THE TEMPTRESS

                    WORKS OF VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ


                                Novels

                    THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE
                    MARE NOSTRUM (_Our Sea_)
                    BLOOD AND SAND
                    THE SHADOW OF THE CATHEDRAL
                    THE ENEMIES OF WOMEN
                    WOMAN TRIUMPHANT (_La Maja Desnuda_)
                    LA BODEGA (_The Fruit of the Vine_)
                    THE MAYFLOWER
                    THE TORRENT (_Entre Naranjos_)
                    THE TEMPTRESS (_La Tierra de Todos_)


                              Other Works

                  IN THE LAND OF ART

                   An unconventional tour of Italy
                   and its treasures of art, architecture
                   and scenery.

                  MEXICO IN REVOLUTION

                   Acute and brilliant chapters on
                   Mexican affairs as seen by the author
                   while on the spot.


                        E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY




                             THE TEMPTRESS

                        (_LA TIERRA DE TODOS_)

                                  BY

                         VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ

                       AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY

                              LEO ONGLEY

                       [Illustration: colophon]

                               NEW YORK

                        E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

                           681 FIFTH AVENUE




                            Copyright, 1923

                       By E. P. Dutton & Company

                         _All Rights Reserved_

                      First Printing, July, 1923
                      Second Printing, July, 1923
                      Third Printing, July, 1923
                      Fourth Printing, July, 1923
                      Fifth Printing, July, 1923
                      Sixth Printing, July, 1923
                      Seventh Printing, July, 1923
                      Eighth Printing, July, 1923
                      Ninth Printing, July, 1923
                      Tenth Printing, July, 1923
                      Eleventh Printing, July, 1923
                      Twelfth Printing, July, 1923
                      Thirteenth Printing, Jury, 1923
                      Fourteenth Printing, July, 1923
                      Fifteenth Printing, July, 1923
                      Sixteenth Printing, July, 1923


                         PRINTED IN THE UNITED
                           STATES OF AMERICA




                             THE TEMPTRESS




CHAPTER I


As usual the Marquis de Torre Bianca got up late. Leaving the security
of his bedroom, he cast an uneasy glance at the letters and newspapers
waiting for him on a silver salver in the library. Some of the postmarks
were foreign. At sight of these he breathed a sigh of relief. That much
respite at least.... But some of the letters were from Paris; and at
these he frowned. He knew what they would be like. They would be long
and full of unpleasant allusions, to say nothing of reproaches and
threats.... He noted uncomfortably the addresses printed on some of the
envelopes, and at their names, his creditors appeared before him, an
indignant and vociferous crowd.... Alas! He knew what was in those
letters.

If they had only been addressed to his wife! She received letters like
that with the utmost serenity, as though debts and clamorous creditors
were her native element--“The Fair Elena” her friends called her,
acknowledging a beauty which couldn’t be denied, but which her women
friends liked to allude to as “historic”--it had lasted so long. The
Marquis, however, had a more antiquated conception of honor than the
historically fair Elena. He went so far as to believe that it is better
not to contract debts if there is no possibility of paying them.

Fearful lest the servant should find him still dubiously eyeing his
mail, the Marquis began opening his letters.... After all, they were not
so bad! One was from the firm which had sold the Marquise her most
recently acquired automobile. Of the ten installments to be paid, it had
collected only two.... And there were numerous other letters from shops
that supplied the Marquise with her needs. From her establishment near
the Place Vendome her debts had reached out and permeated the
neighborhood. The maintenance, to say nothing of the comfort, of the
establishment, necessitated the services of innumerable tradespeople.

The servants had just as good a reason to write him letters as the
tradespeople. But instead they relied upon the worldly arts of the
Marquise to provide them with a means of compensating themselves for
long unpaid services. So they expressed their disgust by a reluctant and
unbending attitude in the discharge of their duties.

The Marquis was wont, when he had finished the perusal of his morning
mail, to look about him with something very like alarm. There was his
Elena, giving parties and going to all the most distinguished
festivities in Paris; occupying the most desirable apartment of an
elegant house on a fashionable street, keeping a luxurious automobile,
and never less than five servants. By what mysterious adjustments and
manoeuvres could his wife and he keep up this manner of life? Every day
there were new debts; every day they required more money for perpetually
increasing expenses. Whatever funds he had disappeared like a river in
the sand. And yet Elena seemed to consider this manner of living
reasonable and proper, just as though it were that of all her
friends....

At this point the Marquis caught sight of a letter he had overlooked, a
letter bearing an Italian postmark.

“From Mother,” he said.

As he read it his expression lightened. He even smiled. Yet this letter
too had complaints to make. But they were gentle, resigned.

The echoes of his mother’s voice, awakened in his memory by her words,
called up before him the old white palace of the Torre Biancas, one of
the monuments of his distant Tuscany. Huge, in ruins now, surrounded by
gardens of the past, with vast halls whose floors were tiled, and whose
ceilings were gay with paintings of mythological scenes, it had long
contained a wealth of famous paintings that hung on its bare walls,
marking out their squares and rectangles in the dust gathering for
centuries on the slowly crumbling plaster.

But the pictures and the priceless bits of statuary had already vanished
from their places when the Marquis’ father took possession of his
ancestral halls. His only resource for an income lay in the archives of
the Torre Biancas. Autographs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and other
Florentines who had had correspondence with his ancestors, paid the
expenses of one generation....

Around the palace the gardens of three centuries stretched out their
marble steps, and balustrades crumbling under the weight of matted rose
vines, to the Tuscan sun. Mosses and vines crept into the cracks of the
stone, tracing out their patterns with supreme indifference to the decay
their presence caused. On the driveways the ancient box, cut back to
form wide walls and deep triumphal arches, looked as black as the ruins
of a burnt city. It was so long now since the gardens had received any
care that they were beginning to look like a flowering forest. The paths
at the step of infrequent visitors sent out melancholy echoes which
startled the birds like the shot of an arrow, disturbed swarms of
insects floating under the outspreading branches, startled the little
snakes crawling among the tree trunks.

Wearing the clothes of a simple peasant, and served only by a little
country girl, the Marquis’ mother lived alone in these vast halls and
gardens, accompanied by thoughts of her son, preoccupied with the
problem he presented. How was she to provide money for him?

The only visitors at the palace were dealers in antiques to whom she
sold one by one the remnants of a splendor already pillaged by those who
had preceded her at Torre Bianca. But she must send several thousand
lire to that last member of the noble line, who was playing a part
worthy of his title in London, Paris, and all the great cities of the
world. And convinced that fortune, so mindful of the first Torre
Biancas, would finally remember her son, she reduced her own needs to
the barest necessities, ate peasant’s food served to her on a rough
pine table, in one of those marble rooms in which nothing now remained
that could be sold.

Touched, as always, by her letter, the Marquis was murmuring softly to
himself, “Mother! Mother!” He read again--

“I didn’t know what to do, Federico, after sending you the money you
last received from me. If you could see the house in which you were
born, my son, I wonder what you would say? No one will offer me more
than a twentieth part of its value. But, until some foreigner who really
wants to buy it comes along, I am willing to sell the floors, and even
those wonderful old ceilings, the only things left now that have any
market value. Anything to get you out of your difficulties, to prevent
the slightest reproach from attaching to your name. I can live on very
little, perhaps even less than I allow myself now. But isn’t it at the
same time possible for you and Elena to reduce your expenses a little
without Elena’s giving up in any way the position that being your wife
entitles her to? Your wife is rich! Can’t she help you to keep up your
establishment?”

The Marquis paused. The simple way in which his mother expressed her
anxieties hurt him; and her illusions about Elena stabbed him like
remorse. She believed Elena to be rich! She believed that he could
induce his wife to live economically and simply ... hadn’t he tried to
at the beginning of their marriage ...?

Elena’s arrival cut short his reflections. It was already past eleven,
and she was going out to take her daily drive in the Bois. She liked to
begin the day with this open air review of her acquaintances.

The somewhat ostentatious elegance of her dress suited her kind of
beauty. Although between thirty and forty, frequent fasts and eternal
vigilance still preserved her slenderness, which was enhanced by her
height; and the care she took of her person kept her in what might be
called that “third youth” which the women of our great modern cities
enjoy.

It was only when she was absent that Torre Bianca was aware of her
faults. As soon as she stepped into the room, his admiration of her took
complete possession of him, making him accede blindly to whatever she
might ask.

She greeted him now with a smile, to which he responded. Putting her
arms about his shoulders she kissed him, and began talking to him with a
childish lisp, which, well he knew, presaged a request. And yet this
trick of hers had never lost its power to stir him, subduing his will.

“Good morning, Bunny! I got up so late this morning, and I have a
thousand things to do before going out, but I couldn’t go without seeing
my darling little Rabbit.... Give me another kiss, and I’m off!”

Smiling humbly, with an air of submissive gratitude like that of a
faithful dog, the Marquis allowed himself to be petted. Elena finally
tore herself away, but before she had quite reached the library door she
suddenly remembered something important and stopped short.

“Have you some money?”

The Marquis’ smile vanished. His eyes put the question:

“How much do you want?”

“Oh, not so much. About eight thousand francs.”

Elena’s tailor, one on the Rue de la Paix, needless to say, had suddenly
stopped being as respectful as Elena thought he should be--his bill was
only three years old!--and he had threatened court proceedings.

At her husband’s gesture when she mentioned this sum, Elena’s childlike
smile vanished; but she still used her little girl’s lisp to complain.

“You say that you love me, Federico, and you refuse to give me this
little bit of money....”

“There are some of the letters and claims of our creditors....” The
Marquis pointed to the heap on the table.

Elena smiled once more, but this time there was something cruel about
the curl of her lips.

“I can show you a great many documents as interesting as those. But you
are a man, and men are supposed to provide money in their homes so that
their wives needn’t suffer.... How am I to pay my debts if you don’t
help me?”

He looked at her with something like fear in his eyes.

“I have given you such a lot of money! But everything that falls into
your hands vanishes like smoke.”

Elena’s voice was hard as she replied:

“You aren’t going to pretend that a woman of my position, or of my
appearance--since people _will_ mention it--should live in a shabby sort
of way? When a man’s vanity gets so much satisfaction out of having a
wife like me, he ought to bring home money by the million.”

It was the Marquis’s turn to be offended, and Elena, aware of the effect
of her words, suddenly changed her manner, smiled, and came close enough
to be able to put her hands on Federico’s shoulders.

“Why don’t you write to the old lady, Federico? Perhaps she can send us
some money, she can sell an heirloom or something....”

The tone of these words only added to her husband’s irritation.

“The person you mention is my mother, and I wish you would speak of her
as such. As to money, she can’t send us any more.”

Elena looked at her husband with a certain contempt, saying at the same
time, as though to herself:

“This will teach me to fall in love with paupers.... Well, if _you_
can’t get me this money, _I’ll_ get it!”

As she spoke an expression so significant flickered over her face that
her husband sprang from his chair.

“You had better explain what you mean,” he began, frowning. But he could
not go on. The Marquise’s expression had completely changed. She broke
out into bursts of childish laughter, and clapped her hands.

“At last, my Bunny is really angry. And he thought his wife meant
something bad.... But don’t you know that I love no one but you? Really,
no one else....”

She caught him by the arm, and kissed him repeatedly, in spite of his
attempts to make her stop her caresses. And he ended by yielding to
them and assuming once more his humble suitor attitude.

Elena was warning him now with upraised finger.

“Come, smile a little, don’t be naughty.... But isn’t there really any
money? Do you mean it?”

The Marquis shook his head. Then he looked ashamed of his powerlessness.

“But I love you just as much,” she said. “Let the old debts wait! I’ll
find a way out--I have before.... Good-bye Federico!”

And she walked backwards towards the door, throwing him kisses; but once
on the other side of the hangings her expression of youthful
lightheartedness vanished. Her lips were twisted with scorn and a look
of frantic ferocity glittered in her eyes.

Her husband too, when he was alone, lost the momentary happiness Elena’s
caresses had afforded him. There lay those letters, and his mother’s
appeal.... He sat at the table, his face in his hands. All his anxieties
had swooped down upon him, he could scarcely breathe in the thick swarm.

Always, at such moments, Torre Bianca called up memories of his youth as
though they could offer him a remedy for present troubles. The happiest
time in his life had been that period when he had been a student in the
Engineering School at Lièges. Eager to restore the fallen splendor of
his house, he had thrown himself into his preparations for a modern
career, in order to set out on the conquest of money, just as his remote
ancestors had done. Before royalty had bestowed a title upon them, they
had been Florentine merchants, like the Medicis, travelling even to the
Orient in their pursuit of fortune. Federico de Torre Bianca wanted to
be an engineer for the same reason that all the other youths of his
generation did, in order to make Italy, once famous for her art, an
important modern nation because of her industries.

As he recalled his student life the first image that arose was that of
Manuel Robledo, his friend and classmate. Manuel was a Spanish youth
whose frank and happy disposition made it possible for him to meet daily
problems with quiet energy. For several years he had played the part of
older brother to the distinguished young Italian, and Torre Bianca never
failed to think of his friend in difficult moments.

He was such a good fellow! Not even his successive love affairs could
destroy his serenity. He had the poise of a mature man, perhaps because
the important interests of his life were good eating and the guitar....

Torre Bianca, who was endowed with a fatal facility for falling in love,
went about in those days with one of the pretty girls of Liège, and
Robledo, out of good fellowship, feigned an absorbing interest in one of
her friends. As a matter of fact he was always much more attentive to
the culinary activities of their parties than to the not very insistent
claims of sentiment.

Yet Bianca had come to discern through this somewhat noisy and
unquestionably materialistic joviality of his friend a certain leaning
towards the romantic which Robledo tried manfully to hide, as though it
were a shameful weakness. Perhaps, in his country, there had been some
experience.... So often, at night, the Italian boy, stretched on his
dormitory bed, heard the guitar softly moaning as Robledo hummed the
lovesongs of his far-away homeland.... Their course over, the friends
had parted, expecting to meet as usual the following year; but that
meeting had never occurred. While Torre Bianca remained in Europe,
Robledo roved about through South America, for the most part in his
capacity as engineer, but now and then he went through an extraordinary
transformation, as though his Spanish blood made it imperative that some
of the old Conquistadores should live in him once more.

At rare intervals he wrote to Torre, but his letters contained more
illusions to the past than to the present. Yet somehow, in spite of his
discreet reticence, Torre Bianca gathered that his chum had become a
general in one of the small republics of Central America.

It was two years now since he had heard from Robledo, whose last letter
announced that he was employed in Argentine, having had enough, for the
time being, of those countries still continually shaken by revolution.
He was contracting for the government as well as for private
undertakings, and constructing canals and railroads; and through all the
discomforts of the rough life he led, the belief that he was helping the
advance guard of civilization to cross one of the earth’s desert places,
gave him intimate satisfaction and happiness.

Torre had among his papers a photograph of his friend in which Robledo
appeared on horseback, wearing an African helmet and a poncho that fell
over his shoulders. Several half-breeds were planting linesman’s flags
on the mesa which, for the first time since creation, was to receive the
imprint of material civilization. Robledo, who was of the same age as
himself, must have been thirty-seven when the photograph was taken; yet
he looked many years younger than Torre Bianca did at forty.

His life of adventure had not let him grow old. Although he was heavier
than in his student days, the smooth face that smiled serenely out of
the photograph indicated perfect physical condition.

Torre Bianca, on the other hand, was of a much slighter build, and
thanks to his fondness for sports, and especially fencing, he preserved
a more than youthful agility. But his face was lined and drawn. There
were furrows between his eyebrows, and the hair above his temples was
already streaked with white, while the corners of his mouth, but
slightly hidden by a short mustache, drooped with what might be
lassitude, or what might be weakness of will. And Torre Bianca, struck
by Robledo’s physical robustness, was encouraged by his photograph to go
on thinking of him as competent to guide and help him, just as he had
done in the early days....

As he thought of his friend that morning in the midst of his anxieties,
he said to himself:

“I wish I had him here! His strong man’s strong will would strengthen
mine....”

The butler interrupted his meditation. A caller ... but he would not
give his name.... Torre Bianca made a determined effort to conceal his
nervous dread from the servant. Was it perhaps one of his wife’s
creditors trying by this means to reach him?

“He seems a foreigner, sir. He says he’s a relative....”

The Marquis had a presentiment, but he smiled at it. It was absurd....
Yet it would be like Robledo to turn up in this fashion, as if he were a
character in a play, coming in just when the action requires his
appearance. But how unlikely that Robledo, who when last heard from was
in another hemisphere, should be on hand to take up his cue like an
actor waiting in the wings! No, life doesn’t provide such neat
coincidences ... only books....

He would not see his caller, he told the servant in no uncertain terms.
At that moment some one lifted the door-hangings and to the butler’s
consternation stepped into the room. The caller had grown tired of
waiting.

The Marquis, who was easily roused, went threateningly towards the
intruder. His arms outstretched, the latter cried:

“You don’t know me--I’ll bet you don’t!”

Clean-shaven, his skin tanned and reddened by sun and cold, he didn’t
look like the Robledo of the photograph. And yet ... there was something
familiarly distinctive about him, something Torre Bianca recognized as
having once formed a part of his own life.... Something in the vigorous
curve of the shoulders, something about his energetic robustness.

“Robledo!”

The friends embraced; and the servant, convinced now that his presence
was superfluous, left the room.

As they smoked and talked, Robledo and Torre Bianca looked at one
another with eager interest, putting out a hand now and then to assure
themselves that the long absent friend was really there.

It was the Marquis who betrayed the greater curiosity.

“Will you be able to stay long in Paris?” he inquired.

“Oh, just a few months....”

He felt the need, he added, of a long draught of civilization, after
spending ten years in American deserts, absorbed in the strenuous task
of building roads, railroads and canals across their wide extent.

“I want to find out if the Paris restaurants still deserve their
reputation, and see if the French wines are as good as they used to be.
And I haven’t had any _fromage de Brie_ for years--no other country in
the world can make it--and I’m hungry for some!”

The Marquis laughed. The same old Robledo, ready to go three thousand
miles to have a meal in Paris! And then, with great interest, he
inquired:

“Are you rich?”

“Poor as ever,” was Robledo’s prompt reply. “But I’m alone in the world,
I’m not married--there’s nothing so expensive as a wife--so, for a few
months I’ll be able to spend money like a regular American millionaire.
I have the money I’ve been earning all this time, I couldn’t spend it in
the desert.”

He turned to look about him at the luxurious furnishings of his friend’s
home.

“You’re the fellow that’s rich, I see!”

The Marquis’s only reply was an enigmatical smile; but Robledo’s words
awakened his worries.

“Tell me about what you have been doing,” the engineer urged. “You
never sent me much news of yourself. Some of your letters must have been
lost, although wherever I went, up to recently, I always established a
good many connections. Yes, I know a little about you. I believe you got
married a few years ago.”

Torre Bianca nodded, and said gravely,

“I married a Russian lady, the wife of a high government official of the
Czar’s court. I met her in London. We met frequently at balls and
country houses ... and finally we married. We make a few pretensions to
elegance--but it’s damned expensive!”

He paused for a moment, as though he wanted to learn what impression
this summary of his life made upon Robledo. But the latter, eager to
learn more, wisely kept silence.

“You, my dear Robledo, leading the simple life of primitive man, are
lucky enough not to know what it costs to live in our civilization. I’ve
worked like a dog just to keep things going--and even at that! And my
poor old mother helps me with whatever she can get out of our family
ruins.”

Then Bianca seemed to repent of the note of complaint in what he was
saying; and with an optimism which, a half hour ago, he would have
considered absurd, he smiled, and went on,

“Really I ought not to complain. There is a friendship that means a
great deal in my life. Do you know the banker Fontenoy? You may have
heard of him; he has business all over the world.”

Robledo shook his head. No, he had never heard that name.

“He is an old friend of my wife’s family. Thanks to Fontenoy, I became a
while ago the director of some development projects in foreign
countries, for which I get a salary that would have seemed to me
magnificent a few years ago.”

Robledo expressed his professional curiosity. “Improvements in foreign
countries!” Of course the engineer wanted to know more about that, and
asked some very definite questions. But Torre betrayed a certain
uneasiness in his replies. He stammered, and his sallow cheeks reddened
slightly.

“Enterprises in Asia and in Africa--gold mines, and a railroad in
China--a shipping company formed to handle the rice products of Tonkin,
and--as a matter of fact, I’m not up on the scheme as a whole. I’ve
never had time for the trip, and then, too, I can’t leave my wife--But
Fontenoy, who has a great head of business, has been to all these
places, and I have the greatest confidence in him. As a matter of fact,
my job is just a matter of signing reports made by the experts Fontenoy
sends out there to satisfy share-holders.”

Robledo could not conceal a certain astonishment at these words. Torre,
aware of his friend’s wonderment, changed the subject. He began talking
of his wife in a tone which indicated that he thought it one of the
achievements of his life to have won her. He knew that Elena charmed
apparently everyone who came within the reach of her beauty. But as he
had never since his marriage felt the slightest doubt concerning her
affections, he was content to follow her meekly about, scarcely visible
in the foaming wake of her triumphant progress. As a matter of fact,
everything that came his way, invitations, generous pay for his
services, a cordial reception wherever he went, came to him, not because
he was the Marquis de Torre Bianca, but because he was Elena’s husband.

“You’ll see her in a little while. And of course you’ll have lunch with
us. You can’t refuse. I have some choice wines, and since you have come
all the way from the western hemisphere for some Brie cheese, I’ll see
that you get plenty of it.”

And then he added, in a tone that partly betrayed his emotion,

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are going to meet my
wife. Everyone calls her ‘la bella Elena’--but she has something
so much better than beauty! She has a disposition just like a
child’s--capricious, yes, sometimes, like a child--and she needs lots of
money. But what woman doesn’t! And I know Elena will be glad to see
you--she has heard me speak so often of my friend Robledo!”




CHAPTER II


The Marquise de Torre Bianca, having come home in good humor, was
disposed to find her husband’s friend very entertaining. For the moment
she had forgotten her pressing need of money, quite as though she had
found a means of satisfying her creditors.

At lunch Robledo had a great deal to do to satisfy her curiosity about
him. She wanted to know all the thrilling episodes of his adventurous
life! Nor could she possibly believe that he wasn’t rich. How unlikely
that anyone from America--either North or South America, it didn’t
matter which--should not be rich, shouldn’t have millions! It required
an effort for the Marquise, as for most Europeans, to reason that even
in the New World there must be people who are poor.

“But I’m not rich at all,” protested Robledo. “Of course I shall try to
die a millionaire, just so as not to disillusion all the people who
believe so firmly that whoever goes to America must by that very fact
make a great fortune, so that he can leave it when he dies to his nieces
and nephews in Europe!”

He began to talk about Patagonia and his undertakings there. With his
partner, a young American from the States, whom he had met in Buenos
Aires, he had tried to colonize several thousand acres near the Rio
Negro. He had risked in this enterprise all his savings, and those of
his partner, as well as whatever sums he could persuade the banks to
advance to him; but he felt certain of the safety of the investment, and
he believed that it would be the source of a great fortune.

It was his job to transform the desert lands of this tract, purchased at
a low price because of their aridity, into irrigated fields. The
Argentine government was carrying on extensive operations in the Rio
Negro region, trying to divert some of its waters. Robledo, who had been
one of the engineers first employed to carry out this scheme, resigned,
in order to colonize the lands which he was buying up in the areas
through which the government irrigation system was sure to be extended
sooner or later.

“In a few years, or even in a few months, I may strike gold,” he was
saying. “Everything depends of course on how the river behaves. If it
amiably allows itself to be divided up, and doesn’t rise suddenly, in
the grip of one of those violent convulsions which are so frequent
there, and which destroy the work of years in a few hours.... Meanwhile
my partner and I have been constructing with the strictest economy all
the minor canals and the other arteries which are to irrigate our waste
lands; and on the day when the dike is finished, and the Rio Negro
waters flow outward into our desert property....”

Robledo stopped short, smiling.

“Then,” he went on, “I shall be a millionaire in regular American style.
No one knows what the extent of our fortune may be. One square mile of
irrigated land is worth several millions, and I own several square
miles.”

Elena was listening breathlessly. But Robledo, as if made uneasy by the
admiring glance Elena’s green gold eyes shot at him, hastened to add:

“On the other hand these millions may not come for many years! They may
not arrive until I am at death’s door, and then my sister’s children,
here in Spain, will have a good time with the money I’ve worked and
sweated for in America....”

But Elena wanted to hear about his life in the Patagonian wilds, that
immense plain swept in winter by freezing hurricanes that raise towering
columns of dust, and whose sole inhabitants are bands of ostriches, and
straying pumas, that sometimes, under stress of hunger, risk attacking a
solitary explorer.

Human population had in earlier times been represented there by scanty
bands of Indians who scratched a bare living out of the river banks, and
by fugitives from Chile and the Argentine, driven through these desolate
regions by fear, either of the victims of their crimes, or of the law.
Gradually the small forts put up by the government for the troops sent
from Buenos Aires to take possession of the Patagonian desert, were
slowly converted into little villages, scattered about at distances of
hundreds of kilometres through these wild and arid lands.

It was in one of these villages that Robledo lived, slowly transforming
his workmen’s camp into a town which would become, perhaps before the
end of half a century, a flourishing city. America is rich in such
transformations.

Elena was listening delightedly, with the same pleasure she would have
felt at the theatre or cinema in watching an interesting story unfold.

“That’s what I call living,” she exclaimed. “That kind of life is worthy
of a real man!”

She turned her gold-flecked eyes away from Robledo to look at her
husband almost pityingly, as if he represented all the weaknesses of a
soft civilization which she hated--for the moment!

“And that’s the way to make money,” she went on. “Really the only men
worth considering are those who win wars, or those who win fortunes!
Even though I am a woman, I’d love a life so full of danger....”

Robledo, to protect his host from the implications of the enthusiasm she
was rather aggressively expressing, began to talk about the less glowing
aspects of pioneering; whereupon the Marquise admitted that her
enthusiasm for a life of adventure was somewhat chilled, and ended by
confessing that she really preferred the ease and elegance of her Paris.

“But how I wish,” she added, “that my husband liked that sort of thing!
Conquering, by sheer force of will, some of the vast riches of this
earth.... He would come to see me every year, I would think of him all
the time he was away, and even join him out there for a few months! It
would be so much more exciting than this life of ours in Paris--and
then, at the end of a few years, there would be riches, real wealth,
immense wealth, like that you read about, and that you so rarely see in
our Old World.”

She paused a moment, then added gravely, looking at Robledo,

“You, for instance, don’t care so much for money. What you want is
adventure, life, activity. You like to use your strength. You don’t
really know what money means. Men like you don’t need much for
themselves. Only a woman can teach men what money is worth in this
world!”

She turned to look at Torre Bianca, adding,

“And yet the men who have a woman to take care of never have the
forcefulness, somehow, to accomplish things the way men do when they are
alone in the world....”

Robledo, after this first luncheon at his friend’s house, became a
frequent visitor at the Torre Biancas, dropping in as informally as
though he really were a member of his host’s family.

“Elena likes you very much, really likes you, my dear fellow,” Torre
assured him; and he looked immensely relieved. It would have been so
difficult if he had had to choose between his wife and his friend, as he
would have had to do in case they hadn’t hit it off!

Robledo, for his part, was somewhat disconcerted by Elena. When she was
present he yielded to the charm of her person, to the peculiar seductive
quality that enhanced her beauty. She always treated him with a gracious
familiarity, quite as though he really were her husband’s brother, and
took charge of initiating him in Paris society, giving him plenty of
advice and information so as to prevent his being taken in by those
disposed to see an advantage for themselves in his being a foreigner,
and accompanying him to the fashionable resorts of the city, either at
teatime or at night, after dinner.

Her mischievous and childlike expression, her imperturbable way of
looking at him, the childish lisp with which she pronounced certain
words, all had a certain fascination for the engineer.

“She’s a child,” he told himself. “Her husband is right about that. She
has all the tricks of the dolls that society turns out--and she must be
fearfully expensive! But, underneath all this, there is probably a very
simple woman....”

When he was not with her, however, he was less optimistic about his
friend’s wife, and smiled somewhat ironically at the latter’s credulity.
Who was this woman? Where had Torre met her?

He knew concerning her only what his friend had told him. As to that
distinguished functionary of the Czar’s court, her deceased husband, it
was difficult to gather just what the nature of his services had been,
perhaps because they had been so numerous! He had, it seemed, been Grand
Marshal of the court; then again, he had been merely a general. But when
it came to remarkable ancestry, no one could surpass Elena’s father.
Torre Bianca delighted to repeat his wife’s statements concerning a host
of personages of the Russian court, many of them great ladies, who had
added the glory of a love affair with the Emperor to their other
distinctions--yes, all these celebrities were relatives of Elena’s. He
had never seen any of them because they had died a long time ago, or
else they lived on their estates way off in Siberia somewhere.

Some of Elena’s allusions puzzled Robledo. She had never, so she told
him, been in America, yet, one afternoon as they sipped their tea at the
Ritz, she mentioned a trip through San Francisco when she was a little
girl. On other occasions she would mention places in remote parts of the
world, or persons well known in contemporary society as though she knew
them intimately; and he never succeeded in finding out how many
languages she knew.

“I speak everything!” had been her answer when Robledo asked her one day
how many languages she could use. And her anecdotes made him wonder....
She had always “heard So-and-So tell this joke;” yet the engineer had
his doubts about the real source of her rather daring stories.

“Where hasn’t this woman been?” he thought to himself. “Apparently she
has lived a thousand lives in a few years. Can all this have happened
when she was the wife of that Russian personage?”

His attempts to sound his friend on the subject of the Marquise had only
one result. They showed that Torre’s confidence in his wife hedged him
round like a thick wall of credulity. It was impossible to scale this
wall or make the slightest breach in it. He would never discover the
truth about Elena from her husband. But he did learn that since the day
he had met her in London Torre knew nothing about his wife beyond what
she herself had told him.

Of course, when he married her Federico must have seen some of the
papers required for the civil ceremony.... But no, apparently he had
not. The marriage had taken place in London, and had come off as rapidly
as a film wedding. All that was needed was a minister to read the prayer
book, a few witnesses, and some passports and papers, probably lent for
the occasion.

But after awhile Robledo grew ashamed of his suspicions. Federico seemed
happy and proud of his marriage. That gave his friend little right to
interfere.... Besides, his suspicions might very well be due to the fact
that he had lived too long in the woods. He had not yet adjusted himself
to the complexities of life in Paris.

Elena was a woman of elegance, a woman of the kind he had never known
before. It was his classmate’s marriage which made this unexpected
friendship possible. And it was very natural that he should find in this
new society things that seemed startling or even shocking. It had
already happened to him on several occasions to consider as perfectly
natural things that a few minutes earlier had seemed to him quite
improper. Undoubtedly it was his lack of social experience that made him
so suspicious.... And then, at a smile from Elena, at a caressing glance
of her gold-flecked green eyes, he would express a trust and an
admiration in no degree inferior to her husband’s.

Robledo was living near the _Boulevard des Italiens_ in an old house
which he had admired on one of his early visits to Paris. Then it had
seemed to him the nearest approach to Paradise that an earthly building
could make. Now however, he left it frequently to dine with Torre Bianca
and his wife. Sometimes he was their guest in their luxurious home.
Sometimes he played the host at some famous Paris restaurant.

Elena was pleased to have him come to the numerous teas she gave, so she
could show him off to her friends. She took childish delight in
opposing the wishes of the “Patagonian bear,” as she liked to call him,
regardless of the fact that he always declared there were no bears to be
found in the part of the world she attributed him to. He detested these
occasions and Elena shamelessly resorted to ruses in order to get him to
come.

Little by little he met all the friends of the house who usually
appeared at the formal dinners given by the Torre Biancas. Elena
invariably presented him, not as an engineer whose enterprises were in
their first and most precarious stages, but as one whose work was
already a success, and who had returned from America well provided with
millions. She took care however to impart this misinformation behind his
back, and Robledo was somewhat at a loss to understand the profound
respect with which he was treated, and the sympathetic attention with
which his friends’ guests turned to listen to him whenever he offered a
remark.

The most important guests were several deputies and journalists, friends
of the banker Fontenoy. The latter was a man of middle age,
clean-shaven, entirely bald, who affected the dress and manners of an
American business man.

Robledo, as he looked at him, was reminded of an occasion long ago in
Buenos Aires when a note was to fall due the following day, and he had
not yet been able to raise the money to meet it. Fontenoy looked exactly
like the popular idea of the successful man of affairs who is directing
business enterprises in every quarter of the globe. Everything about him
seemed calculated to inspire confidence, above all his obvious faith in
his own resourcefulness. Yet, at times, he would frown, and plunged in
silence, give the impression of being completely detached from all that
surrounded him.

“He is thinking of some new combination,” Torre Bianca would say to his
guest. “The way that man’s mind works is extraordinary!”

Yet Robledo, without quite knowing why, was again reminded of his own
anxieties and those of so many others way off there in Buenos Aires when
they had borrowed money at ninety days, and were facing the necessity of
meeting this debt on the morrow.

As he left the Torre Bianca’s one evening, Robledo started off down the
_Avenue Henri Martin_ towards the Trocadero, where he expected to take
the subway. One of the guests accompanied him, a dubious looking person,
who sat at the last seat at table, and now seemed quite happy to be
walking along with a South American millionaire. He was a protégé of
Fontenoy’s and edited a business weekly, one of the banker’s innumerable
enterprises. A close and acid person, he seemed to expand only in those
moments when he was criticising his benefactors, which was always the
moment their backs were turned. At the end of a few yards he began to
pay off his debt toward his host and hostess by gossiping about them. He
knew of course that Robledo was a school friend of the Marquis.

“And have you known his wife a long time too?” he inquired, and smiled
meaningly when Robledo admitted that he had first made her acquaintance
a few weeks ago.

“Russian! Do you really think that she is Russian?... Of course that’s
what she says she is, just as she says her first husband was a Marshall
of the Czar’s court.... Yet a good many people can’t help wondering
whether there ever was such a husband. I don’t care to say anything
about the truth of all this. But I do know that I never have met any
Russians at the noble lady’s house.”

He paused to take breath, and added,

“Moreover, some of her supposed countrymen, people in a position to know
what they were talking about, told me that she wasn’t Russian. I’ve been
told that she’s Rumanian, by some people who claim to have seen her when
she was a girl, in Bucharest--and I have heard that she was born in
Italy, and that her parents were Poles.... Well, there you are! And it’s
lucky we don’t have to know the history of all the people who invite us
to dinner....”

Whereupon he glanced at Robledo in an attempt to discover whether he had
succeeded in whetting the Spaniard’s curiosity, and whether it would be
safe for him to go on....

“The Marquis is a good fellow enough. You must know him pretty well.
Fontenoy has given him a fairly important job. He is well aware of Torre
Bianca’s good qualities ... and....”

Robledo sensed that his escort was on the point of saying something
which it would be impossible for him to accept in silence. He called to
a passing taxi, murmured something about a forgotten engagement, and
made haste to be rid of the spiteful sycophant.

In his conversation with Torre Bianca, the latter always took up, sooner
or later, the subject that obsessed him. He needed so much money to
keep up his social position!

“You have no idea how much a wife costs, my dear fellow! Winters at the
Riviera, summers at fashionable watering places, trips to famous resorts
in the spring and fall, all that costs something....”

Robledo always received these outbursts with expressions of sympathy;
but there was an ironic note in them which exasperated Torre.

“Of course anyone who can get along without women is free to assume that
superior air of yours, my dear boy. That’s what people usually do who
know nothing about love....”

Robledo turned white, and the smile that usually played about his lips
vanished. So, he knew nothing about love.... Something stirred in his
memory....

Torre Bianca knew very little of his friend’s early experiences. The
Marquis had a vague impression that Robledo’s sweetheart had married
someone else, or maybe she had died.... Anyway something had happened,
and he suspected that Robledo had, as a consequence of it, vowed never
to marry.... Yet who would suspect that this well-fed, practical, and
ironical friend of his bore a wound that the years had not yet been able
to heal?

But, as though fearful that his friend might possibly think of him as
“romantic,” Robledo hastened to smile sceptically.

“When I want women they are not hard to find ... and then I am free to
go my way. Why complicate my life by taking into it a companion I don’t
need?”

As the three friends were leaving the theatre one evening, Elena
expressed a desire to go to a certain Montmartre cabaret that was
causing a stir in Paris by the magnificence of its new decorations, in
the Persian style of the Thousand and One Nights, adapted of course to
the architectural necessities of a _faubourg_ cabaret.

Green lights gave the effect of a sea cave to the high-ceilinged room in
which the crowd looked as livid as so many corpses, recent victims of
the hangman’s art. Two orchestras working in shifts filled the air with
jerking and broken rythms. Violins and banjos vied with indefinable
instruments in the production of disharmonies, while automobile horns,
drums and cymbals, contributed to a pandemonium in which heavy objects
crashed on the ground, rails squeaked, and the barnyard squawked.

In an open space between tables groups of dancers came and went. The
women’s dresses and hats, like rainbow-hued foam flecked with gold,
floated in and out among the black coats of the men and the white
squares of the tablecloths. The orchestras shrieked, and the guests
tried hard to be as noisy as the patrons of a country fair. Those who
did not dance lassooed everything in sight with paper trailers, threw
cotton snowballs about, blew whistles and played with other childish
toys. Multicolored balloons floated on the smoke-laden air, while men
and women, as they ate and drank, wore paper caps of ridiculous cut,
baby bonnets tied on with strings, clown’s hats and fantastic
bird-crests.

A forced merriment prevailed, a desire to revert to the stammerings of
babyhood, as though this would give new incentive to the monotonous
sinnings of middle age.

Elena seemed delighted with the scene.

“There’s nothing like Paris, after all, is there Robledo?” she cried.

But Robledo, the savage, smiled with an indifference magnificently
insolent. The three ate and drank, though they were neither hungry nor
thirsty. At every table the champagne bottles appeared, nestling in
their silver pails. One might have thought them the gods of the place,
in whose honor the feast was held. And always, before one bottle was
empty, another took its place as though it had grown out of the frosty
depths of the bucket.

Elena, who was looking about with a certain impatience, suddenly smiled
and waved to a man who had just come in. It was Fontenoy, who joined
them at their table.

Robledo suddenly remembered that Elena had mentioned the banker several
times while they were at the theatre. Perhaps she and the banker had
arranged this “chance” meeting at Montmartre?

But Fontenoy was saying to Torre,

“What a coincidence! I have just been dining with some business friends,
and I thought I needed something frivolous to take my mind off my work
for a little while. I might have gone to any one of a dozen other
restaurants, but I just happened to drop in here--and here you all are!”

For a moment Robledo was tempted to believe that eyes can smile without
the help of lips, such a mischievous and triumphant gleam flashed from
Elena’s. But when the champagne bottle had renewed itself three times
in its silver nest, Elena began to look enviously at the dancers.
Finally she exclaimed, like a petulant small girl,

“I’d give anything to dance, and yet none of you gives me an
opportunity!”

The Marquis got up as though at an imperial command, and husband and
wife threaded their way in and out among the other couples.

When they returned to their table, Elena was protesting with comic
indignation.

“Here I’ve come all the way to Montmartre to dance with my own
husband...!”

With an affectionate glance at Fontenoy she went on,

“Of course I wouldn’t think of expecting you to dance with me. You don’t
know how, and anyway it’s too frivolous. Some of your stockholders might
see you, and they’d be sure to lose confidence in you, if they saw you
in this sort of place.”

Turning to Robledo, she inquired,

“Don’t you dance?”

The engineer pretended to be scandalized at the suggestion. Where could
he have learned the modern steps? The only ones he knew were those of
the Chilian “cueca” that his peons always danced on pay days, or the
“pericon” and the “gato” as danced by some old _gaucho_ to the clatter
of his spurs.

“So, I shall have to sit here! That’s what happens when I go out with
three men.... I never saw anything so ridiculous!”

But, as though he had heard what she was saying, a young man came
towards their table, a young dancer whom they had often seen at
well-known dancing palaces. Torre made a gesture of annoyance. The fact
that he had heard Elena express her admiration of the dancer had been
enough to arouse his dislike.

The youth enjoyed a certain celebrity. Someone had ironically indicated
to what heights of glory he had attained by calling him “the tango-god.”
Robledo guessed from the smallness of his feet, always encased in
high-heeled shoes, and the brilliance of his thick hair, as black as
Chinese laquer, that he was a South American.

This “tango-god” who allowed his partners to pay for the dances they had
with him--or so those envious of his celebrity whispered--had no
difficulty in persuading Elena to accompany him to the dance floor.

Several times she came back to her place to rest, but in a few minutes
her eyes would begin following the dancer, and he, as though conscious
of an inaudible summons, made haste to seek her out again.

Meanwhile Torre Bianca was not concealing his disgust. Fontenoy appeared
impassive and smiled absently in those intervals Elena spent with them.
But Robledo remembered the absent-minded gestures he had observed among
people who have a promissory note soon falling due....

He looked more attentively at the banker, who seemed absorbed in the
thought of distant things. But little by little Elena’s persistence in
dancing with the young South American had induced on his face an
expression of annoyance quite as marked as her husband’s. Yet,
invariably, as she passed by in her partner’s arms, she smiled
mischievously at Fontenoy, as though his air of disgust delighted her.

Robledo, sitting between the two, thought to himself,

“To look at them it would be hard to say which one looks more like a
jealous husband than the other....”




CHAPTER III


The Countess Titonius appeared one day at one of Elena’s teas. The
Countess was a Russian lady who had married a Scandinavian nobleman, by
which act she had cast him into such complete eclipse that no one could
remember ever having seen him.

Well on the way toward fifty, the Countess still possessed the dregs,
albeit somewhat muddy, of a remote but once heady beauty. Her
overflowing obesity, her white and flaccid flesh, now served as the
support for a head and face much like those of a sentimental doll; and
as the Countess was given to writing amorous verses and reciting them to
anyone within hearing, she was frequently referred to in the circles in
which she moved, as “the five-hundred-weight of poetry.”

Already generously decolleté by mid-afternoon, her gigantic and
barbarous jewels adorned the hollows and rotundities of her quivering
flesh, or set off the high lights of a red gold wig for which the
Countess was perpetually purchasing additional curls.

For the most part her jewels were quite shamelessly false. Most worthy
of respect among their number was a pearl necklace, which, whenever the
Countess deposited her bulk in a chair, dangled grotesquely over the
protruding spheres of her opulent form. The pearls, irregular,
triangular-shaped, and with root marks, resembled the shark’s teeth with
which the members of certain savage tribes like to adorn themselves.
Gossip asserted that they were souvenirs of those lovers of her youth of
whom she had been able finally to extract nothing else.... It was
undeniable that the Countess was given to speaking, with no perceptible
restraint, of her innumerable tender experiences.

No sooner had the Countess learned from Elena’s own lips, that Robledo
was a millionaire fresh from the American wild, than she began casting
glances of passionate interest in his direction. Teacup in hand, she
captured him in a corner, and began a conversation to escape from which
he frantically sought a pretext.

“You, who are such a traveller, such a hero, must give me the benefit of
your experience. Tell me, what is your real opinion about love?”

The poetess heard the hero murmuring excuses. In spite of the tender
glances of her miopic eyes, she had frightened him!

A few weeks later Elena asked him to accept an invitation to a reception
at the Countess’s. “It will be amusing. Titonius is sure to ask her
Bohemian friends, so as to have some applause for her poems--of course
she’ll read them! There’ll be a lot of people there who come in the hope
of meeting celebrities, and there’ll be no-account artists, and youths
convinced that they have achieved immortality because they’ve succeeded
in collecting a train of admirers, or get their things published in the
columns of some wretched little sheet that nobody reads. You ought to
see all those absurd people! There isn’t another house like that one in
Paris. Anyway I promised the Countess that you would come and I’ll be
cross if you don’t!”

To keep peace Robledo betook himself at ten o’clock one evening to the
house of Mme. Titonius on the _Avenue Kléber_, having fortified himself
beforehand by dining with some South American friends at one of the
Boulevard restaurants.

Two servants, hired for the occasion, were helping the guests out of
their overcoats. The mixture of various social groups that Elena had
foreseen was noticeable even in the anteroom. Side by side with guests
of distinguished appearance, accustomed to the life of the drawing-room,
he noticed youths with leonine locks, whose formal evening dress was
revealed only when they slid out of threadbare coats with tattered
linings. He caught the contemptuous expression of the servants as they
collected these coats, as well as certain fur wraps grown bald in spots,
from ladies who, on emerging from these coverings, displayed the most
extravagant of head dresses.

An old fellow whose whiskers, of a dirty white, and whose wide slouch
hat made him look like the popular conception of a poet, threw off his
summer overcoat and the woolen mufflers wound about him. Taking his pipe
out of his mouth, he struck it on the heel of his shoe, and put it in
his overcoat pocket.

“Take good care of that, now,” he said to the servant.

Robledo’s fur coat inspired respect in the attendants. One of them,
after helping its owner out of it, kept it on his arm.

“You’ve taken a fancy to it?” the engineer inquired.

Paying no attention to his jesting tone, the fellow replied,

“I’ll just lay it aside, sir.... Because some one might make a mistake,
that he might sir, going away from here....”

And with a gesture at the mound of unsightly coverings, he winked at
Robledo.

The sight of the American “millionaire” in her own drawing room aroused
great enthusiasm in the poetess. Scattering the guests to right and
left, she plunged through the throng to meet him, grasped him by both
hands, and leaning on his arm, bore him along with her, presenting him
to her friends. Her eyes dwelt on him proudly as though he were the
chief attraction of the occasion.

Only the day before Elena had given him due warning.

“Take care! The Countess is enamored of you, and kidnapping is quite in
her line....”

But now the poetess, in a veritable avalanche of words, was giving vent
to her enthusiasm as she introduced the American.

“A hero,” she was exclaiming, “a superman from the pampas, where he has
hunted lions, tigers, and even elephants....”

Robledo looked alarmed at these fantastic improvisations, but the
Countess was far beyond geographic scruples.

“When you tell me all about your wonderful deeds, perhaps I shall write
a poem about them, an epic, in the modern style of course, telling the
adventures of your remarkable life. Men are only interesting to me when
they are heroes....”

Again Robledo wore a look of alarm.

As for the moment there chanced to be no one near at hand to whom she
could present her distinguished guest, the Countess conducted him to a
small room into which no one had yet wandered, perhaps because the odors
drifting in through a portière betokened the close proximity of the
kitchen.

Sitting down in an arm-chair as wide as a throne, she bade Robledo be
seated. But when he looked around for a chair, the Countess Titonius
pointed to a low stool near her feet.

“That will be more intimate,” she declared. “You will look like a page
of olden times at the feet of his lady.”

Robledo could not altogether conceal his dismay at these words, but he
obediently followed his hostess’s directions, although his own generous
proportions were something of an obstacle.

The Countess meanwhile was imitating Elena’s childish gestures and
lisping speech, with rather grotesque effect.

“Now that we are alone,” she was saying, “I hope you will speak freely
with me. I am going to ask you the same question as before. What do you
really think of love?”

Robledo, quite overwhelmed, murmured something about love’s being a
disease from which the human race has been suffering for thousands of
years, without growing any the wiser about its cause and cure.

The Countess was now very close to him, scanning him with her
shortsighted eyes to which she held her shell-handled lorgnette. Leaning
down over her vast girth, her cheek almost touched that of the man
seated at her feet.

“And do you think that I shall ever find a soul to understand my own--so
misunderstood?” she was asking him.

Robledo was quite calm as he replied gravely,

“Oh, I am sure of it. You are still young, and have plenty of time....”

The words threw the Countess Titonius into such ecstatic rapture that
she could not restrain herself from caressing her companion’s cheek with
the tip of her lorgnette.

“Spanish gallantry!” she sighed. “But we must part! Let us keep our
secret from the eyes of a world which cannot understand.... Yes, I can
read your eyes. Our souls shall meet again, more intimately ... but now
my social duties call. Once more, I am nothing but a hostess.”

Rising from her arm-chair throne with all the ponderous weight of her
bulk, she went away, attempting as she did so, to move with the light
step of a young girl. She did not forget to throw Robledo a kiss from
the end of her lorgnette.

Disconcerted by this episode, and somewhat annoyed by being placed in so
grotesque a position, he also left the room.

On his way back to the drawing-room he stumbled upon a man of small
stature, who, in spite of having suffered a rude blow in the collision,
meekly murmured his apologies. Later Robledo saw him again, wandering
timidly about, watching the servants, and at the same time looking as
though he were asking their pardon for doing so, and pushing the
furniture that had been deranged back to its place. Whenever anyone
spoke to him he made haste to answer with abject politeness, and then
fled precipitately.

The Countess meanwhile had gathered a group of men about her, for the
most part long-haired individuals of those Robledo had noticed in the
cloak-room. Many of the women guests were openly making fun of their
hostess, raising their eyebrows at one another with a gesture whose
meaning was not hard to guess. The old fellow who had left his mufflers
and his pipe in the coat room announced solemnly:

“We respectfully request that our beautiful Muse recite some of her
poems!” at which there was much applause, and many approving nods. But
the Muse showed herself to be intractable, and began to move this way
and that in her chair, shaking her head. In a weak tone, as though
suddenly ill, she murmured,

“No, my friends, I cannot ... tonight, it is impossible ... some other
time perhaps....”

Her admirers grew insistent, and the Countess was forced to repeat her
refusals, her voice constantly fainter. Finally her guests abandoned her
for livelier diversions, and turning their back on the suffering Muse,
promptly forgot her.

Scarcely had a young musician, clean-shaven and with flowing locks, who
strove to imitate the genial ugliness of certain modern composers, sat
down at the piano and ran his fingers over the keyboard, when two girls
made a dash for him, put out their hands to his shoulders, implored.
They would love to hear his wonderful compositions--but later! Now he
must be indulgent, and come down to the level of the crowd, and play
something for them to dance to. Oh, a waltz would do, if artistic
principles stood in the way of his playing one of the American dances.

Several couples began to circle round the room and were rapidly joined
by others. Suddenly noticing that no one was left to pay court to her,
the Countess looked about in bewilderment, then rose, saying with
indulgent condescension,

“Since you really want to hear me, I’ll do as you insist. I’ll recite a
short poem.”

Consternation! The pianist, however, not having heard the Countess’s
surrender, went on playing, until the meek anonymous gentleman, whom
Robledo had noticed trotting about, repairing the disorder caused by the
guests, came up to him and grasped his hands. The music ceased, the
couples stopped short, and finally, with a bored expression found
chairs. The Countess began....

Staring, in an attempt to appear attentive, blinking, in an attempt to
repel the advances of sleep, yawning, or sunk in blank immobility, her
victims sat or lolled about. Two of the women, livelier than the rest,
were feigning great interest in the recitation. One of them went so far
as to put a hand behind her ear in order to hear better. A running
conversation was going on, however, behind their fans, which they
dropped to their laps now and then when they needed both hands for the
patter of applause. But they caught them up quickly to conceal their
laughter. The Countess was entertaining them so much better than she
knew!

Robledo chanced to be standing behind them. Leaning against the
door-jamb, he was half hidden by the hangings. The Countess meanwhile
was declaiming with increasing fervor, so that, in order to carry on
their conversation, the two women had to raise their voices.

“Instead of stuffing us with poetry, I wish she’d give us a decent
supper,” one of them was saying.

The other protested. The Countess set a table that was dangerous, but
certainly plentiful. Only the brave, not to say reckless, accepted her
dinner invitations, for on these occasions the Countess herself prepared
the courses. “And, my _dear_, by the time you reach dessert, you’re
lucky if you only have to ’phone for the doctor, instead of the
undertaker!”

Frequently interrupted by their own laughter, they rehearsed the
Countess’s history. She had once been rich; some attributed this past
wealth to her parents’ fortune, others to the fortunes--and fortunes--of
her lovers. Her marriage with the Count Titonius had provided her with a
title and the most insignificant of husbands, a fellow who, ruined by a
stupid speculation, tossed up a coin to see whether he should blow out
his brains or marry the Countess. And now, in her establishment, he
occupied a position quite inferior to that of the servants. When the
Countess’s nerves were in a state of tension because of the infidelity
of some one of her youthful protégés, it was her habit to throw all the
Count’s shirts and underwear over the banisters, after which with the
air of an injured queen she would order him to leave her presence for
ever.

A few days later, however, when the poetess was giving another party,
the outcast would reappear, meek, and sad, and shrinking, as though
fearful of occupying too much space in his wife’s rooms.

“I can’t imagine,” the other was saying, “why she persists in giving
these receptions, when the woman is ruined! For instance, on the table
out there where we’ll have supper in a little while, you’ll see large
pastry pieces, and hot-house fruit--rented, my dear, rented for the
evening, just like the servants. Everyone knows it, and no one dares
take any of these show pieces, the Countess would be so furious--so all
we’ll get will be tea and cakes, and we’ll have to pretend that’s all we
want!”

They stopped a moment to applaud the Countess, who was emboldened by her
apparent success, to begin declaiming a new poem.

Robledo, as little interested in the malicious gossipings of these two
women as in his hostess’s recitations, took advantage of a moment during
which the Countess was bowing to her audience, to leave the drawing-room
and make his way to the alcove which had been the scene of his romantic
passage with the poetess.

The meek and obsequious gentleman he had stumbled against earlier in the
evening was now stretched out on the divan, smoking, and looking much
like a laborer enjoying a few minutes of rest. He had been watching the
spirals of smoke from his cigarette unroll in the heavy air, but when
Robledo sat down near him, he felt it incumbent upon him to smile at the
stranger. In a few moments he inquired,

“Are you bored to death?”

Robledo looked sharply at him before he answered.

“And you?”

The little man nodded sadly, and Robledo made a gesture which plainly
said, “Let’s clear out, shall we?”

But the little man’s eyes seemed to reply, “If I only could!”

“You are living here in the house?” inquired Robledo finally.

And the little man replied breathlessly, with a jerk of his head and
arms.

“This is my house. I am the Countess’s husband....”

After this revelation, Robledo thought it discreet to retire. Putting
the cigar he had been about to light back in his pocket, he returned to
the drawing-room.

A great burst of applause met his ears. The poetess had stopped! And
convinced that she would recite no more that evening, her admirers were
expressing some of their delight, while the Countess grasped the hands
of the friends about her and mopped her damp brow, murmuring,

“I shall die.... Such emotion.... I am in a fever.... Art is like that.
You shouldn’t have made me recite....”

Looking about as though searching for someone, she caught sight of
Robledo and made for him.

“Your arm, Hero of the Pampas! You shall lead me out to supper!”

The guests, for the most part, made no attempt to conceal their joy as
the door of the dining-room opened. There was a general rush for the
_buffet_, some of the guests elbowing and trampling the others.

Leaning on her escort’s arm, the Countess was gazing at him with
passionate eyes.

“Did you pay special attention to my poem, ‘The Rosy Dawn of Love’? Do
you know whom I was thinking of as I recited those verses?”

Robledo turned away. A laugh was about to escape....

“How could I guess, Countess? I’ve lived in the desert so long, I’m
nothing but a savage!”

The guests were crowding around the table, casting hungrily admiring
glances at the examples of the pastry cook’s art that occupied its
centre, surrounded by pyramids of enormous fruit. The cakes and
sandwiches looked pathetically insignificant beside them! The two
servants who had been in charge of the cloak-room, and a butler,
resplendent with a silver watch chain across his waistcoat, and side
whiskers that made him look like an old diplomat, were defending the
pastry edifice in the centre of the table, condescending to hand out
only the trifles on its periphery; cups of tea or chocolate, small
glasses of _liqueurs_, sandwiches and cakes.

The old fellow of the mufflers, whom the Countess hailed as “_cher
maître_,” was trying vainly to make the servant understand that he
wished him to deposit some of the _pièce de resistance_, or at least
some of the fruit on the empty plate he was frantically extending. But
the servant looked at him with a shocked expression, as though he were
requesting something scarcely decent, and finally, after handing him a
cake and a sandwich, turned his back upon him.

Robledo, standing near the table, found himself close to the hired
“pieces” that the servants were so conscientiously defending. The
Countess had dropped his arm for the moment to reply to congratulations
on her remarkable reading. Relieved at being left to his own devices
for a few minutes, he examined the table critically, and while the
butler and his acolytes were attending to the needs of the crowd, he
picked up a plate and knife and tranquilly carved a piece out of the
most majestic of the pasties. He even had time to take one of the ruddy
pears from the showy mounds of fruit, and cut it in two. But just as he
was about to eat it, the mistress of the house, free for a moment from
her admirers, turned an amorous glance in his direction, only to see a
breach in the pastry edifice, and a handsome piece of fruit, ruthlessly
sliced, on the barbarian’s plate....

A great change occurred in the sentiments of the poetess. At first she
looked shocked, as though witnessing an act which transgressed all
consecrated usages. Then came indignation, and finally rage.... It was
she who would have to pay for this stupid destruction.... And she had
believed for a moment that she had found--in this savage--a hero-soul
worthy of her own!

Abruptly leaving her “Patagonian Bear,” she sought out the pianist who,
circling round and round the table, was pleading with one servant after
another for sandwiches and a little more wine....

“Give me your arm, friend Beethoven!” With a dramatic gesture she
continued.

“One of these days I shall write a libretto for this young man, and then
there’ll be a little less talk about Wagner!”

She took him along with her to the drawing room, now deserted, and made
him sit down at the piano, while in clarion tones she declaimed to an
accompaniment of arpeggios. But nothing could tempt her guests from the
dining-room. They remained clustered round the table, maintaining
however, the group distinctions which all Mme. Titonius’ efforts at
Bohemian _camaraderie_ were powerless to break down.

Robledo caught a glimpse through the crowd of the Marquis de Torre
Bianca and his wife, who had just come in, having spent the earlier part
of the evening at another party. He noticed that Elena was talking
mechanically, murmuring phrases that had no meaning, as though she were
thinking of something else. Convinced that his chatter annoyed her, he
went off in search of Federico, from whom he obtained little attention
for the reason that the Marquis was very busy describing to someone he
had just met the important undertakings that his friend Fontenoy was
engaged in, in various parts of the globe.

Bored, and not yet quite clear as to the reason for his hostess’s sudden
desertion, he sank into a large armchair, and almost at the same instant
heard someone talking behind him. Not the two women gossips this time,
but a man and a woman, who, seated on a divan, were repeating the same
things he had overhead before, as though no two guests in that house
could do anything else but gossip about the Countess. He paid little
attention to what they were saying until suddenly he heard the name
Torre Bianca. The woman was saying,

“Did you ever see such jewels? Of course everyone knows that neither she
nor her husband had to work hard to get them. Everyone knows that
Fontenoy pays for all those little luxuries.”

The man had a different version.

“I was told that those jewels were paste, as pasty as those of our
poetical Countess. The Torre Biancas kept the money the banker gave them
to pay for the real gems, or else they sold the real ones and had these
substitutes made.”

The woman sighed at the banker’s name,

“That man is nearly bankrupt--everybody says so! And some go so far as
to talk about court proceedings and a prison sentence. What a
bloodthirsty creature that Russian woman must be!”

The man laughed sceptically.

“Russian? There are people who knew her when she was a girl in Vienna,
singing in music-halls. Also some one in diplomatic circles told me that
she is Spanish, of an English father. No one knows her nationality, she
doesn’t know it herself....”

Robledo got up from his chair. He couldn’t very well listen to any more
such talk without speaking. But just as he was leaving the room he heard
a double exclamation of surprise coming from behind him.

“Here is Fontenoy! How strange to see him here! He never comes, for fear
the Countess will ask him for a loan.... Something unusual must be going
on!”

Robledo recognized Fontenoy in one of the groups. He was just at that
moment bowing to the Torre Biancas. Robledo noticed that he was smiling,
and seemed as serene as usual. More than that, he had lost his usual
abstracted air that always made him look as though he were thinking of a
note due the next day. He seemed calmer and more confident than Robledo
had ever seen him look; in fact the only remarkable thing about his
manner was the exceptional affability with which he greeted the people
about him.

From afar the American watched him and noticed a brief glance that
passed between him and Elena. Whereupon the banker, with a slightly
bored expression, left the group he had been with and slowly made his
way to the small room that had witnessed the scene between Robledo and
the Countess.

As he went towards it he absently pressed the hands held out in greeting
and in the hope of capturing him for a moment’s conversation. “Happy to
see you here,” he murmured, and passed on.

Forcing to his lips his habitual smile of kindly protection, he nodded
to Robledo, but scarcely had he done so when the smile vanished.

For in that moment the two men had faced one another, and Fontenoy saw
something in the Spaniard’s expression which made him drop his smiling
mask. His own soul seemed to be looking out at him from those eyes....

That glance, rapid as it was, he would never forget, thought the
Spaniard. He and this man scarcely knew one another, and yet there had
been in Fontenoy’s eyes an expression of complete trust, as though he
were showing him, in that brief moment, all that he had ever thought and
felt.

Then he saw Elena skillfully making her way, without appearing to do so,
towards the same room. A curiosity of which he was ashamed pricked him.
He had no right to take part in the affairs of these two people. At the
same time it was impossible for him to be indifferent to the unwonted
event which, he knew intuitively, was even then about to occur....

The banker must have found it urgently necessary to speak to Elena--only
this supposition could explain his seeking her at the Countess’s....
What were those two saying to one another?...

Pretending to be absorbed in reflection, he passed by the door.... Elena
and Fontenoy stood talking; their lips scarcely moved as they faced one
another, standing very straight, as though they had resolved that no one
must guess, from the curves of their lips, what they were saying....

Fontenoy’s rapid glance at him made him regret his curiosity; for this
glance moved him as the other had done. It told him so plainly that the
man who was looking at him in this fashion was passing through one of
the most critical moments of his life. He could almost believe that
there was a reproach in his eyes.... “Why does what happens to me
interest you if you cannot help me?...”

So he did not walk past the door again. But yielding to an unexplainable
impulse that was stronger than his will, he remained close to it,
listening.... No, his conduct was not gentlemanly. He was behaving like
any one of those scandal-mongers he had been overhearing. Apparently his
surroundings were demoralizing him....

It wasn’t easy to catch what those two people on the other side of the
door were saying.... In one of the rooms the guests were dancing, in
another someone was pounding a piano.... But a few confused words
reached him. Fontenoy and Elena were speaking louder now, perhaps
because the noise of the piano bothered them, perhaps because of
increasing tenseness....

“Why waste words in dramatic phrases?”--It was Fontenoy’s voice. “You
couldn’t go away! That is for me to do--that is the only thing I can
do!”

The noise made by the dancers and the pianist filled the eavesdropper’s
ears. But as the musician grew more merciful he caught the words another
voice was saying--Elena’s voice--sounding as though it came from a long
weary distance....

“Perhaps you are right. Oh, money! money! For people like us, who know
what it means in our lives, what a horror to be without it!”

Shame of his spying overtook Robledo, driving out the curiosity which
had for a moment controlled him. If these two people had sought one
another out, it was for him to respect their secret. Anyway the mystery
would be short-lived. Perhaps it would not last through the evening....

Going back to the dining room, he found Federico there, still engaged in
conversation with his new acquaintance, an old gentleman who displayed
the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, and looked like a
retired government functionary.

Federico had at last terminated his extensive description of Fontenoy’s
enterprises, and the old gentleman was saying,

“I haven’t the slightest doubt whatever of your friend’s integrity, but
I should think twice before putting any money into his schemes. It
strikes me that he takes unnecessary risks, that he invests his funds
too far from home. Maybe everything will be all right, at least as long
as he holds the confidence of the share-holders. But I am not so sure
that even at the present moment he isn’t losing it. And on the day when
the share-holders decide that they want figures and facts instead of
fine hopes, on the day when Fontenoy has to show just where he stands in
his business, well, on that day, I am not so sure.... I am not so
sure....”




CHAPTER IV


The warm spring-like day, coming in mid-winter, delighted Robledo as he
left his hotel after a hurried breakfast. It was late and the waiters,
the only occupants of the dining room, had not proved inspiring company.
And all the while he had been sleeping and eating, a filmy,
sun-saturated mist had been hovering, a golden caress, over Paris....

“It’s good to be alive this morning,” he thought, as he wandered through
the _Bois_ feasting his eyes on the olive-browns of its winter coloring.
At dusk he made his way back to the _Boulevards_. He would dine, he
decided, and then look up the Torre Biancas, and ask them to come out
with him to some place of amusement.

Happening to stop at a café, he bought a newspaper, and even before
opening it, had the premonition that in this sheet, fresh from the
press, there was something that would startle him. In some obscure way
he felt that he was about to learn things that until that moment had
been vague and mysterious.... And, as though he had known about it
beforehand, his eyes immediately fell on the headlines “_Banker Commits
Suicide_.”

He did not need to read the suicide’s name to know who it was. Of course
it was Fontenoy! There were the details, quite as he expected them to
be, as though they had all been previously revealed to him.

“In his luxurious apartment ... on the bed ... the revolver still in his
hand ... Fontenoy....”

Already the day before rumors of his failure had been circulated in
financial circles, where it was also stated that he would be prosecuted.
His share-holders had lodged a complaint against him, and the examining
judge was expected to look through his books that very day; all of which
seemed to foreshadow the immediate arrest of the banker.

Robledo read again the paragraph of the article, in which it was stated
that Fontenoy had deceived the people who entrusted their money to him,
that his mining and other enterprises in Asia and Africa were little
better than dream projects, capable of development perhaps, but by no
means actually producing, as Fontenoy had represented. The article
furthermore went on to suggest that the banker was more of a visionary
than a criminal, which of course didn’t at all do away with the fact
that he had ruined a great many people. Moreover, it appeared that he
had appropriated considerable sums for his personal expenditures, “_and
responsibility for the disaster will undoubtedly involve some of his
associates_.”

The articles ended by prophecying not only the banker’s arrest, but that
of all those who held important positions in his company.

Robledo’s thoughts turned abruptly from the suicide to his friend. What
was to become of Federico? He ordered the taxi driver to take him to the
_Avenue Henri Martin_.

The butler received him with a funereal air, as though there had been a
death in the house. No, the Marquis was not at home. He had gone out at
noon, when someone telephoned him about the suicide, and hadn’t yet come
in.

“And _Madame la Marquise_,” continued the servant, “is quite ill, and
can see no one.”

Robledo, as he listened to the fellow, was able to judge of the
commotion caused in the house by the banker’s death. The icy and solemn
demeanor of the servants had vanished. Now they looked like the
shivering crew of a doomed ship waiting for the final crash that will
throw them into the sea. Robledo heard whisperings and furtive steps
behind the portières, and hands pulled them aside and curious eyes
peered out at him.

Evidently, in the servants’ quarters, there had been much talk about
what was going on, and about the probable arrival of the police. Every
time the door bell rang, they were expected. In a tone of suppressed
rage the chauffeur kept saying to his companions below stairs--

“So the captain couldn’t think of anything to do but put a bullet
through his head! Well this ship is going down, I tell you! Who’s going
to pay us our wages?”

Robledo returned to the centre of the city for dinner, and called up
Torre Bianca several times during the course of it.

At nearly twelve o’clock the butler replied that his master had just
come in, and Robledo hurried back to his friend’s home.

He found Federico in the library. The latter had aged over night as
though the last few hours had been so many years. Impulsively Torre
embraced his friend, turning instinctively to him for support.

The poor Marquis was not only startled, he was bewildered. Never had he
lived through so many emotions in so short a space of time. That
morning, like Robledo, he had felt the confidence and pleasure that the
golden beauty of the day inspired. What a pleasure to be alive!... And
then the summons of the telephone, the ghastly news, the rush to
Fontenoy’s apartment, the sight of his friend’s body on the bed; and the
grisly crowd a violent death always assembles, for that detail that
seems so grotesquely insignificant before the reality of death, the
autopsy....

Even more painful were his impressions at Fontenoy’s office. There he
found a judge installed in full possession of all the banker’s effects,
examining papers, affixing seals, making out an inventory, coldly,
suspiciously, implacably. The secretary--it was he who had notified
Torre Bianca--was making valiant efforts to conceal his terror.

“We aren’t going to get out of this so easily,” he said, manfully trying
to face the facts that had come so uncomfortably near. And then as a
concession to his fears he added, “The boss ought to have tipped us
off....”

Torre Bianca spent the rest of the day looking up the people who had in
various ways been associated with Fontenoy. Many of them had been
receiving handsome salaries for sitting on the board of directors,
taking their orders of course from the man who paid them. Now they were
thoroughly frightened, and Torre Bianca saw that, to save their skins,
they would not hesitate to lie about him or anyone else who might be
found to serve as a scapegoat....

They lost no time in making out their case against him.

“You signed those reports stating that the business was all right. Of
course you must have seen those foreign concerns with your own eyes,
otherwise you’d have no right to affix your name to the technical
reports that were used to win our confidence....”

Yes, it was quite plain to Torre Bianca that all these people were going
to look for someone who was still alive on whom to throw all the odium
of a scandalous confidence-game, since Fontenoy had eluded them.

“Manuel,” he said that evening to his friend, “I’m scared! And the worst
of it is that now I myself can’t understand why I signed those accursed
reports! They didn’t seem to me so particularly important.... How could
I possibly have such blind faith in what Fontenoy was doing?”

Robledo smiled sadly. He knew who was responsible for this “blind
faith”; but he concluded that it would be cruel to add to his friend’s
distress by giving him his views on that subject.

Even in the midst of his tormenting anxieties Torre Bianca was thinking
more of his wife’s distress than of his own.

“Poor Elena! I’ve just been up to talk to her.... She nearly collapsed
when I told her I had seen Fontenoy this morning.... The whole thing has
been such a shock that her nerves are all unstrung.”

Robledo grew impatient of his friend’s concern for Elena’s health. He
broke out brusquely--

“You’d better think about your own situation and stop bothering about
your wife. You’ve got more than a matter of ‘nerves’ to face.”

Little by little as they discussed the affair, both men began to feel
more hopeful. Familiarity with misfortune invariably robs it of its
terrors! There was no need, they decided, to despair, until the banker’s
affairs had been thoroughly investigated. Fontenoy was far more of a
visionary than a crook, even his worst enemies admitted it. And it was
more than likely that some of the enterprises he had planned and started
would turn out to be good investments. He had been wrong of course in
trying to hurry them up, and in giving the public to understand that
they were far more developed and remunerative than they actually were.
But a few competent managers could find a way to make them productive;
and that would justify Fontenoy’s statements, and prove that Torre
Bianca had done nothing out of the way in signing them in his capacity
of engineering expert.

“Yes, perhaps it will all be straightened out,” said Robledo, who felt
that it was wise to cheer up his friend as much as possible. Torre
Bianca’s distress of mind had considerably alarmed him, and he believed
that only by recovering a certain amount of confidence in himself could
he face the immediate future. The man needed to think clearly, and for
that he must have a good night’s rest!

“You’ll see a turn for the better as soon as the first flurry is over,
Federico! Only, for God’s sake, don’t pay any attention to whatever
Fontenoy’s parasites advise you to do, for they’re in a panic!”

As soon as Robledo got up the next day he sent for the newspapers. One
glance at their headlines showed him only too plainly that Fontenoy’s
suicide was assuming the proportions of a public scandal. It was
intimated that several persons well known in society were threatened
with arrest within forty-eight hours, and in one of the papers he
thought he discerned allusions to Torre, in a somewhat vague sentence
about a certain engineer, “reputed to be a protégé of the banker’s.”

When he returned to his friend’s he found the Marquis nervously scanning
the newspapers in the library.

“They want to put me in jail,” said the latter dolefully. He looked old
and broken, but curiously resigned.

“And yet I never hurt anyone,” he went on. “I can’t understand why they
come after me.”

Robledo tried to cheer him up a bit but without success.

“And see what it’s done to me! I never in my life feared a living soul,
and now I can’t stand having anyone look at me! Even when the butler
speaks to me I have to look away.... Heaven only knows what they’re
saying about me in the servants’ quarters!”

As though he had shrunk back from the painful present to his childhood,
he added timidly and with pathetic humility,

“I’m afraid to go out. I’m afraid of seeing all those people I’ve met so
often in this drawing-room and that, because if I met them I’d have to
stop and explain what I’ve done--and then they would look at me
sceptically, or worse than that, they would say they were sorry for me,
without meaning it!”

He stopped, and after a pause, he exclaimed,

“Elena is much braver than I! This morning, after seeing the newspapers,
she ordered the automobile. I don’t know where she was going, probably
to see some of those people. She said I ought to defend myself against
all these accusations. But what defense have I? I can’t pretend that I
didn’t sign reports about business I knew nothing about! I can’t lie
about it.”

Robledo tried in vain to make him feel less hopeless. His optimism had
collapsed under the attacks made upon it.

“Elena believes, as you do, that everything will come out all right. She
is so confident in her power that she never gives up. Of course she has
a lot of friends in Paris, people who knew her family in Russia. She
went away this morning vowing that she would run down my enemies and all
their machinations.... She thinks I have a lot of them and that they
will use this Fontenoy business to destroy me.... And it’s true that she
knows much more than I do about everything; it wouldn’t surprise me if
she succeeded in making the newspapers and even the judge change their
tone, and stop talking about proceedings and a prison sentence!”

It hadn’t been easy for him to bring out that word!

“A prison sentence! What do you think of a Torre Bianca in jail, Manuel?
No, that’s something that shouldn’t be allowed to happen. And there is
always a way to avoid that!”

As though all his forebears had awakened in him at the threat of public
disgrace, he suddenly regained his former nervous and vibrant energy.
But Robledo, startled by the cold gleam like the glitter of drawn steel
that flashed from his friend’s eyes, exclaimed,

“You aren’t thinking of anything so foolish, Federico! After all, life
is the best thing we’ve got. Death doesn’t solve anything ... and
anyway, who knows? Perhaps you are right about Elena. Perhaps she will
be able to influence the outcome of this affair.... It isn’t so
improbable!”

As he left the house Robledo noticed several persons in the reception
room. The butler murmured to him confidentially,

“They’re waiting for _Madame la Marquise_, sir. I told them the Master
was out.”

His manner made it quite plain that these were people who had come to
collect the money owing to them.

What little credit the Torre Biancas still possessed had vanished at the
banker’s suicide. All the tradespeople knew that Fontenoy was paying
most of the bills of the establishment; and obviously, since the
Marquis’ income came from his employment in Fontenoy’s office, that too
had been cut off.

It was clear to Robledo now that he always found the Marquis in the
library because that was his refuge. He was afraid ... he was afraid of
even the people in his own house....

Later that day he called Torre up. Elena had just come in, and seemed
pleased with the results of her expedition.

“She thinks,” confided the Marquis over the telephone, “that the blow
isn’t going to fall right away--that she has gained time, and that’s
everything!”

That evening Robledo went back to the _Avenue Henri Martin_. He had
found nothing in the evening papers to justify Torre Bianca’s
comparative tranquillity. The allusions to the probable arrest of
well-known personages continued, and there was a considerable
expenditure of rhetoric about the scandalous and sensational failure.

When he found copies of the same newspapers he had just finished reading
lying about on Torre’s library table, he was prepared to find the
Marquis dispirited and anxious. There was an odd discrepancy between
Federico’s voice, which was calm and cold, and the tenseness of his
features. Evidently he had resolved to place all his hopes in the
possible results of Elena’s attempts to influence public opinion in his
favor. In other words he admitted that only a miracle could save him.
And if the miracle did not occur....

Robledo looked about him, staring at the desk, the book shelves. Was
there a revolver in that room? Had his friend prepared to this extent
for a fatal emergency?

“Are there some people out there?” Torre asked.

As he seemed to be well aware of the annoying callers who had waited
throughout the day in the reception hall, Robledo did not ask him to
account for his question, but merely shook his head. The Marquis,
however, was determined to speak of that invading throng of creditors
rushing in on him from all parts of Paris.

“They smell death,” he said. “They are alighting on this house like a
flock of crows.... When Elena came in this afternoon, the hall was full
of them. But she is wonderful! No one can resist her when she chooses to
exert her power over people. She simply talked to them ... and they went
away quite satisfied. If she had asked them for a loan I believe they
would have given it to her.”

He was so proud, for the moment, of his wife’s seductive charm! But
reality soon thrust itself upon his attention.

“They will come back,” he added mournfully. “They have gone away, but
they will come back tomorrow. It’s true that Elena saw certain
influential friends of hers today, people who can affect the policy of
the papers, and the courts. They all promised to help her, but as soon
as Elena leaves them, it is no longer the same.... I don’t doubt that
they were perfectly sincere in what they said to her. But, after all,
what can a woman do against so many enemies? Besides, I ought not to
allow my wife to go about defending me while I stay locked up here! I
know what a woman is exposing herself to when she asks men for their
help. No, I’d rather go to jail....”

Only a moment ago he had been intimidated by the thought of his
creditors, much as a child is frightened by the thought of bogeys; and
now, the idea that Elena might be exposing herself to all sorts of risks
on his account, brought a flash to his eyes; he straightened up as
though galvanized by a stream of nervous energy.

“I forbade her making these calls, even though the people she went to
see are old friends of her family’s. But there are certain things a man
can’t allow a woman to do.... How can I let Elena ask people to help me?
No, I’m going to trust to fate, and take what comes! And after all,
unless a man’s a coward there’s always one solution to the problem--”

Robledo had been listening patiently. He understood his friend; and
gravely he replied,

“I know a better solution than yours, Federico. Come back to Argentina
with me!”

Calmly and methodically, as though he were explaining a matter of
business or an engineering project, he told Torre what he wanted him to
do.

It was absurd to hope that Fontenoy’s affairs, hopelessly tangled up by
his suicide, could be straightened out; and moreover it was dangerous to
remain in Paris. “I am aware besides, of what you are planning to do,
tomorrow, perhaps even tonight, if you begin thinking that there is no
way out. You’ll lay your revolver beside you on the desk, write two
letters, one to your wife, one to your mother. Your mother! That will be
her reward for all that she has done for you! You will leave her to face
the world alone by rushing out of it to save your own hide....”

Torre listened with lowered head. His mother and all the Torre Biancas
seemed to be looking at him reproachfully....

Suddenly he looked up. “Do you think that it would be easier for my
mother to see me in jail?”

“You don’t have to go to jail to avoid committing suicide. What I ask
you to do is this. Trust yourself to me for a little while. Do as I
tell you, without wasting any time in argument. We must come to a
decision.”

Knowing that Federico was as conscious of the newspapers on the table as
he was, he went on,

“In my opinion you are not going to get out of this mess if you stay
here. On the contrary! So, tomorrow we’ll start for South America. Out
in Patagonia you can get an engineering job and work with me. What do
you say?”

But Torre Bianca remained impassive, as though he didn’t understand, or
as though he thought the suggestion too absurd to deserve an answer. His
silence annoyed Robledo.

“I am thinking, of course, of the fact that you signed documents without
knowing whether the statements in them were true or not.”

“I can think of nothing else,” replied the Marquis. “That is why I have
decided that the only thing I can do....”

Robledo could not contain his annoyance. Walking up and down he
answered, and his voice sounded very loud--

“I won’t have you die, you old fool! You’re taking your orders from me
now! Pretend, if you like, that I’m your father--no, your mother,
rather. Look upon me as your poor old mother. She wants you to obey her,
Federico, by doing what I tell you!”

His friend’s vehemence made its impression on the Marquis. He covered
his eyes with his hands and sat, head bowed, in silence. Using the
advantage he had gained, Robledo went on, with something that was far
more difficult to say.

“I’ll get you out of here, you can rely on that, and we’ll go together
to America. You can begin life all over again there. It will be hard
work, but you’ll find a satisfaction in it that you never knew in this
old world. And perhaps, after going through a lot of hardship, you will
become rich. But, in order to accomplish all this, Federico, you must
come to America ... alone....”

The Marquis started up from his chair. He looked at his friend with
pained surprise. “Alone?” Did Robledo dare suggest that he must abandon
Elena? Why death was preferable! What torture, to wonder every moment
what was becoming of her ...!

But Robledo, thoroughly irritated now, as always, by being opposed,
exclaimed,

“Oh, Elena! Elena is--”

A glance at the Marquis made him drop his hostile tone.

“Elena is largely to blame for the situation you are in today, my
friend! It was through her that you knew Fontenoy--and so, more or less
directly, it was through her that you came to sign statements that mean
nothing less than your professional disgrace.”

Federico shrank away, but Robledo went on mercilessly,

“How did your wife happen to know Fontenoy, anyway? You told me he was a
friend of her family’s, but was that all you knew about him?”

For a moment he restrained himself only to burst out angrily,

“Women always know about us, and of them we know only what they choose
to tell us....”

The Marquis looked confused. What was Robledo saying?

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said finally. “But if you are talking
about my wife, please remember that she bears my name, and that ... I am
very fond of her....”

In the pause that followed a distance increasing with the minutes
separated the two men. Robledo made a determined effort to renew the
cordiality of their relations.

“Life over there is hard. We are very far from having even the most
ordinary comforts of civilization. But the desert is a great sea of
energy that cleanses and strengthens those of us who go to it as
refugees from the old world, or from ourselves. A plunge into it
prepares us for a new kind of life, a life such as you know nothing
of.... You find there men who have escaped from all sorts of
catastrophes, men from everywhere. Yet all differences of race, birth,
and breeding are washed away. Only the fundamentals remain. There men
show themselves for what they are, the strength that is in them freed
from all the bonds that entangle you here.... And that is why I call my
country what it really is--‘the land of all the world’. It is waiting
for us, Federico!”

But the Marquis appeared unmoved.

“And what is waiting for you here? Perhaps public disgrace or prison, or
even that most stupid of deaths, suicide. But there you will learn to
know hope again, hope, the best thing in our lives! Are you coming with
me?”

The Marquis turned to him. His reply was ready. But Robledo checked him
with a gesture.

“You understand the conditions.... You must go out there as you would go
to war, with little baggage and no encumbrances. A woman, in this sort
of expedition, is nothing but a burden. Your wife isn’t going to die of
grief just because you leave her in Europe. You can always write--and
such an absence as that renews instead of exhausting love. Besides, you
will be sending her money to live on, and whatever way you look at it,
you will be doing more for her than by going off to jail or shooting
yourself. Are you coming with me, Federico?”

Torre Bianca remained silent for a space. Then he got up, made a gesture
which Robledo interpreted as meaning that he was to wait, and left the
room.

The American did not remain alone long; nor did he remain altogether in
silence, for through the walls and hangings, came, as from a great
distance, the sound of voices, that rose once or twice to the intensity
of angry cries. Then came the sound of approaching steps, and Elena
appeared, followed by her husband.

Elena, too, bore the traces of recent events. For her, too, certain
hours she had just lived through had been so many years. But although
she appeared much older, she was none the less handsome. On the
contrary, her tired beauty seemed more sincere than the skillfully
enhanced splendor of her happier days. Now she possessed the melancholy
charm that flowers have just as they begin to fade. For twenty-four
hours she had neglected her dressing table. During that time she had
experienced a succession of emotions that were either extremely painful
or else annoying to her vanity. For it was difficult for her to think
more of her husband’s distress than of what people were saying....

With a violent gesture she pulled aside the hangings, and swept into the
library like a foaming tide, her eyes defying Robledo as she advanced.

“What is this you sent Federico to tell me?” she demanded harshly. “Is
it true that you want to take him away with you and force him to leave
me here, to face our enemies?”

Torre Bianca, who was following her, once more subdued to her spell,
began to protest, in order to soothe her.

“I shall never abandon you, Elena, that is what I told Manuel!”

But Elena was intent upon Robledo, and continued advancing toward him.

“And I thought you were a friend! How despicable of you, trying to rob a
wife of her husband’s support, trying to make him abandon her!”

As she spoke, she looked fixedly into Robledo’s eyes as though she were
trying to see her own reflection in them. But what she found there was
something that made her suddenly soften her voice, and finally adopt a
childish air of disgust. Even, she raised a finger to scold him. The
American, however, remained unmoved before these manœuvres, and Elena
had to continue with what dignity she could:--

“Come, please explain all this to me! What is this plan of yours to
take my husband away from me, and carry him off to your distant estate
where you live like a feudal lord?”

Unmoved either by her voice or her eyes, Robledo replied coldly as
though explaining a matter of business.

He and Federico had just been discussing the best means of getting the
Marquis out of Paris. It was his intention to have an automobile ready
for his friend the following morning, quite as though it had suddenly
struck his fancy to take a trip to Spain. Obviously certain precautions
were necessary. Torre Bianca was free to go and come as he liked but it
was quite possible that, while the judge was making up his mind as to
how to carry on the case, the Marquis was being watched by the police.
Although the Spanish frontier was several hundred miles away, they could
reach it before any order was given for Torre’s arrest. Besides Robledo
had some friends near there, who could, in case of danger, help them to
get through to Barcelona, and once in that port, it would be easy to
take passage for South America.

Elena listened frowning.

“All that is very beautifully worked out,” she rejoined. “But why is
this plan to include only my husband. Why can’t I go too?”

Torre Bianca looked his surprise. Only a few hours ago, on returning
from the calls she had been making, Elena had exhibited great confidence
in the future, partly to arouse her husband’s courage, partly to
stimulate her own. The people she had seen were men with whom she had an
acquaintance of long standing, and from them she had collected many
promises, given, for the most part, with the melancholy and protecting
gallantry inspired by memories.... Having nothing to depend on at
present but these promises, she had, of course, found it necessary to
place implicit trust in them, persuading herself to believe in their
efficacy. But now, on hearing Robledo’s plan, all her carefully patched
up optimism crumbled into dust.

Her friends’ promises were nothing but lies! They would do nothing for
her or her husband now that they were in difficulties; and the law would
take its course. Federico would go to prison, and she would have to take
up again a life full of uncertainties in this old world, where she could
scarcely find a corner that she had not at some time known before....
Besides, here there were so many enemies, eager for revenge....

Robledo saw something he had never seen before in her eyes--fear, the
fear of the animal at bay. And for the first time also he heard a note
of complete sincerity in her voice.

“And you, Manuel, are the only person in the world who understands our
situation; you are the only person who can help us.... Let me go with
you! I am not strong enough to stay here alone. I’d rather be a beggar
out there in the new world!”

Her tone now was so gentle and expressed such distress that Robledo felt
sorry for her. He forgot all that he had once held up against her.

Torre Bianca, as though aware of his friend’s sudden weakening,
announced resolutely:

“Either with her, or not at all, Robledo. I am not afraid to stay here.”

Still Robledo hesitated. At last he raised his hand, accepting his
friend’s condition. And at once he regretted it, as though he had
capriciously given his approval to something absurd.

Elena, forgetting her present worries with startling ease, began to
laugh.

“I adore travelling,” she began enthusiastically. “And I shall ride
horseback and hunt wild animals, and have all sorts of hairbreadth
escapes. Life will be so much more interesting than here! I shall feel
just like the heroine of a novel!”

The American looked at her, startled. Had she no feeling? No memory? Had
she already forgotten Fontenoy? She seemed at that moment not to know
that she was still in Paris, and that the police might at any moment
step into that house to arrest her husband.

And just as disturbing was the discrepancy between the actual conditions
in which colonists make their fight for existence, and this woman’s
romantic illusions about those conditions.

Torre Bianca interrupted his wife by saying in a hopeless tone,

“But we can’t leave without paying our debts! And what are we going to
do it with?”

Again Elena burst out laughing, at the same time making a gesture which
implied that she thought he must have taken leave of his senses.

“Pay! What an idea! Let them wait! I can always find something to say to
them that will satisfy them.... And from America we can send them money
when you are rich.”

But the more scrupulous Marquis was obsessed by the thought of his
responsibilities toward his creditors.

“No. I shall not leave until we have paid the servants at least. But, in
addition, we need money for the trip.”

There was a long pause; finally, as though he had found a solution, the
Marquis exclaimed,

“Fortunately there are your jewels. We can sell them before we sail.”

Elena looked ironically at the necklace and rings she was wearing.

“We won’t get two thousand francs for the lot. They are all paste,
Federico.”

“But the real ones?” exclaimed Torre Bianca. “Those you bought with the
money from your estate in Russia?”

Robledo thought it the moment to intervene.

“Never mind the jewels, Federico. I’ll pay your servants and the trip
out ... for both of you.”

Elena grasped both his hands, repeatedly thanking him. The Marquis was
touched by his friend’s generosity. But he could not accept it, he
asserted. Robledo cut his protestations short.

“That’s all right! I came to Paris with enough money to last me six
months. If I go back at the end of four weeks, I can afford to pay your
expenses.”

Then, with comic despair he added,

“It only means that I’ll have to leave without going to several of the
new restaurants, and without having some of the most famous wines....
After all that isn’t such a great sacrifice!”

The Marquis grasped his friend’s hand in silence, while Elena
shamelessly embraced him. All she could talk about now was that unknown
land, for which, a few hours earlier, she had had not even a thought. To
her childish enthusiasm it had suddenly become a paradise.

“How glad I shall be to reach that new country, the country that, you
once said, was waiting there for all those who needed it!”

And while she and her husband discussed the preparations necessary for
setting off the next day on their long journey, Robledo was saying to
himself, as he watched them,

“Now you’ve done it! A fine present you are going to bring those people
out there. It’s true they lead hard lives, but at least they live in
peace....”




CHAPTER V


When the Arragonese laborers who had emigrated to Argentina carrying
along that most cherished of their possessions, the guitar with which
they accompany the couplets they improvise, saw her flit by on her pony,
they made a song about “The Flower of Black River.” And at once the name
was caught up by the whole countryside.

As a matter of fact her name was Celinda and she was the only daughter
of the rancher Rojas. She was small for her eighteen years, but agile
and energetic as a thoroughbred colt. Most of the men of the region,
who, like Orientals, considered obesity an indispensable part of
feminine attractiveness, merely shrugged by way of reply when someone
praised the Rojas girl’s beauty. Yes, her face was right enough,
mischievous looking, with delicately up-turned nose, mouth red as a
blood lily, sharp white teeth, and enormous eyes that were, it might be
objected by a connoisseur, a little too round. But when you got through
with her face, well, for the rest she was just as slim as a boy. At a
short distance you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.
“What’s the good of a woman who doesn’t look like one?” they inquired.

In boy’s clothes, mounted on a broncho, circling a lassoo above her
head, she could ride down a wild mare or young steer with as much skill
as one of her father’s peons.

Carlos Rojas, as everyone in the county knew, belonged to an old Buenos
Aires family. In his youth he had led an extravagant life in several of
the European capitols. But marriage and an establishment in Buenos Aires
proved just as costly as his bachelor wanderings in the old world, and
little by little the fortune he had inherited from his father dwindled
away, spent for the most part in ostentation and unsuccessful business
ventures. At the moment when he became convinced that ruin was upon him,
his wife died. She had been a delicate and melancholy woman, given to
writing sentimental verse which she published under a pseudonym in the
fashion papers; and it was she who had selected for her daughter the
romantic name of Celinda.

It became necessary then for Rojas to give up the old farm that had been
in the family for several generations, and that was worth several
millions. When the three mortgages on it had been paid and his other
debts settled there was nothing for Rojas to do but strike out into the
less civilized parts of the Argentine. When money was more plentiful he
had bought a section in Rio Negro as a speculation, and to this
property, which he had never seen, he now betook himself.

Farming is the last resort of many a man who has dissipated his fortune.
In spite of entire ignorance of the principles, to say nothing of the
practice, of agriculture, the man who has failed in other occupations
expects to make a success of this most laborious and difficult of
professions. Rojas, accustomed to a life of spending, believed that by
transferring himself to Rio Negro he would be able to accomplish this
miracle. He had never been willing to bother with the management of the
farm near Buenos Aires, with its rich pasture lands capable of
supporting thousands of steers. Yet now he was planning to lead the
rough life of the pioneer farmer, who must conquer the wilderness if he
is to live. What his ancestors had done in the rich lands near Buenos
Aires, where rains are opportune, he now had to do under the brazen
skies of Patagonia that rarely, throughout the whole length of the year,
let more than a few drops fall on the parched prairie.

But the erstwhile millionaire bore his misfortune with immense dignity.
He was a man of fifty or thereabouts, somewhat short in stature, with a
nose of roman proportions, and a beard streaked with white. In the midst
of his rustic surroundings he preserved something of the manners
acquired by contact with a more polished society. As they said at the
settlement up at the dam, it didn’t matter how Rojas dressed, you could
always tell he had been born a gentleman. He always wore high boots, a
wide-brimmed hat, and a poncho, and in his right hand carried a
_revenque_ or small whip.

The buildings on his ranch were of a most modest sort. They had been put
up as temporary structures in the hope that a turn for the better in his
fortunes would soon make it possible to improve them. But, as so often
happens in rustic settlements, these makeshift buildings were destined
to last even longer than some of those erected with great care as
permanent ones.

Over the walls of baked brick, with no other supports, or of simple
adobe, rested the roof of corrugated tin. Inside, the partitions came
only part way to the roof so that air could circulate freely through the
entire building. The rooms did not contain much in the way of furniture.
The one used by Don Carlos as office and reception room was adorned with
a few rifles and the skins of some of the pumas he had shot in the
surrounding plateau lands. It was the rancher’s custom to spend most of
his time inspecting the corrals close by; but now and then he would
start his horse off at a gallop for a sudden descent upon the peons at
the other end of the ranch. One could never be sure that they weren’t
sleeping while the cattle strayed....

The lunch hour had passed, and still Celinda had not come in. Her father
every now and then looked impatiently out of the door. He had no fears
whatever on her account. Ever since she had come to Rio Negro, at the
age of eight, she had fairly lived on horseback, treating the Patagonian
plateau lands as her playhouse.

“No one is going to take any chances with Celinda,” her father used to
say proudly. “She’s a better shot with the revolver than I am. And
besides, there is no two-legged or four-legged beast can get away from
her when she has her lassoo along. My girl is as good as any man!”

In one of his pauses at the door he caught sight of her, approaching
rapidly along the dark line that plain and sky make where they meet. The
little mounted figure running along the horizon looked like a small tin
horseman escaped from a box of toys.

In front of her pony ran a diminutive steer. And now the group, at full
gallop, was growing larger with amazing rapidity. Anything moving on
that immense plain appears to the bewildered eye, unaccustomed to the
optical tricks of the desert, to change its size without going through
the customary gradations.

The girl was close at hand now, uttering cowboy cries and cracking her
lassoo in order to excite the steer to a quicker pace and rush him
through the gate of the corral. With a great snort he dove through the
opening in the wooden stakes, whereupon Mlle. Celinda dropped lightly
from her horse and came to greet her father. But the latter, after
kissing her cheek, held her away from him, and looked severely at her.

“Haven’t I told you that I didn’t want to see you wear men’s clothes?
Trousers are for men, just as skirts are for women. I won’t have a
daughter of mine looking like a movie actress!”

Celinda received her father’s reproof with lowered eyes, and an air of
graceful hypocrisy. Dutifully promising to dress as he required, she
restrained the amusement his allusion caused her, for as a matter of
fact, she scarcely ever thought of anything but those movie actresses in
knickerbockers that figure so largely in American films; for their sake
she had taken many a five hour gallop to Fuerte Sarmiento, the nearest
town, where, on a sheet hung up in the only hotel, wandering film
operators showed films which Celinda watched with breathless attention.
It wasn’t that the stories were so interesting, but what a good idea
they gave her of the prevailing styles!

As they lunched Don Carlos inquired of his daughter if she had been
near the camp at the dam. How was the work getting on?

The hope, which daily grew brighter, of becoming rich again, had, of
late, changed Rojas from the gloomy and discouraged man he had been for
so many years, into one capable now of smiling once more. If the
engineers of the Argentine government succeeded in damming the Rio
Negro, the canals even then under construction, according to the plans
of a fellow named Robledo and his partner, would irrigate the lands that
these two engineers had bought; and since those lands adjoined his own,
he, too, would benefit from the irrigation system, and the value of his
property would go up by leaps and bounds.

Celinda listened to her father’s comments on the engineering work and
its possible consequences for themselves with the indifference youth
generally exhibits toward money matters. But the discourse of Don Rojas
on riches and what could be done with them was cut short by the arrival
of a mulatto of overflowing proportions, fat cheeked, with slanting
eyes, her coarse black hair gathered into a thick braid that undulated
along the elevations and declivities of her back and then hung free,
endeavoring apparently to reach the ground.

Before coming into the dining room she deposited a bag full of clothes
at the door. Then she made a rush for Celinda, kissed her, and even
spattered some of her tears over her:

“My pretty little one! My baby, my own little Señorita!”

When Celinda first came to the ranch the mulatto had been hired to take
care of her, and it had been a real hardship for the woman to leave the
girl. But she had never been able to get on with Don Carlos. The rancher
was abrupt in his manner of giving orders, and would take no argument
from women, especially when they had reached a certain age.

“The boss is a gay old boy,” Sebastiana confided to her friends. “I’m
getting too old for him, and it’s the younger ones that catch all the
smiles and pretty speeches, while all I get is sharp words and threats
of the _rebenque_!”

When she had finished exclaiming over Celinda, the mulatto looked at Don
Carlos with an indignation that was comical in effect.

“Well, since the boss and I can’t get on together, I’m going to the dam
to keep house for the Italian contractor!”

Rojas shrugged to indicate that she could go wherever she pleased for
all of him, and Celinda followed her old servant to the front door.

The afternoon was half gone when Don Carlos, who had been taking his
siesta in a huge canvas armchair, and reading several of the Buenos
Aires newspapers, which the train brought out to the desert three times
a week, left the ranch house.

Hitched to a post of the portico which shaded the door was a horse. The
rancher smiled as he noticed that the animal bore a side saddle. In a
moment Celinda appeared, wearing a black riding skirt. She tossed her
father a kiss from the end of her riding whip, and then, without setting
foot in the stirrup or accepting a helping hand, with one leap she
landed on the saddle, and the horse started off at full gallop toward
the river.

But his rider did not let him go very far. Celinda dismounted in a grove
of willows where a second horse, the same one she had ridden that
morning with a cross saddle, was waiting for her. Dropping her skirt and
the rest of her feminine costume, she stood revealed in knickerbockers,
riding boots, and a boyish shirt and necktie. She smiled as she thought
of how she was disobeying “the old man,” as, in accordance with local
custom, she called her father.

But how surprised that other man would be to see her in a feminine
riding skirt! No, she didn’t want to surprise him that way.... He had
always seen her in boy’s clothes and so he always treated her with the
friendly confidence he would have for someone of his own sex. Who could
tell what would happen were he to see her wearing skirts, just like a
young lady? He might grow shy and begin being tremendously polite, and
finally stop seeing her altogether!

So she left her girl’s clothes on the horse she had ridden to the
willows, gaily mounted the other, and pressing her slim feet against his
flanks, tossed her lassoo in the air, making spirals of rope above her
head.

And now the Flower of Rio Negro was galloping along the river bank
through the aged willow trees that droop their festoons of delicate
green over the gliding water. This solitary river roadway, that
stretched from the storm-beaten peaks of the Andes, on the Pacific side,
to its wide outlet in the Atlantic, had been named Black River because
of the dark-colored plants which covered its bed, giving a greenish
tinge to the snow waters of the distant mountains.

The thousand-year-old erosion of the swift stream had cut a deep gash,
two or three leagues wide in certain places, in the Patagonian table
land. The river slid along through this cut between two banks of earth
brought down by the stream in the flood season. These banks were of a
rich and light soil, extremely fertile wherever the river water reached
it. But beyond this point the ground rose to form steep, yellow, sinuous
walls that gazed unblinkingly at one another across the gliding black
water; and beyond these heights stretched the mesa, that region where
icy cold alternates with suffocating heat, where hurricanes torment the
harsh vegetation that will yield a living only to those flocks that can
scour many leagues of that arid plain.

All the life of the region was concentrated in the wide fissure carved
by the river waters across the desert. The two strips of soil on its
banks represented so many thousand miles of fertile earth brought down
by the river from its wanderings in the Andes. And it was in one part of
this great cleft that the government engineers were at work in an
attempt to raise the level of the waters the few yards necessary in
order to inundate the adjoining lands.

Celinda was uttering sharp cries to excite her horse; it seemed as
though she must share her delight with him. In a little while she was
going to meet what interested her most in that whole wide countryside!
As she followed a turn in the river bank, the surface of the stream
suddenly widened before her eyes, forming a quiet and solitary lake. At
its farthest limit, at the point where the banks pressed in and
disturbed its waters, were outlined the iron profiles of several great
derricks, and the tin or straw roofs of a settlement. This was the
little town that had grown up near the dam, a town of houses that had
risen but a slight distance above the ground, with not a single second
story to break the monotonous level of its roof line.

But Celinda’s curiosity stopped short of the settlement. Reining in her
horse, she walked him through several squads of men working at some
distance from the river, at the point where the level of the ground
began to rise abruptly.

These peons, some of them Europeans, others half-breeds, were removing
and heaping up the soil which they took from the ditches that were to
become part of the irrigation system. Two ditching machines, with a
great roar of motors, were also attacking the ground in an attempt to
facilitate this human labor.

Celinda looked about her with keen exploring eyes, and turning her back
on the workmen she went toward a man she had spied on a small elevation
of ground. He sat on a canvas folding chair, before a small table; his
sombrero lay at his feet which were encased in thick muddy boots, as
rough and serviceable as the rest of his clothing. His head on his hand,
he was studying the charts spread out before him.

He was one of those blond clear-eyed young men who remind us of the
Greek youths immortalized in sculpture, and who for some unexplainable
reason reappear, with surprising frequency, in the northern races of
Europe. Straight-nosed, with curly hair growing low over his forehead,
and a firm and powerful neck line, he was an unexpected apparition in
that barren spot. So absorbed was he in his calculations that he did not
notice Celinda’s arrival.

She still had her lassoo in her hand, and with the cunning and noiseless
step of an Indian, she began to climb up the slope. Not the slightest
sound betrayed her approach. Within a few yards of her goal she
straightened up, laughing silently at her prank, and giving the lassoo a
few vigorous preliminary swings, she suddenly let it fly. The noose
poised over the youth and descended upon him in a flash. Then it
tightened, pinning down his arms, and a slight jerk nearly upset him.

Angrily he looked about him, his fists doubled up, his muscles tense;
then suddenly he burst out laughing. To complete her impudent
performance, Celinda was gently tugging at the lassoo, and in order not
to be overturned, there was nothing for the youth to do but move towards
her. When he stood close beside her she looked up at him apologetically.

“It’s such a long time since we’ve seen one another ...! _Tanto tiempo!_
I thought I’d better get you on the other end of this rope, so you can’t
get away!”

The youth looked his astonishment. In a drawling voice that made his
slow Spanish sound amusingly foreign, he exclaimed.

“Such a long time! Why, what about this morning?”

“_Tanto tiempo!_” She mimicked his accent. “Well, what of it, you
ungrateful _gringo_? Is it such a small matter to you that we haven’t
seen one another since this morning?”

Then they both burst out laughing, like two children.

By this time they had reached the hitching post where she had left her
horse. Hurriedly she sprang to his back, as though it made her feel
uncomfortable and helpless to stand on the ground. Besides, in spite of
his six feet and over, this point of vantage made it possible for her to
look down at him.

The rope was still wound about his arms and shoulders, but Celinda
determined to let her captive go.

“Listen, don Ricardo, I’m going to set you free, but only so you can do
a little work!”

With a quick twist she tossed the rope off his shoulders. But as though
her presence robbed him of all initiative, the youth remained motionless
before her. Majestically she offered him her hand.

“Don’t be ill-bred, Mr. Watson! That is for you to kiss. You seem to be
losing all your manners out here in the desert.”

Amused by the girl’s mock gravity, the young engineer bent over her
hand. But his air of treating her with the good-natured condescension an
older person displays toward a mischievous child, annoyed her.

“One of these days I’m going to get really cross with you, and then
you’ll never see me again. You always treat me as though I were a little
girl, when I’m not! I’m the first lady of the land, I’m the Princess
_Flor de Rio Negro_!”

But Watson was still laughing at her; and finally the girl laughed too;
whereupon, the Princess Flor began exhibiting a serious and maternal
interest in her friend’s welfare.

“You are working too hard, and I don’t like to see you get so tired,
_gringo mio_! There’s too much work here for one man to do. When is
Robledo going to come back? He must be having a gay time over there in
Paris!”

Watson, as she mentioned his partner’s name, caught up her serious tone.
He was already back, the engineer replied, and might put in an
appearance at any moment. As to the work, it didn’t seem so heavy to
him. He had held more difficult jobs in other countries. Until the
government engineers finished the dam, his work and Robledo’s would be
comparatively light, since most of the ditches were ready, waiting for
the water that was to pour through them.

They were moving along side by side now, unconsciously going toward the
engineering camp. Richard, as he walked along, kept a hand on her
horse’s neck, and looked up at Celinda, whose quick motions of her eyes
and lips while she talked were often easier for him to understand than
her rapidly uttered words. The peons, considering the day’s work ended,
were putting their tools together. The rider and her escort, to avoid
the groups of laborers returning to the town, took a path at some
distance from the river, and wound slowly up the slope that led to the
mesa.

As they ascended a spur of ground that was like a buttress in the great
wall of parched clay, stretching as far as the eye could reach, they
saw, far below them, the lake-like width of the river above the narrow
point selected for the construction of the dam. The camp, a medley of
strangely assorted buildings, scattered about without any attempt at
order, contained adobe huts covered with straw, houses of brick with tin
roofs, tents of dirty canvas, and, most comfortable of the lot, the
portable houses occupied by the engineers, overseers, and other
employees. Above all the other houses, one in particular stood out, a
wooden building mounted on piles, with a porch running around all four
sides. It was the bungalow that, a few weeks before, had been received
at Bahia Blanca for Pirovani, the Italian contractor of the works at the
dam.

The streets of this hastily improvised town were always empty during the
day. But as dusk set in they began to be peopled by groups of peons who,
returning from their work, met other groups and mingled with them, until
finally hundreds of workmen were assembled on the main thoroughfare; and
they were all going in the same direction.

A frame house, the only one that, in size, compared with the bungalow of
the Italian contractor, was the goal of the slowly moving crowd. Above
the door was a sign on which was written in ordinary long hand, “The
Galician’s Resort.” The Galician was, as a matter of fact, an
Andalucian, but it is the prevailing assumption in those regions that
any Spaniard who comes to Argentina must by that fact be a Galician.
“The Resort,” of course, was chiefly useful to the community as a
saloon, but it also served as a store where the most diverse articles
could be purchased.

A group of faithful customers occupied by right of their patronage the
vicinity of the counter or “bar.” Some of them were emigrants who, once
cut adrift from their native Europe, had wandered through the three
Americas, from Canada to Tierra del Fuego. Others, half-breeds, or even
whites, had, after a few years in the desert, returned to a state
approaching that of primitive man; their features were harsh and
hawk-like, their beards thick and rough, and on their long hair they
wore wide-brimmed sombreros. Thrust negligently through their belts of
leather adorned with silver coins, they carried their revolvers and
knives.

Outside the café, waiting for their husbands, in the hope that the
latter would not drink too much if they knew that their wives were
waiting for them, or watching for the companions of their nights, were
assembled the beauties of the settlement, half-breed women of a light
cinnamon color, with eyes like coals, coarse hair of the thick blackness
of ink, and teeth of a luminous whiteness; some of them were so fat they
looked like the grotesque exaggerations of caricature; others were as
absurdly thin, as though they had just come out of a town besieged by
hunger, or as if they were being consumed by flames incessantly burning
within.

And now lights were twinkling in the town, their reddish points piercing
through the violet veils of the twilight.

Celinda and her companion were still watching the settlement and the
wide spreading river in silence, as though afraid that the scene before
them would vanish at the sound of their voices.

“Come, _Señorita Rojas_,” exclaimed Watson suddenly, feeling the need
perhaps of dispelling the seductive influence of the evening, “Come! It
will soon be dark, and your ranch is a good distance from here.”

The girl laughed at the suggestion of there being any danger for her in
that, but at last she bade her friend good-by and set her horse at a
gallop.

Richard started back to the camp. He went down a rough road that passed
for the main thoroughfare of the town, although there were many others
of as great a width, the government at Buenos Aires having decreed that
all the towns springing up in the desert should allow their streets a
minimum width of twenty yards. No one could tell how soon they might
become cities! Meanwhile, the low buildings of a single storey were
separated from those opposite by a space swept by the icy winds that
whirled great columns of dust through them. At times the sun baked the
soil, and from its cracks, whenever a passer-by disturbed them, arose
swarms of buzzing flies; and then again, the puddles formed in the clay
by the infrequent but ferocious downpours made it necessary for the
inhabitants to walk through water up to their knees if they wished to
call on a neighbor living opposite.

As Watson went along between the two rows of buildings he met all the
principal personages of the camp. First to cross his path was the
_señor_ de Canterac, formerly a captain in the French artillery, who,
according to the statements of many who called themselves his friends,
had, because of certain private enterprises, been forced to flee his
country. At present he was employed as engineer by the Argentine
government; and it always fell to his lot to work on the difficult jobs
that the other engineers took good care to avoid. But de Canterac,
being a foreigner, had to take what the native sons refused.

He was a man of forty odd, inclined to stoutness, his hair and mustache
turning white. Yet he preserved a certain youthfulness of appearance. As
though still wearing the uniform, he walked with military bearing, and
in spite of his surroundings, paid considerable attention to the
elegance of his attire.

Watson caught sight of him coming down the street on horseback, wearing
a handsome riding suit, and a white helmet. The Frenchman greeted the
engineer, and dismounting, walked along beside him, leading his horse by
the reins, while he looked at some of the young American’s drawings.

“And when do you expect Robledo?” he inquired.

“He’ll be getting here at any time now. He has probably already landed
at Buenos Aires. Some friends are coming along with him, it seems.”

They had reached the small frame house where the Frenchman lodged.
Tossing his horse’s reins with military abruptness to the mulatto
servant, de Canterac turned to Richard.

“In six weeks’ time, my friend, the first dam will be finished, and you
and Robledo will be able to irrigate a part of your property right
away.”

Watson smiled. With a gesture of leave-taking, he went on towards his
quarters. But at the end of a few yards he stopped to reply to the
greeting of a young man, who in his city clothes looked as though he
might be a government clerk. His round, shell-rimmed glasses re-enforced
this impression, as well as the memorandum books and loose papers that
he was carrying under his arm. He gave every indication of being one of
those hard-working employees, who, falling into the deep ruts of
routine, become incapable of initiative, or of any project requiring
ambition, but live along from year to year, perfectly satisfied with the
mediocrity of which they have become a part.

This was Timoteo Moreno, born in Argentina of Spanish parents. The
Commissioner of Public Works had sent him as his representative to the
works at the dam, and it was his chief responsibility to pay to the
contractor Pirovani the money sent on for that purpose by the
government.

He had just greeted Watson when he slapped his forehead, and stepped
back, searching among his papers as he did so.

“I forgot to leave Captain Canterac’s check at his place.... Oh,
well....” He shrugged, and went along beside Watson. “I’ll give it to
him when I go back. Anyway there’s no out-going mail until day after
tomorrow.”

Now they were standing in front of the bungalow belonging to the rich
man of the settlement. Just at that moment he came out and stood for a
moment leaning over the railing of the balcony, but no sooner had he
recognized them than he came rushing down the wooden steps. “They must
come in, they must have a glass of something with him,” he insisted.

The rings he wore, his heavy gold watch chain and showy clothes did not
conceal the fact that this was the Pirovani who had arrived in Argentina
ten years earlier as a common laborer; but they did give everyone to
understand that he was one of the richest men to be found between Bahia
Blanca and the steep wall of the Andes forming the Chilian frontier.
There was not a bank in the region that would not honor his signature.
Although barely forty his heavy muscular frame and plump clean-shaven
face already showed that softening of tissue that betrays the invasion
of fat cells.

Beaming with pleasure at having someone come his way to whom he could
display the magnificence of his bungalow, he pressed his invitation upon
them.

“Even though I am a widower, and live alone here, I like to have some of
the comforts of Buenos Aires. Just got some new furniture, too, I want
to show you. Come on in, Moreno, you haven’t seen it all, and Mr. Watson
here doesn’t know half what I’ve got to show him!”

The two men followed their enthusiastic host up the wooden outside steps
into the dining room, which contained a large number of heavy and showy
pieces of furniture. Pirovani exhibited them proudly, slapping them to
show the fine quality of the oak, and rolling his eyes toward the
ceiling whenever he alluded to the prices he had paid for them. The
parlor too, which he insisted on showing, contained an excessive number
of chairs and tables among which the visitors had to thread their way;
and the bedroom, with its elaborate furnishings, would have been far
more suitable for a variety hall actress than for Mr. Pirovani, the
contractor. In all the rooms of course, the contrast between the
over-elaborate furniture and the rough frame-work of the bungalow was
startling.

“A pretty sum, it cost me,” exclaimed the Italian proudly. “What do you
think of it, don Ricardo? You’ve seen a lot of fine things in your
travels.... How do you like my little place?”

Watson replied as best he could; but the proud possessor of the bungalow
needed very little encouragement for his outbursts of satisfaction.

When they returned to the dining room, a young half-breed servant, her
thick braid hanging down her back, placed some bottles and glasses on
the table.

“I’m going to have a new housekeeper,” announced Pirovani. “This place
needs someone who knows how to take care of it. Rojas, the rancher, is
going to let me have his Sebastiana.”

Certain that Moreno and the contractor wanted to talk over the
construction plans, Watson refused a second glass of his host’s wine,
and left the bungalow.

It was dark now in the streets and all the life of the town seemed
concentrated in the tavern. Through the glass of its double swinging
doors two rectangles of red lights fell on the road providing the only
illumination in the settlement.

Most of the patrons of the establishment were standing, taking their
drinks over the bar. A Spaniard was playing the accordeon, while some of
the other workmen were dancing with the half-breed girls. There was, an
abundance of Chilians who had strayed in from the other side of the
mountains, and who, after a few days of work, would be sure to wander
off to some other camp, driven by their eternal restlessness; a strange
and disturbing lot, these, always ready with their knives, yet always
ready to smile and speak softly. In another group were the natives of
the land, with their thick beards, ponchos on their backs, and heavy
spurs clicking, stray horsemen who lived no one knew how, nor did anyone
know where they came from. Like the cowboys of former times they wore
the wide leather belt ornamented with silver coins which served as a
rack for their revolvers and knives.

All of these Americans treated the accordeon playing and the waltzes of
the Galicians and _gringos_ with scornful silence, until finally one of
them demanded the “cueca” in so threatening a tone that the couples who
were dancing with their arms about one another’s necks in European
fashion, hastily left the floor. Then the native dances began, the
“pericon,” the “gato,” those old Argentine dances, for so many
generations the chief diversion of the natives, and more popular among
them than any other, the Chilian “cueca,” which, for hours at a time,
with its accompaniment of hand-clapping and sharp cries, excited the
crowd gathered in the tavern.

The proprietor of the _boliche_ handed out two guitars, carefully kept
under the counter, whereupon the players squatted with their instruments
on the ground; but at once a half-breed servant girl hurried towards the
musicians to offer them the horse skulls which were the places of honor
of the establishment.

Besides possessing this distinction, they were also the best seats in
the place. The proprietor owned a couple of chairs which were always
brought out when the commissioner of police or some other dignitary came
to call, but they were rickety, and gave small promise of lasting out
the evening. The steadiest and safest seats in the _boliche_ were those
provided by the skeletons of animals, dragged in for this useful
purpose from the mesa.

At the sound of the guitars the couples stepped out from the groups
along the wall. The girls, a handkerchief in their left hands, held out
their skirts with the right, and slowly revolved. The men, also holding
a handkerchief in their left hands, gave it a rotary motion, as they
circled round their partners, for the “cueca,” like the dances of
primitive times, tells the eternal story of the male’s pursuit of the
female. The women meanwhile danced in small circles, fleeing from the
men, whose wider circles enclosed those of their partners.

The girls who were not dancing clapped their hands continuously,
emphasizing the purring rhythm of the guitars. Now and then one of them
would sing a couplet of the “cueca,” at which the men would shout and
toss up their hats.

A horseman dismounted in front of the tavern. He tied his mount to a
post of the leaf screen, and came in, receiving full in his face as he
stood in the door, the red light of the lamps that hung from the
ceiling. The newcomer, whom the men greeted with respect, might have
been about thirty years of age. Like all the other horsemen of the
region, he wore a poncho and heavy spurs; his hair and beard were long,
and his sharply outlined profile might have been taken for that of an
Arab. Although handsome, his bearing was harsh and repellent, and in his
black eyes shone at times an expression that was both imperious and
cruel. This was “Manos Duras,” notorious in the territory, and a
somewhat disquieting neighbor, for he lived from the sale of cattle;
but no one had ever been able to discover where he bought his steers.

The proprietor made haste to offer him a glass of gin, while even the
roughest looking _gauchos_ raised a hand to their hats as though he were
their chief. The Galicians looked curiously at him, repeating his name
to one another, while the _mestizas_ went towards him smiling like
slave-girls.

Manos Duras accepted this reception somewhat haughtily. One of the
women, eager to provide him with a seat of honor, dragged out another
horse-skull, on which the fear-inspiring _gaucho_ sat down, while the
patrons of the tavern squatted around him on the floor.

The “cueca,” interrupted for a moment by this arrival, went on again,
and did not stop even at the entrance of another personage of important
demeanor, to whom, as soon as he appeared on the threshold, the
tavern-keeper began bowing most respectfully, from the other side of the
bar.

This was Don Roque, Commissioner of Police at the dam, and the only
representative of Argentine authority in the settlement. As the governor
of the territory of Rio Negro lived in a town on the Atlantic, which it
required a journey of twelve days on horseback to reach--six times what
it required to go to Buenos Aires by train--the Commissioner, who was
his representative, enjoyed an ample freedom for the simple reason that
he was forgotten. The Governor lived too far away to send for him, and
the Minister of the Interior, who resided in the capitol of the
Republic, did not deign even to notice the Commissioner’s existence.

As a matter of fact he did not abuse his authority, nor did he have at
his disposal the means of making others feel it too heavily. Fat,
good-natured, and of somewhat rustic manners, he was a native of Buenos
Aires, who, falling on evil days, had been forced to ask for a
government job, and had resigned himself to accepting the one offered
him in Patagonia. He wore city clothes, adapted, however, to the
discharge of his duties by the addition of high boots and a wide-brimmed
sombrero. A revolver in full view on his waistcoat was the only insignia
of authority he displayed.

The proprietor handed out his best chair, kept under the counter for
guests of unusual distinction, and the commissioner set it down near
Manos Duras, who, by way of acknowledging the Police Commissioner’s
presence removed his hat but did not stir from the horse skull in which
he was sitting.

The dance went on. Don Roque was puffing with great satisfaction at a
huge cigar, which the _gaucho_, in a lordly manner, had offered.

“Do you know,” said the Commissioner, speaking in a low tone, “they say
you’re the fellow who stole three steers from the Pozo Verde ranch last
week. That’s outside my jurisdiction, since it’s in the Rio Colorado
limits, but my associate, the commissioner over that way, thinks you’re
the one that did it.”

Manos Duras went on smoking in silence. Finally he spat.

“They don’t want me to sell meat to the camp up here at the dam.”

“Well, they told the governor of the territory that it was you who
killed those two peddlers a few months back.”

The terrible _gaucho_ shrugged and said coldly, as if bored by this
dialogue,

“Why don’t they prove what they say?”

And the dance in the “Galician’s Resort” went on until ten o’clock, this
being, in a land where everyone gets up with the dawn, the equivalent of
those early morning hours at which the night revels of city dwellers
come to an end.

But the chief citizens of the settlement were not asleep. Nearly all of
them could be found late in the evening, sitting at a desk or table
somewhere, pen in hand, while scenes very different from those actually
around them floated before their eyes.

Canterac, his head leaning on his arm, was looking at a little house
near the Champ de Mars. In it was a woman, of rather sad expression,
whose hair was turning grey, although her cheeks still had the freshness
of girlhood. Two little girls sat near her at the table, and a boy,
_his_ boy, fourteen years old now, sat in his father’s place.... They
were talking of him, and Canterac, sitting at his rough oak table in
Patagonia, put out a hand to speak to them.... The stiff pen fell out of
his hand. Smiling to himself he went on with his writing.

“And I shall see you soon. Within a few days I shall make the last
payment on those debts of honor that drove me away from you.... And that
I have at last cancelled them is due to you, my brave comrade, and to
your wise management of the savings I have sent you. How good it will
be to see you and the children....”

For the moment he had lost his expression of stern authority. This was
another de Canterac, one never seen in that Patagonian settlement.

Then, as he was about to slip his letter into an envelope, a postscript
occurred to him.

“I enclose this month’s check. Next month I shall have more to send you
as I shall receive my pay for some of the extra jobs I have been doing
lately.”

Pirovani too was writing a letter that evening. In a nun’s school in
Italy, among classmates, some of whom bore the most aristocratic names
in the kingdom, his daughter was being educated. He smiled as he wrote,
pouting out his lips as he used to do when he played with his little
daughter.

“You must learn everything a fine young lady should know, my little Ida.
Your old father got the money he is spending now on your education by
good hard work, and sometimes when you were a little girl he deprived
himself of a lot of things. You mustn’t forget that I had a hard time of
it when I was a boy, and had none of your advantages. But just the same
I made my way in the world. I know I’m ignorant, but my little Ida will
know enough for two when she leaves school. And this is something else I
want her to know. If I haven’t married again, it was on your account,
_Ida mía_, it was for you that I have worked so hard.

“Next year I am coming home, and we shall buy a castle, and you will
rule it like a queen, and then some fine young cavalry officer will fall
in love with you, and you will marry him, and bear his aristocratic
name, and your poor old father will be jealous....”

Moreno, too, in the modest building where his office adjoined his living
quarters, was writing to his wife all about the fine dream he cherished
of finally landing a government job in Buenos Aires....

Richard Watson was not writing letters that evening. His drawing board
on his knees, he was tracing on a large sheet of paper the path of one
of the main canals. But as he worked the definite outlines of board and
tracings on it became blurred. The red and blue inks on the paper became
a river bordered with willow trees standing out with refreshing beauty
in a land of parched soil and choking dust.

The landscape he saw was of a diminutive scale. The whole extent of the
district around the camp fitted into the limits of his drawing paper. At
the far end of the plain he suddenly saw a rider, no bigger than a small
fly, moving towards him with a graceful swing and something joyous about
its free motion.... Was it the _Señorita Rojas_, in her boy’s clothes,
whirling her lassoo?

Watson raised his hand to his eyes, and rubbed them. No, there was
nothing there. He brushed the paper as though to sweep away the
intruding vision, and the canal, with its red and blue lines,
reappeared.

Once more he set to work on his monotonous task, but in a few moments he
raised his eyes again from the paper, for now Celinda was appearing at
the back of the room, mounted on her horse; the apparition was not of
pigmy proportions this time, but life sized....

The girl threw her lassoo at him, breaking out into unrestrained
youthful laughter that displayed all her sharp young teeth; and
automatically Richard moved his head to dodge the descending circles of
rope.

“I must be asleep,” he thought. “There’s no use trying to work tonight.
Well, let’s go to bed.”

But before he went to sleep, he saw the whole camp spread out before
him, and looked down on it from a height in the sunset, just as when
Celinda, on her horse, had been beside him.

But this time the ground below was dark, and on the blue background of
the sky, pierced with lights, an apparition grew before him, a woman, of
a grave beauty, with stars in her hair, and on her dark tunic, a woman
of great size who spread out her arms, plucking in the darkness the
dreams that grow in the wide meadows of the infinite, and scattering a
rain of soft fragrant petals over the earth.... It was Night herself
comforting with dreams the restless striving exiles of that faraway
Patagonian settlement....

But, as Richard Watson was young, the dewiest, freshest petals were for
him; as they touched him he shrank away, and then felt a terror lest
there should be no more; for the petals that startled him even as they
caressed were the first dreams of youthful love.




CHAPTER VI


A group of children playing on the “main street,” so-called, burst into
shouts of astonishment as they caught sight of the coach which three
times a week made the trip from the dam to Fuerte Sarmiento, for it
presented an extraordinary appearance.

These little ragamuffins, busy with their games in the ruts and holes of
the highway, presented all the racial diversities characteristic of the
settlement’s population. There were white children shuffling about in
their elders’ cast-off shoes, their small forms lost in the baggy folds
of their fathers’ trousers; and there were half-breed children whose
dress had been simplified to a mere shirt, short enough to expose their
little copper-colored bellies to the air.

As the travellers who arrived at the dam had rarely been known to bring
anything with them in the way of baggage save a canvas sack in which was
heaped whatever clothing they possessed, the young inhabitants were very
naturally excited and astonished at sight of the trunks and boxes heaped
on the top of the mail coach, as, drawn by four lean and clay-spattered
nags, it rattled up the road. So high was the pile of luggage roped on
to the coach roof that, as the stage lurched into and out of the ruts of
the clay road, the whole structure tipped over at such an angle that it
seemed about to upset.

The men who were out of work, attracted by the novel sight, stood
watching from the doorway of the tavern. The coach stopped finally in
front of the frame house occupied by Watson, who came out in front of
his door, his servants peering from the doorway behind him.

As soon as they saw that the passenger stepping down from the coach was
Robledo, men and women rushed forward to greet him, stretching out their
hands to him in the confident comradeship of the desert. But everyone
promptly forgot him at sight of the other passengers.

First came the Marquis de Torre Bianca, who turned around to help his
wife to alight from the clumsy steps.

The Marquise, dressed in a luxurious travelling suit which contrasted
oddly with her surroundings, wore the hard expression which disfigured
her beauty in her bad moments. In spite of her thick veil, the red dust
of the long road she had travelled covered her face and hair. With
scarcely restrained astonishment and ill-humor, she looked about her,
and her eyes betrayed the despair with which she was saying to herself,
“Is this what I have come to?”

“Well, here we are,” said Robledo cheerfully. “Two days and two nights
from Buenos Aires, and a couple of hours driving through a dust storm,
that isn’t so bad! The ends of the earth are quite a way off from here!”

Several of the workmen who had welcomed Robledo began, of their own
accord, to unload the baggage. These were Elena’s things sent on to her
at Barcelona by her maid, and she cherished them. They were the chests
and boxes saved from her shipwreck!

Meanwhile a group of children and ragged women had gathered around
Elena, gazing at her with amazement and admiration, as though she had
fallen into their midst from another planet. Some of the little girls
timidly felt of the cloth of her dress. Their fingers had never touched
anything so wonderful!

By this time the news of Robledo’s arrival had reached Canterac,
Pirovani, and Moreno, and the engineer was presenting them to his
friends.

Watson, seeing that the multitude of bags and boxes was being carried
into the house he occupied with Robledo, said to his partner,

“You don’t expect the lady to share our rough quarters, do you?”

“The lady,” Robledo replied, “is the wife of an old college friend of
mine. He is going to take pot luck with us, and so is she. You don’t
need to build a palace for her.”

But Elena found it difficult to conceal her distress as she looked about
at the rooms that she was henceforth to live in; rough wooden walls,
scanty and awkward furniture, and scattered about, on every side,
saddles, engineering instruments, and sacks of provisions; and
everything in this house, occupied by two busy men who had no thought
for anything except their work, was in disorder, and covered with dust.

Torre Bianca was never under any circumstances surprised. As Robledo
took him through the house, putting in a word of apology now and then
for its appearance, the Marquis smiled gently at his friend. Whatever
Manuel did seemed to him worthy of approbation.

“And here are the servants,” said Robledo, introducing to Elena a fat
half-breed, already well on in years, who acted as housekeeper, two
little barefooted _mestizas_, who served as errand girls, and the
Spanish peasant who took care of the horses. All of this ragged crew
expressed with incessant smiles the admiration they felt for the
beautiful lady, and Elena finally broke into a laugh as she remembered
the servants she had left in Paris.

After supper Robledo took his partner aside to discuss the progress of
the work with him.

As Watson showed him the plans and documents, he also mentioned what
Canterac had said to him that afternoon.

“He says that in six months we shall be irrigating....”

Robledo looked immensely pleased.

“Then we’ll see this hard baked soil that bears nothing but _matorrales_
now, turn into the kind of earth they must have had in the Garden of
Eden. Thousands of people will lead happier and better lives here than
they could ever do in the old world, and with all that, you and I,
Watson, are going to get rich. We’ll get rich because we’ll be helping
other people to get rich. That’s the way it goes. If you want progress,
you’ve got to make it profitable to somebody.”

The two friends sat silent, looking into the air before them as if they
saw there the lands eternally green, and gurgling canals in which
gleamed silver water, the roads bordered with tall trees, and the white
houses, which were to come to life on the arid mesa at the magic touch
of water. Watson, as he saw the picture unfold before him, was reminded
of his native California; to Robledo, the scene in his mind’s eye, was
very like his beloved Valencia.

It was Watson who came out of his day-dream first. He nodded towards the
adjoining room in which they had left the new arrivals. The Marquis was
dozing in a canvas chair; Elena sat at a little distance from him, her
head in her hands, in a tragic attitude which indicated plainly that the
question, “What have I come to?” was throbbing in her mind with
desperate persistence.

During the few days she had spent in Buenos Aires her exile had seemed
to her tolerable. The capital was like any large European city. It was
only after determined search that she had discovered a corner of the old
colonial town, a small remnant of earlier and more primitive times,
barely sufficient to convince her that she had actually reached America.

The only thing that had seemed really strange to her during her sojourn
in Buenos Aires, besides her quarters in a second-class hotel, was the
absence of her automobile; aside from this, her manner of living had
undergone no great change. But then came that terrible journey across
interminable plains through which the train crawled hour-long, and never
a house nor a living soul. It was as though the world had suddenly
become nothing but space! And then the arrival in this strange land
where the turn of a wheel or even a step started up clouds of dust;
where the soil which was dissolved and held in suspension in the air
clogged and irritated her nose and throat; where the people looked
ragged and unkempt, and yet treated everyone else with a certain
familiarity, as though they considered anyone who came there, their
equal! “What had she come to?”

Robledo answered the question he read in his partner’s eyes.

“My friend is going to help us. He’s an engineer. But don’t worry about
him. I am going to give him a share in our business, out of my half of
course.”

Then he told Watson the few facts he thought his partner should know
about the Marquis.

“As long as your friend is going to help us,” said the young American,
“you had better take his share out of my half as well as yours. He seems
a nice fellow. Anyway I feel sorry for his wife.”

Robledo took the boy’s hand in his, in quick response to his generosity,
and they dropped the subject.

On the very next morning, Elena, who showed a certain easy adaptability
to the diverse circumstances of her life, set out to win the admiration
of her hosts by her domestic talents, just as, a few weeks earlier, she
had sought distinction in Paris drawing rooms through quite other
attainments. Dressed in a tailored suit which she had cast aside in
Paris, but which caused a great sensation among the engineer’s servants,
she started out, with carefully gloved hands, to set the house in order.

The half-breed and her two little helpers submissively followed the
_señora_ around, until the moment came when Elena rashly ventured to add
example to precept; whereupon her ignorance of housework became
immediately apparent. It was only too clear that she did not at all know
how to do the things she had ordered to be done, and the half-breed’s
help was more than once required in order to get the Marquise out of the
difficulties her ignorance had plunged her into.

In the kitchen a stove, in which was burned the same oil as that used
for the dredging machines, served for cooking purposes. Elena, delighted
by the ease with which the flame could be lighted and put out,
determined to have something to do with the preparations of the next
meal. But she soon had to retire before the superior skill of the
half-breed, who was now frankly laughing at her pretensions as a
housekeeper.

Still trying to be useful, Elena took off her gloves in order to wash
the dishes, but she at once put them on again, fearful that the very hot
water might injure her delicate skin, and destroy the polish of her
nails--and she remembered that in her moments of despair, she had felt a
certain relief in contemplating her hands.

Torre Bianca, dressed in a tweed riding suit, accompanied Watson and
Robledo to the canals. He watched the pile drivers at work, saw what was
being done, and talked with the peons. It wasn’t long before he was
covered with dust from head to foot; his sunburned hands itched
painfully; and yet he already felt the happy tranquillity of the man who
knows that he can earn his daily bread.

At nightfall the three engineers returned to the house, where they found
dinner awaiting them. Elena had been complaining of the rustic
simplicity of the table covers and plates. The half-breed, at her
instigation, purchased for a modest price, some additional pieces of
china which had found their way from Buenos Aires to the “Galician’s
Resort.” The next day some flowers, brought in by the two little
copper-colored errand girls, appeared on the table, and it became more
evident from day to day that there was now a woman accustomed to the
refinements of life in the engineers’ house.

One evening, while the half-breed was serving the first course, Elena
threw off from about her shoulders an old evening wrap which, as it was
somewhat the worse for its previous services, she now used as a dressing
gown. As she emerged from this covering it was revealed that she was in
evening dress. Her gown was a little worn, but it was still a brilliant
relic of happier days.

Watson looked at her with astonishment, Robledo made a gesture which
indicated that he thought she had gone crazy, but the Marquis remained
impassive, as though nothing that Elena did could cause him any
surprise.

“I’ve always dressed for dinner,” observed Elena, “and I don’t see any
reason for changing my habits here. It would make me so uncomfortable!”

The hours after the evening meal were usually spent in long
conversations. Robledo did most of the talking. He liked to tell the
stories of the various interesting characters he had seen pass through
“the land of all the world.” Many of them had already wandered over a
great part of the planet before they landed in the port of Buenos Aires.
Others eager for adventure had fled to the new continent in order to
begin a new life there.

In the capital they had encountered the same obstacles as those they had
run away from in Europe. The big city was already old. Tenements and
slums had grown up there too, and it was as hard to make a living as
ever it was in Europe. Sometimes it was even harder, so great was the
competition between all professions in the crowd thronging into Buenos
Aires from every quarter of the globe.

So they sought the waste places of the republic, the territories that
were still arid plains, and began transforming them for the future
generations of immigrants.

“What a lot of strange characters I have seen pass through here!”
Robledo would begin. “I remember one fellow, a peon, who, in spite of
his angry-looking, bulbous nose, inflamed by long years of drinking,
still had something about him that suggested an interesting history.
When he came straggling through here he was nothing but a wreck; but he
was like those ruined palaces, the smallest fragment of which, a piece
of broken pillar, or a bit of pediment, picked up from among the
crumbled walls, evokes the splendors of the past. Yet this fellow would
stop at nothing, not even theft, when he craved drink, and would lie for
days on the ground dead drunk. But a gesture, a chance word would make
us suspect that he had not always been a dirty, drink-sodden vagabond.

“One day I found him brushing the foreman’s hair, just for the joke of
the thing, and shaping the fellow’s mustache, making it look like Kaiser
Wilhelm’s. So I gave him a drink, I gave him all the drinks he could
hold, because that’s the only way to make that kind of a fellow talk.
And so I learned that this broken-down old drunkard was a German baron,
once a captain of the Imperial Guard. He had gambled with some money
left in his charge by his superior officers, and instead of committing
suicide, as his family expected him to do, he came to America, where he
began his career as a general. He ended up a useless, drunken,
day-laborer.”

Seeing that Elena was interested, Robledo went on modestly,

“This German baron was a general in one of the revolutions in Venezuela.
I, too, was once a general in another South American republic. I was
even minister of war for ten days ... but they threw me out for being
too scientific, and for not knowing how to handle a _machete_ as well as
my aides.”

Then Robledo went on to speak of another peon, a drunkard also, a silent
gloomy sort of fellow, who had crawled into the camp up at the dam to
die. They had buried him near the river, and Robledo had found some of
the poor devil’s papers in the canvas sack the vagabond dragged along
with him. He had once been a well-known architect in Vienna. One of the
photographs among the papers was of a lady with an impressive head-dress
and long pendent earrings, who looked very much like the murdered
Empress. This was the architect’s wife. While her husband was
accompanying General Gordon on one of his expeditions she had been
killed in Khartoum, torn to pieces by the fanatics that the Mahdi was
leading through the Sudan. The other photograph, that of a handsome
Austrian officer, his white coat snugly fitted in at the waist, was the
vagabond’s son.

“And it’s no use trying to reform those fellows,” said Robledo. “You may
clean them up a bit, and make life a little more comfortable for them,
you may preach to them about drinking less, and try in every way to help
them ‘get back’--As soon as they are rested and begin to look a little
happier, they come up to you some fine morning with packs on their
backs. ‘Well, I’m off, boss! What’s due me?’ And it’s no use asking them
any questions. Everything is all right, they have no complaints to make;
but just the same they light out. No sooner do they get a few square
meals than the devil who drives them round and round the globe suddenly
remembers them and starts them off again. They know perfectly well that
beyond the horizon line out yonder are the Andes, and beyond the Andes,
Chile; and beyond that the Pacific and its islands, and then the
crowding masses of China.... And so their mania for wandering awakens
... they must always see what is beyond.... They pick up their bundles
and start out again, with hunger and exhaustion waiting for them out
there.... They die in hospitals, or in the desert; and if they do not
die but keep on, always following the ‘beyond’ that mocks and beguiles
them, they turn up here again--but only because they have made a
complete circuit of the globe.”

Now and then the two engineers spoke of their own lives. Watson’s
history was of the briefest. Leaving his native California after
graduating from Berkeley, he had taken up his engineering work in the
silver mines of Mexico, and from there he had gone to Peru. Finally he
had moved on to Buenos Aires where he had met Robledo, and it was there
the two men had gone into partnership in order to carry out their Rio
Negro enterprise.

The Spaniard did not like to recall his experiences in America before
his arrival in Argentina. In that earlier period he had taken part in
revolutions for which he felt nothing but contempt, becoming involved in
them merely because of his desire for activity. For the same reason he
had undertaken various business ventures only to discover in the course
of them that he was being deceived and robbed, sometimes by his
partners, sometimes by the government. Violent changes in his fortunes
had thrown him from absurd abundance into abject want. But he avoided
talking of all this, and most of his stories were about life in
Patagonia.

Once he had crossed the enormous plateau which begins at the cut of the
Black River and stretches toward the Strait of Magellan. He had started
out on this exploring expedition after resigning his position with the
Argentine government, and to avoid expense he had taken with him only a
native peon and a troup of six desert horses capable of feeding on the
rough weeds of the mesa. Robledo and the peon rode all day, changing
horses at frequent intervals. The engineer had, with the help of some of
his friends, made out a map indicating the springs, the only possible
camping places.

For several years there had been droughts. On reaching the first spring
Robledo found that it was very salty. He was accustomed to the brackish
water which the optimism of the desert explorers considers drinkable;
but the water in this spring was of saltiness that was more than he or
the Indian with him could stomach.

They went on, confident that they would come upon a spring the next day.
When they reached it they found that it did not contain salt water, for
the reason that there was no water in it at all. So they continued
across the plateau that was always endless and always the same. Steering
their course by the compass, they suffered a thirst which made them walk
with their lower jaws drooping, and through their eyes, starting from
their heads, passed now and then the terrifying glitter of madness. And
finally they had been forced to resort to a loathesome thing in order to
ease the torment of their swollen tongues and throats with a little
liquid.

“What tormented me,” said Robledo, “was the memory of all the times when
I had been asked to have a drink in some café or other, and had not
cared enough about what was set before me to drink it--beer, charged
waters, iced drinks--and then I was stricken with remorse at the memory
of certain parties I had been to, when I had passed by the buffet full
of decanters and bottles without taking any of their contents, for I
kept saying to myself, excited with fever as I was, and staggering along
under the hard merciless sun, ‘If you had drunk all the beers, and all
the soda waters, and all the iced drinks that were offered you and that
you didn’t appreciate, you would now have inside of you a reserve store
of liquids and you’d be able to stand this awful thirst much better!’
And this absurd idea tormented me like remorse for a crime, and at
times I wanted to punch my own head for my stupidity in not having drunk
everything that had once been within my reach so that I might have been
prepared for that awful desert trip.

“Finally, with only two of our six horses still stumbling along beside
us, we reached a well of fresh water. That was the most delicious drink
of my whole life! And after all our long hard pull through that desert
of death, we found nothing! The information I had been given, and to
confirm which I had started off on this expedition, proved to be
false.... But that’s the way you have to seek fortune now, for those of
us who go to the new world are half a century late. All the rich lands,
those easy to develop, have been taken up, and only those that are
remote and inhospitable, are left--and often all that they offer is ruin
and death.

“However,” Robledo continued, “men go right on coming to this corner of
the globe. Hope lives here among us, and without hope life is
intolerable. And just consider our own household for instance! Elena
there, a Russian, Federico, Italian, Watson from the United States, I a
Spaniard. And the people who come to see us are each of them of a
different nationality. As I say, it’s the land of all!”

Little by little it became the custom of the most important personages
of the settlement to call at the engineers’ house after supper. First to
appear was Canterac, in a suit of military cut, and still more carefully
brushed and polished than before the arrival of the Torre Biancas. Then
came Moreno, betraying a certain nervous agitation at greeting his
hostess, uttering a few stammerings instead of words, and almost biting
off his tongue in the tenseness of his embarrassment. And last came
Pirovani, displaying a new suit every other night, and always bringing
his hostess a present.

Canterac used to laugh at him, asserting that if Pirovani was late it
was because he had been polishing his watch charms, watch chain and cuff
buttons, so as to dazzle the rest of the company.

One evening the Italian appeared in a startling suit just arrived from
Bahia Blanca, bearing in his fat hand a bouquet of enormous roses.

“These were brought down to me today from Buenos Aires, _señora
marquesa_, and I hasten to lay them at your feet!”

Canterac glared at the Italian with mock indignation, and murmured in a
loud aside to Robledo,

“That’s a lie! These roses came by telegraph! Moreno, who knows
everything, told me so, and this afternoon Pirovani sent a man to get
them from the station. He had strict orders to gallop all the way!”

The housekeeper and the two little half-breeds cleared the table, and
the living room, in spite of its rough wooden partitions, began to look
suggestive of festivity, as the three callers grouped about Elena,
offering her compliments and conversation, according to their talents.
It was noticeable that they invariably repeated the word _marquesa_ at
every opportunity, as though they enjoyed being constantly reminded that
they were in such distinguished company.

Elena soon discovered a preference for Canterac which she made no
attempt to conceal. After all, he was of her world, although his circle
in Paris had not been the same as hers. Yet it had been adjacent, and
though they had never met, they discovered that they had mutual friends.

While the Frenchman and Elena talked, Moreno smoked resignedly,
exchanging a few words with Watson, or listening to Pirovani’s
discussions with Robledo and the Marquis. But he had little attention
for anyone save the Marquise and Canterac, whom he watched with anxious
eyes. However, the _tertulia_ underwent a transformation after the
arrival of Pirovani with his roses.

The next evening Elena and the men of her household were sitting at
table, more silent than usual. She was wearing one of her most startling
evening dresses, one which, even in Paris, would have been described as
daring. But the three engineers, still in their work clothes, appeared
to be exhausted by the day’s labors. Robledo yawned several times though
he was making valiant efforts to keep awake. The Marquis was quietly
nodding in his chair; and Elena meanwhile was looking at Watson as
though she had for the first time become aware of him, which caused the
young American considerable discomfort.

Suddenly Pirovani appeared at the door, carrying a large package, and
arrayed in a new suit of wide checked material whose many colors
resembled the mottled patterns of a python’s skin.

“_Señora marquesa_,” he began solemnly, “a friend of mine in Buenos
Aires has just sent me this box of caramels. Allow me to present them to
you!”

Elena, amused by the contractor’s new clothes, smilingly acknowledged
his present, rewarding him for his attentions with several glances full
of coquetry.

At that point, Moreno arrived, recklessly gotten up in patent leather
boots, a wide-skirted cutaway, and a high silk hat, just as though he
were about to call on his chief, the Minister of the Interior.

Robledo, rousing a little at these arrivals, observed ironically,

“What elegance, Moreno!”

“I was afraid,” exclaimed the latter “that these things would get moth
eaten in the trunk, so I put them on to give them an airing.”

Timidly he approached Elena. “Good evening, _señora marquesa_!”
Imitating the personages of elegant life and manners whom he had so
often admired in novels and on the stage, he bent over her hand. Then
unwilling to leave her side after this successful performance, he did
his utmost to keep up a conversation with her, to Pirovani’s intense
indignation. Finally the Italian got up, as a protest against this
intrusion, and could be heard inquiring of Robledo in his corner,

“Did you ever see anything like the get-up of that jackass?”

But the surprises of the evening were not yet over.

The door opened once more, and Canterac appeared on the threshold, where
he paused a moment, giving all his spectators the opportunity to get a
good look at him.

He wore a dinner coat, and a fine and exquisitely ironed dress shirt,
and when finally he stepped into the room, he did so with a certain
languid grace as though he were presenting himself in a Paris drawing
room. After a slight bow to the men, he bent over Elena and kissed her
hand.

“I too felt like dressing for dinner this evening, Marquesa, as in the
good old times.”

Elena, pleased by this homage, turned her back upon Moreno, and made the
new arrival sit down beside her. For the rest of the evening she devoted
most of her attentions to the Frenchman, while Pirovani sulked in a
corner, making small attempt to conceal his displeasure, though he was
obviously impressed by Canterac’s aristocratic appearance.

For several evenings after this the contractor failed to appear. Moreno,
curious about the reason for his absence, called at the Italian’s and
came back with some news.

“Pirovani’s gone to Bahia Blanca without telling anyone what for. He
must have some important business on.”

So the _tertulias_ continued. Canterac in his dinner coat still enjoyed
Elena’s preference, and Moreno got into his swallow-tail every evening
for no other purpose apparently than to carry on his desultory
conversations with Torre Bianca. Even the Marquis appeared one evening
in a dinner coat, and when Robledo made a gesture of astonishment, he
gave a shrug and a nod towards his wife.

On the fifth evening Moreno came rushing in to announce that Pirovani
had returned. “He may be here at any moment now!”

And since Pirovani had provided them all with a subject for speculation,
everyone had the sense of waiting for him to put in an appearance.

Then the door opened; and pausing on the threshold as Canterac had done,
in order to allow the onlookers to get the full effect of his attire,
Pirovani appeared, in a frock coat that was resplendent with lapels of a
heavily ribbed silk, the fibres of which were as thick as those of wood,
a white waistcoat richly embroidered, a white camelia in his buttonhole,
and a large ribbon from which dangled a monocle.... Needless to say, he
had never learned to wear one!

His aspect was solemn and magnificent, like that of a circus director,
or a world-famous prestidigitator. Making manful efforts to preserve his
calm and conceal his emotions, he nodded with masculine indifference to
the men, and bowed low before the _marquesa_, whose hand he raised to
his lips.

Elena’s eyes gleamed with suppressed amusement. Everything about
Pirovani always seemed to her humorous. But, perceiving that this
transformation had been accomplished in her honor, she welcomed him
affectionately, and made him sit down beside her. Canterac, visibly
offended by his rival’s triumph, abruptly left the group, while Moreno,
with a scandalized expression, made a gesture towards Pirovani and
muttered to Robledo,

“So that’s the important business he took a trip to Bahia Blanca for!
That’s what he made such a mystery about!”

Robledo, however, left him to mutter alone, and went on talking to
Watson, who, still dazed by the contractor’s theatrical entrance, was
watching him with considerable amusement.

“From dinner coats to swallow-tails,” growled Robledo. “We’ll be
holding carnival out on the desert soon, and this woman will be driving
us all crazy before we get through!”

He glanced with relief at the young American, who, like himself, still
wore his simple work clothes, and mentally compared his appearance with
that of the other men in the room.

“What a commotion that sort of woman stirs up in a frontier settlement,
where men live alone, and have no other distraction from their work!” he
thought. “And she’s only just begun.... Who knows what she’ll try next?
We may all end up by killing one another on her account! Perhaps this is
Helen of Troy in our midst....”

With a cynical shrug, Robledo turned his back on the group around Elena.
He had done his best to leave her in the old world--His conscience was
clear on that score!




CHAPTER VII


“Another little glass of _mate_, _comisario_?”

The police commissioner of the camp sat opposite don Carlos Rojas in the
latter’s living room. A half-breed girl, standing very straight, was
looking at the two men with her slanting eyes, waiting for the master’s
orders.

In front of them on the table were two little calabash shells full of a
decoction made from the _mate_ herb, and they were sipping the liquid
through the silver “straw” that is known in these regions as a
_bombilla_. No sooner did the servant hear the gurgling of the liquid in
the straws, which indicated that the contents of the cup was getting
low, than she ran to the stove and brought the “peacock” or _pava_ as
the kettle is called, from the curved neck of which she poured boiling
water on the soaking leaves at the bottom of the calabashes, and filled
these unique goblets to the brim.

Rojas and his guest, as they talked, took frequent sips of their tea. It
was evident from the rancher’s expression that something had gone wrong
with him. As a matter of fact he had lost another steer, and he angrily
attributed this loss to Manos Duras who, of late, had sold altogether
too many pieces of beef to the camp at the Dam. As Rojas himself was its
official victualler, the loss of his trade, in addition to the
disappearance of his steers, seemed to him an insufferable outrage.

He had sent in hot haste for the commissioner, and together, after don
Rojas had told his suspicions, they had counted his herd. It was certain
that one was lacking. And, as he talked with don Roque, the rancher
worked himself up to the point where he came out flatly with the
statement that there was no justice to be had in Rio Negro.

“But,” protested the _comisario_ in a tone of discouragement, “I sent
that fellow up to the capital of the territory three separate times,
under guard, in fact he went as a prisoner, and each time he got off
scot-free. No proofs! What could we do? No one will testify against
him!”

But Rojas continued his protests, and the commissioner to quiet his
growing irritation, promised to make a more determined effort than ever
this time to bring the thief to justice.

However, he had at his disposal very few means of carrying out his
promise. The police forces at the settlement consisted of four lazy
rascals, whose uniforms had grown old and spotted in the service, and
whose only weapons were cavalry swords. When they had to pursue a
criminal, the well-to-do inhabitants lent the police their rifles; and
their horses, of course, were gaunt nags, too ill-nourished to be a
menace to anyone intent on escaping.

“That’s what comes of being a federal republic,” lamented don Roque.
“The states at least have their own police system. We in the territories
who have to depend on the Federal Government for our protection, are so
far away from Buenos Aires that they forget all about us. There’s
nothing for us to do but trust to our wits for our safety.”

“Yes, here we are, deserted you might say,” continued don Roque,
“turning into savings! After all, this is nothing but Patagonia, and it
is only a few years ago that anything like civilization began here at
all. Meanwhile the rest of the Argentine has forged ahead at a
breathless pace in less than half a century.... Pucha! It’s worth seeing
just the same!”

And for the moment they forgot their immediate worries, while they
talked of that part of their country which had progressed with such
dizzying rapidity within their lifetimes. But don Roque had a jealous
enthusiasm for Patagonia also.

“Desert though it is at this moment, you’ll see it bloom yet, and in a
short time from now, too, when this soil begins to get water. And it’s
lucky for us that this land has such an ugly face.... If it hadn’t it
would have been stolen from us long ago!”

Wound up by his own words he went on to tell how he had read in a
magazine about that _gringo_ Charles Darwin, the same who had discovered
how we had all come from monkeys. He, too, it seemed, had wandered
around these parts, when, as a youth, he had landed at Bahia Blanca,
arriving there in a British frigate in which he was making a tour of the
world. He had taken it into his head to study the plants and animals of
the region, not an arduous task because there were so few specimens of
either. Finally, in despair, he gave up his search for new flora and
went away, leaving to this arid plateau the name “Land of Desolation.”

“That was doing us a favor, if the _gringo_ but knew it! Just as soon as
people learn what this country is like when it’s irrigated, the English
are sure to take it from us! Didn’t they take our _Islas Malvinas_, that
they now call Fauckland Islands?”

Rojas too began to talk of past times, lamenting the fact that his
forebears had not been able to see where the true riches of the country
lay. It had been their misfortune to become well-to-do before the
generation of great and rapid fortune-making in the Argentine.

It was in 1870 that the government at Buenos Aires, growing weary of
having the Indians, still in a state of savagery, at its very gates,
completed the work of the _Conquistadores_, by sending a military
expedition out to the desert to take possession of twenty thousand
leagues of land, practically all that was capable of cultivation.

“The government sold that land for 1500 _pesos_. The league and the
_peso_ in those days was worth only a few _centavos_. More than that, it
allowed several years’ time for payment, and even printed the names of
purchasers in the official newspaper, declaring them ‘well-deserving of
the country’. The soldiers who had taken part in the expedition also
received land as a reward for their services. It wasn’t long before they
sold the titles to their acres to the store-keepers in exchange for gin,
and canned food. And these are the lands that now supply wheat and beef
to half the world! On them have arisen numberless villages and towns.
Today a league of land, which once cost a few cents, is worth millions.
The owners of all this property have no other merit than that they kept
their land, without cultivating it, and with no wish to sell it, waiting
for the European immigration which would give it its value. My
grandfather was already rich in those days and owned a big ranch. He
didn’t want to buy any of the new property. If he had only known!”

Rojas at the moment was quite forgetful of how he had squandered the
better part of his inheritance; the thought of the enormous fortune his
family might have amassed had it been willing to take advantage of an
opportunity provided by the rapid expansion of the country, and seized
by so many others, fascinated and tormented him.

But at this point the conversation of the two Argentinians was
interrupted by Celinda’s arrival. Dutifully wearing her riding skirt,
she came in to give her father a kiss, and greet the _comisario_. Taking
advantage of the moment during which don Carlos left them to get a box
of cigars, don Roque said teasingly to the girl,

“Haven’t I seen you wear a different riding suit when you were out on
the mesa!”

Celinda smiled, at the same time indicating by a graceful little
threatening gesture, that he must be more discreet.

“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t let my old man hear you.”

While the two men lit their cigars and went on with their talk about
Manos Duras, and how he was to be punished for his lawlessness, Celinda
knowing the conversation was likely to be a long one, left the ranch,
demurely riding her horse with a side-saddle.

A half hour later, however, she was cantering along the river bank;
wearing boy’s clothes and mounted on a different horse. Suddenly she
caught sight of a group of riders approaching, and stopped to
reconnoitre.

Canterac, inspired by his desire to arouse the _marquesa’s_ interest in
him, had invited her to ride on the river path. It would, he believed,
give her a heightened estimate of him when she saw the work that was
being carried out under his direction. She would realize then that he
was the real manager of the enterprise, when she saw hundreds of men
obeying his orders....

Elena and the Frenchman were in the lead. Behind them rode Pirovani, who
hadn’t a very steady seat, and lurched about rather grotesquely on his
saddle, making determined efforts nevertheless to get his horse between
Elena’s and the Frenchman’s. Last of the cavalcade came the _marqués_,
Watson and Moreno.

As Elena and Canterac rode past Celinda the two women looked at one
another. The _marquesa_ smiled, as though eager to speak to the young
girl; but with a childish frown, Celinda turned severe eyes on her.

“She’s nothing but a girl,” said Canterac, “a mischievous little thing,
full of pranks--and, although she looks like a boy, I shouldn’t wonder
if she had it in her to turn any man’s head. The people hereabouts call
her _Flor de Rio Negro_.”

Elena, offended by the girl’s attitude, looked haughtily at her.

“_Flor_, perhaps,” she commented, “but a little too wild!”

And followed by her escort she rode on.

This brief conversation had been carried on in French, so that Celinda
caught but a few words of it; but it was easy to guess that the
_marquesa_ had said something disparaging, and Celinda did not restrain
her impulse to make a grimace at the intruder’s unconscious back.

The other riders then drew near, and the _marqués_ ceremoniously greeted
the young girl. Moreno, however, did not even see her, so intent was he
in watching the group ahead. As for Richard Watson, he indicated by his
manner that he intended riding on with the other members of the party;
and he pretended not to understand Celinda’s perfectly obvious gestures.

She let him go on, though she wore an expression of childish annoyance.
Suddenly, however, she repented of her meekness, and pulling on the
reins, wheeled her horse around and followed the group.

As she rode, her right hand suddenly caught up the lassoo tied to the
front of the saddle and threw it at the American ... a tug at the rope
... and Watson, to escape rolling out of the saddle, had to stop and
turn his horse back; his companions meanwhile, rode on, unaware of his
capture.

The thong still tight about his shoulders, Richard rode up to the girl;
he was too much annoyed to free himself and ride away; better have it
out!

“Come here,” she said smiling, as she drew in the rope. “Tell me what
you mean by going around with that woman--without my permission!”

In a voice betraying his annoyance, Watson replied sharply,

“You have no rights over me, señorita Rojas! I shall go about with
anyone I like!”

Celinda grew pale. She had not expected that tone. But very quickly she
recovered herself, and imitating the young man’s serious manner, she
replied,

“Mr. Watson, I have over you this right at least. I do care about what
happens to you, and I don’t like to see you in bad company!”

Conquered by the girl’s comic seriousness, young Watson burst out
laughing; and then Celinda laughed too.

“You know how I am, _gringuito_.... I don’t like to see you with that
woman. Anyway she’s too old for you.... Swear to me that you’ll do what
I ask--or I won’t let you go!”

Watson swore solemnly, with hand up-raised, making determined efforts to
preserve his solemnity. Celinda loosened the rope and the two young
people set off in the opposite direction to that taken by Elena and her
party.

Since the day when the Frenchman had shown the _marquesa_ the
engineering works at the Dam, somewhat boastfully exhibiting his
authority over the workmen, Pirovani had felt that he had lost ground;
and he was eager at any cost to regain it.

An inspiration came to him one morning as he leaned on his elbow over
the railing of his balcony. He knew now how to steal a march on his
rival! Within half an hour one of the Italian’s foremen was in
conference with his employer.

This fellow, a Chilian, crafty, ingenious in finding a way out of tight
places, was frequently called upon by the contractor to handle
difficult missions for him. He was known as “the Friar” by his
compatriots, an allusion to his sojourn during one period of his
adventurous life with the Dominicans at Valparaiso. As a result of this
experience he not only knew how to read and write; he had also acquired
a taste for unusual words, which he rendered more unusual still by
stressing their syllables to his own taste. Soft-voiced and
courteous-mannered, he peppered his conversation with poetic phrases. A
little incident of two fatal knife thrusts administered to a friend had
caused him to abandon his native land.

Foreseeing that his master’s summons would mean a long journey, he had
ridden over on his excellent mare. As he dismounted, Pirovani came out,
and gave his henchman a vigorous slap on the shoulder by way of
indicating the affectionate confidence he felt in him.

“Listen, _roto_,” said the contractor, adopting the Chilians’ own
ironical nickname for themselves, “I want you to get to the station as
fast as you can. The train for Buenos Aires will go through in two
hours, and you are going to take it.”

In spite of his half-breed impassivity, the Friar could not suppress a
gesture of astonishment at hearing that he was being sent to the
capital.

“Just as soon as you get there,” Pirovani continued, “give this list to
my agent, Fernando--you know him. Tell him he is to buy these things at
once, and give you the packages. You are to take the next train back. I
expect you to make the round trip in five days.”

The Chilian listened with utmost gravity to these commands. He
concluded from his employer’s manner that the mission being entrusted to
him must be of tremendous importance and felt agreeably flattered at
having been chosen to accomplish it.

Pirovani thrust a fistfull of bills into his hand and bade him good-by,
turning his back on him with the brisk satisfaction of a general who has
just commanded the manœuvres sure to bring a quick and decisive victory.

With a frown indicative of profound thought, the Friar went down the
steps.

“This must be an order for steel for the works,” he reflected. “Or
perhaps he’s sending me for money....”

Seeing that Pirovani had retired into his cottage, he gave up his
attempt to think out a reason for his errand, deeming it simpler to open
the envelope entrusted to him. Then he stood in the middle of the street
reading the papers it contained.

His first glance at the several lines of the document did not enlighten
him.

“_One dozen bottles of ‘Jardin Florido’._”

“_Idem, ‘Nymphs and Undines’._”

“_Six dozen boxes of ‘Moonlight Soap’_”....

The bewildered foreman went on with the remaining pages of the thick
packet. He was beginning to understand; but the more he understood, the
greater was his astonishment. Was it for this that he was being sent to
Buenos Aires with orders to return at once?...

“Holy smoke!” he muttered, “this can’t all be for one female! There’s
enough here for the Grand Turk’s harem!”

But, as the prospect of a trip to Buenos Aires pleased him, even though
he would be able to remain there only a few hours, he cheerfully mounted
his horse, and galloped off hot-foot to the station.

Of all the _marquesa’s_ nightly callers, the calmest, to judge by
appearance, was Moreno. As his work kept him busy only about one day a
week, he spent the rest of the time reading in the window of the frame
house where he had set up his office. He was a greedy and insatiable
reader, devouring two and sometimes three novels daily. His passion for
novels of all kinds was one of long standing; it had grown worse in the
many hours of solitude he spent at la Presa. When everybody else went
away to work in the morning, leaving him alone in his rustic office, he
had no distraction of any other kind.

It was after the arrival of the Torre Biancas that his literary
preferences, up to that time not clearly formulated, took definite
shape. He determined henceforth to read nothing but those tales the
scene of which was the so-called world of fashion, with heroes and
heroines who were personages of supposedly high society. Moreover, now
that he was rubbing elbows with some of the most distinguished
representatives of Parisian _high-life_, he could judge of whether these
novels were true descriptions of the subject they attempted to treat, or
not.

At times he would stop reading and look up at the ceiling with an
ecstatic expression, while a desire whispered in his brain,

“Oh, to be the hero of such a story! Oh, to be loved by a woman of high
society!”

One afternoon when Moreno was least expecting him Canterac appeared at
his door on horseback. As a rule he was at that time of day always at
the dam. Something unusual must have happened ... the captain would not
be likely otherwise to come and see him.

The horseman rode up to the window and shook hands with Moreno. With
military abruptness, avoiding all preambles, he began,

“I wanted to talk to you a minute before tonight so you can get a letter
off in today’s mail.... It’s about a present for the _marquesa_. Poor
woman, in this desert of ours she has none of the things she’s
accustomed to, and if you remember, a few weeks ago she happened to
mention that she misses perfumes so much....”

The engineer took some papers out of a leather wallet, and gave them to
Moreno.

“I clipped these out of some catalogues that the Galician fellow at the
store gave me. Of course it took him a while to get them for me from
Buenos Aires. I should have had them three days ago, so as to send the
order by the other train. But, to come to the point.... You have a lot
of friends in Buenos Aires, won’t you get one of them to buy these
things for me? And take the money out of my pay for the month....”

Moreno with a nod, took the catalogue clippings.

“I hope Pirovani won’t get ahead of me in this matter,” Canterac went
on. “The fellow is more insufferable every day.”

The captain had left him to return to his work at the Dam. Moreno
neglected his novel a moment longer to examine the catalogue lists and
prices; and as he did so his eyes grew round with amazement; in fact
they became almost as round and blank as the shell-rimmed glasses
covering them.

For the list marked was a long one; it contained not only perfumery, but
all kinds of toilet articles. Evidently the Captain had plunged into the
catalogue as though it were a newly discovered continent, appropriating
everything he encountered.

“All this mounts up to more than a thousand _pesos_,” said the paymaster
to himself. “And Canterac’s pay is only 800 _pesos_ a month.”

Methodical and prudent as he was, a man of figures and accounts, he felt
outraged at this lack of balance between income and expenditure. But
after a little reflection he began to smile to himself. After all, this
lavishness was easy to understand! The _marquesa_ was so charming ...
and she couldn’t be expected to live like an ordinary woman!

But all the rest of the afternoon Moreno was uneasy; he couldn’t keep
his attention on the novel he held in his hands. It would waver and
slowly sink to the table in front of him, thickly strewn with business
papers. Finally, with a frown, he picked up a sheet of writing paper and
with the expression of a child fearful of being caught telling a
whopper, he began to write--

    “DEAR CLARA:

     Send me, as soon as you get this, the frock coat I had made when we
     were married. Things have changed here considerably. Quite
     important persons are coming this way now and there are a good many
     parties given for them. Naturally I want to make as good an
     appearance as anybody else. It’s really quite important for my
     advancement that I should....”

Here Moreno scratched his head with his pen handle; then, with a
remorseful expression, he went on writing until he had covered all four
pages of his letter paper.

Every evening now at the _marquesa’s tertulias_, Pirovani betrayed the
indecision and preoccupation of one who has something on his mind of
which he must speak, but whose emotions get the better of him before he
can begin.

After a week of hesitancy however he decided to postpone his offer no
longer; he reached this decision precisely on the evening when Moreno
counted on enjoying one of the most triumphant moments of his life.

Elena was wearing one of those evening dresses of hers the effect of
which she was constantly varying by the addition or removal of some
ornament so that her costumes always appeared new. Canterac and Torre
Bianca wore dinner dress, and Pirovani was displaying the majestic cut
of his swallow-tail. But, alas! He was no longer the only one to be so
arrayed; for, at the last moment, Moreno had arrived wearing the evening
clothes sent down by his wife. It was true that his clothes were modest
enough, and somewhat the worse for numerous years of service and moth
balls. But still they were formal evening dress, and robbed the
contractor of the distinction of being the only guest present to be thus
attired; as a consequence, Pirovani was so nervous that he chattered
like a magpie.

Watson and Robledo had compromised with their surroundings by putting on
dark suits; they felt obliged to change their clothes every evening now
so as not to strike too glaring a note in the picture of incongruous
elegance that was being created out of respect for Elena’s presence.

Watson was tired out by his day’s work; he was preoccupied moreover with
thinking of the meeting he had had in the late afternoon with Celinda
near her father’s ranch. Finally, after several more or less disguised
yawns, he got up to go to his own quarters. Elena could not conceal her
annoyance when he returned her look of cordial interest with a coolly
courteous bow, as though it were without the slightest regret that he
left her charming presence.

As, at that very moment, Canterac was engaged in conversation with the
_Marques_, and as Moreno was discussing something with Robledo, Pirovani
seized his opportunity.

“I haven’t dared say anything before, _Marquesa_, but now I feel that I
must.... This frame is unworthy of your beauty and elegance....”

He gave a depreciative glance about at the room and its furnishings.

“If you like, my house is at your disposal from tomorrow on. It is
yours, _marquesa_. I can live in the house of one of my employees.”

Elena, for some reason, did not betray great astonishment. One might
have said that she had been expecting this offer for a long time, or
even that she had been subtly suggesting it to the contractor. However,
she went through various gestures of protest, at the same time smiling
at Pirovani, and letting her glance rest caressingly on him.

Finally she weakened before his arguments, and promised to consider the
suggestion and consult her husband about it; she could not decide
alone....

While Robledo and Watson were at work the next day, she kept her
promise.

In spite of the submissiveness with which Torre Bianca usually accepted
his wife’s suggestions, he indicated in no uncertain terms that this
particular one scandalized him. Certainly he could not accept Pirovani’s
generosity!

“What will people think of his giving up his own house to us? Everyone
knows that he takes such enjoyment in it!”

No; he shook his head emphatically. Besides, all his class feeling awoke
at the thought of being under obligations to a man, for whom he felt no
dislike, it is true, but whose tastes he considered rather vulgar.

But Elena became irritable.

“Your friend Robledo is constantly doing us favors, and yet it doesn’t
seem to occur to you that people might think that strange! Why do you
think it so extraordinary that a new friend should express his interest
in us by letting us live in his house?”

And Torre Bianca, who was so accustomed to yield on every occasion to
his wife’s wishes, felt himself yielding once more at these words;
nevertheless he persisted for awhile longer in voicing his objections to
the idea, so that finally, by way of settling the matter, Elena said,

“Of course I understand your scruples ... but it isn’t as though the
house were being given to us ... it is simply rented. I insisted on that
point to Pirovani. You will pay him when the irrigation project begins
to bring us in some money.”

With a gesture of resignation, the marqués surrendered. Particularly
noticeable at the moment was his air of discouragement; and he looked
aged and sick, as though some secret malady were eating away his life.

“Do as you like. I have no desire but to see you happy.”

The following day Elena called on Pirovani. It had been arranged that
she was to see the house, and look it over thoroughly before moving.

The contractor, pale with emotion at being alone with her at last,
received her at the head of the stairs, and escorted her through the
various rooms. Elena, playing her part as mistress of the establishment,
at once ordered certain pieces of furniture to be moved about; the
Italian, meanwhile, overcome with admiration of her taste, looked
significantly at Sebastiana the housekeeper; he wanted her too to share
his ecstasy over the titled lady’s exquisite discrimination.

Finally they reached the bedroom that was to be Elena’s henceforth. On
the dressing table and chairs, spread out in every available space,
were innumerable packages all carefully wrapped in tissue paper, tied
with ribbon, and sealed; and about each package hovered an aroma of
flowers and spices. Pirovani was opening them eagerly, revealing dozens
of flasks of perfumes, and boxes of delicate and extravagant soaps, as
well as handsome toilet articles; all the enormous order, in fact,
brought from Buenos Aires, and that now with its gilded labels, its
gorgeously lined cases, its glittering cut glass, caressed the eye and
at the same time flattered the sense with its perfumes suggestive of all
the marvellous blossoms of a Persian garden.

Elena passed from surprise to amazement; finally she burst out laughing,
uttering exclamations of amusement not untinged with mockery.

“How generous of you! But there’s enough here to start a perfume shop!”

Pirovani, quite white by this time, and growing bolder under the
_marquesa’s_ smiles, tried to get possession of her hand. But Elena,
with a malicious glance in her dark eyes, checkmated him at once.

“I know that this is a real present,” she said, “and that you are not
like those vulgar men who sell their gifts.... You want nothing from me
but appreciation, I am sure!”

Then, taking pity on the Italian’s embarrassment--alas! he had, as well
he knew, laid himself open to the charge of vulgarity, according to the
_marquesa’s_ definition--she extended her right hand graciously toward
his lips.

“That is for you,” she said.

But he had not yet learned how to kiss a lady’s hand with the proper
mixture of fervor and restraint; and Elena, abruptly putting an end to
his homage, shook her finger at him....

They went on then to the other rooms of the house, and the contractor,
as though repentant of his audacity, meekly followed his guest about;
and yet there were moments when he wished he had been more audacious
still; but above his conflicting sentiments persisted a sense of
triumph. The _marquesa’s_ white and fragrant hand had actually been
offered to his lips, and with what a gesture!

Ah, what good fortune to be able to offer a woman like that a house, and
servants, and the luxurious articles so indispensable to her comfort!...
With a smile Pirovani contemplated his recent success, and dreamed of
other successes to come....




CHAPTER VIII


Pirovani’s house took on an entirely new appearance after the Torre
Biancas moved in. The window panes shone now and through them could be
seen new and gay-colored curtains. The servants no longer lolled about
the verandah, unkempt and dirty, performing their household duties in
full sight of the street. The presence of the beautiful and elegant new
mistress of the house had inspired them all with a desire to present a
somewhat less untidy appearance. Even the fat Sebastiana “wore her
Sunday clothes every day,” as her friends put it.

The community around the Dam enjoyed other novelties too after Elena had
taken possession of the contractor’s bungalow. There was in Pirovani’s
parlor a grand piano of modest dimensions which until then had remained
locked. It represented a purchase the Italian had made in Buenos Aires
to oblige a friend who had invested too much money in his stock of
musical instruments. Besides, the contractor had heard that no parlor
was complete without a piano, but of course he had always thought he
would have one with perpendicular strings and an upright case. However,
on his friend’s recommendation, he had purchased the handsome
instrument, although he had small hope that any one would ever come to
the Dam who would prove capable of playing it.

Elena however paid it a great deal of attention, sitting in front of it
for hours at a time, letting her fingers run up and down the keyboard,
while the “romances” she had learned when she was a young girl came back
to her; but invariably she interrupted them to dash off a fragment of
the popular music she had heard in Paris before she came away.

Inspired by this evocation of her more youthful past, she sometimes
added her voice to that of the instrument. When this happened Sebastiana
and the other servants left their work in the corral or the balconies,
and cautiously creeping nearing and nearer the drawing room listened
with softened expressions and glances of admiration to the sounds
issuing from it, subdued like the creatures of the wood who listened to
Orpheus’ lyre.

The neighbors too yielded to the spell. As soon as it was night and the
workmen had finished their meal, the women and children would start out
for Pirovani’s. Squatting on the ground at a little distance they would
gaze eagerly at the windows that glowed red from the lamp within. If
some of the children grew impatient, and began their own games again,
their mothers would cry out,

“Be still, you little gallows birds, the lady’s going to sing!”

And an almost religious emotion passed through them at the sound of the
piano keys and Elena’s voice; for the melody that penetrated through the
wooden walls to the crowd in the dark street seemed a message from
another world; so many of them had, for years, heard no music but that
of twanging guitars at the _boliche_.

Then, impelled by admiration and twinges of desire, some of the men
would join the groups in the street. They were the same men who looked
with indifference at the girl from the Rojas ranch with her boy’s
clothes and boy’s ways; but this woman, when she rode by in her trim
riding skirt, aroused their enthusiasm. What a woman, the _marquesa_ de
Torre Bianca! Some curves about her!

And, as they listened to her singing, they stood gaping with sensuous
delight, firmly believing that only a beautiful woman could utter tones
such as those vibrating in their ears....

A week after the Torre Biancas had moved into their new quarters,
Sebastiana announced to her friends that henceforth the _señora
marquesa_ was going to be at home once a week just like the great ladies
in Buenos Aires. This announcement was made in such fashion that the
gossips of _La Presa_ took it into their heads that these weekly parties
were going to be extraordinary occasions. Scarcely was dinner over on
the appointed night, when groups began to gather before the illuminated
windows. Some of the women stood with hands raised to their ears so as
to hear better, and they did not hesitate, by means of severe elbow
thrusts, to impose silence on their chattering neighbors.

While her guests were arriving, Elena, at the piano, was singing
sentimental lyrics of a bygone period.

The first to present themselves were Canterac and Moreno. The latter, in
order to complete his evening attire, had thought it necessary to don a
silk hat. Pirovani could top off his dress suit with a crush hat if he
liked! Just the same the _marquesa_, who was a woman of such
distinction, couldn’t help noticing things like that!... details of
course, but how quickly they betray bad taste!

As Canterac stood on the first step of the stairway he said to his
companion,

“I oughtn’t to go into this house, belonging as it does to that schemer
Pirovani, whom I thoroughly detest. But I was afraid the _marquesa_
wouldn’t like it if I didn’t come to her party.”

Moreno, the friend of everybody, and incapable of animosity, took up the
defense of the absent contractor.

“But that Italian is a good fellow! I am certain he likes you very
much.”

Canterac’s reply to these conciliating words was a threatening gesture,

“The fellow, tactless as he is, seems to take pains to cross my path....
There’s something coming to him....”

They entered the house and the _marqués_ came forward to welcome them.
Then they passed into the drawing-room, where all three men stood
waiting, while Elena went on with her song as though she had not heard
them come in.

As he approached the bungalow Robledo broke into a broad smile at sight
of Pirovani in a new fur overcoat, and a brand new top hat, ordered from
Bahia Blanca--for this occasion--as though some familiar spirit had
informed him of his friend Moreno’s disparaging thoughts!

From the groups of curiosity-seekers, half-hidden in the shadow, came
bursts of laughter and whispers. Some of them were making fun of the
tube of shining silk which the contractor had put on his head; others
were admiring it, their starved vanity making them feel that somehow
this high silk hat was adding to the importance of the life they all led
out there in the desert.

“Here I am, a visitor in my own house,” said Pirovani laughing, and as
though startled by the extravagant novelty of his performance.

“You made a mistake in giving it up,” replied Robledo drily.

Pirovani assumed a superior air.

“You must admit, my dear fellow, that your quarters weren’t quite the
proper place for a lady, at least a lady of such distinction.... Even
though I never went to college, I know what a man with any claims to
being anybody owes to such a woman, and that’s why....”

With a shrug Robledo moved on as though he did not wish to hear further.
The contractor puffed along behind him, and, pointing towards the
glowing windows, he exclaimed in a transport of enthusiasm;

“What a voice! What an artist, eh?”

Once more Robledo shrugged, and then both men went into the house.

On reaching the drawing room they joined the other three men who were
standing there listening. No sooner had Elena uttered the last note than
the contractor burst into applause amid loud exclamations of enthusiasm.
Canterac, Robledo, and Moreno, although less explosively, also expressed
their admiration, each in his own fashion.

It at once became evident that in the new house the gatherings were
going to be less simple and austere than in Robledo’s lodgings.
Sebastiana, who held firmly to the opinion that _mate_ was the remedy
for every kind of infirmity, as well as the supreme delight of the human
palate, was forced to serve cups of boiling water with a thing called
_tea_ in it to the guests.... The two little half-breed servants
followed shyly in Sebastiana’s wake, bearing sugar and cakes.

Under pretext of attending to the serving of the refreshments, Elena
came and went among those guests of hers, whose eyes avidly followed her
about as she balanced her cup, sometimes spilling a little of its
contents on the saucer. Her three privileged admirers tried to engage
her in conversation; but, gently evading them, she always brought it
about that sooner or later, they found themselves carrying on a dialogue
with her husband.... Meanwhile, she was in pursuit of the only man who,
so it seemed, cared nothing about talking to her, and who had been
silent most of the evening. Finally, by skilful manœuvres, she found
herself sitting at the far end of the room with Robledo beside her.

“Evidently Watson didn’t care to come,” Elena was saying. “I am more
firmly convinced every day that he doesn’t like me, and I sometimes
think that you don’t like me very much either....”

Robledo remonstrated, more in gestures than words, at this accusation;
but as Elena was pleased to make herself out the victim of an unjust
antipathy on the part of the two business associates, the Spaniard
finally replied,

“Watson and I are your husband’s friends, and on his account it alarms
us to see how lightly you arouse certain equivocal hopes in all these
men who come to see you.”

Elena began to laugh, as if pleased by Robledo’s words, and the grave
tone in which he uttered them.

“You needn’t worry about that. A woman of experience, who knows the
world as I know it, isn’t likely to compromise herself with any of these
people you speak of.”

And she cast an ironic glance at her three admirers who were still
sitting beside her husband.

“Of course I do not allow myself to make any suppositions,” Robledo
continued in the same tone, “I simply see the present, just as in Paris
I saw ... and I am a little worried about the future.”

Elena could not decide, as she looked at the engineer, whether to
continue to treat the subject lightly or to become angry. Finally she
took up the dialogue again with the grave expression of one who has been
offended by the tone of the discussion.

“I do not think myself either better or worse than other women. It is
simply that I was born to live in luxury, and I have never in my whole
life met anyone able to give me all that I wanted.”

During a long pause they looked at one another; then she added,

“The men who wanted to win me could never give me all that I need in
life; and those who might have satisfied my desires never noticed me.”

She lowered her head as though her courage had suddenly abandoned her.

“You have no idea what my life has been.... I need wealth, I cannot live
without money; and I spent the best part of my youth running after it
... uselessly! Just as I thought I held it in my hand, it vanished, to
reappear again farther on.... Again I had to give chase.... And
again.... Always the same story!”

She was silent for a few moments, assembling her thoughts; then she
added, as though making a confession,

“Men cannot understand the anxieties and desires of the women of today.
We need so much more to live on than the women of former times! An
automobile and a pearl necklace are the modern woman’s uniform. Without
them any women who thinks at all knows that she is unhappy, helpless....
Sometimes I had these indispensable articles, but I never felt sure of
them.... I never could count on being able to keep them ... there was
always the prospect of losing them the next day. And we all need to
hope, don’t we, in order to live! So I am living on the hope now that my
husband will make a fortune ... even though I cannot foresee when that
might happen. Yet even so, it is enough to help me stand this horrible
exile.”

Then, in a tone of discouragement, she went on,

“And what is he likely to make? _Sous_, perhaps, where you make
thousands of _pesos_! No ... I ought never to have married Federico!”

She raised her head and smiled sadly at Robledo.

“Perhaps it would have meant happiness for me to have met a man like
you, spirited, energetic, able to master his destiny. And you, to
become all that you had it in you to be, ought to have had a woman to
inspire you....”

It was now Robledo’s turn to smile.

“It is a little late to talk of that.”

But she looked at him obstinately while she protested at his words. Is
it ever too late for anything while one lives? And there are men of such
supreme energy that they are like tropical regions where death is known
but not old age, and they are forever renewing themselves, like the
springtime. They have that commanding will which imagination obeys; and
imagination is the artist who touches up the dull grey canvas of
existence with the colors of his crazy palette.

Elena’s face was close to him, her eyes searching his. For a moment he
was troubled. Then, with a gesture of negation, he took possession of
himself.

“What you say, my dear friend, is very interesting. But men who are
really energetic do not care to be revived to false springtimes. That
always brings complications.”

As they went on talking she alluded again to her past experiences.

“If I were to tell you my life! Of course every woman cherishes the
belief that her history needs only to be adequately told in order to
make the most interesting novel ever written. I don’t pretend that my
experiences have invariably been interesting. But they have made me
unhappy because there was always such a disproportion between what I
thought I deserved and what life gave me.”

She paused, as if a painful thought had suggested itself.

“Don’t think that I am one of those _parvenues_ who hunger for the
pleasures and comforts that they have never enjoyed. Quite the contrary!
I need luxury and money in order to live, because I had them when I was
a child. Then, when I was a young girl I was very poor. What struggles I
went through to win my way back to the position I had formerly occupied!
The position I had been educated to.... And the struggle never ends....
All kinds of catastrophes repeat themselves until I am sick of them ...
and all the while I am farther and farther away from the place that
should belong to me in life. Here I am now, in one of the most
god-forsaken corners of the earth, leading an existence that must be
very like that of the people who lived in the most primitive times....
And yet you blame me!”

Robledo took up his own defence.

“I am your friend, and your husband’s. When I see you heading in a wrong
direction, I merely give you some good advice. The game you are playing
with these men is a dangerous one.”

He indicated clearly enough that he was talking about the men sitting at
the other end of the room with Torre Bianca.

“Moreover, before you came, life here was monotonous, it is true, but it
was at least peaceful and fraternal. Now your presence seems to have
changed these men. They look at one another with scarcely concealed
hostility, and I am afraid that their rivalry, which up to the present
is merely childish, will sooner or later take a turn toward the tragic.
You forget that we are living far removed from other human groups and
this isolation makes us by slow degrees revert to barbarism. Our
passions, domesticated as they are in city life, lose their manners
here, and run wild. Take care! It is dangerous to play with them as
though they were feeble toys.”

She laughed at his fears; and there was in her laugh something scornful.
She couldn’t understand such love of caution in a strong man.

“You must let me have my court! I need to have people who admire me
about me, or I can’t live.... Yes, like a pampered actress, if you like.
What would become of me if I couldn’t have the fun of coquetting and
flirting?”

Then frowning, and in an irritable voice she inquired,

“What else is there to do here, will you tell me? You have your work,
your battle with the river, your contests from time to time with the
workmen. All day long I am bored to death. On some of those interminable
afternoons I cannot get away from the thought of killing myself ... and
it is only when night finally arrives and these admirers of mine come to
see me, that I find this desert endurable. In some other part of the
world no doubt I should laugh at them, but here I find them interesting.
They are my only comfort in this horrible loneliness....”

With a mocking smile she looked in the direction of the three men; and
then she added,

“Don’t worry, Robledo. I am not likely to lose my head over any one of
them. I know what I am doing.”

And, somewhat bitterly, she compared herself to a traveller on the
Patagonian table-lands who, with only one cartridge in his revolver,
might be attacked by several of the vagabonds who prowl about in the
mountains. If he were to fire he would get rid of only one enemy, and
leave himself quite defenceless against the attacks of the others.
Wasn’t it better to prolong the situation, and threaten them all without
firing?

“You needn’t fear that I shall take any one of these men for my lover.
They are not the kind to lose one’s head over. But even though some one
of them should interest me, I would be cautious, for fear of what the
others might say and do when they found that there was no chance for
them. It’s far better to keep them all restlessly happy with hope.”

And, noticing that her prolonged conversation with Robledo was arousing
uneasiness among the other visitors, and in fact quite scandalizing
them, she got up and moved towards them. All three at once came towards
her, surrounding her as though they were going to fight with one another
for each one of her words and gestures.

It was after midnight when the _marquesa’s_ first _tertulia_ came to an
end. The lateness of the hour was unprecedented in the social annals of
La Presa. It was only on those Saturday nights when the workmen received
their bi-monthly pay that some of the Galician’s customers stayed out as
late as that, and usually it was because they couldn’t get home.

All next day Sebastiana went about half asleep, and with lagging feet,
for she had got up at dawn as usual, in spite of having stayed up the
night before until the last guest had gone.

She stood on the balcony scolding one of the little half-breeds, who
“with all her noise was going to wake up the mistress,” when suddenly
she seemed to forget her anger, and stood, one hand over her eyes,
peering at the street. A horse was rearing there, too abruptly reined in
by his rider, who was quite carelessly waving a hand at the voluble
house-keeper.

“_Mi señorita_ ... I never know her with those clothes! How is my little
one?”

And hastily she clambered down the steps and crossed the street to
welcome Celinda Rojas.

Mistress and servant had not met since the day Sebastiana had left the
ranch. Out of spite for don Rojas, the half-breed made haste to
enumerate all the advantages of her new position.

“It’s a fine house I’m in, _señorita mía_! No offence to your own, of
course. Money flows through it like water in the irrigation ditch. And
the mistress is a fine _gringa_, they say she was born a _marquesa_ over
there in her country. The Italian fellow, they say too, is a demon with
his workmen, but he seems half foolish over the _señora marquesa_, and
he takes good care that she lacks for nothing. Last night we had a party
with music. I thought of my pretty dove when I heard it, and I said to
myself, ‘How my little mistress would love to hear this _marquesa_
sing!’”

Celinda nodded as she listened, as though what she heard excited her
curiosity, making her eager to hear more.

Meanwhile Sebastiana, so as further to impress her, went on to enumerate
the guests who had been present at the party.

“Haven’t you forgotten someone?” the girl asked when Sebastiana came to
a pause. “Wasn’t don Ricardo there, the young man who works with don
Manuel, the engineer?”

The half-breed shook her head.

“No. I never once the whole evening long saw the _gringo_.”

Then she burst out laughing, slapping the enormous muscles of her
thighs, which served to bring them into still greater relief under the
thin stuff of her skirt.

“I knew it, _niniña_, I knew it! I’ve heard how you and the _gringo_ are
always riding around together, and how not a day goes by that you don’t
see each other. But if ever you give him your lips to kiss, little one,
be sure to pick out a spot where no one can see you, to do it in. These
people around here talk too much, it’s meat and drink to them. And don’t
forget that those folks down at the river have very long spectacles, and
they can see for miles and miles....”

Celinda blushed, and at the same time protested at her nurse’s
insinuations.

“Yes, he’s a fine young man,” the half-breed went on. “That don Ricardo
is a handsome _gringo_, and he’d make a grand husband for you if don
Carlos, with his contrary nature, doesn’t stand in the way of your
marrying him. When these _gringos_ from America don’t drink, they make
fine husbands. I had a friend who married one of them, and she leads
him about by the nose. And I know another one who....”

But Celinda wasn’t interested in Sebastiana’s friends and interrupted
her.

“So don Ricardo wasn’t here last night?”

“Neither last night, nor any other night. I’ve never seen him around
here at all.”

Sebastiana looked at the girl with a gleam of amusement in her eyes,
while a good-natured smile spread over her wide, copper-colored face.

“So you’re a little bit jealous, child? No need to blush about that.
We’re all the same when we’re in love with a man. The first thing we
think about is that some one is going to take him away from us.... But
you’ve no reason to worry.... A pearl the like of you, _niña_, _mía_!
The lady in the house there is handsome too, especially when she’s just
got through fixing her hair, and putting all those things that smell so
good and that came all the way from Buenos Aires on her face.... But,
when you are in the game, what hope has she? Didn’t I see my little girl
here come into the world, you might say? And I’ll bet the _señora
marquesa_ can’t remember when she was born.”

Then, as a result of her own thoughts, she considered it well to add,

“To tell the truth, I don’t think the _marquesa_ is so old, at that--but
anyone would _seem_ old alongside of you, precious! We can’t all be
rose-buds!”

She stopped talking for a moment while she looked about, and then
lowering her voice, and standing on the tips of her toes, she said, as
joyfully as any gossip who has found someone to whom to impart a
tit-bit, “You must know, pretty one, that there are plenty of them
running after her ... but don Ricardo is none of those! The poor
_gringo_ has enough on his hands looking after you, my jasmine-blossom!
The others are all chasing after the _marquesa_ like ostriches ... the
captain, and the Italian, and the government fellow, the one who always
carries so many papers.... All of them out of their heads and bristling
at sight of one another like so many dogs. The husband never sees a
thing ... and she laughs at them all and has a good time making them
squirm.... To tell the truth I don’t think she cares a picayune for any
one of the whole lot that comes to the house.”

But Celinda’s uneasiness was not set at rest by these words. On the
contrary she protested mentally,

“How can Richard Watson be compared with these people?”

Then she felt that she must express a part at least of what she was
thinking.

“It may be true,” she observed, “that she doesn’t care much about the
others, but Richard is younger than any of them, and I know that these
women who have run about a lot in the world, and are beginning to grow
old ... well, they’re often very capricious!”




CHAPTER IX


The notorious Manos Duras lived on an elevation of the _mesa_ from which
he could see the distant limits of Patagonia on the far horizon, and
below, the wide, twisting curves of the river, beyond which stretched
one end of the Rojas ranch.

His ranch-house, of adobe, was surrounded by other huts, or hovels, and
a few corrals fenced in by old stockades, but only on rare occasions was
any cattle to be found in them.

Everyone in the country knew where the ranch of Manos Duras was located;
but very few ever cared to visit it, for the region had a bad name.
Sometimes those who with a certain trepidation passed near by, felt
reassured when they saw how solitary the place was. On the road leading
up to the ranch house there were none of those barking and leaping
long-haired dogs with blood-shot eyes and pointed ears who usually
accompany the cowboy. Nor were any horses to be seen nibbling at the
sparse grass in the corrals.

Manos Duras was away. Possibly he was roving up and down the banks of
the Colorado where cattle were more abundant than along the Rio Negro.
Or possibly he was roaming among the spurs of the Andes, going to pay a
visit to his friends in the Bolson valley, settled for the most part by
Chilian adventurers, or on his way to make a call on his acquaintances
along the shores of the Andene lakes. These excursions of his to the
mountains were usually undertaken for the purpose of disposing, in
Chile, of the cattle he had “rustled” in the Argentine.

But at other times the Manos Duras ranch contained an extraordinary
diversity of inhabitants. Wandering _gauchos_ like himself took up their
quarters in the adobe huts for weeks at a time without anyone’s ever
discovering for a certainty where they came from nor where they were
going.

The _comisario_ of La Presa was beginning to feel uneasy about these
mysterious visitors. He got little rest, for not a night went by that he
did not fear that some scandalous depradation might occur. Yet day after
day passed, and nothing happened to ruffle the calm of the settlement
and its outskirts. At the _gaucho’s_ ranch numerous heads of cattles
were sold and skinned, and Manos Duras provided the whole region with
meat. But, as no complaints of theft reached him, don Roque refrained
from any investigation as to the source of the bandit’s flocks and
herds.

Then one fine morning the _gaucho’s_ companions disappeared, and Manos
Duras continued living in solitude on his ranch; at last he too
disappeared for a while, to the _comisario’s_ infinite relief.

Suddenly he reappeared again, with three companions, evil-looking
specimens out of whom no one could get a word. At the Galician’s it was
asserted that they came from a distant valley of the mountain chain.

“They’re three good fellows who are out of luck,” said the _gaucho_.
“Three pals of mine who are going to live up at the ranch until the
white-livered rotters down yonder get through telling lies about them.”

One day of intense heat, Manos Duras sprang on his horse to go up to La
Presa to make some purchases.

The Patagonian summer had begun with the violent ardor it displays in
lands rarely cooled by rain, but where the winter temperatures go down
to many degrees below zero. The parching soil seemed to tremble under
the intensity of the sun’s hot brilliance. So strong was the radiation
that straight lines took on a wave-motion in the dazzling glare, and the
outlines of the mountains, the buildings and the people in the streets
became oddly changed. These tricks of the blinding light doubled or even
tripled the objects in the scene, giving the impression that this desert
land was a region of lakes, where everything was reflected in a series
of glittering surfaces. The mirages of the desert, these, which attract
the attention of even the sons of the soil, so odd and capricious are
the forms which these optical illusions assume.

Far in the distance, behind the deep gash cut by the river, almost on a
level with the horizon line, lay what looked like a long, dark-colored
worm with a tuft of cotton on its head.

Manos Duras stopped short to look at it. That was not the day on which
the mail train usually came in from Buenos Aires.

“It must be a freight from Bahia Blanca,” he said to himself.

He could make it out quite plainly although it was still many miles away
from la Presa, and it had as many miles again to go before it would stop
at Fuerte Sarmiento. In this land the power of vision seemed enormously
increased; the retina seemed capable here of enclosing a vast extent of
territory; here distance seemed to have lost its significance. It meant
little compared with the importance it assumed in other parts of the
world.

After gazing a few seconds at the slowly moving train miles away, the
_gaucho_ started off once more at a gallop. To shorten the way, he was
accustomed to ride through the out-lying part of the Rojas ranch
stretched between his land and the settlement beyond. With the coolness
that was so characteristic of him he turned his horse down a trail that
only a practised eye could have discovered between the tough _matorral_
brush.

But don Rojas was also at that hour riding about his property, looking
it over and making calculations for the future.

The part of his estate that was on the plateau would never amount to
anything, he reflected. That beggared soil could never provide fodder
for more than a very limited number of cattle. His herds were
“_criollos_,” as he called them disparagingly; that is to say they were
spare, heavy-boned beasts, hard-hoofed, with clumsy horns; in short they
were adapted to their rigorous surroundings, and could get along on
sparse pasturage; these were the degenerate descendents of the cattle
that, centuries before, the Spanish colonists had brought over in their
small sailing vessels.

He was thinking regretfully of the prize herds of his father’s estate,
of the huge steers, flat backed as your hand, short-horned, the solid
flesh fairly bursting through their sleek hides--mountains of beefsteak,
as he called them.... Then he began thinking of the miracle that was to
be wrought on his lands below when the irrigation ditches brought them
the water that was to transform them, releasing their fertility....
Alfalfa would flourish there as in the land of Canaan, and here, along
the banks of the Rio Negro he would be able at last to reproduce the
marvels of scientific breeding accomplished on the ranches near Buenos
Aires; then, instead of thin, hard-hided “_criollos_” he would have
herds of the finest cattle, the product of crossing the best breeds to
be found anywhere in the world. With all the delight of an artist in
polishing off his creations don Carlos brooded over this transformation
that in his mind’s eye he saw taking place on his barren ranch, when
suddenly he saw a rider approaching him.

He raised his hand to shade his eyes and could scarcely contain himself
when he saw who it was.

“By the.... What? That robber Manos Duras!”

The _gaucho_ as he drew near, raised his hand to his sombrero, in
greeting, then spurred his horse ahead.

After a moment of hesitation don Carlos also started off at top speed,
cut across the _gaucho’s_ path, and obliged him to stop.

“Who gave you permission to come on my property?” he shouted in a voice
that was shrill and shaking with anger.

Manos Duras made no attempt to reply, merely looking at the rancher with
the same silent insolence he used towards others. His bold eyes however
avoided meeting those of don Carlos. As though offering excuses, he
replied in a low tone that he was aware of the fact that he had no right
to pass through there without the owner’s permission, but the short-cut
eliminated a long and round-about bit of the road to la Presa. Then, as
a final explanation he added:

“Besides, don Carlos lets everyone ride through here....”

“Everyone but you,” was the aggressive reply. “If ever I find you again
on my land, you’ll get one of these bullets!”

This reply put an end to the _gaucho’s_ assumed meekness. He looked
contemptuously at Rojas, and said with slow distinctness,

“You are an old man, that’s why you talk to me like that.”

Don Carlos took his revolver from his belt and pointed it at the
_gaucho’s_ breast.

“And you are nothing but a cattle thief.... Why they should all be
afraid of you is more than I can understand. But if ever again you steal
one of my steers, old man as I am, I’ll make you pay for it!”

As the rancher was still pointing his revolver at him, and as the
expression of his face allowed no doubt whatever concerning his
determination to carry out his threats, the _gaucho_ did not dare move a
hand toward his belt. The slightest motion on his part might call forth
a shot.... So he contented himself with giving don Carlos a venomous
glance, and saying very low,

“We’ll meet again, boss, and we’ll have more time to talk.”

With this he dug his spurs into his horse and set off at a gallop,
without looking back, while don Carlos remained holding his revolver in
his right hand.

Near the river however the _gaucho_ had a more agreeable encounter. He
noticed three riders coming towards him, and stopped to see who they
might be.

The _marquesa_ had felt impelled to accept an invitation to go once more
to the works to see the progress of the dam. Things were now at such a
pass between Pirovani and the French engineer that she had felt it
necessary to her own peace to sooth the latter by accepting his
suggestion that she ride out with him. For his part, he felt that he
must show her once again that he was after all the directing spirit of
the enterprise, and that the contractor, on that ground at least, had to
submit himself very often to his commands.

While they were on these excursions the Captain could talk much more
freely to Elena than at her house. The fact that the _marqués_ was busy
with the work of planning the canal system aroused all sorts of hopes
and illusions in the captain’s breast. If only the _marquesa_ would
consent to riding with him, alone, along the river bank....

But, as though she had divined his thoughts, she insisted that Moreno go
with them. Only on that condition would she consent....

“Because you see, you’re dangerous, _señor_ Canterac,” said Elena,
pretending to be afraid, and at the same time laughing at her pretended
fear.

“I’ll go with you only if this friend of ours, who is the father of a
family, and a thoroughly serious sort of person, goes along with us.”

Moreno, pleased at having been included, but at the same time somewhat
vexed at being described in such terms, rode along behind Elena, who
paid not the slightest attention to him. She remembered him only when
Canterac became too vehement in his attentions, riding close to her
horse and grasping her hand, or attempting other more or less daring
gallantries.

“Moreno,” she would manage to say, while the Captain was manœuvering for
place, “ride forward and stay on my left.... I don’t want the Captain so
near ... anyway they’re too bold! I don’t like military men!”

All three stopped their attempts at conversation to look intently at
Manos Duras who was waiting motionless at the side of the road. Moreno
knew who he was and murmured his name to Elena, whose interest in the
_gaucho_ was so keen that she yielded to her impulse to speak to him.

“So you are the famous Manos Duras of whom we have heard so often?”

The horseman seemed a little disturbed by Elena’s words, and more so by
her smile. He took off his sombrero with a reverential gesture--“as
though he were in front of a miracle-working picture,” thought
Moreno--Then, in a theatrical manner that was with him quite
spontaneous, he replied,

“I am that unhappy man, _señora_, and this present moment is the
happiest in my life.”

He looked at her with eyes in which she could plainly read a strange
mixture of worship and desire; and she smiled with pleasure at the
barbaric homage she was receiving.

Canterac, who thought the conversation ridiculous, indicated his
impatience by teasing his horse and protesting every few moments that
they ought to be getting on. But Elena did not choose to hear him, and,
with smiling interest, continued her conversation with the _gaucho_.

“They tell dreadful stories about you.... Are they true? How many
murders have you really committed?”

“Black calumnies, _señora_!” Manos Duras replied, looking straight into
her eyes. “But, if there are any murders I can commit for you, you have
only to ask!”

Elena seemed thoroughly pleased by this reply, and said with a look at
Canterac,

“How gallant the man is, in his way! You can’t deny that such offers as
these are pleasant to hear....”

But the engineer for some reason seemed more and more irritated by the
familiarity of this conversation between Elena and the cattle-rustler.
Repeatedly he tried to nose his horse between the mounts of the other
two, so as to put an end to the dialogue, but each time, with a gesture
of impatience, Elena checked him.

Seeing that she was bent on continuing her conversation with Manos Duras
he turned to Moreno; he had to express his anger to someone.

“This fellow is too presumptuous! We’ll have to give him a lesson!”

The government employee accepted without reservation the allusion to the
_gaucho’s_ presumption, but he merely shrugged at the suggestion of
teaching him better. What could _they_ do to this terrible bandit, if
even the _comisario_ had to show him a certain respect?

“You ought at least to stop them from buying his meat at the settlement.
Boycott him, that’s part of the answer!”

Moreno nodded with alacrity. The suggestion was easy enough to carry
out, if that was all that he would be asked to do....

Finally Elena moved on, bidding farewell to the _gaucho_ with a coquetry
excited by his emotion and the wolfish desire she saw in his eyes....

“Poor fellow! How interesting to meet him like this.”

And while the three riders went on, Manos Duras still remained
motionless by the road. He wanted to look a while longer at that woman.
A grave, thoughtful expression had come over his face as though he had a
presentiment that this meeting, in some way or other, was to affect his
life. But when Elena and her companions passed behind a hillock of sand
and disappeared from his range of vision, the _gaucho_ no longer felt
the dazzling stimulation of her presence. He smiled cynically to himself
while pictures of barbaric lubricity passed through his mind, driving
out his doubts and restoring to him his accustomed boldness.

“And why not?” he said to himself. “This is a woman, like those that
dance at the _boliche_ ... aren’t they all the same?”

Elena and her escorts went on along the river bank. Suddenly Elena
straightened up in her saddle so as to be able to see farther into the
distance.

In a meadow edged on the river side with young willows, were two horses,
saddled but not hitched. A man and a boy stood at the far end of the
meadow practising throwing the rope. The lariat they were using seemed
to be a light one, less heavy and rapid in the air than the lassoos of
woven leather that the native cow-punchers used.

More by instinct than by strength of sight, Elena recognized the boy.
Undoubtedly that was _Flor de Rio Negro_ teaching Watson to throw the
rope, and laughing at the _gringo’s_ clumsy attempts to master the
whirling, snake-like coils. Richard too, now that Torre Bianca went
daily to direct the canal work, was enjoying more liberty, and was using
it to follow the Rojas girl about in her rides and share in her childish
games.

Indicating to her companions that they were not to follow her, Elena
rode towards the meadow.

Celinda however was quicker to notice her than was Watson. With a sudden
right-about she turned her back on the intruder, and at the same time
ordered Watson to fix one of her spurs, which, so she said, had come
loose.

The youth, after kneeling at her feet for a moment, found the spur quite
firmly in place, and was about to get up. But she was determined to keep
him on his knees.

“I tell you, _gringuito_, that I’m going to lose it! Please fasten it
better!”

And it was only when she saw that Elena, offended, and well aware of the
girl’s hostility and strategem, had turned her horse about and was
riding away, that she allowed him to get up.

A little before sunset Elena’s party rode up the main street of the
town. In front of Pirovani’s house, which she now looked upon as hers,
Elena dismounted, leaning on Moreno, who, as she stepped to the ground,
had anticipated the Captain’s move to help her.

Offended, the Frenchman saluted with military abruptness, and rode away
without waiting until Elena had gone into the house. Another day
spoiled! He was furious with the others, and with himself.

Pirovani appeared, issuing from a side-street. As soon as the contractor
caught sight of Moreno who was going toward his house, he ran after him,
eager to hear about the episodes of an excursion to which he had not
been invited. With the easy credulity of the jealous, he believed that
Canterac must have won a great advance on him during that short ride
with the _marquesa_.

With childish satisfaction he smiled when the government employee told
him how, several times, the _señora marquesa_ had asked him to help her
keep the Frenchman at a proper distance.

“Of course I know that she can’t stand him,” said the Italian. “I’m not
so stupid that I can’t see that! But, as he’s the engineer in charge of
the works, and can do favors for Robledo and her husband, she doesn’t
dare tell him what she thinks of him....”

But his delight took a sharp fall when Moreno went on to tell him of the
encounter with Manos Duras, and the “presumption” with which the fellow
had talked to the “_señora marquesa_.”

This was too much for the contractor!

“All these people think they are everybody’s equal just because we are
all together here in this desert,” he exclaimed, scandalized. “Some fine
day this cattle thief will take it into his head to come to the
_marquesa’s_ parties, just as though he were one of us.... It’s
outrageous!”

“By the way,” said Moreno, “the Captain doesn’t want any more meat to be
bought of Manos Duras, nor any business done with him whatever. That’s
more in your hands than Canterac’s.”

Pirovani agreed with vehement signs of assent.

“And I’ll see to it! That Frenchman has the right idea for once. This is
the first time in weeks that he’s said anything I could see any sense
in!”




CHAPTER X


A few months after the work in the camp up at the dam had been begun,
the inhabitants of the various settlements along the _Rio Negro_ began
to talk admiringly of the Galician’s new “store” which had suddenly
become the most handsome establishment of the kind in the whole extent
of the territory; its contents were as novel and instructive as they
were interesting.

In the early years of the settlement one of the first foreigners to
arrive at the camp in search of work was an Englishman who for many
years had been wandering from one end of South America to the other. The
last place he had stopped at in his adventurous career was in the heart
of Paraguay where he had traded with the savage tribes of the region.
However, this traffic had not, it seemed, made him rich. In fact it had
left him little but a souvenir of his life in the forest, four
crocodiles from the great Paraguay River. The natives, in exchange for
the white man’s neckties and suspenders, had stuffed the hard hides of
these _yacarés_ with straw, and had performed the same operation on a
boa constrictor, several yards long, which was added to the Englishman’s
collection.

While at the capital the wanderer heard of the great engineering work
going on up at _Rio Negro_. There seemed a good chance of getting
something to do there, so with all his stuffed animals he betook
himself thither.

Within a few weeks, as a result of the sudden change from the torrid
temperature of Paraguay to the harsh winter of Patagonia, and also of
the fact that the Galician had given him far too ample credit at his
store, the Englishman died of pneumonia complicated by delirium tremens.
The worthy proprietor of the “Galician’s Retreat,” believing firmly in
the sacred right of collecting money due him, and animated moreover by a
sure instinct in decorative matters, in so far at least as his
customers’ tastes were concerned, appropriated the four _yacarés_ and
the boa, and strung them up on the ceiling of his _boliche_.

As a matter of fact Antonio Gonzales, who was an Andalusian,--although
according to well established South American custom no one thought of
referring to him as anything but “_el gallego_”--could never look up at
the enormous reptile dangling like a ship’s cable from his ceiling,
forming curves and loops as it swung from beam to beam, without feeling
a good deal of the Andalusian’s hereditary horror of reptiles.

But it pleased the more important patrons of the establishment to drink
their liquor under this extraordinary ceiling decoration, and a business
man must of course always sacrifice his own preferences and timidities
when they clash with those of the public.

The deeply furrowed hide, so thickly covered with flies that they made a
sheath over it, stretched diagonally across the ceiling, and each time
the door opened and a stream of air poured in, swayed as though coming
to life. The draught frequently shook off into the glasses of the
customers some of the dead flies whose remains had been drying since the
preceding season, or scales from the giant boa, or a fine powder that
was a mixture of dry particles from the straw with which it was stuffed
and the arsenic used to dry the skin. In the corners of the room were
suspended the four crocodiles, black and with horny squares in their
backs, revealing to the Galician’s customers nothing but the bright
yellow of their bellies and the soles of their paws.

Whoever came near the _boliche_ always stopped in to have a glass of
something, and to admire these curiosities. As to reptiles, there was
not in the whole of Patagonia anything more remarkable than a certain
deadly little viper, short, wide-headed and fat, and looking much like a
comma; so these imported monsters attained immediate and far-reaching
celebrity.

The proprietor of the store, with the air of one who has seen a great
deal of the world, would explain to the _gauchos_ the customs of the
animals balancing above their heads; he even went so far as to give his
hearers to understand that he had had something to do with the perilous
business of hunting them.

After awhile, however, he observed that these ornaments, which were the
pride of his establishment, did not attract everybody to his inn. On the
contrary, if they attracted some they kept others away; for there were
other Andalusians in the community beside the “Galician,” and they did
not have the same interest as he in conquering their aversion to
serpents. And besides these there were Italians and others who, although
they were quite ready to praise the quality of the drink to be obtained
at the store, did not dare step inside. It was all well enough to toss
off a glassful under the yellow paunch and the four extended claws of
the crocodiles--they could go that--but, to see that serpent breathing
out flies, and showing, as it moved, the hair-raising marks on its back,
whenever on lifting your glass, you looked up at the ceiling--no--that
was going too far!

The boldest of these spirits ventured to come in only after tightly
clenching their right fists; then they advanced holding out the thumb
and little finger so as to form horns to conjure away ill-luck. “Lizard!
_Lagarto!_” they muttered, turning their eyes so as not to see what was
above their heads. But there were others who, notwithstanding this
protection, did not venture to come in but stayed outside, even in
mid-winter, their hands in their belts, puffing out streams of vapor
from their mouths, and calling loudly to Friterini, the Galician’s
servant, to bring their drinks out to them.

So once more the proprietor sacrificed his convenience to that of his
patrons. The boa was unhooked and sold to a tavern in that district of
the port of Buenos Aires known as La Boca, where most of the customers
were sailors and men from ships. So the four crocodiles remained as the
sole ornaments, swaying from the ceiling like extinguished funeral
lamps.

Another embellishment of the place was the collection of flags which on
feast days fluttered from the roof, and the rest of the year adorned the
_boliche’s_ one room. All the colored rags ever chosen by men eager to
make themselves a group apart, distancing other men in their pursuit of
distinction, were to be found in this fly-infested shack in Patagonia;
flags of nations now in existence, of nations which had died and desired
to live again, of nations which had never lived at all, and were
struggling to be born.

There was not a workman in this “land of all the world” who could not
find some bit of rag with his national colors at the Galician’s. Antonio
Gonzalez had, long before they were known in the embassies of Europe,
become familiar with the flags which years later were to be consecrated
by the events of the Great War. And he had room for them all; the flag
of the Irish nation was there as well as that of the Zionist republic,
later to be established in Jerusalem. Only once had he raised any
objections in the matter, and that was when some of his compatriots from
Barcelona tried to get him to put up the Catalan emblem.

“I admit this flag to membership here,” he said with a majestic wave of
the hand towards the walls already bristling with banners. “The only
condition I make is concerning its size.” He quite firmly required that
it should not exceed a fourth part of the Spanish emblem.

On national holidays, aided by Friterini, he always adorned his roof
with the exhibits of his “flag museum,” offering explanations as he did
so to the _comisario_, the only representative of authority in the
settlement. One might have thought him the keeper of the royal seal
consulting with the prime minister.

“Don Roque, you know many things, but in this matter of banners, I know
the oxen I am plowing with better than you do. The first point to
consider is this. The Argentine flag must be placed higher than any of
the others. Then, to the right of it, the Spanish flag. No other can
have that place. In this country we come next to the Argentinians, as
you know ... Isabel, _la catolica_ ... Solis ... Don Pedro de Mendoza
... Don Juan de Garay....”

He produced these names of navigators and explorers without the
slightest consideration for chronology, while, from below, he watched
his Italian waiter placing the flags on the roof. Argentina was all
right? Spain beside her? No danger of their tumbling down with the wind?
Well then, Friterini could finish up the job to his taste.

“Aren’t we all equal in this, everybody’s land?” inquired the tavern
keeper.

In the summer time the somewhat murky interior of the _boliche_ was
invaded by unbelievable multitudes of flies frantically seeking refuge
from the consuming heat of a land forever thirsting. At night the
reddish glow of the lamps kept clouds of these pests in a state of
aggressive wakefulness. Slow, tenacious, lazily obstinate, they fell
into the food, swam about in the gravy and tumbled drunkenly into the
glasses. If one chanced to open one’s mouth, at once there were some
flies in it; they buzzed in one’s ears and plunged into one’s nostrils.
Each spoonful of food in the short trip from plate to mouth was beset by
these intruders who alighted on it with tenacious feet and cautiously
outstretched wings.

Some of them of course were slaughtered. But there were so many of them,
so discouragingly many, that finally all attempts to destroy them were
abandoned out of sheer weariness. One learned finally to blow them
patiently out of the way, or quietly spit them out when they strayed
into one’s mouth.

There were other parasites too, equally obstinate in their assaults upon
the dwellings of this little town lost in an immense solitude. As the
numbers of human beings were greater per square foot in the _boliche_,
the number of these pests was greater there too. From the roof and the
walls, blood-sucking insects descended on the rough skins of the
clients, perforating them and swelling like balloons with the blood they
drew from them. And there were others that crept up from the ground,
clinging to the heavy boots of the customers, and slyly making their way
towards the flesh that they scented. In winter time when the doors of
the _boliche_ were closed, the air grew thick with tobacco smoke, and
smelt of gin, sour wine, wet clothing, and shoe leather. The
establishment meanwhile was run with an equal disregard for the
convenience or even the comfort of its patrons, and for economy. There
were scarcely any chairs in the place. The guitar-players had, it is
true, horse-skulls to sit on; but the majority of their audience dropped
on the ground when they were tired; yet, on the shelves behind the
counter, impressive stores of champagne bottles were renewed every week.

When the day laborers received their fortnight’s pay, the Galician had
to minister to the most grotesque orgies. The workmen who had no
families and who could spend all their money for their own pleasure,
devised banquets of Babylonian extravagance, recklessly ordering
innumerable tins of Spanish sardines, and nearly as many bottles of
_Pomery Greno_, to wash these tid-bits down. There were times at La
Presa when not a mouthful of bread was to be procured, but the customers
of the Galician’s, obliged to live on hard tack though they were, knew
the taste of _pâté de foie gras_, and how much a bottle of Moët and
Chandon costs. On the evenings between pay-days, gin and whiskey soothed
the silent thirst of this or that patron, or gave another the stimulus
he needed to go on talking.

The inexhaustible theme of conversation was the question as to when the
trains would begin making regular stops at La Presa, instead of simply
stopping at the dam when there was machinery to be unloaded there for
the construction work.

To the inhabitants of the settlement it seemed a gross injustice that
the trains should make no stop before Fuerte Sarmiento, under pretext
that the engineering work in the river was not yet completed, nor the
adjacent lands irrigated, and that consequently there could be no
question of colonizing there.

In the old world the towns came first; then railroads were built for
them. In this new land it was the reverse. First the rails had been laid
across the desert and at every fifty miles a station was built, around
which a town sprang up.

“Why shouldn’t we have a station in La Presa? Aren’t there more than a
thousand souls in this settlement?” Gonzales, the liberal patriot, was
indignantly inquiring. “Everyone knows that the train stops for mail at
lots of places where there is nothing but a horse tied to a hitching
post. What we need is someone to represent us at Buenos Aires.”

But, in the interval, the _Gallego’s_ patrons were content with making
guesses as to the date when the train would begin to stop at the dam
settlement, putting up cases of champagne bottles as bets on the event’s
taking place in one month or another.

Here and there chatted groups of those who were not interested in
dancing, or in the women who were assembled in the _boliche_ on much the
same footing as the champagne and gin bottles and equally purchasable.

The trench-diggers were giving voice to their opinion of the _alpataco_,
that hateful bush that rises but a short distance above the ground but
sends its iron roots, that defy and even shatter axes, down into the
ground for a distance of thirty feet. To dig out one of these bushes
keeps several men busy all day, with the result that whenever the
laborers come upon one the air quivers and becomes blue with
exclamations and profanity.

Friterini, a pale youth, with hair brushed boldly back from his
forehead, burning black eyes, and bare arms, rushed off, as soon as he
had served the clients, to join some Spanish workmen at a small table,
and to describe to them in the mongrel Italian soon acquired by those
sons of Italy who come to Spanish-speaking countries, the beauty of his
native city.

“ ...Brescia! Ah, Brescia was something far different from this blazing
desert, this sand heap, and well of thirst! Not that it was a big city,
no, that wasn’t the point, but it was beautiful, and all the youths took
their mandolins with them when they went out to make love, and there
were girls one could love there too.... Ah, Brescia!”

The _Gallego_, leaning over his counter, was lending an attentive ear to
his older customers, the _jinetes_ or riders of the country, those who
had covered every foot of it from the Andes to the Atlantic, from the
Colorado to the straits of Magellan, sometimes cattle accompanying
purchasers, other times exploring parties, sometimes prospecting for
water and pasture lands. Their patience defied time; for them the weeks
and months of their journeys were no more than so many days.

One of them liked to tell of his last trip, an exploration of lonely
lakes hidden between spurs of the Andes. He had gone on this expedition
as a guide or _baquiano_ for a European scholar to whom he had been
recommended by another scholar guided by him in the same fashion some
twenty years earlier. It was during the first expedition that the
remains of huge animals of pre-historic epochs had been found, gigantic
skeletons that were then and there labelled and boxed up to be put
together again later in the museums of the old world.

The second trip had been even more unusual; the scholar who undertook it
was also looking for pre-historic animals; but he expected to find them
alive; for among the scarce inhabitants of the mountain chain a
conviction was passed on from generation to generation that there still
existed in the Patagonian desert enormous creatures and fantastic forms,
the last remains of a fauna that had arisen during the first eras of
life on our planet.

There were even some who were certain that they had seen, from a great
distance, it is true, the gigantic plesiosaurus plunging into the
death-quiet waters of the Andene lakes, or feeding on the vegetation
along their banks. However it was always towards dusk, when the mountain
range spread its purple shadows over the plain, that these creatures
appeared. There were always, of course, sceptics to affirm that such
sights as these appeared only to those who, as they returned from some
distant _boliche_, carried in their bellies a good supply of liquor.

The old _baquiano_ did not commit himself as to the substantiality of
the beasts in question. There were arguments on both sides of the
question....

“In a whole year we never found one of those animals, and we scoured all
the territory from lake to lake and from Nahuel-Huapi to near Magellan.
But with my own eyes I have seen tracks in the ground, larger than
elephant hoofs ... and the people living around those places saw them
too. And once, near one of the most distant lakes, I found heaps of dry
dung so large that they could not have been those of any known animal.
My scholar gentleman didn’t answer when I asked him what he thought of
these signs ... you could see he was wondering where the beast’s lair
might be ... and who knows? We might have found the beast himself if we
had continued a little longer on that track. But perhaps, when there are
more people in those parts, some one of these solitary creatures will be
discovered at last.”

The proprietor of the _boliche_ liked best of all to ask these elderly
customers of his to talk to him about certain mysterious personages who
had passed through the region years earlier, just at the time when the
Indians had been driven out, and colonies were being established. They
were personages whose adventures sounded like the inventions of a
novelist; they had more often than not been born in palaces; and like
many of the saints, they had abandoned the house of their fathers to
endure every kind of privation, renouncing all the comforts that would
naturally have been theirs by prerogative of riches and rank, renouncing
even their very names, in order to be vagabonds, to know the harsh
pleasure of savage liberty.... Juan Ort, for instance, whose name was a
familiar one to all the old inhabitants of the territory....

The _Gallego_ knew this story, however, from having read it in books and
newspapers. Juan Ort was that archduke of Austria who, a victim of the
poetic melancholy hereditary in his family, gave up his rank in the
navy, and his position at court, to sail the seas in a luxurious yacht
on which was everything to delight the sense, rare and delicate foods,
exquisite music, beautiful women.

One day the news came that this yacht with its entire crew had been lost
off Cape Horn. But Juan Ort had not perished. This shipwreck, real or
feigned, was going to serve his purposes, allowing him to descend lower
in the social scale, to live with those who were struggling in life’s
lowest depths.

“I knew him,” muttered one of the other old inhabitants of La Presa.
“And he was nothing more, and nothing less than either you or I. He was
a man just like any other who comes along with his pack on his back
looking for work. But this _gringo_ was a tall, red-bearded man,
glum-like, and fond of drinking alone. He didn’t say he was Juan Ort. He
didn’t have to. We knew it. Besides, he carried in his bag a little
silver cup with the shield of the royal family on it, and he liked to
drink from it when he was on his bit of a ranch. It was the cup he drank
from when he was going to school, he said....”

But one day this romantic vagabond disappeared. Some supposed him in
hiding in the dives of Buenos Aires, others asserted that they had met
him playing the part of a strolling photographer in Paysandu. No one
knew where he had died.

“Macanás!” exclaimed the sceptics when such tales were told, “all the
_gringos_ who come around here and who don’t want to work make out that
they’re Juan Orts so that fools will gape at them.”

But Gonzalez, insatiable reader of many-volumed novels that he was,
believed in Juan Ort, and in other equally interesting characters who
came to end their days in a land where no one was ever asked to tell
what his past had been. Just so long as his customers didn’t try to
sneak out without paying their bills, the _bolichero_ was inclined to
attribute an interesting past to all of them, and look upon them all as
possible sons or nephews of an emperor, restless noblemen dissatisfied
with their origin and eager to change their manner of life.

Others of the members of the _tertulia_, those of more prosperous
aspect, were preoccupied with the future of this incipient city. Its
destiny was closely bound up with that of Gonzalez, who went about with
his hairy chest bared to the sky, his hair uncombed, his face streaked
with dust and sweat, and elastic bands supporting his shirt sleeves, so
that his hands might be free. Unquestionably the servant presented a
better appearance than the master. But the “_Gallego_” had several
thousand _pesos_ saved up in the Banco Español of Bahía Blanca; moreover
he owned a thousand acres of land near the town. The only thing in the
world that troubled him was the wretched ignorance and lack of manners
of his patrons who persisted in calling his place “_boliche_,” as in the
first days of its existence, without seeming to appreciate the important
improvements accomplished by its proprietor, nor to understand the sign
saying “_Almacén_” which occupied such an important position above the
door.

But what was his prosperity actually worth compared with the millions of
_pesos_ that were going to fall into La Presa some day, when, from a
mere workmen’s camp, it would change into an important town and its
“_almacén_” would become a handsome establishment like those in Buenos
Aires, and the dusty lands that he had bought in small lots scattered
through all the fields that were to be irrigated, would be purchased
from him for substantial sums by Spanish and Italian colonists? Then he
would return to his native land to set himself up in Madrid, going about
in its streets and drives in the most luxurious and largest automobile
to be found; and the people at home, pleased by the presents he would
bring them, would perhaps make him deputy or senator, and then one of
the cabinet ministers would present him to the king of Spain, whose
portrait, in colors, was nailed to the wooden part of one of the
partitions of his _boliche_, directly under one of the crocodiles. Why,
who knows? They might even make him a viscount, or a marqués, like so
many other _bolicheros_ who had grown rich in America! But he cut these
ambitious dreams short to return to the reality in which he was still
living. With the patrons who were interested in the irrigation of this
region, he was describing its present aspect in order to provide a more
startling contrast for its future prosperity.

“What is there here now besides the folks living at the dam? Ostriches
maybe, and a puma ... not a single thing else.”

His hearers laughed at the memory of the bands of ostriches who made
excursions now and then from the plateau to the river basin, astonished
no doubt by the novelty of the works that were being constructed along
the water’s edge. The _señorita_ from the Rojas ranch for instance
always had a good time pursuing these flocks that moved about on stilts,
and that always managed to escape by opening wide their compass-like
legs; though now and then one of them was overtaken by the young lady’s
swift lassoo.

And, when he was gripped by hunger, the puma too came down from the
uplands to prowl about the houses and ranches of La Presa.

When the puma was mentioned there were several smiles and glances in
Friterini’s direction. It was not yet forgotten that one dawn as the
waiter was on his way to the corral from the _boliche_ he had seen a
kind of tiger jump from the bottom of an empty barrel; yes, there were
spots on its skin, and it was about the size of a dog. The puma, which
had evidently selected this place as a safe lodging for the night and
had curled himself up to sleep, had given the homesick young Brescian,
whose mind was full of serenades, a fearful scare.

“When we have water, and the land is irrigated,” Gonzalez continued,
“there will be thousands and thousands of families here.”

Both he and his customers spoke, in a tone that was almost lyric, of the
marvels of irrigation. Beyond La Presa was Fuerte Sarmiento, the nearest
railway station. The town there had grown up around a fort at the time
when the Indians were driven out. The troops of the occupation had
without much difficulty opened up a small canal, taking advantage of the
grade of the river, and this water course had made the place a veritable
oasis in the midst of the dry adjacent lands. Great poplars formed walls
of defence around the orchards; vines, all kinds of garden products, and
fruit trees grew with the prodigality due to a vigorous soil that after
resting thousands of years begins once more to give birth to the
multitudes of living things that it is able to conceive and nourish. And
all the more striking were these rich harvests because of the contrast
they offered to the desert that began at once beyond the reach of the
tentacles of the canal.

But the majority of the drinkers were even more enthusiastic about
another oasis in that arid region. This one was a good many miles below
the dam at a point where there was a natural declivity in the river bed;
it had been very easy to run irrigation ditches out from the lower level
of the stream.

It was a Basque colonist who had opened up some canals, and irrigated
the several hundred acres on which he had sown alfalfa. What a fine
fodder that was! The patrons of the _boliche_ always began to talk
excitedly whenever the subject of this crop came up. No, really,
irrigated alfalfa was nothing short of miraculous. In the whole
territory of Rio Negro this plant, of Asiatic origin, needed to be sown
but once. If the alfalfa fields had water, they would sow themselves.
Why, in Fuerte Sarmiento there were alfalfa lands that dated as far back
as the expulsion of the Indians, and now after thirty odd years of
productivity they were more fertile than the day when they were first
sown. The greater the number of crops taken off, the stronger and more
luxuriant were the alfalfa plants that sprang up in their place.

“If only we could eat alfalfa,” the _Gallego_ remarked gravely, “the
social problem would be solved for there would then be food enough in
the world for everybody.”

But, unfortunately, only cattle could assimilate this remarkable fodder.
The sheep that the Basque kept in his alfalfa fields were like animals
from another planet, where miraculous fodder might give the creatures
feeding on it proportions that to our terrestrial eyes would seem
fantastically exaggerated.

“They look like creatures seen through a magnifying glass,” said the
proprietor of the _boliche_.

The Basque fellow, proud of his endless pasture lands and his huge
sheep, liked to say when some poor tramp passed through his ranch.

“I’ll give you that sheep if you can carry it!”

And then the poor devil would nearly split his sides trying to carry
the heavy beast.... When the rich alfalfa grower had guests he would
order a turkey, to be put on the spit. And the guests would be overcome
with amazement when they saw the enormous alfalfa-fattened bird brought
on the table. They always thought it must be a sheep roasted whole.

The Basque’s prosperity made it possible for him to be generous toward
the poverty of others, and even indulgent to theft; but he could not
tolerate Manos Duras and other cattle thieves because they took live
animals from him.

“Let them take all the meat they want,” he used to say. “I know what it
is to be poor, and I know what it is to be hungry. But at least,
_pucha!_ Let them leave me the skins....”

More than once as he rode around through his enormous estate he broke
into curses at sight of the entrails and other remains of a sheep left
near the ditches. But if, a few paces from the scene of the slaughter,
he came upon the hide still quite fresh spread out on the wire fence, he
would smile and mutter,

“That’s all right. Just so long as they’re decent and only take what
they need to satisfy their hunger....”

Meanwhile the _boliche_ owner was dreaming of some day being as rich as
his compatriot. He too would own immense alfalfa fields.... And, talking
interminably of this fodder with the other men there who also owned
barren tracts of hard-baked soil, and were also awaiting the
transformation to be wrought by irrigation, he never noticed the length
of the night hours; for, like children listening to a marvelous tale, he
went through the same emotions at the same words without ever tiring.

“If the day would only come when we shall see our fields all red and
covered with water as though we were going to make bricks of the watered
clay....”

The thought of it was sheer ecstasy.... Then they would look at the
clock. It was late! They had to go to bed, for they must be up at dawn.
Instinctively, as they left the _boliche_, they all turned their eyes
toward the dark river that silently, for thousands of miles, slipped
through the arid lands without once bestowing on them the gentle caress
of its touch, a caress that would have brought forth so many wonders.

But, while waiting for the moment when he would wake up to find himself
a millionaire, Antonio Gonzalez decided that one of the best ways of
turning an honest penny was to arrange Sunday horse races. For this
enterprise he needed don Roque’s permission; and it was not so easy to
get it.

The _comisario_ was afraid of his superiors in office; and the federal
government had forbidden horse racing in the territories where the
conditions of life were too primitive to allow orderly management of
this diversion. It always resulted in drunken orgies and innumerable
fist-fights, or worse. But this former city-dweller needed greater
resources than his government pay in order to bear his sojourn in
Patagonia with resignation; for which reason Antonio Gonzalez could
always persuade him, after a little private conversation, to overcome
his scruples in the matter.

“But, for Heaven’s sake, _Gallego_, don’t advertise your horse race too
widely!” the _comisario_ implored. “Don’t make such a noise about it
that they’ll hear up in Buenos Aires about what’s going on ... because
we’ll get into trouble. Have it up at the dam if you like ... but for
the people who are here only ... no one from outside!”

But to be a success the undertaking must be given wide publicity! As
early as the Saturday before the great event, riders began coming in
from all parts of the territory.

After all there were none too many days of general merry-making in the
region and the races at La Presa were something that should be taken
advantage of. The population at the settlement suddenly tripled, and
within twenty-four hours a whole month’s supply of liquor had been
consumed at the _boliche_.

Manos Duras greeted the numerous riders who had come in from distant
ranches; many of them had from time to time been of use to him in his
business transactions. On this occasion they all rode their best mounts,
those they called “_fletes_”; these were the horses they were going to
ride in the races.

The prizes put up by the _Gallego_ did not amount to very much--a twenty
_peso_ note, brightly colored handkerchiefs, a jar of gin; but the
_gauchos_, proud of their spurs, of their belts adorned with pierced
silver coins, of their silver-handled knives, had come to win for the
honor and glory of winning. They would go home satisfied with having
shown their skill and grace as horsemen before the hordes of _gringo_
workmen who were quite incapable of riding a broncho.

They did not often start for home when the races were over, but stayed
to celebrate their triumph. This brought it about that in the early
hours of Sunday the _Gallego_ took in money by the fistful. It was these
hours that were most dreaded by Don Roque, and that made him vacillate
about granting new permissions to Gonzalez, even though such refusals
cost him the handsome sums that the tavern keeper was only too willing
to pay him.

The crowds overflowed from the _boliche_ and formed in groups around it.
Friterini aided by the women went in and out among them with bottles and
glasses. Guitars were twanging, accompanied by shouts and the clapping
that meant there was dancing going on in the centre of the dense
clusters of _gauchos_ and workmen. The _comisario_ with his long sabered
soldiers stood at a considerable distance for he knew that his presence,
or theirs at least, served more often than not to excite instead of
pacify the crowd.

It was the Chilians who worried him most. In ordinary celebrations when
they were with their compatriots, they grew drunk methodically without
any violent changes of mood. Accustomed to a certain decorum in their
social relations, they sang and danced the “_cueca_” without in any way
disturbing the peace. Nevertheless their aggressive patriotism increased
in proportion to the quantity of liquor they absorbed.

“_Viva_ Chile!” they shouted in chorus, in the intervals between cuecas
their dances.

Some more enthusiastic member of the crowd would complete the
exclamation in due form, hurling it out in all its classical purity, in
the fashion of the _rotos_ when they are celebrating a national
holiday, or leading a bayonet charge.

“_Viva_ Chile--”

But on the days of the horse races, the presence of strangers,
especially those haughty desert riders, who were so proud of the horses
they bestrode, of their saddles ornamented with silver work, and of
their weapons, and the jingling metal ornaments of their attire, seemed
to spread an aggressive uneasiness through the crowd, a mixture of
hatred and envy, especially among those _chilenos_ who were unmounted.

Suddenly the purring of the guitars would stop, and a noise of
quarreling arise in the silence. Then came women’s shrieks, and above
this sound, the animal yelp of a man mortally wounded. Silence--depths
of silence. Then the crowd would scatter, leaving a man with frantic
eyes and a blood soaked hand alone in the centre of the open space.

“Make way, comrades! Luck was against me....”

Silently they would stand out of his way. No one attempted to stop him,
not even the _comisario_ who was trying to get as far away from the
scene of action as possible.

The crime might have been an attack against the laws established by
older, and wiser generations. The brother of the stricken man or of the
dead, thought of nothing for the time being than of getting the victim
under ground. This was not the moment to attack the aggressor. There was
time enough to go in search of the “unlucky” man, and find him, wherever
he might be; then he, the avenger, would take his turn of “bad luck”
and kill his man. Murder called for vengeance in due form.

When one of these incidents occurred, don Roque, in a state of great
indignation, completely forgot the tavern-keeper’s generosity.

“Didn’t I tell you that all this would come to a bad end? Now we’ll hear
from Buenos Aires ... and before you know it I’ll lose my job!”

But Buenos Aires spoke no word, and don Roque continued in the service.
As he was the only representative of authority and as he and his
colleague at Fuerte Sarmiento were in perfect agreement about certain
points of policy, the dead man was properly buried, when there was a
dead man; if he was no more than wounded, his gashes were allowed to
heal; and of course he always swore that he had never seen the man who
attacked him, and that he couldn’t recognize him if he were to meet him
face to face.

Several months went by however and don Roque was still not mollified.
“That’s all very well, _Gallego_; but I don’t want to have any more such
doings....” Whereupon the _bolichero_ redoubled in generosity and a
horse race was announced for the following Sunday.

When this celebration came to a peaceful end, Gonzalez triumphed over
the _comisario_.

“You see! This town is getting civilized. You can trust it to be decent
now. What happened before was just an accident.”

Nevertheless the tavern-keeper, by way of avoiding trouble, extended his
generosity in the direction of Manos Duras, in the belief that he would
be invaluable as a means of maintaining the peace, inasmuch as he
inspired a wholesome fear in all those who were not his particular
friends and subject for that reason to his bidding.

One Saturday, at nightfall, Robledo came down the main street on his way
back from the irrigation works. As he rode by Pirovani’s house he looked
away and hurried his horse along, fearful lest Elena should open a
window and call to him to stop. Several days had passed since he had
last called on her. On that afternoon he felt the vague uneasiness that
foretells the presence of danger without giving any clue at to what
quarter to expect it from.

The settlement at the dam seemed to him entirely changed from what it
had been two months earlier. It looked the same; but the life of the
community had been transformed in a disquieting, and alarming way. The
gentle monotony, the rather coarse-grained self-confidence that had once
distinguished it, the mutual trust felt by most of its inhabitants in
one another, were fast disappearing.

The demon of the pampas, the terrible _Gualicho_, he who had been driven
out with the native Indians from the lands which had once been theirs,
seemed to have returned, and to be claiming his own, to be fighting for
it tooth and nail. Half-amused, half-fearful, Robledo recalled the
method employed by the Indians to uproot the spirit of evil when they
noted his presence among them. When their cattle-thieving expeditions or
their attempts to ambush neighboring tribes failed, when sickness
increased among their tents, when famine threatened, all the horsemen
would arm themselves as for a pitched battle and gallop out into the
fields to put the accursed _Gualicho_ to flight. With their lances and
_macanas_ or battle axes they fought with him, they hurled against him
their _boleadoras_, formed of pieces of leather tied at the ends around
two smooth stones, so as to wind tightly around the victim; and they
accompanied their shots and gashes and blows with shrill howls while the
women and children, in procession, took part in this united offensive,
adding their blows and imprecations to the general onslaught. Surely
some one of these countless strokes of knife and dart must reach the
evil spirit and make him flee for his life; and when at last the whole
tribe fell to the ground exhausted, peace and quiet returned to them
once more, for they were convinced that the enemy had betaken himself
out of their camp.

And now Robledo the Spaniard thought he noticed the presence of
Gualicho, the pampas demon, the malign one, the poisonous busybody. It
was he who was stirring up these men, setting one against the other. How
frequent hostile glances were among them now, as though when they looked
they saw someone different from the friend they had known so long! Would
it perhaps become necessary for the whole community to join hands and
put the enemy to flight with a combined offensive?

He was debating this problem when suddenly his horse started and stopped
so abruptly that Robledo almost took a header. At the same moment he
heard shots and saw the glass from one of the tavern windows, and then
from the door, splinter and fly through the air.

Through these openings came all manner of projectiles; bottles,
glasses, and even a horse skull. Then came some _gauchos_, friends of
Manos Duras, who backed away from the tavern firing revolvers at it.
Several men from the camp plunged through the doorway; they too were
shooting; and those of them who had no more cartridges advanced knife in
hand.

A man fell and began to drag himself along through the dust. Then
Robledo saw another man tumble over. Gonzalez appeared, in shirt sleeves
as usual, with elastic bands showing his biceps. With arms up-raised he
proffered entreaties, commands, and imprecations, in one breath. The
half-breeds who served in the _boliche_ also rushed out and added their
shrieks to the confusion, while they fled up and down the street.

Robledo took out his revolver and spurring his horse, got between both
groups of contestants, pointing first to one group, then to the other,
and at the same time commanding the crowd to come to order. With the
help of the neighbors, who began coming out of their houses, some of
them carrying rifles, he succeeded in bringing about a momentary
semblance of order. Followed by the workmen from the dam the gauchos
fled, while the women, both the dancers from the _boliche_ and the
respectable wives and mothers of the neighborhood, ran to the assistance
of the wounded.

Gonzalez, who was making a great deal of noise without anyone’s paying
attention to him, gave a gesture of delight when he recognized Robledo,
as though certain that the engineer would know just how to save the
situation.

“These are the friends of Manos Duras,” he explained. “They came to
raise a row because down at the dam they won’t let this dirty fellow
sell them any more meat, or do any business with them. As there’s a race
coming off tomorrow Manos Duras blew into town to make trouble for me
and that’s how all this happened.... It’s as though the devil was let
loose in the town now, don Manuel! And there was a time when it was so
quiet here....”

Still hot and excited from the recent battle, the _gallego_ went on
sputtering explanations. He admitted that the Chilians sometimes
provoked disturbances, but only occasionally, and always as a
consequence of too much liquor. No one could hold them responsible for
this affair! Poor _rotos_! It was the natives who had behaved
outrageously, as if carrying out secret orders, and provoking the
workmen with a definite intention of stirring up a riot.

“And this kind of thing isn’t going to stop here, don Manuel. I know
Manos Duras. If he had wanted money he would have come to me for it, and
it wouldn’t be the first time.... But there’s something else in all this
that I don’t quite get. He has some reason for making mischief, there’s
something in all this that we don’t know....”

The wounded had been picked up and put in the _boliche_ by this time. A
man on horseback started off for Fuerte Sarmiento to get the doctor, who
came to La Presa only once every two weeks. Some of the women went off
to find a Sicilian peon who was reputed to know the secret of curing
wounds; and in the middle of the street the old grannies of the
settlement were shrilling out their opinion of Manos Duras and his
friends.

Robledo, deep in thought about all that had been going on, started off
once more towards his house. Yes; Gonzalez was right. The devil has been
let loose in La Presa. Life there was completely changed from what it
had been before....

And on the following day he noticed a great transformation in the
workmen at the dam. Those who belonged to Pirovani’s gang sprawled on
the ground smoking and dozing. Some of them, those of Spanish blood,
were humming to themselves, clapping their hands and looking dreamily
away, as though they saw in the distance the homeland they had left.

The Chilian foreman known as “the friar” was going from one group to
another, protesting against this laziness; but all he got for his pains
was laughter at his expense. One of the older workmen went so far as to
answer insolently:

“What’s the matter with you? Do you expect to get something from the wop
feller when he dies? What is it to you whether we work or not? Say, cut
that stuff! He hasn’t been around here for days!”

Another laborer, with a suggestive laugh, broke out,

“He’s following that pretty _gringa_ around like a dog, you know, the
one that’s always perfumed to the king’s taste, and that they call the
_marquesa_. Well, I don’t blame him.... I would too if there was any
chance....”

And he added something that made his hearers burst out into savage and
bestial laughter. Suddenly a boy, one of the apprentices, who was
keeping a look-out from a slight rise of ground, gave the alarm.

“Engineer coming!”

With a jump they picked up their tools and went to work, bending to the
task as though they were all models of diligence, while Robledo walked
his horse slowly through the groups.

But all the while they were pretending to work they kept an eye on the
engineer, and no sooner was his back turned than they let their tools
fall once more to the ground. Robledo turned several times to look back.
And each time he did so he felt more and more convinced of Gualicho’s
presence in the colony. The demon was busying himself there, every one
was feeling the touch of his evil hand; work itself was crumbling away
in his presence....

Leaving Pirovani’s peons to their own devices he came to that part of
the works where his own men were digging canals.

Here something was being accomplished. Torre Bianca was directing the
men and keeping close watch of every move, letting no effort go to
waste, and lending an example by his own activity. As soon as he caught
sight of Robledo he led him away to a spot where they could talk
unheard. From his manner Robledo guessed that he had unpleasant news to
impart.

“The bad example set by those fellows at the dam is beginning to affect
these men up here. They won’t work any longer than the other laborers,
they say. I can’t make out what’s got into poor old Pirovani. He seems
to have given up his work entirely.”

Robledo looked at him fixedly, but he kept silence while Torre Bianca
went on with his news.

“Last night Moreno told me that Pirovani and Canterac are not getting on
together.... Each one of them in his capacity, as engineer, refuses to
approve of what the other does as contractor. They seem to want to give
each other a black eye with the government so as to hold up the pay.
Pirovani says that he’ll stop the whole works and go to Buenos Aires,
where he has a lot of friends, and make complaints at headquarters there
about the Frenchman....”

This was more than Robledo could listen to in silence.

“And while they are squabbling,” he raged, “they’re losing precious
time. Winter is coming; that means that the river will rise, and if the
dam isn’t finished, it will be swept away and the work of years
destroyed. The whole thing will have to be done over again....”

The _marqués_, who was plunged in thought, suddenly exclaimed:

“But those men used to be friends! Something must have come between
them....”

Robledo made a determined effort to keep his eyes from betraying pity
and amazement as he looked at his friend. He merely nodded.




CHAPTER XI


It was a little after sunrise when Moreno hastily left his house;
Canterac had sent him an urgent message, asking him to call. The
Frenchman was pacing nervously up and down. He wore high boots and
riding breeches; his cartridge belt, revolver and coat were lying on a
chair. Drops of water from his morning ablutions still trickled down his
chest, and his shirt-sleeves were rolled to above his elbows. His hard,
dictatorial expression became harsher still when he drew his eyebrows
together, as though some thought or other were causing him both anger
and pain.

Moreno noticed that on all the pieces of furniture and in all the
corners there were numerous packages carefully wrapped in tissue paper,
tied with delicate ribbon, and sealed.

It was easy to guess that the engineer had slept badly, tormented
perhaps by whatever it was that he wished to impart to Moreno.

The government employee sat down and prepared to listen. Canterac
remained standing, so as to be free to walk up and down when his
restlessness overcame him.

“This Pirovani fellow, for all his vulgarity, is always getting ahead of
me ... just because he is rich!”

Canterac pointed to the packages.

“There are the perfumes we ordered from Buenos Aires. Perfectly useless
purchase! The Italian got his before I did.”

Moreno made haste to exonerate himself. He had done everything he could
to get the order sent down in time. But the other order had in some
mysterious way come sooner. Perhaps the Italian had sent a messenger to
the capital for it....

Canterac, in spite of his disappointment, didn’t want to appear
ill-natured. He accepted Moreno’s excuses, and slapped him on the back
in friendly fashion.

“I couldn’t sleep a wink last night, my dear fellow. I have a scheme I
want to consult you about. Something must be done to put this intriguing
Italian, who has the cheek to get in my way, back in his proper
place.... All these people around here seem to think themselves our
equals as though all distinctions between them and us had been
suppressed. Why I shouldn’t be surprised if that fellow, in spite of the
fact that he takes his orders from me, thought himself my superior ...
just because he has money!”

Canterac smiled with a cruel gleam in his eyes and went on,

“But I’ll help him get rid of some of it! Up to the present I’ve been
willing to approve officially of his contract work. But I’m not going to
any more and he’ll lose by it. He’ll have to break his agreement and get
out of here....”

The engineer came close to Moreno and began speaking in a low tone as
though afraid of being heard.

“I want to do something unique, something that this uneducated immigrant
would never be able to think of. It just occurred to me last night. At
first I thought it was a crazy idea, but after I’d spent a few hours
thinking it over I decided it was something really original and worth
doing ... if it is only possible to carry it out.... Pirovani offered
the _marquesa_ a house.... Well, I shall offer her a park ... a park
that I’ll make here in the middle of this Patagonian desert ... what do
you think of my idea, Moreno?”

The government employee was listening with profound interest and
astonishment, but he didn’t know what to reply. He needed further
explanations. So Canterac continued:

“In this park I shall give a _fiesta_, a garden party in honor of the
_marquesa_. I shall even allow myself the pleasure of inviting this rich
rustic, just by way of taking vengeance on him by making him squirm with
envy. You, my dear fellow, are to direct everything. Here are full
instructions. I wrote them out last night, when I found there was no use
trying to sleep.”

Moreno took the papers Canterac was handing over to him, but instead of
reading them looked curiously at the engineer, as though entertaining
serious doubts of his sanity.

“I understand your astonishment.... Of course it will cost a lot! But
what of it? You can spend all you want. I’ve just received several
thousand _pesos_ that I expected to remit to Paris. But I’d rather give
the _marquesa_ a surprise, and my park will certainly be that.... And I
can always earn more money. I have every confidence in the future.”

Canterac spoke with entire good faith; it was easy enough to hear in
his tone the soaring optimism of the lover.

The next day was Sunday, and Watson, about midday, went to Pirovani’s
former home to see Torre Bianca. Something had come up in connection
with the canal works that he wished to discuss with the _marqués_,
especially since Robledo was away, having gone up to Buenos Aires to get
extended credit from the banks for his work, and to sell some of the
property he owned in the central pampas.

The young man went up the outside stairway with a certain trepidation,
keeping an anxious eye on the windows. He knocked cautiously as though
he particularly desired not to be heard by the other inhabitants of the
house, and smiled with relief when Sebastiana came to the door.

“The master is not at home, he went with don Canterac to Fuerte
Sarmiento this morning. And how is don Robledo?”

Like the other natives of this part of the continent, the half-breed
prefixed “don” to family and given names indiscriminately.

Watson was just leaving when the hangings of the reception room were
pushed aside by a white hand at the base of which shone a jewelled wrist
watch. The hand was beckoning, and the next instant Elena herself
appeared, urging Watson with words and smiles to come in. The young man
felt too constrained by her presence to dare refuse and he followed his
hostess into the drawing-room, where he sat with lowered eyes in
embarrassed silence.

“At last the pleasure of seeing you in my house,” she exclaimed. “You
must really consider me a very disagreeable sort of person, you care so
little about seeing me!”

Richard Watson proffered excuses. He had come there twice before with
Robledo. It was impossible for him to come every evening like the
others. He got up earlier than they did. As he was the junior partner
naturally he took on some of the more unpleasant responsibilities, such
as getting to the works in good time to see that everything started off
properly in the morning....

But Elena was not interested in these explanations which were merely
obstructing the conversation. There was something she wanted to say,
that she must say at once.

“Perhaps people have spoken ill of me to you. Why deny it? It isn’t
strange that it should be so. Women are always exposed to that sort of
thing. Whenever we resist certain advances we run the risk of making an
enemy!”

Elena’s tone was one of gentle ingenuousness as she gave voice to these
complaints. One might have thought her the victim of the most unjust
persecution. With a motion that brought her close to Richard she
addressed him without any semblance of reserve, as though they were
tried comrades. The youth meanwhile began to be uneasily aware of the
fragrance and close proximity of this beautiful woman.

“I am so unfortunate, Watson,” she was saying. “I wanted the opportunity
to talk to you about this, and I am so glad I can talk to you now for a
moment alone ... for probably this will never happen again. You see me
surrounded by men who pay court to me, and I suppose you think I flirt
with them. But do you know why? To make myself dizzy and numb, so as not
to be so painfully conscious of the emptiness of my life. For years I
have felt that I was alone ... as though there were no other human being
in the world except myself!”

Watson had forgotten his uneasiness of a few moments ago. Listening to
her now with credulous interest, he accepted all that she said.

“But ... your husband?...”

There was an ironic gleam in her eyes as he put this innocent question.
But she restrained her cynicism and replied, sadly,

“Oh, why talk of him? He is a very good man, but he is not the husband a
woman such as I should have.... He has never understood me. Don’t you
see that he is weak, that he can never conquer in the battle of life?
And I was born for greater things ... yet here I am, an exile in this
barbarous land, and through his fault!”

With a glow in her eyes that might have come from intense feeling she
looked at the young American who lowered his eyes not knowing what to
say; then she added thoughtfully,

“Can’t you believe that a man who was young and energetic might have
gone very far with a woman such as I to inspire him?”

Surprised, young Watson glanced up at her; then he lowered his eyes
again to her feet as though afraid to look at her. Elena smiled to
herself.... Then she murmured softly,

“But life is always like that! The men we don’t want pursue us, and
those who really arouse our interest always try to escape us!”

At these words the young man raised his eyes and looked at his hostess
without the slightest suggestion of timidity but with a questioning
expression. What did she mean?... He did not know life at first hand;
and, being a man of action, he cared very little for reading and had
never, from books, caught glimpses of what life was really like. But he
kept deep in his memory the observations made in certain rather simple
and ingenuous novels of abundant adventure, that he had read on railway
journeys and sea voyages, by way of escaping tedium. Besides this he had
seen a hundred or more “movie” stories, so that, in films as well as in
the pages of the novels he had read, he had become familiar with the
“fatal charmer” type of woman, the “vamp,” the creature who is beautiful
in body and of a malicious and trouble-making soul, tempting men to
leave the ways of honor, troubling the domestic and gently monotonous
happiness which every young man should seek in marriage and family life.
Was the _marquesa_ perhaps one of these “vamps?”... Robledo certainly
didn’t seem to have much use for her....

But he did not stop there. He went on to think of all the beautiful
women who are calumnied and persecuted--also in the movies--and who,
because of the envy they inspire are forced to go through sufferings
which had more than once brought tears to his eyes as he watched the
film roll on. Yes, there must be victims such as these in the real
world too ... why else should there be so many of them on the screen?

He was looking searchingly at Elena trying to discover which category
she belonged to, the “fatal charmers” or the persecuted victims of
malice and envy; but she meanwhile lowered her eyes, and said gently,

“It hurt me very much to see that you avoided me. Surrounded as I am by
selfish and frightfully materialistic men, I need a friendship that is
pure and disinterested, I want a companion who will appreciate me for my
real self, my soul, and not for whatever physical charms I may possess!”

Richard Watson nodded involuntarily. How could he help approving such
words?... And as she went on talking he went on making up his mind about
her....

“I always thought that you might have been this ideal friend, for you
look so good--but, alas! you dislike me, you run away from me because
you think that I am one of those dangerous women of whom there are so
many in the world ... and really I am nothing worse than unhappy!”

In the vehemence of his protest Richard stood up abruptly. No! He had
never disliked her, nor wished to run away.... He had always felt the
most profound respect for the wife of his associate, Torre Bianca. But
he confessed that up to that moment he had not known her well.

“There is nothing strange about that. Sometimes people have a speaking
acquaintance with some one for years and years, and think they know him
... and suddenly they come really to see into this person’s soul, and
discover that he is very different from what they had imagined. For
instance, after what you have just said, I....”

He stopped; but his silence and the expression in his eyes gave Elena
some idea of the impression her words had produced on him. She too stood
up, and coming near him gave him her hand.

“Then ... you are going to be my friend?... the friend I need so much in
order to go living?... You are going to advise me, to help me?”

Troubled by her glance the young man stammered a few confused words. But
he took her hand and pressed it. Elena welcomed this reply to her
request with childish delight.

“How happy I am! You will come to see me every day? You will go out
riding with me, you will keep off those tiresome suitors of mine who
keep following me around?”

Watson was somewhat surprised by the _marquesa’s_ exuberant joy. He
hadn’t promised any of these things, as a matter of fact; but he didn’t
dare try to correct his hostess’s impression.

As though she had not the slightest doubt that he would accompany her on
her rides she burst out laughing, and said, with a mischievous gleam in
her eye,

“And when we go out riding together, you will show me how to throw the
lassoo, won’t you? I want so much to learn that little
accomplishment....”

Scarcely were the words out of her mouth when she saw how inopportune
they were; for Watson turned his eyes away from her, and a shadow passed
over his face, the shadow cast perhaps by a procession of memories....

Instinctively she knew that, most vivid of the images before him was
that of a girl throwing the lariat, and trying to teach him how to do
it, one golden afternoon, at the far end of a green meadow. To dispel
the picture, Elena came close to him and put both hands on the lapels of
his blouse. She wanted apparently to see her own reflection in his eyes,
while in her own she seemed to be trying to concentrate all her powers
of seduction.

“We are really friends?” she murmured. “Friends for good and all?
Friends who can trust one another beyond all calumny and envy?”

At the magic of her touch and the fragrance she exhaled, the memory of
the river bank and his happy hours with Celinda grew faint, vanished....
There was something within him nevertheless which struggled to resist
the influence that was trying to envelope him. He thought for a moment
of those fatal women he had read about, and he moved his head as though
about to shake it.... “No!” He raised his hands to his blouse lapels to
detach her hands from them. But at the contact of his fingers with the
soft smooth skin of her hands, he stopped dismayed; and then very gently
he caressed them. And when he looked into Elena’s eyes, that were
imploring a reply to her question, he merely nodded.... “Yes!”

From that day on Watson became the _marquesa’s_ only escort on her
rides.

In front of Pirovani’s former residence the half-breed in charge of the
contractor’s stables would take up his stand, holding the bridle of a
white mare on which was a side-saddle. Then Richard would appear mounted
on his horse. The _marquesa_, in riding costume, was coming down the
steps, while Pirovani, as though he had been waiting in hiding for her
arrival, would rush up to her to offer his greetings, and suggest that
he too knew how to ride.

But the “_señora marquesa_” would have none of his company.

“You have business to attend to, señor Pirovani. My husband says that
you’ve been away a good deal lately, and I don’t like to hear that! The
señor Watson has more free time now and he is going with me....”

In time the Italian came to accept these words with a certain pleasure.
What an interest the _marquesa_ took in his work! And could she, after
all, show any more clearly how much all that concerned him was important
to her? Besides, there was no particular reason to be jealous of Watson.
Everyone always thought of him as engaged to the Rojas girl ... so,
unwillingly enough, Pirovani would retire and betake himself to the dam.

At other times, when Elena was already mounted, Canterac would come
riding down the street. Wouldn’t she let him accompany her? But Elena
was protesting, making signs that meant “no” with her riding-whip.

“But I’ve told you several times that I don’t want any escort but Mr.
Watson,” she told him quite frankly one morning. “Do go along, my dear
captain, and finish up that grand surprise that you are getting ready
for me.”

Canterac too was disposed to accept Elena’s choice of the American youth
as an escort without too much bitterness. So long as it wasn’t Pirovani!

He watched the two riders move down the road, and although he felt
annoyed and disheartened as he always did when Elena opposed his
desires, he tried to conceal it, and stopped in at Moreno’s.

The latter was reading a novel in front of the open window; as soon as
he caught sight of Canterac he leaned out and began a report on the work
in the park.

Canterac, from his horse, leaned forward, listening with grave attention
to the explanations that were pouring out of the window opening.

“I got Pirovani’s men away from him by offering them double pay. And I
got hold of all the carts he had contracted to get, and all those in
Fuerte Sarmiento. This will delay the work at the dam a little. But both
you and Pirovani will have to find some way of making up for lost time.”

Thirty miles down the river, in a somewhat swampy bit of ground, where
the freshets had provided water enough for a vigorous growth of poplars
and other trees, Canterac’s men were hard at work carrying out his plans
for the _marquesa’s_ park. The peons were removing the earth from the
tree roots which they cut away, bending down the trees until they fell
on the ox carts waiting to drag them slowly back up the river bank to
the dam. It took a whole day to make the journey to La Presa.

“It’s a tremendous job, and it’s going to be a long one,” Moreno was
saying. “I went down there yesterday to see for myself how things are
getting on, and there’s no doubt about it, those men are earning their
pay.”

Near the Presa, in a level spot barren of all vegetation close to the
river, other peons were digging ditches. As soon as the carts arrived,
they lifted off the trees, and planted them in the holes prepared for
them, heaping up the earth around them to keep the trees upright.

“The trees are only a few yards high, but they will be very effective in
the desert where there are no others to compare them with. You can be
sure of one thing captain! The whole settlement will be struck dumb with
amazement when they see what you have done. Pirovani could certainly
never have planned all that!”

Canterac heartily approved of the last words.

“You are going to spend every cent of your several thousand _pesos_,”
Moreno went on. “It may even happen that you’ll run short of money
before you get through. But you’ll have your park! Of course there won’t
be any cost in keeping it up because a few days after the _fiesta_ the
trees will be withered and dead.”

And the government employee laughed at the uselessness of this enormous
expenditure. At one and the same moment he pitied and admired the
engineer.

Meanwhile Elena and Watson were riding slowly along the river bank. The
_marquesa_ had taken possession of one of his hands, and she was talking
affectionately to him, with an air of maternal interest and tenderness.

“From what you tell me, Ricardo, it is evident that Robledo is managing
the whole business, and that you are after all nothing but an employee
of his.... I have no right to intrude on your affairs, but, in spite of
myself, everything that concerns you interests me so much! I don’t say
that he is not quite fair in his division of the earnings ... no!
Robledo is the sort of man who is always _correct_ in his dealings. But
just the same, I think he takes advantage of the fact that you are
younger. You will have to emancipate yourself from his control or you
will never go as far as your ability makes me expect you to go ... but
you’ll have to make your way alone, without guardians to check you....”

Watson had defended his partner against Elena’s first insinuations; but
now with eyebrows drawn close together and a worried expression, he let
her go on without offering a word of protest.

The two were swaying in their saddles while they talked, yielding to the
motions of their horses. As they rode along they noticed another rider
appear and then disappear in the distance ahead of them. This occurred
several times. The rider zigzagging thus capriciously from river bank to
the sand dunes that the spring floods had formed some distance from the
river was no other than Celinda Rojas.

Elena was the first to mention what both were well aware of.

“I think she is looking for someone,” she said maliciously.

Richard looked in the direction to which she was pointing, and his
expression showed plainly enough that he was perturbed.

“It is the _señorita_ de Rojas,” he said, blushing slightly. “She’s
still nothing but a kid! I know her quite well. She is like a younger
sister to me, or rather, a pal.... You don’t for a moment imagine....”

But Elena was smiling ironically as though she did not believe what he
was saying; and finally in a tone so cold that it hurt the youth’s
feelings, she commanded--

“Go and speak to her, otherwise she will be following and watching us
all the afternoon. Then come back to me!”

Obediently the young man turned his horse into the rough _matorral_
brush that crackled like dry wood under his horse’s hoofs.

Celinda at once stopped her cavortings in the distance and galloped to
meet him, shaking her finger at him as she came near, and looking as
like an offended school-teacher as she could. With tremendous
seriousness she inquired,

“Haven’t I told you more than a hundred times, Mr. Watson, that I didn’t
want to see you with ... that woman? Besides I have been riding
everywhere these last few days without finding you,--and then when at
last I do stumble upon you, I find you in bad company!”

But Richard Watson was no longer the youth she had known. He no longer
greeted her foolish little speeches with an outburst of laughter. On the
contrary he looked offended, though her tone had been a jesting one.
Drily, he replied,

“I shall keep what company I choose, _señorita_. There is, I believe,
nothing more between us than a sincere friendship, in spite of what
people may choose to say. You are not engaged to me, nor do I need to
limit my acquaintance simply to satisfy your whims.”

Celinda was speechless with astonishment. Taking advantage of this fact,
Watson saluted her in a coldly ceremonious fashion, and galloped off in
the direction taken by Elena. But when the girl became convinced that
the young North American was really riding away from her, she angrily
shook her fist in the air; then she broke into supplicating cries,

“Don’t go, _gringuito_, listen don Ricardo! Don’t be angry.... Look!
What I said was just for fun, like the other times....”

But he pretended not to hear; and as he continued riding away from her,
she gathered up the lassoo that hung on the front of the saddle and
swung it, catching the fugitive in the noose, and shouting out with
forced merriment,

“See, disobedient one, now you must come here!”

The thong had fallen over his head with the same precision as always. As
on so many other occasions she drew in the loops, tugging gently at her
prey. But this time Richard took out his knife and angrily cut through
the rope. So quickly did he free himself that Celinda, absorbed in
pulling in the lassoo, nearly fell off her horse when her tugging
suddenly ceased to find any resistance.

Watson rode rapidly away, unwinding from about his shoulders the piece
of rope that had caught him there. He threw the fragment from him and
never once looked back. Celinda meanwhile wound up her lassoo that still
trailed weakly on the ground.

When finally the lacerated end of the rope reached her hands she looked
at it sadly. Tears blurred her sight. But suddenly the rancher’s
daughter looked out towards the dunes where Elena and Richard were
riding, and turned white with anger.

“May the devil carry you away with him, miserable _gringo_! I don’t want
to see you, ever again.... I’ll never throw the noose over you any more!
and if, some day, you want to see me, you’ll have to catch me the way I
used to catch you ... if you can!”

And then, no longer able to conceal from herself the fact that she had
been cruelly treated, the Rojas girl covered her face with her hands.
The sand dunes and the solitary river had so many times seen her
laugh--she did not want them now to see her weep....




CHAPTER XII


The day set for Canterac’s great surprise party to the _marquesa_ had
arrived. Under Moreno’s direction the workmen set up the last trees in
the level space near the river.

Groups of curiosity seekers were already admiring from afar the
Frenchman’s improvisation of a wood. From Fuerte Sarmiento, and from as
far as the capital of the territory of Neuquen, sight-seers were
arriving, attracted by the novelty of the _fiesta_ that was to be given
at La Presa. Some workmen were still busy swinging ropes of vines from
tree to tree, and nailing up clusters of banners.

Friterini, raised to the proud rank of head-waiter, had taken his
somewhat dusty swallow tail out of his trunk, and had donned this relic
of the days when he had served as emergency waiter in the hotels of
Europe and Buenos Aires. Throwing out his stiff shirt bosom, and
nervously struggling every few minutes with his white tie, he directed
the operations of a troup of half-breed women from the _boliche_ who had
been transformed into waitresses and were setting the tables for the
afternoon’s entertainment.

Don Antonio, in other words, the _Gallego_, had also been transformed,
at least outwardly, for the occasion. He wore a black suit, and a thick
gold chain dangled across his waistcoat. Don Antonio was one of the
guests of the occasion; his right to figure among the important
personages of the settlement had been recognized. However, as the
refreshments had been entrusted to his establishment, he had thought it
advisable to transfer himself to the scene of the festivities as early
in the afternoon as possible in order to see to it that the preparations
were properly attended to.

Among the spectators on the other side of the wire enclosure were
several _gauchos_, among them the notorious Manos Duras, who, after the
affair at the boliche, had quietly returned to the settlement in order
to offer the explanations he thought adequate. He did not for a moment
deny that some of those who had provoked the affair were friends of his,
but they were all older and more experienced men than he, so he couldn’t
very well be responsible for their acts. He wasn’t their father. When
the row occurred he was far away from the settlement. What was the idea
anyway in trying to implicate him in things for which he was not to
blame?

The _comisario_ had to content himself with these explanations; the
proprietor of the _boliche_ also made haste to accept them, in the
belief that it was better to number the _gaucho_ among one’s friends
than one’s enemies. And now Manos Duras stood contemplating with a
somewhat mocking stare the preparations for the garden party. The other
_gauchos_, as silent as he, seemed to be laughing to themselves at all
the goings-on. Those _gringos_, carrying trees away from the spot where
God had planted them ... and for a _woman_!

The inhabitants of La Presa were more outspoken in their comments. In
fact some were quite vociferous about them, and the better dressed of
the women expressed themselves very freely on the subject of the
_marquesa_.

“That great big doll ... _tal!_ What she gets the men to do for her!”

And they rehearsed the expenditures that Pirovani, close, even
hard-fisted in his dealings with the workmen, had made for this
_gringa_. Every single day the train from Buenos Aires, or Bahía Blanca
brought in presents for the _marquesa_, and all paid for out of the
contractor’s pocket. And then there was the cart with a great tank set
up on it, that did nothing else all day long but bring water from the
river to the _marquesa’s_ house, just because she had to have a bath
every day!

“She must have something on her skin that won’t come off,” some of the
women gravely asserted.

To all of them, obliged as they were to go to the river with a jar on
their hips when they wanted water, this tank and cart represented the
most unheard of and extravagant of comforts. A bath every day in that
land where the slightest breath of wind raised columns of fine dust,
columns so enormous that one had to bend way over towards the ground in
order to keep one’s balance under their impact ...! And as every woman
in the settlement had in her hair and the linings of her clothes the
accumulated dust of a week, this extravagance in the use of water
enraged them all. It reminded them too vividly of the differences and
similarities between them and the _marquesa_. She had the things they
didn’t have; but she was a woman like them ... yet she never for a
moment shared in the life of this desert community as they knew it....

To console herself one of them maliciously alluded to the _marqués_,

“And to think that he’s likely to come along this afternoon with his
wife’s lovers! Would you believe that a man could be so blind? No, they
must both be in the game....”

And in this fashion all those who had not been invited, and who had no
other means of seeing the celebration than by peering through the wire
fence, were consoling themselves by making hostile remarks about the
_marquesa_, her friends and her husband.

Celinda rode her horse past the different groups; and she too looked
resentfully at the hastily improvised park. Then, perhaps so as not to
hear the scandalous remarks of the women, she made off towards the town.

Without for a moment neglecting to keep an eye on the preparation of the
tables for the refreshments, Gonzalez was talking with several of his
customers, and pointing to the river. He couldn’t have found a better
occasion for repeating with professorial gravity some of the things he
had heard his compatriot Robledo say about it.

“The Indians had named the river ‘Black’ because of the trouble they had
in paddling up its course against the swift current. Then the Spanish
explorers named it ‘River of the Willows’ because in former times so
many of these trees grew along its banks. There were fewer of them now,
but they still constituted the greatest obstacle to navigation, so many
were the roots and tree-trunks that rose like ram’s horns to batter in
the sides of small craft venturing on these waters. Several centuries
passed before it was explored; meanwhile the assertion made by the
Indians that it was possible to travel on its waters as far as Chile,
and that it formed a link between the Atlantic and Pacific, thus
providing a canal far more accessible than the straits of Magellan, was
generally believed.

“An English missionary attempted to explore it in the hope that his
discoveries would make it possible for England to take possession of the
region, and that this waterway would give her a vantage point for
attacking the Spanish colonies in the Pacific.

“And then the Spaniards, who had plenty to do because they owned most of
America, thought they had better get busy.

“It was Alfarez de la Armada, him they called Villamarino, who, in the
last third of the 18th century, when almost the whole of America had
been explored and colonized, performed this difficult and obscure task.

“Don Manuel says that Villamarino is the last representative of the
great race of Spanish explorers,” asserted the _Gallego_.

“With four small boats, heavily laden and not at all adequate to the
journey, he started from Carmen de Patagones on the Atlantic side with
an escort of sixty men. This handful of whites was going to plunge into
a totally unknown country, in which the most savage and blood-thirsty
Indians of the Southern continent were to be found. It was from the
banks of the _Rio Negro_ that the invasions of the civilized lands of
the viceroy of La Plata started; rather than invasions they were raids
by dark-skinned horsemen excited by the prospect of leading off as booty
the sleek cattle of the ranches around Buenos Aires. So, with his four
little boats, Villamarino was going to navigate for hundreds of leagues
between banks on which were ambushed numerous bands of Aucas, the
fiercest and most warlike of the native tribes.

“Only those of us who know how violent the current of this river can be
at times can imagine something of what that expedition must have been
like, navigating against the current, in boats propelled by long poles
and a bit of sail. They took along fifteen horses to drag the boats
along the shore in the places where there was no way of getting through
the tangle of roots, or where the rapids against them were too strong.
Four different times the high winds snapped off the masts.... Yes, as
don Manuel puts it, Villamarino was the last flash of that fire of
courage that had burned in the Spanish Conquistadores for nearly four
centuries. The expedition went on month after month. As they had no
_baqueano_ or guide, they often mistook the way and went up tributaries,
so that they had to retrace their steps sometimes for many miles....
They were looking for the sea that the Indians talked about so often....
And at last, at the end of the Limay, which is a part of the _Rio
Negro_, they came out on a sea--but an inland one--nothing more than
Lake Nahuel Huapi.... But one thing is certain, and that is that until
this river is cleaned up no modern explorer, not even with the boats we
have now, is going to repeat the trip that the ensign Villamarino
started out on a century and a half ago.”

Carried away by his patriotic enthusiasm, Gonzalez went on repeating to
his hearers all that the engineer had told him; but his audience was
rapidly melting away, attracted by the preparations for lunch. To most
of them the sight of the tables elaborately decorated for the occasion
was far more interesting than the _Gallego’s_ rhapsodies about the young
officer of the Spanish navy, and his descriptions of the ancient “River
of the Willows”....

The crowd was fast increasing. An orchestra, composed of a few Italians
who lived near Neuquen, began to shatter the air with the strident notes
of their brass instruments. At once several couples began to dance. This
struck don Antonio as a serious lack of respect for the organizer of the
festivities.

“Don’t let them dance until the _marquesa_ arrives,” he commanded to
Friterini. “This party is in her honor and the _señor_ de Canterac won’t
like it if it begins before she gets here.”

But neither musicians nor dancers had the slightest consideration for
don Antonio’s scruples.

Elena meanwhile, most elegantly dressed for the party, was sitting in
the drawing-room at home; and she was frowning.

“Such things as this happen to no one but me,” she was thinking. “Why in
the world should this news get here today, and just before the garden
party? And yet some people don’t believe in fate!”

That day happened to be one of those on which the train came down from
Buenos Aires bringing the mail. A short time after it had reached the
house Torre Bianca, his face white and full of consternation, came to
his wife’s room to show her a letter.

“Look Elena.... This is from our family lawyer....”

A glance at the sheet he held out to her showed her what the letter was.
It announced the death of Federico’s mother.

“_Ever since you went away to America, the señora marquesa’s health has
been very bad. We all of us knew that the end might come at any moment.
She was thinking of you when she died. We heard her speak your name even
after we thought she would never say another word._

“_We enclose a few particulars about the estate which
unfortunately...._”

Elena stopped reading to look with inquiring eyes at her husband. But he
stood with his head sunk between his shoulders, as though stricken
himself by the news. She hesitated about speaking; but as time passed
and he still stood brooding in silence, she said slowly:

“I suppose that this news, which really can’t have been so
unexpected--you remember you said several times that you feared this
must happen soon--isn’t going to keep us from going to the garden
_fête_?”

Torre Bianca raised his eyes and looked at her in amazement.

“What are you saying? Don’t you understand that it is my mother who has
died?”

Elena pretended to be somewhat embarrassed; then she said in a tone of
kindly sympathy,

“I am so sorry to hear of the poor lady’s death! She was your mother,
and that in itself is enough to make me grieve for her. But you must
remember, Federico, that I never saw her and that she knew me only from
photographs. Do be calm and try to be reasonable! Just because, on the
other side of the globe, this unhappy event has occurred we surely
aren’t going to deprive ourselves of going to a _fiesta_ that represents
a tremendous outlay of money, and that has been prepared especially for
us, by our friend....”

She drew near to her husband, and said in a melting voice, while she
caressed his cheek--

“After all, dear, one must have a certain regard for social conventions.
No one knows about this yet. Just pretend that the letter hasn’t arrived
and that you will receive it in day after tomorrow’s mail.... Yes, that
is the best way to manage it. You don’t know this sad news yet, and you
are coming with me this afternoon.... What do you gain by remembering it
now? There is time enough to think of this unfortunate happening
later....”

The _marqués_ indicated that he did not agree with her. Then he raised a
hand to his eyes, and leaning one elbow on his knees, he groaned softly
to himself,

“She was my mother ... my poor old loving mother....”

They were both silent for a long time. Then, as though unwilling to let
his wife see the grief he felt, the _marqués_ took refuge in the
adjoining room. Elena, scowling to herself, and in a thoroughly bad
humor, could hear him walking to and fro on the other side of the door;
and every now and then she heard him groan. Finally she opened the door
through which the _marqués_ had disappeared.

“You had better stay here, Federico. Don’t worry about me. I’ll go alone
and make up an excuse for your absence. I’ll see you later then, _alma
mía_! Of course you know that the only reason why I am leaving you now
is so as not to hurt our friend’s feelings. Oh, what a bore these social
obligations are!”

It was strange to hear the gently pitying tones of her voice when at the
same time the corners of her mouth were tense and twisted with anger.

She put on her hat and went out. From the top of the stairs she could
see the street, that was for once completely deserted. Everyone in town
had gone to see the “park,” Canterac and the contractor, each acting
independently, having declared the occasion a general holiday, forcing a
day of idleness upon their subordinates.

In front of the house there was a small four-wheeled cart in charge of a
half-breed who was asleep on the driver’s seat, a Paraguay cigar between
his thick bluish lips. A swarm of flies buzzed about his sweat-smeared
face.

Elena was thinking now of her admirers who must by this time be
impatiently looking for her. They had refrained from coming to get her,
inasmuch as the day before she had announced to them that she wished to
arrive at the party with no other escort than her husband. Elena had
come to believe that a lady always avoids giving any occasion for
gossip.

As she turned away from the house and approached the cart, she heard a
sound of galloping hoofs. A rider suddenly appeared from one of the
adjoining narrow streets. It was _Flor de Rio Negro_.

Elena, by a kind of intuition, like the instinctive alarm of an animal
when something hostile is approaching it, guessed that it was she who
was coming before she saw her. Without waiting for the horse to stop,
the reckless young rider slipped out of the saddle to the ground. Then,
with the slow gait of one who has not walked for some hours and is
surprised by the strange hard feel of the ground, she approached Elena.

“_Señora_, a word with you, only one!”

She stepped in between Elena and the cart, cutting her off.

In spite of her cold hauteur Elena was startled by the girl’s hostile
eyes. However, she tried to preserve her impressive calm, and with a
gesture seemed to inquire,

“Can it really be me you want?”

Celinda, quick enough to understand her, replied with a nod. As the
_marquesa_ lifted her hand, in an affectation of queenliness, giving the
girl permission to speak, Celinda asked in a tone that was sharp and
resonant with hate,

“Haven’t you enough with all these men you are driving mad? Do you have
to take away those who belong to other women too?”

Elena offered nothing by way of reply but a withering glance that swept
the girl from head to foot. Surely she was sufficiently superior to
crush the impudent young thing with a look....

“I don’t know you,” Elena was forced to say as the girl still barred her
passage. “Besides there are such differences in rank and education
separating us that it is useless for me to try to talk to you.”

She tried then to brush Celinda aside; but the girl, irritated beyond
bearing by her contemptuous glance, raised the small riding whip she
held in her left hand.

“You devil in skirts!”

She aimed a blow at Elena’s face; but the latter defended herself
promptly, clutching at her assailant’s arm. The older woman was
intensely pale, and her eyes had grown larger with amazement, while a
feline light gleamed in their pupils. Then she said in a voice that was
slightly hoarse,

“That will do! Don’t trouble ... I’ll consider the blow as given ... and
I shan’t forget the gift! I’ll return something equivalent when the
proper time comes....”

She let go her grip of Celinda’s arm. The girl seemed to have poured out
all her rage. With arms hanging limp, she stood motionless, as though
repenting of her attack on her enemy.

Elena made good use of this momentary respite, and climbing into the
cart, tapped the driver on the shoulder to rouse him from the sleep in
which he had been quite undisturbed by the scene going on within two
feet.

As soon as they had progressed beyond the limits of the town, Elena
caught sight of the park and the crowd streaming around it. A rider was
cantering in the opposite direction as though coming back from the
party. With a great sweep of his hat he saluted her. Recognizing Manos
Duras, she smiled mechanically in response to his greeting. Then,
without seriously taking account of what she was doing, she beckoned to
him. The _gaucho_ instantly swung his horse around and rode up to the
cart, following alongside.

“How are you, _señora_? Why are you so pale?”

Elena made an effort to regain her serenity. She must still bear the
traces of her recent violent emotions, and she wanted to reach the
_fiesta_ tranquil and smiling. No one must divine the insult she had
just received....

As though eager to put an end as quickly as possible to her conversation
with Manos Duras, she asked him gayly,

“You told me one day that you admired me and that you were ready to do
anything I might ask you, no matter how terrible....”

Manos Duras again raised his hand to his hat in salutation and smiled,
showing his sharp wolf’s teeth.

“Command what you will, _señora_. Shall I kill someone for you?”

As he spoke he looked at her with eyes in which glittered a wolfish
desire. Elena pretended to shrink back in alarm from what his words
suggested.

“Kill! Oh no! What do you take me for? On the contrary, the favor I ask
of you ought to be one you take pleasure in granting. Well, we’ll talk
it over. I’ll let you know when I need you....”

As the _gaucho_ lingered over his farewells, she indicated with a
vigorous gesture that he must leave her. They were now near the site of
the “park” and it would scarcely do for the _marquesa_ to arrive without
her husband and with such an escort!

Manos Duras reined in his horse to watch the cart roll down the road.
For some minutes his eyes followed that most extraordinary and
fascinating of all the women he had ever encountered. Then, as she
passed out of sight, his submissive watch-dog’s expression changed to
one of harsh aggressiveness.

The guests were entering the artificial park in full view of the envious
populace who were constrained, by the _comisario’s_ vigilance, and that
of his four henchmen, to remain outside the wire fence. The guests were
for the most part Spanish and Italian merchants from the nearest small
towns. Some of them had come from as far as the island of Choel-Choel,
the last stopping place of the few boats navigating up the river. Also
the foremen and machinists of the works were arriving with their wives,
arrayed in the clothes that they kept packed away for their excursions
to Bahía Blanca or Buenos Aires.

Robledo was wandering through the short avenues of the park, looking
ironically about at Canterac’s absurd creation. Moreno was pointing out
with a good deal of pride the particularly admirable features of that
part of the work which he had attended to himself.

“The handsomest thing of all is a kind of summerhouse or shrine of
flowers at the end of the arbor. Undoubtedly the captain will try to
carry off the _marquesa_ and keep her there awhile, but she’s clever
enough, she’ll know how to get away when she wants to....”

He winked knowingly as he spoke of Canterac’s plans; then, very gravely,
by way of affirming still further his belief in the _marquesa’s_
prudence, he remarked that “she was not the kind of woman that some
people believed her to be.”

He seemed disposed to show Robledo the remarkable “shrine of flowers”
when suddenly he sped away, mumbling excuses, in the direction of the
entrance to the park. Elena was arriving! And, just as he ran, so did
her other admirers; but, after greeting them all three, she quite
frankly showed her preference for Watson, who had, with a somewhat more
dignified pace, also gone to meet her. Even while she talked to the
others she did not cease looking at the youth with caressing glances.
Robledo, watching the group from afar, was immediately aware of the
preference Elena was betraying for his young partner.

Annoyed by this discovery, he drew near to pay his respects to the guest
of honor. Then he turned to Watson, and, in a low tone, asked him to
take a turn through the tree-bordered _allée_. But Watson pretended not
to understand him. Finally Canterac, who, as the creator of the
_fiesta_, assumed an overwhelming superiority, interposed, and
separating Elena from the others, offered her his arm. He must show her
all the beauties of his park.... Robledo took advantage of this
diversion to lead Watson away under the trees. Scarcely were they alone
when, in a fatherly tone, and with a slight nod towards the woman who
was walking away down the path, leaning on Canterac’s arm, he said,

“Take care, Richard, my boy! This Circe of ours is trying to subdue you
too to her enchantments....”

But Watson, who had always listened deferentially to his partner up to
the present, now looked haughtily at him.

“I am old enough to know how to take care of myself,” he replied drily.
“Besides, when I want advice I shall ask for it.”

Muttering a few words that Robledo could not make out, young Watson
turned his back on him and left him.

Robledo was startled by the boy’s manner. Then he grew indignant.

“This woman again! She goes too far ... robbing me of my best
friend....”

The most interesting part of the _fiesta_, as far as the majority of the
guests were concerned, was about to begin. Friterini began to shout out
orders to the half-breeds who were to be the waitresses of the occasion.
On the tables, made of boards laid on small wooden horses, and covered
with recently laundered tablecloths, the rarest and most savory
delicacies of the boliche and the other dispensaries of meat and drink
in the immediate vicinity of Rio Negro, were being assembled. From
Europe and the distant parts of America came choice morsels that had a
flavor of tin and tin foil. There were potted meats from Chicago,
Frankfort’s famous sausages, French _pâté de foie gras_, Galician
sardines, peppers from Rioja, olives from Seville, all of them foods
that had crossed the ocean in metal boxes or wooden crates.

Most extraordinary of all were the drinks. Only a few _gringos_, those
who were natives of the so-called “Latin countries,” paid any attention
to the bottles of dusky wine. The other guests, especially the native
sons of the soil, considered all beverages of a reddish hue very
ordinary drinks indeed, and quite beneath their notice. In their opinion
the clearness and colorlessness of a wine was a mark of its
aristocracy. The popping of champagne corks resounded continuously. And
many were there who tossed off the sparkling wines as though they were
water.

“All this would be pretty expensive in Europe,” exclaimed a greasy-faced
Russian. “But here, with the difference in exchange!...”

The order-loving Moreno contemplated the increasing thirst of the guests
with considerable anxiety. At the same time, with mysterious gestures,
and words muttered in passing, he admonished the enthusiastic Friterini,
urging him to be sparing and prudent.

“Provided Canterac’s _pesos_ hold out!” he said to himself. “But it
begins to look as though we wouldn’t have money enough to pay for it
all.”

Meanwhile the Frenchman, with Elena on his arm, was walking under the
trees, or stopping to point out the largest of them to his companion.

“This is scarcely the park of Versailles, _bella marquesa_,” he was
saying, imitating the gallantry of past centuries. “But, however humble
it may be, it represents the great interest that one man here takes in
making himself agreeable to you....”

Pirovani, pretending to be absorbed in his thoughts, was following them
from a moderate distance. He could not conceal how much this garden
_fête_, conceived and executed by his rival, annoyed him. He had to
acknowledge that he would never have been able to think of anything like
this. It only proved what an advantage it was to have had an
education....

As he advanced through the artificial park he tried, without being seen,
to push with all his weight against the trees nearest him in the hope
that they would fall over. But his evil desires were of no avail. All
the trees stood firmly erect and immovable. That fool of a Moreno had
done things well in so far as helping Canterac was concerned.

But the Italian’s hands turned cold, and all his blood seemed to rush to
his heart when he saw the couple he was following disappear in an arbor
of dense foliage at the far end of a tree-bordered avenue. This was
Moreno’s “shrine of flowers.”

“Now the queen can sit on her throne,” said Canterac. And he pointed to
a rustic bench which had a kind of canopy over it, made of garlands of
foliage and paper flowers.

Excited by finding himself alone with the _marquesa_, the engineer began
to talk in an impassioned manner of his love for her and of the
sacrifices he was ready to make for her. He had often gone on in this
way before, but never with such intensity. Stimulated by the success of
his plans up to this point, he was nearly beside himself at the thought
of having a prolonged _tête à tête_ with Elena in the bower he had made
for her.

She sat down on the rustic bench with the engineer by her side but,
although still wearing a provocative smile, she seemed a trifle uneasy.
Canterac seized both her hands, and leaned over towards her mouth.
Elena, on her guard, eluded him, and struggled to free herself from his
grasp.

This struggle was going on when Pirovani appeared at the entrance to the
bower. But neither of its two occupants could see him. The contest
continued, Canterac bent on reaching the _marquesa’s_ lips, Elena,
unmindful now of her coquettish pruderies, violently repulsing him.

“This isn’t fair,” she panted. “And my hair will be all disarranged! You
are going to spoil my hat.... Do please stop! If you don’t I shall leave
you!”

She was defending herself so energetically that Pirovani thought it the
moment to intervene. He resolutely stepped into the “shrine.” At sight
of him Canterac let go his hold of Elena and stood up. While the
_marquesa_ picked up her hair pins and straightened her hat, the two men
glared at one another. Finally the Italian spoke.

“You seem in great haste,” he remarked sarcastically, “to collect your
pay for what the party has cost you.”

To Canterac it seemed so incredible that the contractor should dare
insult him to his face, and in the costly park that was his own
invention, that he remained speechless for several seconds. Then his
anger, the anger of the man accustomed to commanding and receiving
obedience, broke out in a cold blinding flash.

“What right have _you_ to speak to _me_?... I ought to have known better
than to have invited as my guest an ignorant immigrant, who has made his
money God knows how....”

Pirovani became furious, raging at receiving such an insult, and before
Elena. And, as the hot violence within him clamored for satisfaction, by
way of reply he threw himself upon the engineer and struck him a heavy
blow. In a flash the two men had come to grips and were bending
backwards and forwards in desperate attempts to gain the advantage; and
Elena, her serenity quite gone, was crying in alarm.

There was a general rush towards the bower, Robledo and Watson arriving
first, and together. The engineer and the contractor, tightly grasping
one another, were rolling on the floor, breaking down as they did so a
part of the “shrine.”

Pirovani, heavier and more powerful than Canterac, was crushing the
latter with his weight. Rage had made the contractor forget all the
Spanish he knew, and in Italian he was hurling out blasphemies alluding
to the Virgin and most of the inhabitants of Heaven, and imploring those
who were trying to separate him from the Frenchman to let him devour his
adversary’s “gizzard.” In a few seconds he had reverted to the years of
his adolescence when in some “gin shop” of the Genoese waterfront, he
would knock down some one of his companions in poverty, and roll on the
ground with him, pommelling him, and hurling epithets even more violent
than his blows.

By dint of vigorous pulling and the application of several fists, some
of the men finally succeeded in separating the two assailants. Watson,
with utter contempt for both of them, rushed to the _marquesa_ and stood
in an attitude of defense before her as though she were menaced by some
danger.

Robledo looked at the two rivals. Each one of them from the midst of the
group that had gathered round him, was insulting the other, eyes
blood-shot, tongues thick and stammering with rage. Both of them had for
the moment forgotten all the Spanish they had learnt, and were
ejaculating the worst words they knew in their respective native
languages.

Then he turned to look at the _marquesa_, who was sighing and exclaiming
like a child, while she leaned against Richard Watson.

“Now we’re in for it,” muttered Robledo to himself. “There’ll be murder
done yet for that woman!” and without looking again at Watson he turned
away.




CHAPTER XIII


Watson and Robledo finished their supper in silence. Their thoughts were
still busy with what had occurred a few hours earlier in the park of
Canterac’s invention.

An invisible wall seemed to have risen between them. Watson’s expression
was sombre, and he avoided looking at his partner. The latter, when from
time to time he looked at him, smiled bitterly. He could not now see
Watson without thinking of Elena. Undoubtedly it was she, tormented as
she was by her desire to control every man in whom she was interested,
who had aroused the young American’s feeling against his partner!

Watson got up from table with a few mumbled words, and picked up his
hat.

“So, he’s going to see her,” thought Robledo. “He is restless if he
can’t be by her side.”

In the main street Watson found various groups engaged in heated
discussion. The red rectangles of the windows and doors of the _boliche_
were frequently eclipsed by the shadows of the customers going in and
out. It was not hard to guess that the subject under discussion was the
scandalous occurrence of that afternoon, and that everyone was taking
sides either with the French engineer or the Italian contractor.

When he reached Elena’s house Sebastiana came out and stood at the top
of the outside staircase waiting for him to come up. She too, he could
see, was thinking about what had happened at the “park.”

The half-breed looked at Richard with a good deal of severity. “Ay,
those men!... Here was this _gringo_ who had seemed such a good young
man, and see how he was treating her little girl, her little Celinda! So
he was no different from the others....”

The young engineer walked in without meeting Sebastiana’s eye, and found
Elena in the drawing-room. She seemed to be expecting him.

He was about to sit down in an arm-chair, but she would have none of it.

“No, no, here beside me--so no one will hear us.”

And he sat down on the sofa beside her.

She was pale, and there was a hard expression in her eyes, as though she
were still in the grip of recent and very disagreeable experiences. The
fist-fight between Pirovani and Canterac now occupied second place in
her thoughts. The thing that was in the very forefront of her mind was
the image of Celinda with her up-raised whip. At that image she trembled
with anger.

But Richard’s punctual arrival made her forget her resentment. So, he
was glad to grant her request that he spend the evening with her.... She
saw that he was looking somewhat uneasily at the doors leading into the
room.

“No one will come in,” she reassured him. “My husband is in his room, a
little upset by some bad news from home that he received today.... A
family affair, that doesn’t much concern me.”

With a sudden softening in her voice she went on,

“How grateful I am for your having come! I fairly shook with terror at
the thought of spending these hours alone.... I am so frightfully bored
here! That is why I begged you when we parted this afternoon not to
leave me all alone....”

And she caught up Watson’s hand, and looked at him with a caress in her
eyes.

The young man was agreeably flattered by her glances, but at once there
arose in his mind a memory of what had happened earlier that day.

“What were those men fighting about? Was it about you?”

She did not answer at once; finally, looking away, she said with a kind
of surrender,

“Perhaps, but I despise them both. You are the only man here I care
about, Ricardo.”

She laid her hands on his shoulders; and with a feline undulation she
brought her face close to his.

“I suspect,” she murmured, “I suspect that we two are going to go beyond
the limits of friendship....”

Stimulated by the novelty of being alone with one another, they became
conscious of the daring and vehement desire burning hotly within them.
In a few short minutes they were going to cover a distance that in his
inexperience he thought would have required several long days’ journeys.
She, meanwhile, thought of the young Amazon whose riding-whip had almost
struck her in the face. Her outraged vanity, and her desire for
vengeance, made her decide upon a cynical course of action; she laughed
to herself and her laugh was reflected in a cruel glint in her eyes.

“If you’re jealous you ought to have some reason for it,” Elena was
thinking. “I’ll pay you back for your whip-blow.”

In addition, when she perceived that those other two men had fought one
another in her presence without causing her any but the most trifling
emotion, she decided, with a lack of logic characteristic of her
unbalanced brain, that the surest way to make peace between them was to
give herself to a third, one who should be more deserving of her
interest.

To Watson, since the moment when two men had tried to kill one another
for her sake, this woman seemed all the more beautiful and desirable. A
feeling of male pride and sex vanity mingled with the emotions that
Elena’s words and the contact with her graceful body were arousing in
him.

The hands on his shoulders had imperceptibly crept closer and closer
together. They met, and the young American felt himself imprisoned by
two beautiful arms. Something awakened in his thoughts, like a little
flame in a dying fire. He thought he saw before him the sad, noble face
of his comrade Torre Bianca, and he tried to shake his head--“No!” and
draw back, pushing Elena away.... He couldn’t betray his friend.... It
was unworthy of him to act in this fashion, under Torre Bianca’s own
roof. Then he saw himself and Celinda riding happily along together.
Again he tried to move his head “No!” He blinked and looked profoundly
distressed, trying to defend himself, and at the same time certain that
he would be unable to do so.

“Poor little _Flor de Rio Negro_!” he thought.

The arms wound around his neck pressed gently against him, drawing his
head slowly toward Elena’s face; her hungry lips were close to his. Then
their mouths met, and Richard thought the kiss would never end.

He felt all the surprise of one who on entering a marvelous palace, sees
the doors of a second and even more beautiful hall standing wide open
before him; and he passes on through a third and a fourth, until he is
lost in the succession of dazzling rooms opening their doors to him.

He trembled at what her mouth revealed; shudders ran down his back.

At that moment, confusedly he thought, just like all the other simple
folk at the dam who were in mad pursuit of Elena--“This is woman, the
real woman who rules the world.... It is only the women who have known
the elegances of life who are worthy of a man’s admiration and
worship....”

His hands, as he tried to free himself from the power that threatened to
drown his will, came in contact with the soft curves of her body....

Suddenly from the other side of the door came a vigorous knocking.
Sebastiana was pounding away on the bare boards with her knuckles, in
this fashion asking permission to enter, for the half-breed was too
well-trained to come in without announcing her intention. However,
before asking permission in this way, she always took the precaution to
look through the keyhole. When, finally, her head appeared between the
two wooden slides of the door, she said, lowering her malicious eyes,

“My old boss, don Pirovani, wants to see the _marquesa_. He seems to be
in a hurry.”

Richard stood up to go. Elena gave him to understand that she would get
rid of the intruder in short order. But the young man had regained his
composure, and, aware of the peril he had just escaped, he asked for
nothing better than to make use of the opportunity to escape. He didn’t
want to stay alone with her again! At the door he almost fell over the
contractor who came in, bowing from afar to the “_señora marquesa_.”
Watson shook hands with him and hurried away.

Elena scarcely took the trouble to hide her anger at this inopportune
call, and received the Italian with quite obvious ill-humor.

She remained standing to indicate that his stay was to be short, but
pre-occupied by his own troubles, he asked if he might sit down, and
before Elena could reply, he sank into a chair. Elena merely leaned
against the edge of the table.

“My husband is ill,” she said, “and I must look after him. It isn’t
anything to worry about ... just an unfortunate occurrence in his
family. But now let’s talk about you. What brings you here at this
hour?”

Pirovani delayed answering, in order to make his words more impressive
when he did finally utter them.

“The _señor_ Canterac says that after what happened this afternoon we
must have a duel to the death.”

Elena was thinking only of Watson, and this man’s arrival, putting the
young American to flight, made her tremble with nervousness. But for his
news, she had only a slight shrug. It really didn’t interest her! Then
she tried to conceal her indifference by saying,

“I don’t see anything so strange about that. If I were a man I would do
the same.”

Pirovani, who up to that time had been uncertain as to how he felt about
Canterac’s challenge, got up with an air of tremendous resolution.

“Then,” he said, “if you think it is all right, there is nothing more to
be said. I’ll fight with the Frenchman, and I’ll fight with half the
world if necessary, so that you’ll be convinced that I am worthy of your
esteem.”

As he spoke he took Elena’s hand. But it lay so inert in his own that he
was discouraged, and let go of it. She looked wearily towards the
interior of the house where her husband was, indicating to Pirovani that
he was to take his leave. The Italian made haste to obey, but while he
moved towards the door he irritated her still more with words and
gestures designed to inspire admiration for his devotion and heroism.

As soon as she was alone, Elena called shrilly for Sebastiana. The
half-breed was slow in coming to her mistress. She had been escorting
her former employer to the street.

“See if you can find the _señor_ Watson!” ordered Elena hastily. “He
can’t be so far away. Tell him to come back.”

The half-breed smiled, lowered her malicious eyes, and said innocently,

“It isn’t so easy to overtake him. He flew out of here like a shot from
a gun. The devil must have been after him!”

When he left his former house Pirovani went to see Robledo, whom he
found reading a book that was propped up against the kerosene lamp in
the centre of the table. When the Spaniard saw his caller he greeted him
with exclamations and reproaches.

“What got into you? Why do a thing like that?... A man of your years and
reputation!... You’re not a fifteen-year-old fighting for your
sweetheart!”

The Italian rejected this admonition with a haughty gesture, judging it
rather tardy. Then he said solemnly, and as if his own words intoxicated
his vanity,

“I am fighting a duel to the death with Captain Canterac, and I want you
and Moreno to be my seconds.”

Robledo broke out into exclamations of scandalized impatience.

“But what do you take me for? Do you think that I am going in for any of
your nonsense, and make a fool of myself just to keep you company?”

And he went on with a vigorous tirade against Pirovani’s absurd request,
the latter nodding obstinately all the while. He was determined to face
everything now after what Elena had said.

“I am a man of humble birth,” he said, “I know nothing except how to
work; and I’ve got to show everybody that I’m not afraid of this
gentleman, accustomed as he is to handling weapons.”

Robledo shrugged at these words, more absurd than anything that had
preceded them. Finally he grew tired of his useless protests.

“I see that I might as well give up my attempts to knock a little common
sense into you. Very well; I’ll consent to acting as your
representative, but on condition that the affair be settled by reason
and not by a duel.”

The contractor assumed the attitude becoming to a gentleman whose honor
has just been slighted.

“No. I wish to have a duel ... and to the death. I am not a coward and I
didn’t come here to find a way out.”

Then he gave expression to what he was thinking.

“Although I never had much education, I know what ought to be done in
cases like this one. And further, I know how certain people of high
station look at it. I must fight, and I shall fight.”

He spoke with such sincerity that Robledo felt sure Elena must have
inspired in him this ridiculous resolution. Undoubtedly she was the
person “of high station” who had advised poor Pirovani! Looking
pityingly at him, he yet abruptly and emphatically refused to act as
second.

Convinced finally that nothing was to be gained by further argument,
Pirovani went away and betook himself to Moreno’s.

The next day, early in the morning, don Carlos Rojas, standing in the
doorway of his ranch house, saw a rider approaching. The horseman was
wearing “city clothes,” and his mount made the rancher smile. It was
Moreno.

“Where are you going on that graveyard nag, friend ink-spiller? Stop a
while and have a _mate_ with me, eh _amigo_?”

They both went into the room used as a parlor and office, and while a
small servant prepared the _mate_, Moreno caught a glimpse through a
doorway of the rancher’s daughter sitting in a wicker chair; she looked
worried and unhappy, and in her feminine dress seemed to have lost the
joyous, rebellious audacity which she always seemed to possess when she
wore boy’s clothes.

Moreno bowed to her from the room where he sat, and she acknowledged his
salutation with a sad little smile.

“There, you see! She’s not herself at all, not the same girl any more.
Anyone would think she was sick. That’s the way it is with young
people!”

Celinda shook her head. Sick? Oh no, that wasn’t it.... Then she left
the room so that her father and his guest might speak more freely
together.

When they had sipped their first cup of _mate_, Rojas offered Moreno a
cigar, “so that he would have something to puff at”; then lighting his
own, he prepared to listen.

“What brings you to these parts, old boy?... You’re not much for riding,
and when you come as far as this, it must be for some reason.”

Moreno went on smoking with the calm of an oriental who considers it
advisable to excite the curiosity of the person addressing him before
taking any part in the conversation.

“Don Carlos,” he said at last, “as a young fellow you had a good deal to
do with firearms. When I was in Buenos Aires I heard that you’d fought
in several duels on account of women.”

Rojas looked cautiously about to see whether his daughter happened to be
within earshot. Then he smiled with all the fatuous vanity of a man well
on in years at the memory of the bold, wild follies of his youth, and
said, with an affectation of modesty,

“Bah! Nobody remembers that now! Boyish pranks ... they don’t do that
sort of thing these days.”

Moreno thought it proper to suspend the conversation by a long pause;
then he announced,

“Canterac and Pirovani are fighting a duel tomorrow. They are going to
shoot to kill.”

Don Carlos was frankly amazed.

“But such things are out of style!... And here in this desert of a
place?”

Moreno nodded and remained silent. The rancher also refrained from
speaking but he looked questioningly at his caller. What in the world
had he, don Rojas, to do with all this? And was it simply for the
pleasure of giving him this bit of news that the government clerk had
taken such a long ride?

“The captain,” said Moreno, “has arranged with the _marqués_ of Torre
Bianca and the _gringo_ Watson to be his seconds. As they’re both of
them his colleagues, they can’t very well refuse.”

This seemed quite a matter of course to Rojas. But what the devil was it
to him who the seconds were!

“Pirovani has only one second so far. That is myself,” Moreno continued.
“I came to ask you to help us out, don Rojas. You know how to act in
this sort of affair. I wish you’d serve with me as a second for our
Italian friend.”

But the rancher protested vehemently.

“Drop all this fool business, man! Why should I get mixed up in the
squabbles of these people? They’re all my friends ... and anyway, I’m
too old to have anything to do with this sort of thing. I don’t care to
make that kind of splurge, not at my age....”

But Moreno was not to be put off so easily, and several minutes of
heated argument followed. Finally the rancher gave some signs of
abandoning his first position. He was more won over by what seemed to
him the mysterious nature of this duel than by any of Moreno’s pleas. As
a second he might learn some curious and interesting things....

“Well, then, I’ll do what you want. What the devil will this ink-spiller
be after me for next?”

Then he smiled slyly, slapping Moreno on the leg, and asked him,
lowering his voice,

“And why do they want to kill one another? About a woman eh?... Sure as
I breathe, that _marquesa_ has something to do with it ... she seems to
drive all the men around her crazy....”

Moreno assumed a mysterious expression, at the same time raising his
finger to his lips to impress Rojas with the need for caution.

“Careful, don Carlos! Remember that the _marqués_ will be acting with us
as a second in this duel.... Perhaps, even, as an expert in this sort of
thing he will manage the whole affair.”

The rancher began to laugh, again slapping his friend on the leg. So
hearty was his laughter that at times he raised his hand to his throat
as though choking in the outbursts of his amusement.

“That’s a pretty thing, eh? So the husband is going to superintend the
duel! And the fight is about his wife.... But these _gringos_ are an
amusing lot.... I’d like to see this business through! It beats anything
I ever heard of....”

Then he added gravely,

“Yes, I’ll act as second. This is better than a play in Buenos Aires, or
one of those movies my little girl is so crazy about....”

In the early afternoon, after lunching at the ranch, Moreno returned to
the settlement; he dismounted in front of Pirovani’s house.

Torre Bianca was walking up and down in the room he used as an office.
He was in mourning and looked even more unhappy and discouraged than
usual. In his pacing back and forth he stopped every now and then beside
a table on which was an open case containing a brace of revolvers. He
had spent a good part of the afternoon cleaning the weapons and looking
at them meditatively, as though the sight of them evoked distant
memories. But at moments he forgot the revolvers and gazed at a
photograph beside them on the table; it was his mother’s, and as he
looked at it tears filled his eyes.

After a ceremonious salutation Moreno hastened to assure him that he had
found another second, and that he came fully authorized by him to
discuss the preparations for the duel. The _marqués_ acknowledged his
speech with a bow, and showed him the case of weapons.

“I brought them from Europe. They have played a part in several affairs
at least as serious as this one. Look them over carefully. We have no
others and they will have to be found acceptable by both parties.”

The government clerk indicated that he considered such an examination as
the _marqués_ suggested quite unnecessary, and that whatever the latter
thought fit to suggest he would find quite acceptable.

The _marqués_ went on talking with a courtly dignity which deeply
impressed Moreno.

“This poor worthy gentleman doesn’t really know what this situation is,”
he thought. “Yet he is so good and likeable.... He evidently hasn’t the
faintest conception of what has been going on, of what his wife has been
up to ... nor of the unfortunate part that he himself is going to
play....”

“As neither of the two parties wishes to give any explanations, and as
the offence is unquestionably serious, the duel will have to be to the
death. Don’t you agree with me?”

Moreno had assumed a portentously solemn expression just as soon as he
perceived how serious this conversation was to be, and now he silently
nodded his approbation.

“My principal,” the _marqués_ continued, “will not be satisfied with
anything less than three shots at twenty paces, with five seconds for
taking aim.”

Moreno blinked to show how amazed he was by these conditions, and wished
to indicate that he was opposed to accepting them, but he remembered a
second interview that he had had that morning with Pirovani before he
set out for the Rojas ranch.

The Italian had appeared to be transformed by his bellicose enthusiasm.
He rejoiced in this opportunity to present himself to the “_señora
marquesa_” in the light of a novel hero.

“Accept all the conditions,” he said to Moreno, “however frightful they
may be. I want to make it quite dear that even though I started out in
life a simple workman, I am more courageous and more of a gentleman than
this French captain!”

So the government employee ended by nodding.

“Tonight,” the _marqués_ continued, “all four seconds are to meet at
Watson’s place to put the conditions into writing, and tomorrow as soon
as it is light, the duel will take place.”

Pirovani’s representative called attention to the fact that don Carlos
Rojas would not be able to be present at this meeting because he had
that afternoon set out for Fuerte Sarmiento in search of a doctor for
the duel. But his friend had authorized him to subscribe to any
conditions that might be set down. Whereupon the two seconds considered
the interview at an end.

As Moreno went out of the house, he saw the police commissioner standing
at the foot of the stairs leading to the street. Evidently the
_comisario_ was waiting for him. And don Roque did not take long to
express his indignation.

“You people seem to think that you can do anything you like, just as
though there were no law in the land, no authority, no anything, just as
though the Indians were still running it. Well, I’m the police
commissioner, though you don’t seem to know it, and it’s my job to keep
other people from doing all the crazy things that they take it into
their heads to do. When is that duel to take place? I must know.”

Moreno was not disposed to give the information requested of him, and
the _comisario_, in view of this disinclination to obey, went on in a
gentler tone,

“You might as well tell me without making any bones about it. You know
very well that there isn’t one of you who would approve of such a thing
taking place with me present in the town. Tell me when the thing is
coming off.... So I can get out before it happens.”

Moreno murmured something in his ear and the _comisario_ acknowledged
the confidence by grasping the official’s hand. Then he walked towards
his horse who was hitched near by, and just as he was about to mount
him, he added, very low,

“I am going to spend the night in Fuerte Sarmiento and I won’t be back
until tomorrow afternoon. Do whatever you like.... I know nothing about
it!”




CHAPTER XIV


The last of the customers to leave the _boliche_ that evening were going
home when Robledo stopped in front of the house Elena occupied.

He went softly up the stairs and, after a few seconds of hesitation,
knocked gently at the door. After a very brief interval it opened, and
Sebastiana appeared, thoroughly surprised at being summoned in this
fashion just as she was going to bed. Her coarse hair was arranged in
numerous braids, each one of which was tied at the end with a knot of
ribbon or string, and with her enormous arms she tried to conceal a part
of her copper-colored and exuberant bosom, freed from the compression of
her corset. Her wrathful eyes, which gave warning of the hailstorm of
abusive words with which she was planning to receive the importunate
disturber of her peace, softened at sight of Robledo, and before he had
time to speak, she was saying in the most amiable tone in the world,

“The mistress is in her bedroom, and the _señor marqués_ has gone out
with his accursed pistol case. I thought he was at your house ... but
come in, I’ll go call the _señora_.”

Robledo had good reason to know that Torre Bianca had gone to see him,
but he felt it imperative to speak to the _marquesa_. However, he
hesitated about stepping into the house. He had no desire to find
himself alone with Elena. Besides, his interview with her must be of the
briefest. Torre Bianca might return at any moment, and it would be
awkward to explain his presence there when a few minutes earlier he had
been talking with the _marqués_ at his house.

“I want to see your mistress for just a second.... It would be better if
she just leaned out of her bedroom window....”

The half-breed closed the door, and Robledo went along the outside
balcony past several windows. One of them opened a few moments later and
Elena, her hair hanging loose, and a dressing gown thrown negligently
about her shoulders, but leaving much of her arms and breast exposed,
leaned out.

She had gotten up quickly, and appeared startled. Even before Robledo
spoke she asked anxiously,

“Has something happened to Watson? Why are you here at this hour?”

Robledo smiled ironically; then he answered,

“Watson is quite well. My being here at such an hour as this is on some
other man’s account.”

He looked at her with severity and added slowly,

“Within a few hours’ time two men are going to kill one another. This is
a horrible absurdity which makes it quite impossible for me to sleep
tonight. So I have come to say to you, Elena, stop this frightful thing,
for heaven’s sake!”

As soon as she felt certain that Robledo’s business in no wise concerned
Watson, Elena replied, with little concealed ill-humor,

“What do you want me to do? They can fight if they choose. That’s what
men are born for.”

Robledo heard these words with a gesture of astonishment. How cruel they
sounded!

“Although I am a woman,” she continued, “these matters don’t alarm me.
Federico fought a duel for me when we were first married. Several men in
my country risked their lives in duels for me in the hope of making
themselves agreeable in this way. I never interfered in any of them.”

An expression of contempt passed over her face as she added,

“Do you really think that I am going to ask these two gentlemen not to
risk their precious lives on my account, just so afterwards they can ask
me for something in return? Anyway, if I interfered, each one of them
would believe that I was interested in him ... and I don’t care a snap
for either of them. If it were some other man who was concerned, I might
grant your request....”

Robledo raised his head slightly at the phrase “some other man,” and for
a moment saw clearly before him the image of his partner. The expression
in Elena’s eyes grew gentle.

“Go to bed and sleep peacefully, just as I shall, Robledo. Let those two
vain male creatures announce all they like that they are going to kill
one another. Nothing serious will happen, you’ll see!”

She made a motion as though to draw back into the bedroom, for a crowd
of “_jejenes_” and other insects attracted by her fragrant flesh were
beginning to swarm around her shoulders, and she had to ward them off by
constant slaps while she spoke.

“If you see Watson tell him that I expected him all day. With all this
commotion about the duel I suppose it was impossible for him to get
away.... Till tomorrow then, and rest easy! There’s no need to
worry....”

She closed the window, pretending a childish fear of the mosquitoes, and
Robledo retired, defeated.

At the same hour Canterac, seated at his work table, was finishing a
long letter with these words,

“ ...and this is my last request. I hope you will grant it. Good-by, my
sons! Forgive me!”

He folded the sheet of paper and put it in an envelope which he placed
methodically in the pocket of a coat hanging near him.

“If luck’s against me tomorrow,” he thought, “they’ll find this letter
on my person. Before the duel I’ll ask Watson to send it to my family,
in case....”

An hour later his opponent was entering Moreno’s lodgings.

The government employee had returned just a short time before from the
meeting with Canterac’s seconds. Pirovani spoke haltingly, struggling
hard to conceal his emotion.

He had just left two letters on Moreno’s table, one of them very bulky,
with the envelope still unsealed, showing the contents to be a folio of
close written sheets. The Italian had been writing most of the night,
trying to condense his affairs into such form as could be jotted down on
these sheets. He pointed to the less voluminous of the two letters.

“That is for my daughter,” he said gravely. “Send it to her if anything
final happens to me....”

Moreno tried to laugh as though he couldn’t at all believe in the
possibility of a fatality. But he stopped his feigned merriment abruptly
when the contractor went on in a still graver voice,

“This thicker envelope contains an authorization duly made out, by means
of which you will be able to collect the money the government owes me,
and other sums at the bank. A man as competent as you ought to find it
possible, by means of all that I have prepared for you in this packet,
to take over my business. I am also leaving a will, appointing you my
daughter’s guardian. You are the only man here, Moreno, in whom I place
my confidence. Even though now and then you have been more on my enemy’s
side than mine ... but that doesn’t matter! I know that you are honest,
and I am entrusting my daughter and my fortune to you,--everything I
have in the world.”

Moreno was so moved by this proof of confidence in him that he was
forced to raise a hand to his eyes. Then he stood up to grasp the
Italian’s hand, and with broken phrases expressed his intention of
fulfilling with the utmost exactitude the obligation laid upon him. He
vowed that he would devote himself to the care of his friend’s daughter
and fortune, if the duel should result fatally for him.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sunrise; a meadow overgrown with fine grass, along the river bank; at
the far end, some old willows, their roots half exposed to the air.
Slowly dying, they lay across the stream, and it seemed as though at any
moment they might fall into it.

A gloomy spot at best; and it was here that Elena’s friends had elected
to fight their duel. The light striking horizontally and almost level
with the surface of the ground, elongated the shadows of the human
figures and the trees, making them seem fantastic and unreal.

Pirovani arrived first, escorted by Moreno and don Carlos, all of them
dressed in black. But the contractor was distinguished from those who
accompanied him by his coat, which was new and of a solemn cut. He had
received it the preceding week from Buenos Aires. It was the creation of
a well-known tailor there of whom he had ordered a complete outfit of
clothes similar to those made for the most fastidious millionaires of
the capital.

Behind this group came a tall, heavy old man, whose nose was purplish
and bulbous, due to excessive use of alcohol through a long and
prosperous life. He carried a surgeon’s instrument case. This was the
doctor whom Rojas had gone to fetch the day before.

A few minutes later Canterac, Torre Bianca and Watson arrived. The
captain and the _marqués_ wore long frock coats, less striking than
Pirovani’s, and black neckties, just as though they were officiating at
a funeral. Watson alone wore a dark-colored business suit.

After ceremoniously saluting his antagonist and the latter’s seconds
from afar, Canterac began to walk up and down along the river bank,
pretending to amuse himself watching the birds who were displaying their
customary morning animation, or throwing stones into the current. The
contractor did not wish to make a less gallant showing; bent on
imitating the captain in everything, he also walked up and down near
the willows, and looked at the river. And thus both of them continued
promenading up and down, like two automatons, each on that part of the
bank he had selected.

Torre Bianca, who because of his experience in such matters, directed
the arrangements, began to pace out distances. He asked Watson for the
two canes that the latter had foresightedly brought with him, and stuck
one into the ground. Then he looked toward the sun with one hand over
his eyes in order to discover just how the light struck; and then once
more he measured out twenty paces.

“Twenty,” he said, and stuck in the second cane.

Then he went up to the other seconds, drew out a coin, and after a word
from Moreno, tossed it into the air. As it fell, the government employee
said to Rojas,

“We have won, don Carlos. We can choose our ground.”

The _marqués_, who had brought his pistol case, spread it open on the
grass. With elaborate care and deliberation he loaded the weapons,
producing the same coin in order to consult chance once again. As the
metal disc fell, Moreno leaned over to look at it and said to the
rancher,

“Luck is with us. We can choose the revolver we prefer.”

Then Pirovani’s seconds went to bring him up to that one of the canes
they had chosen. The _marqués_ and Watson conducted their principal to
the spot marked by the second cane.

Meanwhile the doctor somewhat confusedly set about his preparations. It
was the first time that he had witnessed a duel. With one knee on the
ground he opened his instrument case and began to unroll bandages, open
medicine flasks, and examine the condition of his instruments.

The antagonists stood facing one another, Canterac rigid, his face grave
but inexpressive, like a soldier awaiting the word of command.
Pirovani’s eyes glowed like coals, he looked aggressive, furious. When
Moreno came up to him to give him a revolver, he said, very low,

“You watch me kill him. I know I’m going to do it....”

But then he forgot his homicidal hopes to add,

“I wish they would explain clearly to me how much time I can have to
take aim. I don’t want to make any mistake, and be taken for an
ignoramus who doesn’t understand these affairs.”

The two opponents held their pistols aloft, the barrels point up. Moreno
noticed that Pirovani’s coat was unbuttoned and carefully buttoned it.
Then he turned up the Italian’s collar so that the white of his shirt
could not be seen. Meanwhile, Torre Bianca was examining Canterac, who
was correctly buttoned up, in military fashion, but he too needed to
have his coat collar turned up. Both men, before taking their weapons,
had removed their hats and given them to the seconds.

Taking a stand between them both, the _marqués_ removed a paper from his
pocket and read slowly:

“ ..._Secondly, the director of the duel will clap his hands three
times, whereupon the principals are to take aim and fire when they are
ready, in the interval between the first and the third handclap._”

“_Thirdly, if one of the two principals fires after the third handclap
he will be disqualified, and declared an outlaw to the gentleman’s
code._”

Pirovani, with his pistol held above him, thrust his head forward and
looked toward the marqués so as to hear better, and he nodded at each
word that came from Torre Bianca. Canterac remained impassive, as though
listening to something that was perfectly familiar to him.

The _marqués_ went on reading, and finally put away the sheet of paper
and addressed both antagonists.

“It is my duty to ask those here present if they are able to come to
terms without firing. Is it possible for you gentlemen to settle this
difficulty without having recourse to the duel? Does either of you wish
to offer excuses to the other?”

Pirovani violently shook his head. “No!” Canterac remained motionless.
Not a line of his sombre expression softened.

The _marqués_ spoke again, removing his hat with mournful solemnity,

“Then fate is to decide between you, and each of you is to comply with
the requirements of the field of honor.”

He took a few steps backward, keeping the combatants in full view. Then
he raised his hand. Were they ready? Pirovani nodded. His adversary
continued motionless.

The _marqués_ brought his hands to within a few inches of one another,
indicating that he was ready to give the first handclap. Every motion
that he made was so slow that it assumed a tragic solemnity.

The other seconds, at a considerable distance from him, were looking on
with ill-dissimulated emotion. Still kneeling near his instrument case,
the doctor was looking up with wide-open eyes.

The _marqués_ brought his hands together, slowly uttering “Fire....
One....”

Both men brought their revolvers down simultaneously.

Pirovani, whose sole thought at that moment was that he must not shoot
after the third handclap, fired at once. His opponent blinked one eye,
and the muscles of his cheek on the same side contracted slightly, as
though he had felt a projectile brush close by. But he at once recovered
his impassivity and went on taking aim.

The _marqués_ clapped his hands again. “Two!”

When Pirovani saw that he had not wounded his enemy, and that now he
stood disarmed before him, there passed over his face like a swift
cloud, an expression of pure fear. But it had gone in an instant. Then,
looking at Canterac who was still taking aim, he crossed his arms,
pointing his own useless revolver at his breast, and, as though defying
death, presented himself full face to the shot.

Moreno clutched Rojas by the shoulder.

“_Pucha!_ ... He is going to kill him,” he said between his teeth.

Torre Bianca gave the third clap. “Three!” But the instant before
Canterac had fired.

There was a general rush in one direction. Only the captain remained
motionless, one arm hanging by his side, the still smoking revolver in
his left hand.

Pirovani lay stretched on the ground, an inert mass. The men who reached
him first saw a thread of blood coming from the top of his head, and
running out, a miniature stream, on the grass. Then his head was hidden
from view, for every one was crowding around the fallen body, leaning
over to hear what the doctor was saying.

In a few moments the latter looked up, and stammered,

“There’s nothing to be done ... he’s dead!”

Seeing that Canterac was approaching to learn what had been the effect
of his shot, Torre Bianca went up to him, quickening his steps. His
gesture told Canterac what had happened even before he spoke.

His second judged it necessary to get him away from the field and
ordered him to follow. On the other side of the sand dunes a vehicle was
waiting. It was the same one that had transported Elena to the garden
party.

When this cart deposited them in front of the house that had once
belonged to Pirovani, both men stood hesitant.... Torre Bianca could not
ask the captain to enter the house of the man he had just shot; nor did
Canterac dare move towards it.

So they were standing, unable to make a decision, when Robledo appeared.
He had evidently been prowling about the vicinity to learn some news of
the event. When he saw Canterac, he looked questioningly at him.

“And the other ...?”

Canterac bowed his head, and the _marqués_ with a gesture told Robledo
what had happened.

All three men stood silent. Finally the Frenchman said very low,

“My career is ended, my family lost to me.... And the most frightful
part of it all is that I can feel no hate when I think of that poor
man.... What is to become of me?”

Robledo was the only one of the three capable at that moment of coming
to a determined decision.

“The first thing you must do, Canterac, is to get away. There’ll be a
great stir about this affair. We won’t be able to hush it up as though
it were a fist-fight in the _boliche_. You must get away to the Andes,
at once. When you get into Chile you can wait there.... Everything in
this world can be settled somehow ... perhaps well, perhaps badly, but
settled somehow.”

The Frenchman, however, had lost his grip for the moment. What could he
do? He had no money ... he had spent it all for that mad garden
party.... How could he live in Chile? He knew no one there....

Robledo took his arm and pulled him gently away from the others.

“The first thing to do is to get away,” he repeated. “I’ll see that you
have what you need to do that. Come!”

Canterac however hesitated to obey. He was looking back at Torre Bianca.

“Before I go,” he murmured, “I would like to say good-by to the
_marquesa_.”

Robledo listened with a pitying smile to this plea. Then he took hold of
him with paternal superiority.

“Let’s not lose time,” he said. “Look after yourself, and nobody else.
The _marquesa_ has other things to think about.”

And he took Canterac with him to his quarters.

All that day the town seethed with the news of the duel. Indeed some of
the inhabitants treated the occasion as a holiday. In the main street
thick groups of men and women gathered, talking, gesticulating, and
casting hostile glances at the house that had once been the
contractor’s. Torre Bianca’s name, and his wife’s, were bandied about
even more frequently than those of the men who had fought the duel.

Some of the _gauchos_ who were friends of Manos Duras passed in and out
among the groups. Apparently the recent event had quite overshadowed the
hostility existing between them and the people of the settlement.

In the middle of the afternoon Manos Duras himself came riding up the
main street. He stared with profound interest at the dead man’s house.
Some of the half-breed girls spoke to him. What did he think of that
woman who made the men around her kill one another in cold blood?... But
the notorious _gaucho_ merely shrugged, and smiling contemptuously,
passed on.

Three of his friends were waiting for him at the _boliche_. They were
men who lived the greater part of the year in the foothills of the
Andes. Recently they had been paying him a visit at his ranch. Under
other circumstances don Roque would have been alarmed to learn of this
fact. He would have suspected that these pals of the _gaucho’s_ were
preparing some shameless piece of cattle rustling. But at that
particular moment the most important persons at the dam were giving the
_comisario_ far more to worry about than the thieving _gauchos_ had ever
done.

When Manos Duras stepped into the “_Almacén del Gallego_,” he noticed
that there were many more customers there than on other workday
afternoons. Everyone was talking about the contractor’s death.

“That woman did it all,” someone was shouting. “She’s to blame for the
whole thing, the--!”

Manos Duras bethought him of the afternoon when he had first seen the
_marquesa_; and the memory was enough to make him look as aggressively
at the man who was talking as though the words contained an insult for
him.

“If two men chose to fight with bullets for this lady, what have you got
to say about it?... I’m just as ready as they were to draw a bead on
anyone who insults her.... Come on now, let’s see if there’s one of you
dares step on my poncho....”

This _gaucho_ challenge was received in silence by the _Gallego’s_
patrons. When the talk began again it was about subjects that Manos
Duras could not take exception to.

At nightfall Torre Bianca from one of his windows looked wonderingly at
the groups of people in the street. Their number had noticeably
increased. Then he noticed that the _comisario_, who had just returned
from Fuerte Sarmiento, was going about talking to different people in
the crowd, urging them to go home. When he saw the _marqués_ at the
window the police commissioner raised his hat to him.

Men and women turned to stare at Elena’s husband. Many of the glances
turned in his direction were hostile, but no one dared make any
demonstration against him.

Torre Bianca could not conceal his amazement at having so many eyes
fastened upon him. Then he took in the fact that there was something
very unfriendly in the glances coming his way. Haughtily, but sadly, he
closed the window. He did not understand.

A little later Sebastiana opened the house door and leaned over the
railing of the balcony. She was irresistibly attracted by this crowd in
which she spied many old friends. But when they saw her, the women who
were in the street began to gesticulate and shriek out insults.

Annoyed by such an incomprehensible reception, she replied in the same
fashion; but crushed finally by the strength of numbers of her enemies,
and seeing that several of the men were joining in the attack on her,
contributing loud guffaws and vile names, she retired defeated. Her
meditations in the kitchen during the next few hours brought her to an
alarming conclusion. Every woman of the region, even though she might
formerly have been a friend, would now be against her because she was in
the service of the _marquesa_!

At about the same time of the day, Watson returned to town. After the
morning’s tragedy he had accompanied the seconds and the doctor while
they transported the victim’s body to a dilapidated ranch house near the
river. Then they determined to remove it to Fuerte Sarmiento, since
Pirovani was to be buried there, in order to avoid the outbreaks that
would be imminent if this ceremony were performed in La Presa.

As he was riding into town, just as he reached the first houses of the
settlement he encountered Canterac.

The latter also was on horseback; and he wore a sombrero and a poncho
just like the _gauchos_. From his saddle hung a sack of the kind used by
the cow-punchers to carry clothing and various belongings.

As soon as Watson recognized him he stopped to say good-by, for Canterac
had all the appearance of one prepared to cross the Patagonian desert.

Canterac, by way of replying to his question, pointed to that part of
the horizon where the first stars were beginning to glitter over the
invisible Andes. Then he told him that he counted on spending the night
at a ranch near Fuerte Sarmiento, and that he would probably be under
way again before dawn.

“Good-by, Watson,” he said. “It would have been a good thing for us if
that woman had never come here. Strange, in what a different light I see
things now. But ... it’s too late.”

For a few seconds he looked hesitatingly at the youth; then finally with
decision, he said,

“I’ve earned at least the right to speak through my folly ... listen to
what I am going to say, and don’t be offended if I give you advice that
you don’t ask for.... Never let anything come between you and Robledo,
boy.... There are few souls in this world like his. It’s thanks to him
that I am getting away. Everything in this outfit belongs to him....
Don’t trust anyone who speaks ill of him....”

He eyed the boy sadly at these words; and before he rode away, he
offered him still another bit of advice.

“And don’t on any account forget that young lady they call _Flor de Rio
Negro_!” Then he shook Watson by the hand, waved him good-by, and
leaning down, spurred his horse. In a moment he had vanished into the
darkness of the new-born night.




CHAPTER XV


Watson, as he went on towards the town, felt the prick of a conscience
that has lost its accustomed tranquility.

With remorse he remembered the brief dialogue in Canterac’s park, in the
course of which he had answered Robledo harshly.

“And for this woman,” he thought, “for this woman who coolly sends men
to their death, I treated my best friend in such fashion!”

And after Robledo’s image came that of Celinda, with unhappy,
reproachful eyes....

“Poor _Flor de Rio Negro_,” he thought to himself. “Tomorrow I must go
beg her to forgive me ... if she will listen to me....”

Absorbed in his thoughts, he rode into La Presa, letting his horse pick
the way. Suddenly he noticed that the animal was hesitating, about to
stop. Raising his head Watson saw that he was in front of Elena’s house.

The _comisario_, assisted by two of his men, was with paternal
exhortations gently shoving the last group of curiosity-mongers out of
the way.

Don Roque followed them down the street, and Richard was about to ride
on when he noticed that one of the windows of the Torre Bianca’s house
had opened. A woman’s hand was beckoning to him. Watson remained
indifferent to the summons, and the window swung out wide enough to let
Elena appear in the opening. She was dressed in black, as though in
mourning, but she wore her floating veils with considerable coquetry.

Richard felt that he must at least approach the house sufficiently to
offer his greetings. He took off his hat in response to Elena’s
affectionate signs to him.

“Such a long time since I have seen you, Ricardo!... Come in at
once....”

But he shook his head, looking at her sternly.

“You do not ask for whom I am in mourning,” she went on. “It is for my
husband’s mother, a dear old lady whom I loved very much. I feel so bad
about this loss.... And I do so need at this very moment to talk to a
friend....”

As she spoke she tried to maintain a sorrowful expression, although at
the same time she was employing every gracious word and gesture she knew
to persuade him to come in. But Richard persistently shook his head, and
said, finally,

“I shall come to see you when you are living in some other house, and
when your husband is present. I cannot come now.”

Coldly he went away without turning around; and Elena’s emotions ran the
scale from intense surprise to hot anger. Finally she banged the window
shut with a violence that threatened to demolish it.

That night after supper Watson offered Robledo his apologies for his
unfriendly words to him at the garden _fête_; but Robledo cut him
short.

“That’s all over and done with, Watson. We’re as good friends as before,
aren’t we? So what does all that matter? The terrible part of this
affair is what happened to poor Pirovani ... and in some ways it’s even
worse for Canterac. Of course his words make an impression on you. Poor
fellow! He wouldn’t take anything more than what was absolutely
necessary for his journey over the mountains. He’s going to wait for
news from me in Chile, he says. I must get some letters of
recommendation for him from friends of mine in Buenos Aires.... But what
a catastrophe, Watson!... And all for a woman!”

Robledo was silent for a while. Then he added optimistically,

“She isn’t _bad_, she’s merely a woman of impulse, whose emotions have
never had the slightest training; and so she sows evil, without knowing
always what she is doing, because all her attention is centered on
herself. She has never discovered that she isn’t the center of the
universe. If she were rich, she would perhaps be good. But she cannot be
content with a modest sort of existence, and she’s incapable of
sacrificing herself. All the trouble in her life comes from the fact
that she has so little and desires so much!”

He smiled sadly and then went on after a pause,

“Fortunately all women are not like that. She herself told me that in
this age of ours, the woman who thinks at all is unhappy and hates all
the rest of creation if she can’t have the pearl necklace that is ‘the
modern woman’s uniform’.... I am quoting.... But there is something more
terrible still than the woman who is determined to get a pearl necklace
for herself, Richard, and that is the woman who having had it once, has
lost it, and feels that she must at any cost get it back!”

The memory of Gualicho, the demon who tormented the Indians with his
wiles, driving them to the point where they mounted their horses and
pursued him with darts and tomahawks, passed through his mind. Elena, in
the old world, would have been merely one of many dangerous women; and
her powers for evil would have been checked and neutralized by the
proximity of others like herself. But here, surrounded by men who
admired her, conscious of primitive surroundings among which she stood
out like a being of finer clay, she had, without wishing to, exerted an
influence as evil as that of the red-skinned demon, in former times the
terror of the wandering _gauchos_ of the Pampas.

She herself had been a victim of the loneliness of her surroundings to
the extent at least of becoming enamored of Watson. She had believed
that she could play with men and despise them. That at least was what
she had intimated to Robledo one evening, while she gazed pityingly at
her victims. But Richard was youth, and masculine energy incarnate; he
was, moreover, the object of a young girl’s first love; and so to this
mature coquette, eager to win him away from an inexperienced adolescent,
as a proof that her former powers of seduction had not yet waned, he
represented an irresistible temptation.... And now her vanity had been
cruelly wounded. Not only had the only man she had found interesting in
this wild desert repulsed her; she had every reason to believe that he
despised her....

Robledo meanwhile went on talking about the _marquesa_ with a somewhat
contemptuous pity.

“She really believes that she was born for higher things, and yet fate
seems determined to make her roll downhill.... It isn’t surprising that
she should appear to be a bad woman, when you consider that she doesn’t
know what resignation means.”

But the effect of Elena’s influence on affairs at the dam was
sufficiently alarming....

“Our contractor dead ... our chief engineer a fugitive.... How can we
carry on the work, Watson? The construction at the dam will be delayed
and the spring floods will come before we have braced the walls. What
are we going to do? I’ll have to run up to Buenos Aires to get help.”

And he spent most of the night worrying about what was to be done to
save three years’ labor from destruction.

The next morning Watson got on his horse; but instead of riding towards
the canal works he took the road to the Rojas ranch. There was no use
going on with this secondary part of the work until the government sent
down a new engineer to take over the completing of the work on the dam.

When he reached the ranch he was about to dismount and open the
“palisade,” or barrier poles that closed the way. But near it he
discovered a small half-breed, about ten years of age, a chubby little
fellow with velvety antelope’s eyes, and a skin of a lustrous light
chocolate color. The small boy, one finger in his nose, was smiling at
him.

“The master went out early this morning,” he said in reply to Richard’s
question. “Last night someone stole one of his cows.”

“And where’s your mistress, Cachafaz?”

Young Puck, who had earned his name Cachafaz through an unbelievable
series of deviltries, took his finger out of his nose, and pointed
vaguely to the horizon line.

“She just now left. You’ll find her somewhere near.”

And with his dirty forefinger he gestured in a zigzag towards the
distant desert. Watson grasped the fact that for young master Cachafaz
“just now” might mean one hour, or two or three, and “somewhere near”
might mean anywhere within two leagues. But he must see Celinda!
Determined to find her, he set his horse off at a gallop towards the
open, trusting that luck would lead him in the right direction.

But what young Cachafaz had not told the visitor was that, in his
estimable mother’s opinion, the little mistress of the ranch was sick.
Cachafaz’s mother was an old Indian woman who had come to take
Sebastiana’s place as housekeeper; but she lacked some of Sebastiana’s
virtues; she had neither her good humor nor her talent for work. All day
long she kept a Paraguay cigar in one corner of her blue,
nicotine-stained lips, and when don Carlos wasn’t at home, she used his
carved calabash and silver _bombilla_ for the absorption of her own
_mate_.

The servants and peons at the ranch looked upon Cachafaz’s mother with
superstitious respect, for it was generally believed that she was a
witch and held dealings with the invisible spirits of the air, those
that howl as they whirl inside the sand columns as high as towers, that
the hurricanes drive in front of them when they come down from the
plateau lands. When the old squaw noticed that Celinda was in very poor
spirits indeed and found her crying several times, she shook her head
knowingly, as though all this merely confirmed her suspicions.

“The trouble with the girl is that she’s sick, and I know what sickness
she’s sick of.”

An ancestor of the old woman’s had been a great medicine man back in the
times when the Indians were still the owners of the land. He was always
summoned whenever the chiefs fell sick. His son had inherited his secret
lore, but unfortunately he had handed on only a part of it to his
daughter, who became Cachafaz’s mother.

“It’s the _ayacuyas_ that are bothering the girl, and she must be cured
of the wounds left by their arrows.”

The old squaw was well acquainted with the _ayacuyas_, hob-goblins so
diminutive that a dozen of them would scarcely cover a finger nail; they
always carried bows and arrows, and it was the wounds from these weapons
that caused most of the sicknesses in the world.

She herself had never seen them, for she was nothing but a poor
ignorant, miserable old woman, but her father, and her grandfather
before him, who had been great _machis_ or medicine men, had often had
dealings with these little creatures. Only the native Indians could see
them. Some of the _gringo_ doctors pretended to have seen them too, and
called them by a name in their own language, _microbe_, but what did
they know about them ...?

And if you took their bows and arrows away from them, they attacked
human beings with tooth and nail, and it was important to know how, by
bleeding and sucking, to get the splinters of the arrows, or the nails
and teeth that the invisible demons left in the bodies of their victims,
out of the poisoned wounds.

“I’ll find you a _machi_ who’ll make you well, little lady, and take
away this sadness that the _ayacuyas_ brought upon you. But don’t let
the master know of it.”

Celinda smiled at the remedies suggested by Cachafaz’s mother. When she
grew tired of being shut up in the ranch house she went to get her horse
and rode him hither and yon over the desert with no goal to reach. She
never wore boy’s clothes now. She hated those clothes because of the
memories they awoke. She preferred riding in skirts; and she had laid
aside too the lassoo that had once been her favorite plaything.

That morning she had been galloping for more than an hour over the ranch
when she noticed, on a slight elevation, a rider standing motionless;
the distance diminished him to the size of a little tin soldier.

She stopped when she noticed that the miniature rider was plunging down
the slope and galloping towards her as though he had recognized her. For
some time he was lost to sight, then he reappeared, much bigger in size,
on the edge of a deep depression. When she saw that the rider was
Watson, her first impulse was to flee. But she repented of this impulse
as though it were cowardly, and turning her horse about, remained
motionless in a disdainful attitude.

Richard rode up to her, and with his hat in his hand and eyes humbly
cast down, he was about to beg pardon. He opened his mouth to speak but
the words would not come. Nor did Celinda give him time.

“What do you want?” she asked harshly. “Has your _gringa_ dismissed you?
Other people’s leavings aren’t welcome here.”

And she wheeled her horse about to ride away. Richard made a desperate
effort.

“Celinda! I’ve come to tell you I’m sorry.... I came to get my _Flor de
Rio Negro_ ... to....”

She softened a little at the note of child-like humility in the young
man’s voice; but at once she recovered herself and looked at him
unforgivingly.

“Ask alms of God, brother, and go your way. Today I have no alms to
give!”

She began to move away; but she stopped long enough to tell him with the
cruelty of a spoiled child,

“I don’t like men who ask for pardon. Anyway, I vowed that if you wanted
to see me again you’d have to catch me with the rope.... But you’ll
never be able to. You’re nothing but a tenderfoot, and a _gringo_, and
you’re awkward and I don’t like you!”

And spurring her horse she went off at a gallop, not however, before
casting Richard a look of complete scorn.

He stood distressed by this dismissal, and felt no desire to follow her.
Then his vanity took offense as he went over the words that she had
thrown at him. She had belittled him as a man, and he was going to get
hold of her and show her that he was no tenderfoot nor as awkward as she
made out.

Then began a wild race through the ranch, one rider following the other
up hill and down, from ridge to gully. Now and then Celinda, who had a
great advantage over her pursuer, would rein in her horse as though she
wanted to be overtaken; but as soon as he came near, she started off at
a gallop again, insulting him with the terms that the _gauchos_ of other
days used when they made fun of the awkward Europeans and their lack of
skill as riders.

“Clodhopper _gringo_! Tenderfoot, who doesn’t know one end of a horse
from another!”

Richard kept a coil of lariat that _Flor de Rio Negro_ had given him on
the front of his saddle. As he rode along he let it out and began
throwing it over her head every time he came near her. But the lassoo
always fell into space, while Celinda, from far away, laughed at this
exhibition. However, her laughter had changed its character and was
growing heartier and happier, as though expressing, not so much contempt
for the man she was mocking, as genuine merriment. Watson too was
laughing; so often, when they had laughed together, they had made up
their quarrels!

In their circlings about they had little by little approached the ranch.
Celinda jumped her horse over an obstacle of tree-trunks and rode into
the corral. Watson did not dare let his horse take the height and rode
around the palisade in order to get in through a gate.

He reached the main building of the ranch with calculated slowness,
hoping that someone would come out to whom he could speak. Celinda
remained invisible, and he did not dare go up to the front door of the
house, for fear the _señorita_ Rojas might receive him in unfriendly
fashion.

Again little Cachafaz appeared quite providentially, close to the
horse’s feet.

“Tell the _señorita_ Celinda I would like to come in and say ‘how do you
do’ to her!”

Cachafaz went away scratching his little fat chocolate colored belly
under his loose shirt. In a few minutes he came out of the house, and in
his soft Indian singsong he announced to Watson,

“Mistress says you’re to go away, and that she doesn’t want to see you,
because you are ... because you are very ugly!”

Cachafaz burst out laughing at his own words; but Watson looked
despondently at the house. Then he turned his horse about, and, a little
consoled by a resolution he had just taken, rode homeward.

“I shall come back tomorrow,” he said to himself. “I shall come back
every day until she forgives me.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Elena sat absorbed in thought, sitting in an armchair. Then she took up
a position near the window where she could look out on the main street
without being seen.

As a matter of fact she could be seen only by two of the four policemen
of La Presa. Don Roque had placed them near the house so that there
should be no more gathering in groups around it as on the day before.
For the moment the people of the settlement seemed to have forgotten
Pirovani’s former dwelling. No one seemed at all inclined to stop in
front of it, and the _comisario’s_ precaution seemed superfluous.
Besides many of the workmen from the dam had gone to Fuerte Sarmiento to
be present at the contractor’s funeral. The others were either in the
_Gallego’s_ shop, or gathering to talk in different places on the
outskirts of the town, where they heatedly discussed the possibility of
the immediate suspension of the work, which would leave most of them out
of employment.

Some of the more optimistic ones were certain that on the very next
train a new chief engineer would arrive, quite as though the government
at Buenos Aires could not go on for a day without starting up the works
at the dam again. The Galician and some of the other Spaniards were
betting on don Manuel Robledo as the new director of the works.

Some of the old peons who had labored on all the public works of the
country shrugged their shoulders with characteristic fatalism.

“The cart is caught in the mire, and you’ll see a long time pass before
its wheels revolve again!”

Meanwhile Elena, standing behind the window, was gazing at the solitary
street and mentally reviewing all the difficulties of her present
situation. Pirovani dead ... Canterac a fugitive ... she no longer even
knew who owned the house she was living in. Besides this, Robledo must
have been talking about her to the only man whose presence gave
emotional interest to the monotony of her life in that God-forsaken
country. Perhaps at that very moment this man, whom she needed, was
with that girl who had tried to lash her face with a riding whip....

Never, in the whole course of her complicated history, the many phases
of which she alone knew, had she found herself placed in a situation so
difficult. Even that heterogeneous mob, in which there was many a man
with a European crime record, dared to criticize her, and went so far as
to force the public authorities to set a guard over her ... there they
were, those two men armed with sabres, just within sight of her window.
And she had crossed the ocean and come to live in this wild land only to
find herself in this lamentable situation!

She had always found a way out of the difficulties of her life, she had
always discovered a solution. Sometimes it was a bad one, and sometimes
profitable ... but what was the solution of the difficulties that faced
her now?... Should she go away? But how? She and her husband were as
penniless as when they arrived; more so, since Robledo was not going to
pay their fare back. And where could they go, with the law lying in wait
for her husband if he should return to Paris?

She was terrified at the thought of remaining in La Presa. Her life
there had been tolerable up to the present, thanks to Pirovani’s
generosity, and the rivalry she had stirred up among the men of the
community. But now that the Italian was dead she would have to give up
this house that was palatial compared to the other dwellings of the
settlement. No one would come any more to admire her, pay her
attentions, and desire her, doing everything to make life agreeable for
her. Only Robledo remained ... and he was an enemy! And as for Watson,
who might have provided the solution she was seeking ... there was his
partner in the way!

An idea that she had been cherishing of late passed through her mind.
When she had been out riding with Watson, it had occurred to her more
than once that now was the time to leave Torre Bianca, who was, after
all, a failure, who would never succeed in getting ashore from the
shipwreck.... But with Watson she would be able to make her way in the
world. He was young, energetic.... With the advice of an experienced
woman to guide him through a life of adventure, he would succeed
anywhere. In her previous life she had had similar experiences under far
less favorable circumstances.... But of what use to think about Watson?
This solution was denied her. An implacable hate burned in her at the
thought.

Richard had gone away for good and all. She could not doubt that, after
the words they had exchanged while she stood at her window the day
before....

Perhaps it would be easy to win him back if she could only have him
alone with her for a while. But, aware of that danger, hadn’t he told
her bluntly that he would call upon her again only if her husband were
present? The tone in which he had spoken, and his look at her as he
spoke, had shown her clearly enough that he would be immovable on this
point.

Ignorant as she could not help but be of the young man’s conversation
with Canterac after the duel, she naturally attributed his change of
manner to Celinda’s influence.

“She has taken him away from me,” the older woman thought. “It is she
who stands in my way.... How I hate her!”

And while she pursued these reflections, she felt agitated and divided
by diverse and opposing thoughts as though she were two distinct
persons. The image of Watson comforted her even in these painful
moments. He was young, he was the master fated to come along sometime in
the life of a woman who has played coldly and cruelly with men. In all
her previous life she had sought men out of ambition or vanity. But now
she needed Watson; she needed him not only because he could get her out
of the critical situation in which she found herself, but because he was
youth and strength and resourcefulness, he was everything she lacked,
everything her weary life needed. And as though that were not enough,
she felt the pain of jealousy, the jealousy of an impulsive and mature
woman who sees her last hope of happiness snatched away by a rival young
enough to be her daughter.

And with this torment, there was all the difficulty of the tragic
situation created by the rivalry she had excited between two of her
admirers; and there was the urgent necessity of protecting herself
against the general hostility that was likely to pursue her throughout
the whole community.

“What am I to do?” she kept saying to herself. “Where shall I go?”

A knock at the drawing room door interrupted her. It was Sebastiana,
who came in with a timid, undecided expression, fingering a corner of
her apron, and smiling at her mistress as though looking for words in
which to explain what had brought her there.

Elena gave her a little encouragement, and finally the half-breed
plucked up courage enough to speak.

“I was in the employ of don Pirovani, and as he is dead now ... and for
the reason that everybody knows, I must go away.”

The _marquesa_ signified her surprise at this decision. Sebastiana could
remain, of course. She was pleased with her services. The contractor’s
death was not sufficient reason for her going. As long as she must work
somewhere, she might as well work for Elena. But the half-breed was
insistent, and went on shaking her head.

“I must go. If I stay, there are friends of mine here who’ll scratch my
eyes out. Many thanks!... just the same, I’d rather stay on good terms
with my people ... and ... I might as well say it ... the _señora
marquesa_ hasn’t any friends here.”

At this Elena deemed it prudent not to continue the conversation. So she
expressed her acceptance of Sebastiana’s decision.

“Very well, if you are afraid to stay here....”

This prudence quite moved Sebastiana.

“I’d like to stay. The _señora_ is very kind, and never did me any
harm.... But that’s the way people are, and I can’t fight all the women
in town.... But if there’s anything I can do for the _señora_, she has
only to ask.... It would be a pleasure....”

Finally, after expatiating further on her desire to be useful to Elena,
and her unwillingness to leave her, Sebastiana withdrew.

Near the door she stopped to reply to Elena’s question about the
whereabouts of the _marqués_.

“I don’t know. He went out this morning and hasn’t come back yet.
Perhaps he went to Fuerte Sarmiento with don Moreno for the funeral of
my poor old master.”

When she was once more alone Elena’s thoughts turned to her husband as
to someone long forgotten but now presenting himself with renewed
importance. She was so accustomed to looking upon him as a person
entirely lacking in desires of his own, as someone ready to accept all
her notions, and disposed to believe whatever she wanted him to believe!
But this latest episode of her life had been of such a violent
nature.... In a large city it would have caused little more than a
ripple. But here, in the monotony of life in a pioneer community, where
such unprecedented events were rare, surrounded by this rabble of
adventurers, predisposed to insult persons of superior rank....

She felt more and more uneasy at the thought of the possibility that
Torre Bianca might learn the real cause of the rivalry between those two
men whose duel he had directed. Mentally she reviewed all that had
passed between her husband and herself since the previous day. On
returning to the house, Federico had told her of the sad outcome of the
duel; he had obviously taken certain precautions in telling her the
news, as though fearful of the emotion it might cause her. But later
that day he had appeared a changed man. He would not speak, he answered
her questions in monosyllables. And twice she surprised him gazing
fixedly at her with an expression that she had never seen him wear
before. After having closed the window, to shut out the stares of the
crowd that so much annoyed him, he had shut himself up in his bedroom,
and had gone away the next morning very early, while Elena was still
asleep. All that day she had not seen him. What was she to think?

But her uneasiness soon left her. She was so accustomed to controlling
her husband that she concluded that her suspicions and fears were all
uncalled for. Besides, even though her uneasiness should be well
founded, she would always be able to calm and reassure him, as she had
done so many times before.

The sight of a passer-by slowly walking in front of the house, and
looking attentively at the windows, was enough to make her forget all
about her husband ... Manos Duras! An hour earlier, when, as now, she
had stood at the window, she had thought once or twice that she saw the
_gaucho_ standing at the entrance to an alley that ran into the main
street near the house. The notorious cow-puncher was roaming around the
town on foot just like a European laborer on a holiday. As soon as he
caught sight of the _marquesa_ on the other side of the window panes, he
saluted her, taking off his hat with a flourish and showing his wolf’s
teeth.

This was the first pleasant greeting that Elena had received since
Pirovani’s death. She felt instinctively that this man was the only
admirer left her; that this should be seemed to her so comic that she
could not help smiling. Henceforth there was only one suitor for her
favor whom she could count on in that part of the world ... and he was
a cattle-rustling _gaucho_!

She stood meditating once more, her forehead pressed against the
window-panes, staring at the solitary street. Manos Duras had
disappeared in the neighboring alleyway, and even the two policemen,
considering their vigil unnecessary, had wandered off to the _boliche_.

Again three discreet raps on the door ... Sebastiana entered more
resolutely. This time she spoke very low, and with a confidential
expression in her crafty eyes.

“Has the master come in?” asked Elena.

“No; it’s something else I’m to tell you.... I was in the corral a
moment ago, and the _gaucho_ they call Manos Duras suddenly looked in at
the back gate and he said....”

Sebastiana made a valiant effort to recall the man’s words. He had
charged her to tell the _señora marquesa_ that he was “at her orders for
anything she might choose to command, that in times of trouble one
discovers one’s true friends, and now that there were so many people
both in the town and outside of it, talking evil of the _señora_ out of
pure envy, Manos Duras was glad to have the opportunity to say that he
was just the same in his sentiments as before.”

“Tell your mistress that I don’t turn around with every wind like the
others, and that she will always be the same for me, for I’m one of
those that break but never bend ... that’s what he told me to tell the
_señora_....”

Elena received the words with a smile. Poor man! And yet there were
people who said he was no better than a bandit! To her at that moment he
seemed the most interesting male creature in the region; he was the only
gentleman to offer her assistance!

When the half-breed went out of the room Elena remained standing near
the window, her eyes following the passers-by as they came and went in
constantly increasing numbers. Several times she stepped back at sight
of groups of workmen on horseback or in carriages returning from Fuerte
Sarmiento. They must undoubtedly be those who had gone to the
contractor’s funeral. All of them, she noticed, looked askance at the
house before they passed on.

At dusk she saw a solitary rider go by, his head obstinately held down.
It was Richard Watson. From his dust-covered clothing, and the lagging
pace of his horse, she concluded that he had not been to the funeral. He
must have spent the day riding in the open, undoubtedly on the Rojas
ranch or wandering near the river with that girl who was so free with
her whip.--“And I have to stay shut up here like a wild beast to escape
the insults of this miserable and unjust rabble ... and then they wonder
that I do the things I do....”

She remained motionless, her eyes closed, while the shadows of twilight
crept out of the corners of the room, and came to mingle their darkness
in the core of her being. A faint and fading light from outside gave a
certain bluish phosphorescence to the window panes, outlining Elena’s
motionless silhouette.

When night had fallen she called Sebastiana, who answered, saying that
she was bringing the light.

And she appeared bearing a large lamp which she placed on the table in
the centre of the parlor.

She was on the point of going away, believing that she had discharged
her full duty, when her mistress stopped her.

“Do you know where that Manos Duras you spoke to me about a while ago is
now?”

The half-breed, always inclined to chatter, produced a long preamble
before giving a definite reply. Manos Duras was going about these days
with some friends of his from the mountains who were staying with him at
his ranch ... they were a poor sort and not at all God-fearing. No
telling what they might be up to ... and he had said while he was
talking at the gate that he might soon go away on a long trip and that
this was the principal reason why he had come to bother the _señora_, in
case she should want him to do anything for her.

“And probably,” she wound up, “if he hasn’t gone back to his ranch, I’ll
find him this very moment at the _boliche_!”

“Go find him,” said Elena, “and tell him that I want him to be in front
of the house at ten o’clock.... You needn’t say anything else. But be
careful how you tell him ... I don’t care to have anyone overhear....”

Sebastiana had some doubts as to whether she had heard the first words
correctly, but at being admonished by her mistress to be discreet, she
forgot her astonishment and began affirming vehemently that the _señora_
could rest easy as to her prudence and that she was accustomed to
discharging confidential missions with the utmost care.

She went out of the house and made a bee-line for the _boliche_. If the
_gaucho_ was not there, it would mean that he had started for his ranch.

When she reached the door of the _Gallego’s_ establishment, she stopped
and peered inside. As it was the supper hour the customers were not
numerous. The majority of them had gone to their own homes where they
were having their evening meal with their families. An hour later they
would have returned to sit around the counter. An old _gaucho_ was
strumming the guitar while he gazed up at the paunch of one of the
crocodiles hanging from the ceiling. Manos Duras’ three guests were
listening attentively. Manos Duras himself was sitting on a horse’s
skull, and leaning one shoulder against the wall, was smoking
meditatively. As the owner of the _boliche_ was absent, Friterini,
behind the counter, was assuming all the airs of proprietorship, while
he blissfully perused an ancient and greasy copy of an Italian magazine.

Manos Duras looked up when he heard a discreet cough, and saw a
half-breed in the door beckoning to him to come out. When he had
followed her to the rear of the _Gallego’s_ shop, Sebastiana delivered
her message in a mysterious manner, keeping one finger on her lips; she
even went so far as to wink one eye. The _gaucho_ needn’t take her for a
fool. She had some idea what her message meant!

When the half-breed had gone, Manos Duras waited a few minutes before
returning to the _boliche_. He wanted to be alone in the dark, for it
seemed to him that he could enjoy his satisfaction better there. But in
his satisfaction there was a great deal of astonishment. How could he
have foreseen, that afternoon, as he wandered in front of the great
_señora’s_ house, that she would send him a message asking him to see
her in private that very night?

When through Sebastiana, whom he found in the corral, he had made his
offer of assistance to her mistress he had simply been, in his own
special way, obeying a chivalrous impulse. He wanted to appear to the
_marquesa’s_ eyes to be a man different from the rest, and he had
offered his protection without any hope that she would accept it.... Yet
one hour later she was sending for him. What was she going to ask him to
do for her?

Fortified by male vanity he dismissed his doubts. Even though he was a
rough cattle merchant, he was after all a man; and a better one at that
than these others.... They were all afraid of him ... these _gringas_
from the other side of the world were capricious creatures ... one never
knew where their fancy might lead them.... Manos Duras smiled....

“Just what I always said,” he thought, “they are all alike!”

And he returned to the _boliche_ and sat down with his friends, waiting
for the hour stipulated by the great _señora_.

Robledo and Watson were at that moment finishing their supper.

Someone knocked at the door.

They were both astonished to see Torre Bianca come in; he was so
thoroughly covered with dust that his black clothes looked grey, and
his hair and mustache were completely white.

“I’ve just come back from Fuerte Sarmiento, from poor Pirovani’s
funeral.... Moreno brought me back in his carriage.”

Robledo invited him to sit down at the table.

“Have some supper here, if you don’t feel that you must go at once to
your house.”

Torre Bianca shook his head.

“I do not intend to go back to my house.”

He spoke with such decision that Robledo stared at him. So tense were
the nerves of the _marqués_ that his hands shook and his tongue stumbled
over the words he spoke.

“I had something to eat with Moreno before coming back here.... But I’ll
eat a little now.... Death ... it’s pretty grim, isn’t it? Poor
Pirovani.... I’ll have a drink if you don’t mind.”

In spite of mentioning several times that he was hungry, he ate very
little of the food brought him by Robledo’s servant. But on the other
hand he drank a great deal of wine, tossing it down mechanically, as
though unaware that he was drinking.

Robledo thought he noticed the odor of gin about him. Undoubtedly he and
Moreno had had several drinks before starting on the journey home.
Perhaps this was the explanation of his excitement. He was not in the
habit of drinking liquor.

Watson, who had finished his supper, noticed that Torre Bianca was
looking at him as though he wanted to intimate that his presence was
inopportune.

“Is Moreno at his place now?” the young American inquired.

And on hearing that he was, Watson took himself off to discuss with the
government employee the report that was to be presented at Buenos Aires,
urging that the work at the dam be continued.

When Torre Bianca found himself alone with his friend, he became a
different person. His excitement abated suddenly, he lowered his eyes,
and it seemed to Robledo that he was shrinking in his chair like
something soft that huddles in on itself for lack of support from
within. All the spurious energy of alcohol had vanished at a stroke and
Torre Bianca, sitting opposite him there, had all the appearance of a
wrapping from which the contents has been deftly removed.

“I must talk to you,” he said, lifting his mild and pleading eyes to his
friend. “You are all that is left me now, the only human being in the
world who cares anything about me ... and for that very reason you must
let me have the truth. Today, while they were burying poor Pirovani, I
could think of nothing but this.... ‘I must see Robledo. He will tell me
frankly what I am to think of all this.’ What I mean by ‘all this’ is
the things I have noticed since yesterday ... everywhere I go ... the
way people look at me, the dislike they show in their gestures, the
names I can hear them calling me in their minds ... they don’t have to
speak, because I can guess it all.... Oh, it is too horrible!”

His voice broke on a note of complete discouragement and he covered his
face with his hands. Robledo murmured a few words intended to cheer him
up a little, but the _marqués_ interrupted him.

“You can talk later, Manuel. But first you must hear some things you
don’t know, and some of the things I told you once and that you have
forgotten. I must ask you one thing. Do you believe that my wife is
deceiving me?”

Robledo looked his astonishment at his friend’s words. Several minutes
passed before he attempted to reply. It was obvious that Torre Bianca
was in terror of his answer! And to avoid hearing it, he began relating
the whole story of his relations with Elena.

Robledo had heard a part of this history when he was in Paris; how the
_marqués_ had met her in London, the high rank her family held in Russia
at the court of the Czars, and so on.... But now the speaker’s tone was
quite changed, as though Torre Bianca himself had his doubts about the
authenticity of that past in which, up to that very day, he had had
complete faith, and about which he had always shown a great deal of
pride.

Furthermore, between the lines of his narrative, Federico was revealing
new episodes to his friend. Apparently the events of the past stood out
in clearer relief now, and his attention was caught by details that
until then had passed unnoticed. There had always been in his house an
intimate friend, a favored friend, whom his wife treated with the utmost
confidence, asserting that she had known him since the days when she was
living with her distinguished family. And when one “friend” went away,
another appeared ... but the place was never vacant. Twice the _marqués_
had fought duels for his wife’s honor, as a result of her being
calumniated by men who but a short time before had been frequent
visitors in her drawing-room. And with remorse he recalled that his
antagonist in one of these duels had been a friend of his whom he had
seriously wounded.

“I have told you the whole story of my life with this woman,” he said.
“At least all that I am sure of concerning her life. All the rest is
what she herself says ... and I don’t know whether I am to believe it or
not.... I even doubt what she says about her nationality and her name. I
told her frankly everything about myself ... and she gave me back lies
... lies ... lies....”

Again he looked anxiously at Robledo, hoping that the latter would give
him some faith in what he had once believed.

Like a drowning man, the _marqués_ was grasping at straws as he sank.
But Robledo looked away, and gave an ambiguous shrug.

“Since a few hours ago I have been looking at things with new eyes. Oh
God! The cruel glances of those poor people when I opened the window
yesterday! And today during the funeral ... I can’t tell you what
torment I endured!... And I, who never in my whole life have been afraid
of anyone, I couldn’t meet the hostile eyes of those workmen ... and
what was worse, some of them were mocking and contemptuous. Poor Moreno
kept taking me aside, and talking very loud so that I wouldn’t hear the
things people were saying behind me.... He didn’t know that I noticed
everything he was doing to protect me.... But this afternoon I felt so
overwhelmed, that I thought of you, my friend ... and I thought of my
poor old mother as though I were still a child. She had deprived herself
of everything so that her son might preserve the honor of his race! And
her son ends up by being the laughing-stock of a workmen’s camp, in a
wild uncivilized corner of the globe.... Oh, how shameful!”

He covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut out the cruel
spectacle. Then he looked up to ask with breathless anxiety,

“You, who are my only friend, and who knew something of my life in
Paris, do you believe that Fontenoy was my wife’s lover?”

Again Robledo made an ambiguous gesture. What could he reply? And again
Torre Bianca, with anguish in his voice, asked,

“And those two men who went out yesterday morning to kill one another,
do you think it was on Elena’s account?”

But this time Robledo did not take refuge in ambiguity. He merely
lowered his eyes; and the _marqués_ took the silence that followed to
mean “yes”....

Then hiding his face again in desperation, he said,

“And it was I, her husband, who acted as master of the duel in which
those two men fought....”

A long silence. The _marqués_ laid his head down on his hands, and
Robledo watched him, pityingly. Suddenly Torre Bianca straightened up,
and said, slowly rubbing his forehead,

“I can’t go on here. I am ashamed to meet the eyes of these people. But
I can’t go away with her, either. She couldn’t deceive me now ... and
when I look, at her, and see how false she is, and how falsely she
smiles, I shall kill her ... I am certain that I shall kill her!”

The moment had come for Robledo to speak.

“Don’t think about her any more. For the time being you must rest.
Tomorrow we’ll find a better way of your getting rid of your wife.
You’ll stay here tonight. And I’ll plan what we must do tomorrow. She
will go away. I don’t know just how; but she’ll go. And you will stay
with me.”

He laid an affectionate hand on Torre Bianca’s shoulder, and his tone
while he spoke, was like that of a father. But the _marqués_ kept his
face covered, and he shook his head.

He hated her! And yet, at the thought of separating from her forever, he
felt a sharp pang, a strange anxiety....




CHAPTER XVI


Pricked by her feminine curiosity, Sebastiana impatiently awaited the
hour of her mistress’s _rendez-vous_.

She was in the kitchen, in the corral covered over by a wooden shelter.
Several times Sebastiana carried her small lamp over to the table where
she kept an alarm clock to discover the hour. A little before ten she
took off the old shoes she wore, and in her stocking feet crossed the
corral, keeping close under the balcony of the house.

In this fashion, with noiseless step, she reached the corner of the
building nearest the window of Elena’s bedroom. Then she sat down on the
ground, huddling close to a pillar. In this fashion she could hear
without being seen.

In a little while she made out through the darkness the form of Manos
Duras approaching the house. She saw him take off his spurs and hide
them in his belt, after which he cautiously went up the wooden outside
stairway. Shortly after this the window of the _señora’s_ bedroom opened
and she came out, with a sign to her visitor that he was to make no
noise.

Sebastiana strained her ears to hear, but the window was so far away
that it was only with the greatest effort of concentration that she
could catch a few fragments of phrases. The words that passed between
the speakers were uttered in such low tones that she could not be
certain that she heard them correctly. It seemed to her that she caught
the names “Celinda” and “_Flor de Rio Negro_”; but she concluded that
her sense of hearing must be playing her a trick.

“What has my former little mistress got to do with the schemes of these
people?” she asked herself. “You must be imagining things, Sebastiana!”

Thrusting her head out from the shadow of the pillar, she succeeded in
seeing both speakers. Manos Duras was nodding approbation of what the
_señora_ was saying. Then he spoke briefly, emphasizing what he had to
say with impressive gestures. At a certain point he tried to seize the
_marquesa’s_ hand, but she drew back, with a movement that expressed
both repugnance and hauteur. At once he appeared to repent of his
impulsiveness, and in a louder tone, and as though making a promise, she
said to him,

“We’ll speak of this some other time, when you have fulfilled your part
of the contract. You understand what we have agreed upon.”

And she took leave of him with a certain coquetry of manner, although
she succeeded in keeping out of his reach.

When he saw that the window had closed upon the _señora_, the _gaucho_
went down the steps. On reaching the street he stopped and looked back.

“Two, instead of one,” Sebastiana thought she heard him say. And as he
spoke he looked like a hungry wolf licking his chops.

But still Sebastiana doubted having heard what had actually been said,
and she retired to her dingy bed in her hut in the corral, somewhat
disappointed by the scanty results of her eaves-dropping.

The only memory of what she had overheard that claimed her attention to
the point of keeping her awake, was that of the phrases concerning
“Celinda” and “_Flor de Rio Negro_”; but what possible reason could
there be for these two people to talk about her niña?

Robledo also spent a bad night. Worn out by his conflicting emotions the
_marqués_ had finally accepted his friend’s invitation, and his host had
put him in the same room that Torre Bianca had occupied when he and his
wife arrived at La Presa.

Twice that night Robledo woke up to find that he was straining to hear
the sounds coming from the next room. Muttered words and groans came
through the thin walls....

“Federico, do you want something?”

In a weak, humble voice came Torre Bianca’s reply. From the comparative
silence that followed it seemed that he was making not altogether
unsuccessful attempts to be quiet.

A third time Robledo woke, but this time the bars of his window were
outlined against the light sky of early morning. A sharp noise had
broken into his slumber, making him start up in bed.

When he came out into the living-room, he found Watson leaning down over
a chair, fastening on his spurs. It was the noise made by this chair
falling over a few moments before which had aroused him. When he saw his
young partner, Robledo exclaimed cheerfully, “Up so early?... And you
got in pretty late last night too....”

But Watson seemed to be in low spirits; he offered no explanation beyond
saying that as there was no work that day, he was going out on a long
ride.

When he had gone, Robledo finished dressing, walking up and down in the
living room as he did so. Passing by the door of Torre Bianca’s bedroom
he felt tempted to open it and go in. He wanted to see his friend. A
vague presentiment made him uneasy.

“How had poor Federico spent the night?” he wondered.

He opened the door, and looking in, uttered an exclamation of
astonishment. There was no one in the room. The bed, on which the
bed-clothes hung tossed about in disorder, was empty. Robledo stood for
several minutes trying to think out a solution for the mystery. He
concluded that Federico, not being able to sleep, must have gone out to
walk as soon as it grew light.

Instinctively he looked scrutinizingly about the room. He noticed some
sheets of paper on the table, all of them bearing the beginnings of a
letter in Torre Bianca’s handwriting. He had evidently felt it useless
to continue any of them.

Robledo picked one of them up. “Thank you for all you have done ... but
I can’t go on--” another one began, “The only woman who ever really
loved me was my mother, and she is dead. If only I could feel sure of
seeing her again--”

Robledo looked at some of the other sheets. They contained nothing but
crossed out and unintelligible phrases. Torre Bianca had done his best
to write and had finally given it up. Robledo could see his friend in
the late hours of the night throwing down his pen ... he had just picked
it up off the floor ... and saying with the scorn of one who already
considers himself above earthly cares: “What does it matter....”

He stood with the papers in his hand, trying to determine what he had
best do. Then it occurred to him that perhaps the _marqués_ was
wandering about up at the dam. These scrawls of his gave evidence of
indecision ... at such a time wouldn’t he be likely to go to the place
where he had been happiest in La Presa, to the scene of his work?

He examined the ground outside the house carefully and gave an
exclamation of satisfaction at distinguishing among the fresh tracks of
Watson’s horse, a man’s foot prints. They must be Torre Bianca’s!

The tracks led down an alley between his house and the neighboring one,
and then came out on the open. Once outside the town, he lost the traces
of the footprints among the many tracks made by those who had passed in
and out of the settlement that morning.

Instinctively he went towards the river, following the bank upward of
the current. The surface of the water he watched so intently was not
broken by the slightest object. Finally he stopped this search of his
that had no guide nor reason other than a presentiment.

“This Federico,” he said to himself, “has upset me with his troubles.
Why should I have such absurd fears about him?... Let’s go home.... I
feel sure that I’ll find him at the house. He’s probably been taking a
walk on the other side of town.”

And with a hurried anxious step he went back to La Presa.

At the very same hour of the day, near the Rojas ranch, Manos Duras,
with his three comrades from the mountains, was talking in the shade of
some _matorrales_ that grew a little higher than their heads.

They had dismounted and were holding their horses by their bridles. One
of them was dressed in different style from his companions, and seemed
more like a laborer from a neighboring town than one of the _gauchos_ of
the country. To this fellow Manos Duras was giving directions which he
accepted in silence, with a few rapid blinks of approval. He then
mounted his horse and the other two looked after him until he
disappeared behind some _matorrales_.

“The old dog is going to learn what it costs to give me any of his
threats,” growled Manos Duras with a smile full of venom.

One of the mountaineers, whom the others called Piola and who seemed to
be older than the rest, and better mannered, shook his head and looked
dubious. His comrade’s plan was all right except for Manos Duras’
intention of staying in town a day or two after striking his blow. It
would be much better, in his opinion, to retreat together and at once
into the mountains.

“Leave the plans alone, brother. I know what I’m doing,” Manos Duras
replied. “I want to collect something that will be due me. Perhaps I can
get my pay this very night, and if so I’ll overtake you by tomorrow.”

His horse, an excellent animal, would surely be able to make up for the
disadvantage of a late start, and would overtake the first party, that
was to carry the baggage, before they had covered half the distance to
the ranch.

Meanwhile his messenger was galloping toward the Rojas property. At the
palisade, he opened the gate, and continued his rapid pace through the
estate of don Carlos Rojas.

When he drew near the main building, Cachafaz, made aware of his arrival
by the barking of the dogs as they leapt in front of the horse’s hoofs,
and snapped at the horseman’s legs, came out to meet him. With sharp
cries the boy called off the dogs and then listened with the gravity of
a grown man to what the gaucho had to say.

But scarcely was the message delivered when Cachafaz, with shouts of
joy, rushed into the ranch house, quite unmindful of the messenger.

Don Carlos was in the parlor having his tenth gourdful of mate that
morning. Celinda, in feminine attire, sat in a cane armchair, absorbed
apparently by her own melancholy thoughts.

“Master,” cried the little half-breed, bursting in like a small
whirlwind, “the _comisario_ has just sent word that you are to go at
once to the _pueblo_. They have caught the thief who stole our heifer!”

Pleased by this news, the rancher followed Cachafaz out of the room,
taking with him his calabashful of _mate_ and continuing to sip it
through the _bombilla_ as he walked. He wanted to learn some of the
details of this capture from the messenger who had come in such hot
haste to inform him of it.

But on stepping outside his front door, he was perplexed at discovering
that the horseman had disappeared. Cachafaz ran shouting around the
buildings and through the various corrals without being able to discover
the messenger. Finally, with a shrug, don Rojas concluded that the
_comisario_ must have charged some _gaucho_ who was riding through that
section of the country to deliver the message as he went by. After all
it was good news! The fellow probably had a long journey to make and
hadn’t wanted to lose any time. Nor should he lose any either! Thereupon
don Carlos mounted his horse to go see the commissioner. He would be
back for the midday meal, he told Celinda.

Manos Duras and his three companions, lying flat on the ground, saw the
rancher go by in the direction of La Presa. Keeping their faces close to
the _matorral_ roots, they laughed cynically as they watched him ride
away.

“He’s going after the cow we ate yesterday,” commented Piola.

And Manos Duras added, with characteristic impudence,

“We’ll see what he has to say when we have carried off his little
heifer.”

Watson, who was riding in the vicinity of the ranch, eager to approach
it, and yet fearful of arousing Celinda’s resentment by his presence,
also saw don Rojas pass by, going in the direction of La Presa.

This strengthened his courage. Celinda then was alone at the ranch, and
he could invent some pretext for going to see her.... But then he lost
heart again.... He couldn’t stand having Cachafaz come out as on the day
before and tell him that Celinda would not see him. No, he preferred
roaming about over the plains ... and perhaps Celinda, bored by her
solitude, would come out and get on her horse....

He felt disposed to wait at least until sundown. As was his habit he
carried a few eatables in one of his saddle bags. But for the time being
he had quite forgotten that human beings are born with the mortal
infirmity of hunger. Other matters seemed far more important to him at
the moment.

Meanwhile, his friend Robledo was wandering along the main street of La
Presa, head down, absorbed by his reflections. He had just stopped in at
his house. Torre Bianca was still not there. His breakfast had waited
for him in vain. Where could he be?

He heard someone calling to him from the middle of the street and looked
up. The rancher Rojas was talking excitedly to the _comisario_, who
looked amazed, then bewildered. Robledo walked towards them.

“Someone came to my ranch this morning to tell me that the _comisario_
wanted to see me and return the cow that was stolen from me three days
ago.... And now don Roque says he never sent any such message, and
doesn’t know anything about this business. Did you ever hear the like?
Who could the fellow be who brought the message?... I’d like to show him
what I think of his joke!”

Robledo listened abstractedly for a few minutes, trying to feign a
decent amount of interest. Then he went on his way through the town. For
the moment he was entirely pre-occupied with thoughts of his friend.
Every time he saw a man in the distance he thought it must be Torre
Bianca.

“It’s too bad that Watson went away so early this morning,” he thought.
“If he were here he would help me look for Federico.”

But Watson, far away on the desert, torn between his desire to see
Celinda and his fear of being harshly dismissed by her, was little by
little approaching the ranch as he rode around it in wide circles. When,
however, he reached the palisades of the Rojas property, he was again
torn by indecision. How was he to explain his presence on the ranch
grounds when _Flor de Rio Negro_ had ordered him never to come there
again?

But the sight of a gate swinging wide open gave him courage.

“No matter what she may say, I’m going in,” he decided. “I must see her,
even though nothing comes of it but her calling me names....”

And he rode slowly forward down the trail leading to the ranch house.
Suddenly his horse started and quickened his walk, then stopped abruptly
as though about to rear.

Across the path lay the bodies of two dogs, recently killed, it seemed,
for their mangled heads lay in two fresh rivulets of blood. A few paces
farther on he found a man also stretched across the trail.

He too was dead. Richard recognized him as one of don Carlos’ half-breed
peons, although his head was frightfully shattered by the explosion of
the bullets at close range. One of the corpse’s eye sockets was
completely empty, and through this opening to the skull was oozing some
of the brain. The thirsty earth was avidly drinking up the murdered
man’s blood.

Watson flung himself down from his horse, and holding his revolver in
his right hand, he made his way toward the house. When, on looking
through the door opening into the living room he saw no one, he began to
call.

The wicker chair in which Celinda usually sat lay overturned on the
floor. The cover of the large table had apparently been roughly pulled
off and lay on the ground, while the papers and small objects that
usually covered it were scattered about under foot.

He continued shouting “Where are you?... It’s me, Watson!” until steps
finally became audible in the hall leading to the inner rooms of the
ranch house; and finally there appeared in the doorway the wrinkled,
copper-colored face of Cachafaz’s mother. Then the other servants, all
of them half-breeds, also crept out of their hiding places; but to
Watson’s questions they stammered unintelligible replies or else
maintained a terrified silence.

Richard came out of the house just in time to see young Cachafaz peer
anxiously out from one of the corrals; and no sooner did the others see
the boy than they all began giving their account of what had taken
place; but the little fellow spoke with a certain authoritative air of
knowing what he was about and Watson listened attentively.

He, Cachafaz, had been with his young mistress that morning and had
seen everything. Three men had come galloping towards the house full
speed. Then the dogs began to bark and just as he stepped out of the
house to run and see what was the matter with them, he heard the shots
that killed the poor hounds. Then he saw a peon running towards the
horsemen, probably to ask them why they were coming into the ranch in
that fashion; but before he could say a word they drew their revolvers
and shot him down.

“I ran through the house,” continued Cachafaz breathlessly. “The
_señorita_ was just going out to see what was happening when three men
rushed in and threw a poncho over her head; then they picked her up and
carried her away.... I was under the table ... but as soon as they had
gone I crept out and I saw them get on their horses, carrying my
mistress this way in their arms ... so ... under their ponchos. That’s
all I know.”

Then the others burst out once more, each eager to tell what he or she
had witnessed, though as a matter of fact, none of them had seen much
for they had all run to cover as soon as they saw the peon drop dead,
and had remained in their hiding places until Watson had arrived. Watson
meanwhile, as he tried to get some clear impression from all these
divergent accounts of what had actually taken place, thought
remorsefully of those moments of indecision when he had been wandering
outside the boundary lines of the ranch. If he had only arrived half an
hour earlier, if he had only been with Celinda, to defend her, to drive
off these kidnappers....

He divined from the look in Cachafaz’s antelope eyes that the boy did,
as a matter of fact, know more than he had told, so he led the small
half-breed, who was smiling scornfully at the contradictory statements
being poured out by the excited servants, into the next room. There
Cachafaz, standing on tiptoe, whispered to him,

“It was Manos Duras ... and I know where he took our _señora_!”

Richard fired rapid questions at him, and the boy explained as best he
could. No, neither of the three men who had carried away Celinda was
Manos Duras. But when Cachafaz left his first hiding place, which was
under the table, he had run into a corral nearby where there was a heap
of alfalfa drying for the winter feed of the cows. He had crept to the
top of it, and from there he could see way, way off into the distance.
So he had seen how the three riders met a fourth who was waiting for
them outside the ranch gates, and that fourth was undoubtedly Manos
Duras. Then all four started off in the same direction riding hard, and
carrying Celinda with them swung across one of the saddles, a
prisoner....

And from the top of his alfalfa heap he had seen Watson coming, but he
had been so scared that he hadn’t come down until he was quite sure that
it was the _patroncita’s_ friend and no one else.

Watson could not for several minutes co-ordinate his thoughts. It seemed
to him that the first thing he must do was to go find Celinda and free
her at once, without a thought for the advantage of numbers on the side
of the bandits. He had one ally at least, young Cachafaz, who knew where
Celinda was being concealed. That was the important thing; knowing
that, everything else should be easy. He’d fight the ruffians and bring
Celinda back of course! And with the absurd self-confidence of lovers,
who are incapable of perceiving the actual size of the obstacles placed
in their way, he mounted his horse and beckoned to Cachafaz to come with
him.

With a flying leap, Cachafaz landed on the horse’s cruppers, and
clutched Watson’s blouse; then the latter spurred his mount, and they
started off at a gallop.

As soon as they had passed through the gate Richard turned his horse in
the direction of the Manos Duras’ ranch, which he had often seen from a
distance. But Cachafaz exclaimed,

“That’s the wrong direction!” and he pointed to the highest part of the
bluffs overhanging the river.

“Go over there,” he whispered, “to the ranch of the Dead Squaw.”

The tumble-down ranch house, known as that of the “Dead Squaw,” had a
certain notoriety in the vicinity; it was rarely visited for it was
generally reputed to be the usual stopping-place of travellers wanting
to cross that part of the country without being seen.

“We’ll find them there,” said Cachafaz, “if they haven’t gone on to some
other place.”

At the same hour, on returning to his house after a fruitless search,
Robledo experienced a surprise no less disagreeable than fell to
Watson’s share when he arrived at the Rojas’ ranch.

On the threshold of the front door sat Sebastiana, apparently waiting
for him, to judge from her grunt of satisfaction at sight of him. He too
felt relieved to see her, for it flashed through his mind that
doubtless Torre Bianca had sent her, with a message explaining his
disappearance. Probably the poor weak-willed _marqués_ had gone back to
his wife and was once more lending his credulity to her lies.

“Did your master send you?... Have you a note from him for me?”

Sebastiana blinked her slant eyes by way of showing her astonishment.

“Master?... _El marqués?_ ... I know nothing about him. I thought he was
here. No, I came for something quite different.”

She got up heavily, sighing, as she lifted her weight up to a vertical
position; then she said, in a hoarse whisper,

“I couldn’t sleep all night, and here I am waiting for you to answer a
question for me, don Robledo.”

The engineer listened somewhat ironically, though with admirable
patience, to this plea for consultation. But no sooner did the
half-breed begin talking, than his expression completely changed, and
indicated the closest attention to what she was saying.

The woman finished her account of what she had seen and heard the night
before.

“Why did the _señorona_ and Manos Duras talk so much about my little
mistress?... What has my little white dove to do with them?... As I’m
nothing but an old fool who can’t understand anything, I said to myself,
‘I’m going to see don Manuel who knows everything. He can tell me....’”

But Robledo was not listening now. He seemed absorbed. Suddenly he made
a gesture as though he had just discovered a terrible truth. Abruptly
he turned his back on Sebastiana, and went rapidly back to the place he
had just come from.

Then to the half-breed’s astonishment the engineer began running, with
increasing speed, as though her words had made him fearful of arriving
too late. While he was still a distance away from the other men he began
to shout and gesticulate to don Carlos and the _comisario_ who were
still talking just where he had left them a few minutes earlier.
Uncomprehendingly they looked at one another when they heard him say,
pantingly,

“Get on your horses ... at once! That story about the cow was a ruse of
Manos Duras to get you away from the ranch! I’m afraid something has
happened to Celinda ... we must get out there as soon as possible ... if
it isn’t already too late....”

Don Roque, recovering from his momentary stupefaction, rushed to his
house to get out his gun and mount his horse. His four policemen, whom
he summoned at once, rushed around in an attempt to follow their
leader’s moves, but only three of them succeeded in finding mounts and
borrowing a few guns from the neighbors. Obviously their sabres would be
more useless than ever on this occasion!

Meanwhile Robledo had gone back to his house and while the servant was
saddling his horse, he strapped on his revolver holster and a cartridge
belt, and sent for all the overseers of the works who lived near by and
had guns. In addition he borrowed the _Gallego’s_ American rifle which
the proprietor of the _boliche_ kept hidden under his counter.

In addition to carrying on his own preparations, Robledo kept an eye on
don Carlos Rojas for fear he might escape. He had obliged Celinda’s
father to come back to the house with him, and now he was urging him to
be prudent.

“Getting there half an hour sooner isn’t going to change what has
already happened. All you’ll do is to let the bandits get you too into
their clutches ... if nothing worse. We’ll all go together ... just be
patient a few minutes longer!”

But the rancher received these admonitions with grunts of protest,
trembling all the while with rage and anxiety. Robledo, standing on
guard in his doorway, stepped forward to greet the men he had sent for
and explain to them what he wanted of them. The _Gallego_ came up to the
group, his American rifle in his hand, and, with a solemnity befitting
the handing over of his entire family, entrusted it to Robledo, his
fellow countryman.

This offered just the opportunity don Carlos had been waiting for.
Jumping into the saddle, he galloped off without paying the slightest
attention to the shouts sent after him.

The rescuing party was hastily organized. It consisted of a dozen
horsemen, all of them carrying rifles, and under the leadership of
Robledo and don Roque they speedily galloped off.

The news meanwhile had spread through the town and a group of women and
children gathered to speed the troup of horsemen with shrill shouts. As
they passed the house of the unfortunate Pirovani, Robledo could not
restrain his uneasy impulse to glance up at the windows.

“This woman has perhaps prepared another tragedy for us,” he thought....

At that instant Watson was dismounting, and with Cachafaz at his heels,
was crawling through the tough _matorrales_. The little half-breed had
directed him to a sand hill on the edge of the plateau; and from this
elevation he and his small guide could look down almost perpendicularly
on the ruins of Dead Squaw ranch.

Watson knew the place by name. Twenty years earlier it had been
inhabited by ranchers who sent their cattle out to pasture in the lands
adjoining. But the capricious hurricanes of the desert had suddenly
spread a thick mantel of sand over these pasture lands; then the waters
of the well, which up till then had been relatively fresh, turned
brackish, and finally became liquid salt. All the human inhabitants had
fled and the adobe buildings soon fell into ruins. Only vagabonds now
sought the shelter of the crumbling roof of the abandoned ranch.

As Watson advanced, cat-like, through the thick tough shrub-growths of
the sand hill he felt an eerie fear at the stillness of the ranch below.
Not a dog barked ... surely Cachafaz must have made a mistake in his
deductions, surely that silent ranch was as deserted now as it had ever
been! But the little half-breed wriggling ahead of him, stopped between
two _mattoral_ trunks and made a sign to Watson that he was to come
nearer.

Thrusting his head between the branches Richard made out a sandy
elevation twenty yards below in the centre of which was the ranch house.
Two horses were nosing along together, nibbling at the sparse grass; and
a man with a rifle laid across his knees sat on the ground keeping
watch.

Cachafaz murmured into his ear,

“That’s one of the men who carried away the _patroncita_.”

However much Watson might peer and stretch his neck to see, he could
discover no one else below. Making his way backwards from his
observatory he slid down to the bottom of the hill and took out a pencil
and bit of paper from his pocket. His bright animal-eyes shining as
though he already knew what the mission was that he was to be entrusted
with, the boy watched Watson write.

Richard gave him the paper and pointed to the place where his horse was
tethered.

“Get to the town as fast as you can and give this to the _señor_
Robledo, or else to the _comisario_ ... whichever one you meet first.”

And he was about to add further directions but Cachafaz was no longer
listening. He was already flying down the hill; then with a jump he
sprang on the horse, and was off at a fast gallop.

Once more Watson went up the sand slope to observe what was going on at
the ranch. Then he saw two men; first the one he had seen before, who
was still sitting on the ground with his rifle on his knees; and another
one standing in front of him, carrying no other weapons but the knife
and revolver in his belt. This was a _gaucho_ whom he recognized
immediately--Manos Duras. The two men were talking, but the distance
separating him from them was too great to permit of his catching any
words. So it was useless for the moment to continue his observation of
the camp; useless also to think of attacking.... Not even with the
advantage to be gained by surprising them could he take the risk.
Although there were only two men visible, it was reasonable to suppose
that inside the ranch house there were several more, perhaps asleep.

“What have they done with Celinda?” thought the youth.

Crawling along between the _matorrales_ he followed the edge of the
sand-hill until he reached a place opposite the one from which he had
made his first inspection. The two bandits went on talking, without
giving evidence of the slightest suspicion that on the edge of the slope
near them a man was gliding through the brush, spying on them.

The man facing Manos Duras was the so-called Piola. He was speaking in a
tone of vigorous expostulation.

“You know very well that I don’t have any use for this kind of business.
I steer clear of any mix-up with women in it. It always ends up wrong
and there’s the devil and all hell to pay. It would have been a much
better job, as long as you were picking one out, to have rustled a herd
in Limay and sold it in the _Cordillera_ ... or why the devil didn’t you
pick on some of old man Rojas’ cows that we might have sold for good
money instead of making us waste our time here like a lot of kids
stealing this little she-calf....”

Manos Duras’ only reply was a gesture indicating that what he chose to
do was his business. Piola took up his complaint again.

“It may be that you know what you are doing. And we fellows are sticking
to you like brothers. But if you got any coin for kidnapping this girl,
the least you could do is to share it with us.”

The _gaucho_ looked at him with scornful anger.

“Money--nothing! Haven’t I told you man, that this is a matter of
getting even?... Old Rojas insulted me, and I’m doing the worst thing to
him that I can think of ... and anyway, you know what our bargain
was.... You are to keep her for me, and as soon as we get into the
mountains, it will be your turn....”

Piola showed his fangs in a smile of appreciation at this part of the
contract.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll keep her for you ... your turn first ...
that is if you catch up with us by tomorrow. But if you’re late, you
won’t find her quite as you left her.... But why don’t you start out
with us now? What’s up in La Presa tonight that you can’t go along with
us?”

“Just a little matter to settle,” said Manos Duras with an insolent
smile. “I want to leave all my accounts in order before I go.”

But Piola was far from sharing his comrade’s assurance that the
adventure in hand would end successfully. He calculated that perhaps at
that very moment what had happened at the Rojas ranch was already known
at La Presa. If news of the kidnapping had not yet reached the town, it
would be sure to do so before long, for don Carlos would be returning
to his ranch after his fruitless trip to see the _comisario_. Wasn’t
Manos Duras afraid, he inquired, that the inhabitants of La Presa would
attribute the girl’s disappearance to him?

“Maybe,” replied the _gaucho_, in a tone of contemptuous indifference.
“But they have attributed so many things to me without being able to
prove any of them ...! If they see me in town they’ll think that I
haven’t had anything to do with this affair. Nobody saw me at the Rojas
place. Besides, I shall go to my ranch first in case anyone should come
up there to look for me. Then this afternoon I’ll ride into town as
usual ... by midnight I’ll have finished my business and be on the way
to join you.”

Piola winked his left eye and pointed towards the ranch house.

“What does _she_ say?”

“She thinks we carried her off to get ransom money out of the old
man.... She has no idea of what’s in store for her.... Pretty enough,
too, and she doesn’t seem to be much scared now that she’s got over her
first fright. _Pucha!_ She kept me busy for a while.... Little devil,
kicking and biting under the poncho when I put her on the saddle in
front of me! I’m keeping her with her hands bound in the house yonder.
If I didn’t she’d be fighting to get out, and you’d have to knock her
down as though she were a man!”

Manos Duras stood silent, absorbed by his thoughts for a few moments.
Then he added with a cynical smile,

“I came out because it was getting pretty difficult to keep my hands off
of her ... but the fact is, brother, there’s another one who’s even more
to my taste ... and I’m going to see her soon. Just the same this one is
a pretty fine specimen, and when a man’s alone with her, the devil
begins looking around for his innings ... and as we’re in enemy country,
I’ve no business to forget what I’m doing, and lose time.... But I’ll
make up for fasting today by feasting tomorrow. Today I have another
game to finish. So, just as soon as the others get back, I’ll be off.
You’ll go ahead with the she-calf, and I’ll go back to the ranch ... and
it’ll be ‘so long’ until tomorrow ... _si Dios quiere_!”

Watson grew weary of wriggling about through the _matorral_ bushes when
he found that there was nothing more to see than the two bandits talking
together, and the crumbling ranch-house, its door tight-closed, a few
planks of wood carelessly nailed across it. No, there seemed to be no
other living being around, and after a while he began to doubt that
Celinda’s captors had hidden her in the building opposite him. Perhaps
they had carried her off to a place much harder to find, and had left
her there under guard of the other two men?

Finally, tired of the uselessness of his observation, he slid down the
sand-hill and sat near the spot where Cachafaz had jumped onto his
horse. Time passed, but so slowly, it seemed a lifetime that he had been
waiting there, helplessly, in the slow torture of anxiety and
inactivity.

Something was moving on the horizon.... His eyes, which had for so long
scanned the landscape without discovering anything new in it, suddenly
grew animated as he made out between the dark patches of the distant
_matorrales_ a small rider who grew larger as he steadily galloped
towards the sand-hill. In a few minutes Watson recognized him. He had
seen the same horse and rider pass by that very morning ... don Carlos
Rojas.

Although the rancher was coming straight towards him, Richard thought it
prudent to go to meet him, and began running, with all the speed he
could make in the soft sand, furrowed by the black roots of the brush
from around which the wind had scattered the supporting soil so that his
feet kept catching in the exposed root fibres, and his progress was
constantly being interrupted by violent stumblings.

As soon as don Carlos caught sight of him, he reined in his horse and
pulled his revolver from the holster. Then, recognizing him, the rancher
dismounted.

Watson was perplexed. He had sent his message to La Presa. How was it
don Carlos had come in response to it ... and alone?

“Where are the others?” asked Watson. “Have you seen Robledo?”

Don Carlos replied evasively. Perhaps Robledo and the _comisario_ would
get there soon, but then again they might take hours....

“And I wasn’t going to wait for them,” don Carlos wound up. “Bunch of
slow-pokes. No knowing when they’ll get here. I got tired waiting and so
I came alone.”

Then he went on to explain that while he was riding as fast as he could
towards Manos Duras’s ranch, without stopping to go back to his own, he
had seen a rider coming rapidly towards him. He had drawn his revolver
in order to stop him, but there was something about the rider’s
appearance, that made him determine not to shoot.

“He looked like a monkey on a horse. Cachafaz it was! Then he told me
that you were here and showed me your note. I told him to ride ahead and
tell the others so that they shouldn’t lose more time going to my place.
So he’ll show them the way out here.... But what has happened?”

They walked along among the _matorral_ roots, following the path made by
Watson, Rojas leading his horse. He tethered him at the bottom of the
sand-hill, and then, on hands and knees, followed Watson up the slope
from the top of which they could look down on Dead Squaw ranch.

As they peered through the openings in the bushes they saw Piola still
sitting on the ground, just as before, but he was alone. Manos Duras had
disappeared.

The fellow was smoking and looking about uneasily, as though
instinctively, with the sharp senses of the desert dweller, he had
become aware of the hidden enemy. Every now and then he stretched his
neck and stared into the distance as though expecting a new arrival.

“Let’s attack!” whispered don Carlos.

It apparently was a small matter to him that the mountaineer held his
gun in front of him ready to aim. Rojas and Watson had no arms but their
revolvers.

“Don’t forget there’s another one somewhere about,” said Watson.

“Well, what of it?... That makes two, and there are two of us. Let’s go
for them. I want to take a crack at that fellow!”

And he pulled out his revolver, apparently with the idea of firing from
where he was, without taking any account of the distance the bullet
would have to travel. Watson checked him, laying a hand on his arm, and
whispering in his ear,

“There are two other men that I haven’t located yet. We’d better wait
for Robledo and the rest.”

They waited in a state of painful indecision, fluctuating between the
determination to wait prudently and the impulse to try their luck and
attack without knowing the exact number of the enemy to be reckoned
with.

But it was not long before Watson discovered the whereabouts of Manos
Duras’s other companions. Suddenly the silence was broken by the furious
barking of dogs in the distance. Piola stood up with a shout. Manos
Duras came out of the ranch house and went around the corner of the
adobe building, remaining in full sight of the two men spying upon him
from among the _matorral_ bushes.

Two other mountaineers were arriving. After the morning’s work, they had
gone to Manos Duras’s ranch to get the troop of horses that were to
accompany them on their journey into the mountains, carrying the food
and the other supplies necessary for so long an expedition, and the dogs
of the ranch had come along with the party.

In a few minutes the two new arrivals, armed with rifles and bringing
six horses loaded with sacks and roped bundles, reached the sandy
elevation. The dogs, after leaping about among the decaying buildings,
joyfully greeting the master they could not see, began to bark uneasily
and nose anxiously about. Then they broke into shrill fierce howls.
Their mouths dripping, their backs bristling, they tried to spring up
the sand slope, sliding back and running to the _gauchos_ to warn them
of the hidden enemy.

Instead of trying to quiet the dogs, the two horsemen looked up
threateningly at the _matorrales_ of the sandy elevation.

“They’ve spotted us,” muttered Rojas. “All the better. We’ll get through
this business right away!”

Watson followed him down the side of the hill. There was nothing to do
now but break cover. They came out at the point where the horse was
tethered; don Carlos mounted him and felt of his revolver to see if it
came out of the holster easily. Keeping close to the horse Watson moved
forward with Rojas, and in this fashion they advanced quite openly
towards the ranch-house.

When, preceded by the three dogs who, as they retreated, showed their
fangs and barked furiously, they reached the open space in front of the
building, they found themselves face to face with the two mountaineers
still on their horses, and Piola, with his rifle in position, ready to
fire. Don Carlos addressed him as though he were the leader of the band.

“Where is my daughter?” he demanded.

Imperturbably the _gaucho_ listened to him, as though not understanding
a word.

“There’s no need of useless talk,” Rojas continued, “If it’s money you
want, out with it, and perhaps we can come to an understanding.”

Piola remained silent. Meanwhile, in response to an almost imperceptible
signal from him, the other two _gauchos_ removed themselves to a
distance of a few yards, where they stood scanning the horizon line. One
of them rode back, dismounted, and began talking very low to Piola.
There was no one to be seen on the plain.

But the dogs continued barking, moving uneasily from one side of the
group to the other. It seemed that their agitation must be a remnant of
their previous excitement. The two riders had unquestionably arrived
alone.

Rojas continued his attempts to strike a bargain, at the same time
making extraordinary efforts to control his indignation.

“But I don’t know what you’re talking about, _señor_,” Piola replied
finally. “You’re on the wrong track. I never saw the young woman.”

“Aren’t you people friends of Manos Duras?”

While this was going on Watson moved away from the speakers with the
intention of getting around the ranch-house to the front door. But the
other mountaineer, guessing his intention, stepped in front of him,
taking aim at him, on the point of shooting. Finally without having
committed himself to any definite reply, Piola turned his back to Rojas
and walked away, disappearing behind the corner of the building.

The rancher attempted to follow him and brought up short against the man
who checked Watson. His rifle in position, he kept it pointed at both
men, and they were constrained to stand motionless while they inwardly
debated the question as to whether to yield to the menace of the gun
muzzle, or throw themselves upon the bandit.

With a blow, Piola knocked down the poorly joined planks with which the
door was patched, and came upon Manos Duras just at the moment when the
latter had reached the conclusion that his struggles with Celinda were
going to cost him too many scratches. The girl, in spite of the fact
that her hands were still bound, was defending herself with the ferocity
of a small tiger against the _gaucho’s_ attacks. She had torn his flesh
with her nails, bitten and kicked him. His face in several places
dripped blood, but such was his state of excitement that he was unaware
of more than a few of his wounds.

At sight of his comrade he tried to regain something of his customary
composure, and addressed him with fierce joviality.

“What did I tell you, brother? A fellow begins by playing and before he
knows it he loses his head, with a girl like that....”

But he became silent when he saw how Piola was looking at him.

“So, you’re playing in here like a green school boy! It doesn’t matter
to you what happens outside, does it?”

He motioned his leader towards the door, and once on the other side of
the threshold, he went on in a low tone,

“Old man Rojas is here with one of the _gringos_ from the dam. What are
we going to do?”

Manos Duras, in spite of his customary cynicism, was taken aback at the
news that only a few crumbling adobe walls separated him from Celinda’s
father. How had he arrived there so soon? Who could have revealed to him
the whereabouts of his kidnapped daughter? Then his native ferocity,
pricked by the memory of the insult done him, awoke to provide him with
a solution to the problem confronting him.

“Why not kill him?”

“And the _gringo_ too?” inquired Piola ironically. “You have an answer
to everything!”

The _gaucho_ from the Andes moved uneasily as though instinctively he
felt the proximity of danger. He could not believe that those two men
had come alone. Others must be close at hand to lend them help. The best
thing for Manos Duras to do in this situation was to mount his swift
horse without further loss of time, and start off with his prize on the
saddle in front of him for that part of the banks of the Limay where he
was to meet the rest of the expedition. Certainly he ought to give up
the idea of keeping any engagement in La Presa that night. Prudence
demanded a change of plans. While he was riding for safety with the
girl, he, Piola, and his men, would remain to distract the attention of
the pursuers. He could spend several hours convincing the old man that
his suspicions were ill-founded. And if other pursuers arrived from the
town they too would be convinced, on finding that the _gauchos_ had no
woman in their possession, and discovering no evidence of Manos Duras
having been at Dead Squaw ranch, that his comrades were merely peaceable
travellers using the ranch as a camping ground.

Manos Duras listened impatiently. No; he had taken a fancy to the
adventure just as it was and would not change any detail of the plan he
had made. He wanted to keep Celinda, well and good, but he would not
give up his visit to La Presa, where, as soon as it grew dark, he was
going to present himself on his mysterious errand.

“Well, there’s another way out still,” persisted Piola. “The old fellow
is offering money for the girl....”

But he got no farther. Close at hand, on the other side of the wall, a
shot rang out, and then a cry. Manos Duras’s trusted comrade uttered an
oath.

“There! The party’s begun!” he exclaimed, raising the trigger of his
gun, and running towards the spot from which the sound had apparently
come.

What had happened was that while the man who checked their advance kept
his gun aimed at Watson, who because of his youth seemed the more
dangerous of the two, Rojas had cautiously removed his revolver from the
holster and fired.

The man on guard fell over on his face, and Watson at once grasped his
rifle.

At the moment when Piola came around the turn of the building, Rojas had
already mounted his horse, for like many of his forefathers, he felt
more secure on his mount than he could ever feel standing on solid
ground. Watson, who had been wrestling with the wounded man for
possession of the rifle, at that moment wrested it from him, and was
raising it to his shoulder; but when he found that the mountaineer was
aiming at him, the American stooped with a quick instinctive motion,
and the bullet, which would otherwise have hit him square in the chest,
merely grazed his left shoulder. But the smarting pain caused by the
whizzing projectile made him drop the rifle he had seized, and raise his
right hand to his wounded shoulder.

Piola stepped towards him to make sure of his second shot; and at this
point in the duel Manos Duras thrust his head out of the shelter of the
corner wall.

What he noticed first was that Rojas was taking aim with his revolver at
Piola. Manos Duras with his own revolver took aim at the rancher; but he
could not draw the trigger. The other mountaineer who had been scouting
on the opposite side of the ranch came between him and his target.

“There’s a whole bunch of them coming,” he yelled.

The dogs were following him, making violent leaps in the direction of
the invisible enemy and back again.

And now events followed one another in such rapid succession that all
that happened seemed to crowd with fantastic velocity on the heels of
what was already occurring....

Manos Duras was the first to spring into action. With a rush he mounted
his horse, nibbling at patches of coarse grass, as undisturbed by the
shots fired as though he heard such detonations every day; and together,
horse and cattle thief disappeared behind the ranch house.

Piola turned from Watson to consider his own safety. He too felt safer
on horseback; keeping his rifle in his left hand, he jumped on his mount
with the remaining _gaucho_, and went to keep guard over the troop of
pack horses who represented the entire fortune of the band.

Rojas, apparently forgetting all possibility of danger to himself, rode
towards Watson.

“What have they done to you, _gringuito_?” he asked with genuine
emotion. “Have they killed you?”

“Nothing ... a scratch ... that’s all.”

Don Carlos had no time for more. It was imperative that he discover what
there was on the hidden side of the ranch house. He pushed his horse
forward, and passed the screening angle of the building.

No one. The door of the ramshackle building stood wide open. Through the
gaping aperture he could see the interior of the house. There was no one
there. But as he looked up from this disappointing scene, he caught
sight of a rider disappearing at a fast gallop in the direction of the
mountains; and this rider bore in front of him on the saddle a large
bundle which he held with both arms; and in spite of the rapidly
widening distance, Celinda’s father could see that the bundle was
struggling frantically.

“Ah, you criminal, you horse thief!”

He had had no worse fears. And while he stood, motionless for the moment
with despair, it seemed to him that he could still hear his little
daughter crying out to him for help....




CHAPTER XVII


When Elena finally got up the next morning, she was astonished to find
that Sebastiana paid no attention to her repeated calls.

At last one of the half-breed girls who worked under the house-keeper’s
directions presented herself and announced that Sebastiana hadn’t come
back to the house after her departure from it early that morning.

“They say there have been terrible goings-on at the Rojas ranch. The
_comisario_ and a lot of men are all riding out there now.”

Sebastiana, it seemed, had been seen on horseback riding out of the
town, accompanied by the _señor_ Robledo’s servant.

“She has gone to see what happened to her mistress ... everybody tells a
different story.... But one thing is sure and that is that someone was
killed out at the ranch....”

But the mistress of the house showed so little interest in what the
young half-breed was saying, that the girl stopped. A brief exclamation
of surprise had been the only comment made by the _señora_. Then she had
lapsed into silence as though the subject bored her.

All that morning Elena spent in her parlor, after the little maid had
brought her her breakfast. With impatience she contemplated the long
hours that must elapse before night. One thing she had determined upon.
She would send for Robledo, but he too, according to the report of the
servant girl, had gone with the comisario to the Rojas ranch, and would
probably not return before nightfall.

She could stay no longer in that place. For her husband it was
different; he had his work there. But she would ask Robledo to pay her
passage back to Paris, or at least to give her money enough to get to
Buenos Aires. Once in the capital, she would know how to get along. In
her early experiences she had had similar or worse situations to face
and she had long ago discovered that a woman of determined will can get
out of difficulties far more easily than a man.

As she went over in her mind the conversation she would have later that
day with the engineer, she felt consumed with impatience; but at the
same time she dreaded to see the hours glide swiftly by when she
remembered that at the end of a certain number of them someone was
likely to appear at her window and demand the fulfillment of a promise
she had made the night before.

It required a tremendous effort on her part to believe that she had not
dreamed that interview with Manos Duras. “What madness! How could I--the
person who is really I--have done such a thing?”

Yet, many times before in her life, she had felt the same wonder at her
own acts, as though there existed within her two antagonistic
personalities, each one of which aroused the loathing of the other.

“And perhaps that man will actually come back here,” she thought, with a
tremor of nervous irritation.

To quiet her nerves she assured herself that probably the _gaucho_ would
forget her promises. Then she remembered the vague news brought in by
the maid-servant about some frightful occurrence or other at the Rojas
ranch.

“He will not come,” she kept saying to herself as she contemplated the
possibility of Manos Duras’ coming to see her that night as had been
agreed. “How could he dare to make such absurd pretensions?...”

No, certainly not; and after the news which would by that time be the
common talk of the town, he would not dare come back to make any claims.
And even though that semi-savage was a fear-inspiring opponent at close
range, she had only to keep her doors and windows well locked in order
to protect herself from his presence.

She stopped thinking about the _gaucho_; but her memory was still
tormented by memories of the preceding night. What was it that had
happened near dawn just as the open space of her window began to grow
luminous? She had been in the confused state of half-consciousness, when
one’s eyes refuse to open, and one’s thoughts alternate between waking
and sleep.

But now that she was quite waked up, and could contemplate what had
occurred a few hours previous, she began to acquire the certainty that
there had been someone close to her window that morning. Now she could
distinctly remember the muffled sound of steps on the balcony, a slight
creaking of the boards in the outside wall, as though someone were
leaning heavily against them. She could even have averred that she had
heard sounds like the lamentations of someone lost; and instinctively
she believed that the being who had been near her in the night on the
other side of the bungalow wall was no other than her husband.

Twice she had gone to the window and had opened it in the hope of
finding some paper or other trace of her invisible visitor, who had come
with the dawn, and vanished at sunrise.

“It was Federico,” she thought. “It could have been no one else....
Robledo must know where he is! How I wish he would come back so I could
speak to him!”

A little after midday, as she was smoking her twentieth cigarette, there
came a knock at the door. Several moments elapsed, and again came a
knock. Elena concluded that, since Sebastiana was no longer there to
keep them in order, the young servant-girls had left the house after
lunch, to run about the town in search of news and gossip.

So she went to open the door herself, and was much astonished at sight
of her caller. It was Moreno. There was nothing so remarkable about his
coming to call, yet Elena could not conceal a gesture of astonishment.
She had forgotten him so completely! Of late other men than he had
completely absorbed her attention.

Blushing with embarrassment for the forgetfulness of him her surprise
had betrayed, she invited him to come in, in a tone of quite exaggerated
affability. Surely it was her good luck which was sending her this fool
to entertain her with his conversation during the interminable afternoon
that somehow or other she must live through! And this call was at least
a break in the monotony of her solitude.

As he came in Moreno looked at the furnishings with a gently protective
air, quite as though they belonged to him. Then, with an assurance he
had never before revealed, he sat down in the chair which the _marquesa_
indicated he was to occupy.

“I’m off to Buenos Aires by the afternoon train, _señora marquesa_,” he
announced with a gravity of a man who knows his own importance. “I must
see the government representatives and give them an account of what
happened here, and talk with the minister of public works about keeping
things going on.”

Elena received all this with nods of understanding and sympathy, her
eyes all the while smiling maliciously ... it was amusing to see this
worthy family man stressing his own importance.

“But before I went away, I wanted to see you again to discuss a matter
relating to my future responsibilities.”

As he went on talking the malicious sparkle in Elena’s eyes suddenly
went out, and in its place came a look of avid interest that at moments
increased to burning intensity.

“Poor fellow,” said Moreno, as he related how Pirovani had entrusted his
entire fortune to him, making him the guardian of his only daughter who
was at school in Italy, “poor fellow ... I find on looking through his
papers that he was even better off than I thought. This responsibility
he has left me is going to take most of my time, and I may have to
resign from my position. I don’t even know that I’ll be able to come
back here. Perhaps it will be a long time before we see one another
again.”

The government employee grew sad at thought of this prolonged
separation, although he managed to maintain the expression of intense
self-satisfaction which he had worn ever since the day of the funeral.

“As poor old Pirovani left the management of his fortune to me, and as
this house belongs to his heir, of whom I am the legal guardian, I am
empowered, _señora marquesa_, to tell you that you may remain here as
long as it suits your convenience, just as though it were your own
house, and without any question of your paying a single cent for it.
There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you, _marquesa_!”

Her inquiring eyes looked at him fixedly. It was difficult to conceal
from him the surprise this news had caused her. Moreno, of all people,
the trustee of the contractor’s fortune, and still dazed by the amount
of the fortune so suddenly thrust into his possession, and about to
return to a great city, there to begin a new kind of existence....

Little by little from the sea of her amazement new plans began to emerge
like islands still of uncertain shape and in process of formation.
Within her, a dividing process was going on; side by side with the woman
of frivolous tastes, hungry for comforts and luxuries, emerged that
other woman, the one of ferocious energy, capable of harsh resolution in
difficult moments, the one who did not hesitate to commit cruelties. And
this woman, as she became roused, was imperiously commanding her
companion,

“Don’t let this man go away ... fate has sent him to you!”

Moreno, who was looking at her with more audacious eyes than in the days
when he had no hope of ever being rich and powerful, saw a shadow on the
_señora marquesa’s_ face, as though an invisible cloud were passing over
her. Then the corners of her mouth quivered, perhaps with pain, and she
raised her hands to her eyes, as though to hide some tears.

Moreno got up from his chair to console her. He remembered, at sight of
her mourning, that she must at that very moment be grieving over the
death of her husband’s mother. And in addition to that bereavement there
was the death of Pirovani, and Canterac’s flight, and so many
distressing occurrences in so short a time ...!

“All these things are very sad, _señora marquesa_, but you must not
weep, my friend!”

And he dared go so far as to take hold of her hands, pressing them
gently as he removed them from her eyes, humid with tears.

“I am not weeping for what is past,” she sighed, “but for myself, for my
misfortune. For them there is no remedy. I am all alone in the world. My
husband has not come back here since day before yesterday ... and
perhaps he will never come back. Who knows what calumnies people may
have poured into his ears! I had friends once, good friends, and one has
died while the other is a fugitive.... You were the only one left me ...
and now you are going away for ever!”

Shaken by these words, the government employee began to stammer,

“But you must always count on me, _señora marquesa_.... I am going
away, but in reality I am not going at all, for you will have me in
Buenos Aires, and....”

He decided that it was wiser not to go on, for his emotions might make
him incoherent. Elena, who had dried her tears, was looking at him with
passionate interest.

“I never have been able to make people understand me,” she said. “Men
for instance are always like this. They all come running when a woman
strikes their fancy, and they pursue her with their attentions, each in
turn gaining possession of his rival’s place until the poor thing is so
confused she doesn’t know which of them all she really prefers. Now that
you are going away, and that I am losing you, perhaps forever, I
suddenly take account of the fact that it was always the two poor
friends who have already left us who deliberately crowded into the front
row, and in doing so hid from me the man who is really the one I am most
interested in!”

Moreno was so impressed by these words that he took Elena’s left hand in
his.

“What are you saying, _marquesa_!”

She let him caress her hand, and then wove her smooth fingers about one
of his adding, in a tone of utmost sincerity, as though revealing her
most intimate thoughts,

“You always interested me ... because you were so modest, and I
recognized that modesty as being the kind that accompanies great
ability, abilities that you yourself do not yet suspect the existence of
in yourself. I like men who are good, men who have no false pride. So
often, when I was alone, I amused myself imagining what a man like you
might have become, had you lived in Europe ... and had you met the right
woman to inspire you, and to advise you and encourage your awakening
ambition....”

Moreno remained silent, looking at Elena with a kind of astonishment, as
though the words she had just uttered had won from him the utmost he was
capable of in the way of admiration. This wonderful woman had the same
thoughts that came to him so often ... but he had never dared put his
faith in them....

Elena sadly threw back her shoulders.

“But it is too late to talk of such things,” she went on in a tone of
discouragement.

“You have a family to work for, and I ... I am a woman with neither
illusions nor hopes, I am alone, I am poor ... and I do not know what is
in store for me.”

The government clerk remained pensive, his eyebrows drawn together, as
though mentally contemplating a vision thoroughly distasteful to him.
What he saw was a little house in the suburbs of Buenos Aires; in its
modest clean little rooms were a woman and some children ... his
children, his wife ... and then rapidly the vision vanished like a puff
of smoke, and Moreno recovered the air of assured self-satisfaction he
had displayed on first arriving that afternoon.

“I, too,” he said, “was busy thinking about a great many things last
night. I couldn’t sleep, and got up very late. That’s why I didn’t have
time to find out about what had happened at the Rojas’ place.... One of
the things I was thinking was that it might be a good idea for me to go
to Europe to look up Pirovani’s daughter, and keep a closer watch over
his property than I could do in Buenos Aires. Who knows? I might be able
to increase his fortune considerably, if I attended strictly to
business.... I am not vain enough to think that I have all the ability
you attribute to me, _marquesa_; but it is true that I know a little
arithmetic, and that I am methodical. I might be able to do at least as
well as other men in business ... why not?”

A long pause followed, and finally Moreno plucked up the courage to
stammer timidly,

“You might come with me to Europe, _marquesa_ ... to advise me. For, in
spite of the flattering opinion you have of me, I would be so ignorant
there of the things I ought to know....”

Elena started, and then, with a proud gesture, repelled this suggestion.

“How could I accept such a thing! You are mad!... But, my dear Moreno,
you would find me a terrible burden!... and besides, I am a married
woman, and if we travelled together, people would inevitably make the
worst suppositions about us!”

In spite of her protest, she took Moreno’s hands in hers and brought her
face close to his, surrounding him with the fragrant effluvia of her
perfumed flesh; and at the same time, she exclaimed warmly,

“What a great big heart you have! How can I show you how much I
appreciate your offering to do this?”

Moreno assumed an imploring expression as he in turn protested; what
could it matter to them what people said?... Anyway, no one knew them
in Europe. They could live in Paris, that marvellous city that he had
so often admired and that he might never have had the chance to see, had
not Pirovani’s death made it possible ... and it was for him to thank
the _marquesa_ if she should deign to accompany him and give him her
invaluable counsel.

“But your family?” inquired Elena, with an austerity of intonation
belied by her eyes.

With the good-natured cynicism of a rich man who firmly believes that
every difficulty in life can be solved with money, he replied,

“My family can stay in Buenos Aires. I’ll see to it that they have much
better quarters than they have ever had before. All that can easily be
arranged with money, and everybody will be happy. As for myself, I shall
of course have quite an income, for naturally I must pay myself for my
work as guardian. And besides that, I shall make money in a business
way.”

But Elena persisted with her refusals, although with diminishing
intensity, and Moreno thought the moment propitious for trying to
overcome her resistance by describing the delights of that Paris which
he had never seen, and those pleasures she had grown unmindful of for
having known them so well.

“It is madness,” persisted Elena, interrupting him. “I haven’t the
courage to face the scandal that would surely come of it. Just imagine
what people would say if we went away together!”

And then, assuming the modest, timid expression a young girl might wear
if confronted with something offensive to her innocence, she murmured,

“I am not the sort of woman you think me. Men are so fearfully ready to
believe everything they hear about a woman ... and Heaven only knows
what people may have said to you about me!... I alone can know how
unhappy I have been in my marriage. My husband is good, yes ... but he
never understood me. Still, all that is a far cry from running away with
another man, and giving everybody the right to talk about me!”

And then all the phrases stored in his memory from his assiduous reading
of society novels came pouring out.... What did marriage amount to
anyway?... And how could what people said have any weight with her? It
was her right to have real love in her life, and to take it wherever she
might find it ... and it was just as surely her right to “live her own
life,” side by side with a man capable of making life beautiful for her,
of making it worthy of all her wonderful gifts!

And as these passages culled from hundreds of novels came out, one after
the other, Moreno had the satisfaction of seeing that Elena too was
familiar with all these arguments, and that she too was moved and
softened (just as he was himself) by his literary but none the less
impassioned eloquence.

What the _marquesa_ was actually thinking was that she had carried on
this pretense of resistance long enough, and that it was now time to
give in gracefully so as to clear the way for a discussion of more
immediate and urgent matters. As though unaware of what she was doing,
she placed her hands on his shoulders, and spoke close to him, in a
scarcely audible tone, and looking up at the farthest corner of the
room, as though lost for the moment in a host of memories.

“Paris!” she murmured. “You know it from books, but they can give you
only a feeble idea of what life there is really like. Oh, if you knew
what a delicious experience is awaiting us there!”

Moreno took these words to be an acceptance of his proposals, and
believed himself authorized by them to put his arms around her.

“You do accept then?... Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

But she gently pushed him away, checking his caresses, and with the
gravity of demeanor of a woman who knows how to make clear and definite
business arrangements, she said,

“If I should come to the point of saying ‘I accept’ it would be only on
condition that we should leave this very day. Otherwise I may repent of
my decision, and change my mind.... Besides, why should I stay in this
hateful hole, when even my husband has abandoned me ... and I don’t know
what has become of him ...?”

Moreno replied by nodding vigorously. They ought to take advantage of
the train leaving that very afternoon. If they waited for the next,
something to hinder them might develop before they could get away ...
and the poor fellow actually believed that the _marquesa_ was capable of
repenting of her decision ... that he must make the most of this
favorable moment.

She meanwhile was asking numerous questions, each of which constituted
an article in the verbal contract that was being so definitely drawn up
between them. Moreno made clear to her that his claim to the
guardianship of Pirovani’s fortune was well substantiated by the papers
the Italian had left. The fortune of which he would have charge was
ample. By great good luck--for them--it happened that the contractor
had, before the duel, entrusted all the cash he had on hand to his
second. This made it possible for Moreno to pay the expenses of the trip
to the capital, as well as provide funds for Elena’s establishment in a
luxurious hotel there.

“And once in Buenos Aires,” he went on, “I shall assemble all the
deposits Pirovani had in numerous banks there, and I’ll also try to
collect what the government owes him for the work here in La Presa. I
know a lot of influential people who’ll help me get that money. You’ll
see that even though some people around here may think I’m a fool, I’m
not so slow when it comes to making people pay me what they owe me....
And just as soon as that little matter is settled, we’ll start for
Europe.”

Once more, emboldened by his own words, and certain now of Elena’s
acceptance, he put his arms about her, but again she repulsed him.

“No,” she said severely, though at the same time there was a gleam of
malicious amusement in the eyes she rapidly turned away from him, “I
warn you that until we get to Paris I shall be no more to you than your
travelling companion. Men are always ungrateful if they attain their
desires too easily ... and they have been known to take advantage of a
woman’s generosity, and forget all their handsome promises!”

Then she smiled with a look that promised many things, and murmured very
low, dropping her eyes,

“But, as soon as we get to Paris....”

Moreno was profoundly moved by the gesture that accompanied her words.

“Paris!” At the word, the government clerk’s imagination excitedly
reviewed all he had read about the episodes of the gay life led by
foreigners in the French capital.

A luxurious all night restaurant, such as those he always thought of as
being plentifully scattered through Montmartre, and such as those he had
so often admired in movie films.... It seemed to him that he could
actually hear the harsh, restless music of a jazzband ... and his eyes
followed the circling of the couples dancing in a great rectangle,
bordered by glittering tables.

Then the _marquesa_ came in, gorgeously dressed ... she was leaning on
his arm ... he wore a dress coat and an enormous pearl on his
shirt-front. The major-domo of the establishment welcomed him with the
familiar respect due a well-known customer, the women from afar cast
enviously admiring glances at Elena’s jewels.... Then a groom,
diminutive as a gnome, carried off the marquesa’s magnificent fur wrap
that scattered a perfume through the air like that of a tropical
garden.... And now he was examining the wine list, and ordering a
high-priced champagne, whose very name called forth from the manager of
the establishment a reverently hushed tone of admiration....

The vision vanished; he was still in Pirovani’s former house, sitting
beside the woman whom he had desired with all the fervor that men
isolated and lonely feel for something that seems forever beyond their
reach; and now his eager and hungry eyes rested upon her.

“Paris!” he repeated. “How I want to be there with you ... Elena. For
you will allow me to call you Elena, won’t you?”




CHAPTER XVIII


To young Watson it seemed that events were now following one another
with the dizzy rapidity and the absurd lack of logical sequence
characteristic of a dream, or of something equally independent of time
and space.

First came shots; then there passed before his eyes several riders, some
of them advancing at a gallop, while others, halting, fired at the
mountaineers. In vain Piola raised both hands in the air, shouting,

“Don’t shoot, brother, we surrender!”

The men just arriving didn’t want to hear and went on firing in spite of
Robledo’s shouts.

Piola’s comrade fell wounded; and at this Piola himself thought it
advisable to fall to the ground and take refuge behind his horse.

The whole group of horsemen from La Presa were finally assembled on the
same plateau in front of the ranch house; but Watson paid not the
slightest attention to Robledo’s exclamations of astonishment at finding
him there. Nor did he waste any time on the _comisario’s_ salutations.
Anyway these two recent arrivals promptly forgot him, and went to see
what information they could get out of Piola by placing their revolver
muzzles against his chest, while they demanded that he tell them what
had been done with Celinda. Some of the other members of the rescue
party dismounted to have a look at the man just wounded, as well as at
the one hit a few minutes earlier by don Carlos.

What most attracted Watson’s attention in the whole strange scene was
the presence of his own horse there, with Cachafaz importantly
straddling him and pointing accusingly at the three prisoners.

“It was those bad _gauchos_ who took away my _patroncita_! I saw them!”

But he was inconsiderately interrupted, for someone grasped him round
the waist and rudely robbed him of the dignity of his commanding
position by setting him down on the sand.

With a determined effort to pay no attention to the pain it caused him,
Richard had made use of his one serviceable arm to get possession of his
horse. The animal recognized the feel of his master in the saddle, and
needed no spurring to start off at full gallop in the direction taken by
Rojas.

The rancher had already been in close pursuit of Manos Duras for several
minutes, and he had not given up hopes of overtaking him. It was
difficult to keep the horses at a gallop on those sandy slopes, and
besides, the animal Manos Duras rode had two burdens to carry; and all
the while he was spurring on his horse the bandit had to keep tight hold
of the still unsubdued Celinda. Rojas had the advantage of two free
hands as he gave chase.

The _gaucho_ turned around several times, taking aim with the revolver
he held in his left hand. Two bullets whistled past don Carlos. He
replied with two bullets, then stopped. He had just discovered that he
had only three more cartridges. That morning when he had started out
for La Presa he had strapped on his holster case without filling the
empty sockets. Only three shots more! But he had the knife he always
carried for the emergencies that might arise as he rode over his
property in his belt.... Besides, shooting was dangerous. He might wound
Celinda.

The _gaucho_, better supplied with shot, went on firing with great
lavishness as he sped away.

An overwhelming indignation swept through the rancher as he perceived
what Manos Duras was attempting to do.

“Shameless cattle thief! He’s aiming at my horse!”

And to the horse-loving creole, this was as despicable a crime, as just
a cause for unlimited vengeance, as the injury done him, don Carlos
Rojas, by robbing him of his daughter.

But in a few moments the rancher, who rode a horse as though moulded to
it, felt a mortal shudder under him. Instantly he lifted his feet from
the stirrups and jumped to the ground, but scarcely had his foot touched
the sand when the animal fell heavily, a stream of blood pouring out of
his breast like the crimson spurtings of a shattered wine cask.

The rancher stood by helplessly while the bandit sped away, holding
Celinda down on the saddle-tree.... Then he concentrated all his will on
the hand that held his revolver. He must kill the bandit’s horse.

And the man trembled with emotion. Not all his combats with men and wild
beasts had prepared him for this. How could he, to whom a horse was like
a child of his flesh, shoot one down in cold blood?... But there,
growing smaller in the increasing distance, was Celinda, struggling,
crying out!

He was, as a rule, a sure shot. But he fired without effect; and again
he fired. The _gaucho_ still sped on, and don Carlos raised his revolver
for the last shot. Suddenly Manos Duras’s horse staggered, slowed down
and plunged to the ground, raising a cloud of dust in a last frenzied
kick.

Rojas ran forward; but before he reached the struggling group Manos
Duras had already extricated himself from the saddle, and, still holding
Celinda, stood waiting for him, his second revolver drawn.

Don Carlos went a few steps further; but the shot that rang out passed
so near his cheek that for a moment he thought it must have caught him.
He dropped to the ground in order to offer the marksman a smaller
target, and dragged himself along, keeping his revolver in his left
hand. The _gaucho_, unaware that his enemy had but one shot left,
thought it was don Carlos’ intention to draw nearer so as to make sure
of the effect of his bullets, and he went on firing, holding Celinda in
front of him the while as a shield against her father’s shots. But the
girl’s struggles to free herself from the grip of that sinewy arm shook
his hand and spoiled the bandit’s aim.

“If you try one more shot, old man, I kill your daughter!”

This warning, added to the knowledge that he had but one more bullet in
his cartridge chamber, forced don Carlos to content himself with slowly
crawling forward over the sand, seeking the shelter of the hummocks on
its surface.

But meanwhile Manos Duras became instinctively aware of the presence of
a new danger. He looked about attempting to discover it; but the one
menacing him from in front soon called for all his attention.

The invisible enemy recently arrived was Watson, who, when he heard
shots, dismounted, and under cover of the rough desert brush, advanced
Indian-fashion towards the scene of the revolver duel.

For a moment he felt tempted to fire from the back at Manos Duras; but
there was danger of his wounding Celinda whose movements could not be
counted on. So he returned to his horse and detached from the saddle the
lassoo that the _señorita_ de Rojas had given him. Holding it in his
right hand, he circled about through the _matorrales_ until he was
directly behind the bandit.

Going even this short distance caused him acute pain. Several times the
thorny branches of the harsh desert growths caught at his wounded
shoulder, and uncertainty made him tremble with nervousness. Would he
have sufficient skill to use this primitive weapon?

He was troubled at recalling how _Flor de Rio Negro_ had laughed at him,
in childish enjoyment of his clumsiness; but the memory of the happy
rides they had had together, and the sight of her now in close peril of
death or worse, brought his energy flooding back; and some of the
principles instilled in him as a boy, and the methodical, practical
spirit of his race, came to stiffen his courage. “Whatever you do, do it
well” ... somehow that seemed to the point. Confiding in the mysterious
and intangible powers that control our lives, and that from time to
time, show an inexplicable preference for some of us, and protect us
from apparently inescapable dangers, Richard threw his rope, almost
without looking, trusting to his luck and his sure sense of distance.
Then he began pulling in, backing his horse in the brush. At the sudden
resistance of the lariat, he felt the joyful assurance that he had
caught his game. So savage was his joy that he pulled with both hands,
though several groans escaped him for the pain he felt from the
laceration of his shoulder.

And as a matter of fact the rope had caught both Manos Duras and
Celinda, and suddenly they both tumbled backwards under the impact of a
sudden pull.

The _gaucho_ let go of Celinda so as to free both hands. Even while he
was being drawn along the ground he managed to get at his knife, and cut
the rope that bound him. But Watson had foreseen this, and running
forward, dealt him several blows on the head with the butt of his
revolver. Rojas meanwhile reached the tussling group and throwing his
now useless weapon down, grasped his knife.

“Leave him to me, _gringo_!” he gasped. “I don’t want anybody to take
this job from me.... I have a right to it!”

He pushed Watson vigorously out of the way, and the latter turned to
Celinda, picked her up from the ground and carried her off to a distance
of a few yards. She was so stunned by the fall that she did not
recognize him, but stood, passing her hands over her forehead, and
gazing blankly about her, while blood tricked from the cuts on her arms
and face.

Don Carlos meanwhile was almost helping Manos Duras to get to his feet.

“Stand up, son of evil!... Or you’ll be saying that I am killing you
without giving you a chance! Get out your knife, and fight, damn your
soul!”

Manos Duras as a matter of fact already held his knife in his hand, but
the rancher, beside himself at finally having the _gaucho_ within reach,
had not noticed it.

But scarcely had the bandit got a footing than he treacherously made a
plunge toward his pursuer, trying to stab him below the belt. However,
the blows dealt him by Watson had dazed him sufficiently to slow up all
his movements, and the rancher had time to parry the blow with a back
stroke of his left hand. Then don Carlos landed a thrust on the bandit’s
chest, and another and another, in such swift succession that Manos
Duras, blood pouring out from the numerous gashes he had just received,
toppled over....

“The puma’s done for!” shouted don Carlos, holding up his blood dripping
knife. The bandit, writhing at his feet, was uttering snorts of an agony
that could only end in death.

Watson had led Celinda a certain distance away so that she should not
witness this scene; but he had kept close watch of what was going on,
ready to lend help if don Carlos should need it.

The two men helped Celinda to the spot where Watson had left his horse;
in their anxiety lest she should see the bandit in his death agony, they
almost carried her between them. But still dazed by the rapid succession
of events, the girl looked about with vague dilated eyes as though she
recognized nothing in her surroundings. Finally she burst into tears,
and threw her arms about her father. Then, entirely unmindful of the
attitude she maintained towards him when she was quite herself, she
threw her arms about Watson, too, and kissed him.

Stirred by her unexpected caress, and distressed by the sight of the
scratches and cuts on the girl’s face, Richard asked, anxiously,

“Did I hurt you, Miss Rojas?... But don’t you think I managed a little
better with the lariat this time?”

Then the two men helped Celinda get on the horse and walked along beside
her to Dead Indian ranch.

At sight of them, Robledo and the commissioner came out with a joyful
welcome. In front of the ranch house stood the other men of the
expedition, who, after attending in their own way to the wounds of their
captives, were keeping watch over them, as well as over Piola. It had
been decided to take them all to the jail in the capital of the
territory on the very next day.

Meanwhile, Celinda, finding herself once more among friends, who were
eagerly expressing their delight at her rescue, began to recover her
usual spirits. She tried to hide her face from Watson, so that he
shouldn’t see all the cuts that disfigured it; but at the same time she
eyed him with a new tenderness.

“Did I really hurt you, ... Celinda?” the youth kept asking in an
imploring tone, as though his emotions would not at the moment permit of
his saying anything else. “But didn’t I do better with the lassoo?
Didn’t I?”

After glancing about to see whether her father were near enough to
overhear, she murmured, imitating his foreign accent,

“Clumsy _gringo_! Great big stupid! I should say you _did_ hurt me, and
you manage a lassoo as badly as possible.... But never mind! As long as
you caught that bad man with me, and as long as I said that you’d have
to catch me that way if you wanted me ... here I am!”

And puckering up her lips she blew him a kiss, as a kind of promise of
what his reward would be when later they should find means of being
alone.

At dusk the expedition reached La Presa, after a short halt at the Rojas
ranch where they found Sebastiana. The half-breed, at sight of her young
mistress, burst out into loud exclamations of joy, which later were
transformed into cries of indignation when she saw the marks on
Celinda’s face. In the midst of her indignant vituperations, the
_marquesa’s_ name escaped her, in spite of Robledo’s commands to her
that she be discreet. And finally she ended up by telling Rojas all that
she knew of the interview between the “_señorona_” and Manos Duras, and
of all that she suspected it signified.

Sebastiana, quite as a matter of course, decided to remain at the ranch,
and did not consider it necessary to ask don Carlos’ permission to do
so. The rancher himself, however, urged Watson to stay with him until
the following day, when he would accompany his guest to town.

“I have some urgent business to attend to at La Presa, just a few things
to say to a certain person there,” said don Carlos in a voice so soft
it was terrifying to hear. Robledo divining his intentions tried to
dissuade him from the trip.

“Leave me alone, don Manuel. I’m going to see that woman. You know what
she tried to do to my girl. All I want is to pick up her skirts and give
her a thrashing with this whip of mine, so....”

And he snapped the leather thong of his short riding-whip.

Convinced finally that there was no deterring don Carlos from his
purpose, Robledo finally consented to being accompanied by him to the
settlement. The fury of his combat with the _gaucho_ had not yet abated
in Celinda’s father, but Robledo hoped that within a few hours it would
have subsided a little.

When they reached the main street, the rescue party found nearly the
whole population of La Presa assembled to meet them. The men, riding
ahead, gave out the news of the skirmish as they passed by the different
groups and their words sped through the crowd with startling rapidity.
There was general and frankly expressed rejoicing at the death of Manos
Duras, as though the town had by that event been freed from a dangerous
menace. Some of the men went so far as to lament the fact that the
_comisario_ should have left the three prisoners under guard at Dead
Squaw ranch until they could be conveyed to the prison of the territory.
With that ferocity which always manifests itself in a crowd when finally
it has been liberated from something that it feared, the men and women
who had gathered to hear the news would have liked to tear these friends
of the dead _gaucho’s_ to pieces, in order to be avenged for the terror
he had inspired in them when he was alive.

Suddenly the throng caught at something that promised the satisfaction
of its most ferocious instincts. A few of Sebastiana’s words were
repeated, and in a twinkling the whole story was out. So it was the
great _señora_, the “_señorona_” who, with Manos Duras, had planned this
terrible act of vengeance! A vengeance which seemed more like the
horrible things they had heard tell of, or that they themselves had seen
in the movies, than anything they had ever witnessed in actual life. To
think that that white-skinned _gringa_ had tried to kill the ranch girl,
their own _Flor de Rio Negro_, daughter of the land and the friend of
every one of them!

Robledo, on horseback, moving back and forth from one group to another,
guessed from a few phrases caught at random that the anger rising
rapidly in the crowd was assuming dangerous proportions. At that very
moment they were passing poor Pirovani’s former dwelling. Some of the
women began crying out shrilly as they looked up at the windows.

“Down with the painted face! Death to the murderous she-dog!”

The worst insults in their feminine vocabularies were hurled through the
air. Anticipating what was going to happen, Robledo changed his course
and went up to the house, backing his horse up against the outside
steps. But for once not even those men who were most loyal to him
supported him in his purpose.

Heedless of his advice as of his commands, women and children dove under
his horse or slipped behind its flanks, and the invading movement
having been started, the men thronged into the basement of the house,
apologizing, with a lift of their caps, as they passed in front of the
engineer.

The assault of the enemy’s quarters was very rapid, every obstacle in
the way of the invaders being overcome with that ease which seems
characteristic of popular attacks on days of successful revolutionary
outbreaks. The front door fell in, shattered by a few determined blows,
and the human tide eddied for a moment around the opening, then, in
surge after surge, swept into the house. Broken panes fell out of the
windows, followed by all manner of projectiles, furniture, clothes,
dishes, and in vain did some of the more moderate members of the crowd
protest against this senseless destruction.

“But this isn’t _her_ house,” they were repeating. “This all belongs to
don Enrique, the Italian!”

The crowd however turned a deaf ear. It preferred to believe that
everything there _did_ belong to the “_señorona_,” so as to be able to
vent its rage without scrupling about other people’s property. And all
the while they screamed out insults, in the hope that their words would
scorch the “_señorona’s_” ears, just as they hoped that their hands
might tear at her flesh.

But finally Robledo, still on his horse, calling out orders that went
unobeyed, succeeded in gaining the attention of the crowd which had
grown tired of its work of destruction. Its energies had suddenly
diminished at discovering that its hoped-for victim was no longer within
reach; but the real reason for its subsiding into a relative silence
which allowed Robledo to make himself heard, was the arrival of an old
Spanish laborer who had retired from the works at the dam in order to
carry on the business of delivering water to his customers in the town.
Prodding and cursing at the miserable old nag that unwillingly drew his
ramshackle cart, containing a water-tank, he daily made the rounds of La
Presa; and from this conveyance he now began haranguing the mob at
Pirovani’s.

“What are you doing here, blunder-heads? She’s gone!” he yelled shrilly.
“I saw her in a carriage with the señor Moreno, the government fellow.
They were on their way to the station to take the train to Buenos
Aires.”

At once some of the men who had horses within reach offered to start off
in pursuit. They had lost a good deal of time, but perhaps if they rode
without any regard for their mounts they might get to Fuerte Sarmiento
in time to catch the fugitive....

But some of the others shook their heads. The train would go by within
less than an hour, and as it started out from the neighboring town, it
rarely reached Fuerte Sarmiento late.

But the women were insistent. Let the men who had horses try to get to
the station and let them drag the “_señorona_” back by the hair ... and
while they were screaming out what they would do if they had their way,
some of the males of the party were expressing the opinion that it would
be an excellent plan to take up a position along the railway track, and
when the train came by, shoot.... They appeared to have quite overlooked
the fact which Robledo tried to point out to them, that even if they
knew which particular coach contained the _marquesa_, there would be
other travellers in it, whom they would have little excuse for
murdering.

Hoarse with shouting, and convinced finally that the hated woman was now
beyond their reach, they lapsed into glum silence.

Robledo seized his opportunity.

“Let her go. When she goes, Gualicho goes, and he’s troubled us enough.
What we want is to keep this demon from ever coming back. If only he had
been driven out long ago!”

As twilight deepened, the mob grew calmer. Supper time came, and even
some of the most excitable members of the crowd decided to continue
their discussion of the story either at their own homes, or at the
_Gallego’s boliche_.

Rojas, plunged in gloom, had apparently forgotten all the other events
of the day, and could think of nothing but Elena’s having escaped him.

“But you don’t know how I feel about it, don Manuel!... I had something
to say to her, by means of a whip.”

And with a gesture indicating how he would have done it, he went on
explaining just what he considered justice would have demanded that he
do to the _marquesa_.

From that day on, life in La Presa became a monotonous series of anxious
days. Robledo was the only person of any importance left in the
community. As operations at the dam remained suspended, the workmen
began to drift away. Some of them, less impatient, spent their days in
idleness, talking of the prospects of the Government’s ordering the
works to begin again “next week.” But the order never arrived. Down
there at Buenos Aires they were taking their time to consider the
matter, and as the months went by, one after another of the workmen lost
patience, and finally took up his pack again to escape, either on foot
or by rail, from a place where there was no money coming in and where
poverty was gaining headway like a plague.

The _boliche_ had taken on a funereal appearance. Only a few of the old
customers still came to toss off a drink before the _Gallego’s_ counter.
These were all men of assured solvency, don Antonio having abruptly cut
off the credit of all his other customers; to back up this resolve he
kept a revolver in his money drawer, and his handsome American rifle
under his chair. When out of funds, his patrons amply justified all
these precautions.

“You ought to go to Buenos Aires, don Manuel,” he kept saying hopefully
to Robledo. “You’re the only man from these parts they’ll listen to up
there.”

The engineer, however, was as disheartened and gloomy as his
surroundings. The only thing that ever drew a smile from him was the
changed aspect of his partner. Watson had suddenly developed a
cheerfulness which seemed to indicate that the fate of his once beloved
canals was nothing to him now. According to his frank confession, the
only subject that interested him was cattle raising, and he spent all of
his days at the Rojas ranch.

What was the momentary paralysis of the works at the dam to him! He was
young, most of his life stretching ahead of him. Why not study
cattle-farming in the meantime, especially as he had _Flor de Rio Negro_
to teach him, as she rode by his side through her father’s fields from
sunrise to sundown?

But an incident that occurred shortly after Elena’s flight had tinged
everything with black melancholy for Robledo. Gonzalez had brought him a
hat that one of his compatriots had found near the river, at a distance
from the camp. The engineer had recognized it at once. It was Torre
Bianca’s.

For some time he had felt certain that his friend was no longer alive.
Often at night, when the financial difficulties in which the works were
involved kept him awake, he reconstructed the events which one morning
at dawn had made Elena’s husband leave the house of the friend with whom
he had taken refuge.

There could be little doubt now. Torre Bianca’s body must be at the
bottom of the river.

And so it proved. The owner of the _boliche_ came to him again to tell
him of the discovery made by some of the men who, being out of work, had
gone fishing two leagues down the river. Near a reed-encircled island
they expected to find some of the trout that often came down stream from
Lake Nahuel-Huapi. And among the reeds they had noticed two long black
objects swayed by the ripples--the legs of a drowned man.

Robledo had not the heart to examine the body, but his compatriot
Gonzalez found evidence from the clothing that the drowned man was Torre
Bianca.

After this, Robledo felt more inclined to yield to the _Gallego’s_
insistent urgings that he go to Buenos Aires to make a plea for the
continuance of the work on the dam. Recognizing the possibility of his
being more useful to the despairing community in Buenos Aires than at La
Presa, he started off for the capital and spent several months there,
going from one government office to another, struggling with the
entanglements of administrative red tape, and making a determined effort
to provide resources in order to maintain his credit at the banks. But
to his dismay he found that the business men who had up to that time
given their support to his enterprise, were unwilling to put more money
into the work, and little by little he became aware of the general
distrust felt of everything connected with La Presa.

Winter came, and Robledo had not yet accomplished enough to feel
justified in leaving Buenos Aires. There were days when, in a sudden
spurt of optimism, he had hopes of accomplishing his purpose within the
week. But when, armed with a new argument, he presented himself at the
government bureaus, he was met with the set phrase, “Come back
tomorrow.” And the tomorrow they meant, as he came to discover, was not
the tomorrow following today, but something vague and nebulous in the
future, a tomorrow that would never dawn.

One morning the papers brought news of the uneasiness felt in the river
towns, at the unprecedentedly rapid rise of the _Rio Negro_. The
tributary streams were all bringing down enormous quantities of water
and it seemed impossible that the banks of the larger stream should be
able to contain the rapidly rising torrent. And this was the state of
things that he had come to warn the government about, this was the
condition that his dam, had it been nearer completion, would have been
able to control!

Then came a telegram from his friends in La Presa, excitedly imploring
that he come back, as though his presence possessed a miraculous power
over the forces of nature itself.

He reached the town during a spell of icy cold that made him shiver in
the fur-lined coat he had worn during the sharpest days of the winter.
The streets of the town were deserted. The houses of wooden
construction, best fitted to keep out the cold, kept their windows and
doors tight shut. The roofs of the adobe buildings were crumbling, and
the hurricanes from the plateau-lands had torn out the wooden frames of
the windows. There was no one in sight! The only inhabitants of the
place were those who had been there before the dam had been begun. To
the engineer’s eyes the place looked as though ten years had elapsed
since he had left it.

For days at a time he stood on the bank watching the growing volume of
water in the great stream. Then the current began bringing down trees
from the upper reaches of the river, and Robledo’s helpless indignation
grew as he saw the danger to which all the lower river country was
exposed increasing hourly. And now it was no longer trees torn from the
slopes of the giant Andes, but great round enormous boulders, hidden
from view, on the sandy bottom, that the stream rolled furiously along
down stream.

It was not so much the danger of flood that worried Robledo as the
probable fate of the unfinished wall of the dam. Each morning, with the
methodical care of a doctor testing his patient, he examined the great
dike thrown from bank to bank, the magnificent dam which, so well
planned and constructed, had been left unfinished by its builders, first
because of their absorbing love affairs, then because of their mortal
rivalry.

The wider arm of the dam had been completed to within a few feet of the
smaller one, and over these two walls the rising waters poured their
volume, marking the place of the submerged obstructions with whirlpools
and hissing foam.

Like all men who lead a life of danger, Robledo began to be
superstitious, and as he watched the peril that was assuming gigantic
proportions, he found himself addressing vague, mysterious divinities,
imploring them to wreak a miracle.

“If only we can get through this winter without seeing this wall crash,”
he thought. “What luck ...!”

But one morning, quite as though it were one of these sand walls that
children spend hours building, and then break down at one capricious
blow, the flooding waters snapped off one end of the unfinished arm, and
then broke it up as though it were the least cohesive and resistant of
substances; and finally, those two submerged walls, in the building of
which hundreds of men and thousands of tons of heavy, hard materials had
been employed, those walls that had seemed as immovable as the
mountains, rolled outward, then down stream, crumbling as they went, to
be tossed in fragments on the banks and on the shores of the reed-grown
islands.

Robledo threw himself down on the ground in a paroxysm of weeping. Four
years of work had melted away like so much sugar before his eyes. “All
to do over again ... from the very beginning!”

His fellow countryman, the owner of the _boliche_, saw ruin staring him
in the face also. In that once prosperous establishment the money-drawer
beside the counter was now empty; and with his customers had vanished
all his hopes of transforming his sandy acres into fertile irrigated
fields. He was a poor man now, poorer than when he had come to find his
fortune in this accursed spot!

The _Gallego_ was plunged in heavy gloom; but his faith in Robledo, and
his desire to cheer him up, made the store-keeper try to appear
optimistic.

“It will all come right some time,” he would say over and over again,
but without conviction.

Don Manuel, however, as he watched the merciless stream continue its
work of destruction, felt rage growing within him. He no longer watched
the river. His eyes had the vague expression of one whose thoughts have
wandered far, who sees what is hidden to others.

Canterac and Pirovani appeared before his mind’s eye as clear and
distinct as though he had seen them only the day before. And then came a
woman’s face, smiling, but with the look of one intent on mischief in
her tawny eyes.

Through time and space this woman exerted her evil influence on this
distant corner of the globe. She, not nature’s forces, was the real
destroyer of the work of many men.

Robledo clenched his fists. He thought of Rojas, and of how the rancher
had wanted to punish this woman with whip-lashings. At that moment he
would have devised for her something far worse.

“Gualicho, accursed Gualicho! Betrayer and tormentor of men, destroyer
of men and of things!... perish the evil hour in which I brought you
here!”




CHAPTER XIX


“Twelve years since I was in Paris! Ay!... How I have changed!”

As he spoke, Robledo looked pityingly at himself in the glass; he looked
pityingly at himself every morning while he dressed!

He was still in vigorous health; but unquestionably age had begun to
leave its marks on him. The crown of his head was now completely bald.
On the other hand he had shaved off his mustache, for the simple reason
that it had come to contain more white hairs than brown ones. This
change, according to Robledo, made him look like a priest or a comic
actor. But it was undeniable that it had restored to his appearance a
certain jovial youthfulness.

He was sitting in a wicker chair in the lobby of one of the hotels that
are to be found in Paris near the _Arc de Triomphe_. Opposite him sat a
young married couple, no other than Watson and Celinda.

The years that had passed had merely emphasized Richard’s features,
bringing into sharper relief his athletic and tranquil beauty. _Flor de
Rio Negro_ had now attained the ripe sweetness of a midsummer fruit. She
still preserved her youthful slimness, slightly modified; she was now
the mother of four children!

She no longer wore her hair cut in the style of a medieval page, nor, in
public, did she indulge in the childish exploits of the small amazon
who had once been the admiration of the immigrants on the wild
Patagonian plains. The time had come when she considered it her duty to
assume something at least of the grave dignity to be expected in the
mother of a nine year old boy. This important member of the family now
sat facing his parents. His restlessness, and his impatience of maternal
remonstrances soon revealed the fact that he was a self-willed and
somewhat disobedient small boy; and he had already learned to seek
“Uncle Manuel’s” protection whenever his less understanding parents
scolded him. Meanwhile, on an upper floor of the “palace,” as most such
hotels call themselves, two English nurses were occupied in watching
over the play of the prosperous couple’s three younger children.

The Watsons had the characteristic appearance of those South American
families who go to spend several months in Europe every year or so, and
who, rich and exuberant, travel tribe-fashion, transporting their whole
establishments, including all the servants, from one side of the
Atlantic to the other. The Watson family was as yet but barely started,
and occupied merely four staterooms on board ship, and five rooms with a
general sitting room at the various hotels at which they stopped. But
ten years more, with continued success in business, on its yearly trips
to Europe, the family caravan would be engaging all the staterooms on
one side of the steamer and occupying a whole floor in the “palaces” it
patronized.

“How many things have happened since I was here last!”

Robledo’s cheerful face became grave as he remembered the struggles of
those two hard years during which he had fought ill-luck and failure, in
order to make it possible for the works on the Rio Negro to be taken up
again.

He had known all the anxieties of rapidly accumulating debts and the
demands of creditors who cannot be paid. Nearly all the inhabitants of
La Presa had abandoned the town when the river destroyed the works. The
infrequent travellers who journeyed that way came principally to see the
ruins, like those of the dead historic cities of the old world, and
viewed with astonishment here in this land where ruins were scarcely
known.

But at last the government had taken up the work again. Little by little
the river allowed itself to be brought under control, and finally
accepted even the obstructing dam. Then it was that Robledo’s and
Watson’s canals drank their first waters, letting the vivifying
irrigating stream run over their oozy beds. After that had been
accomplished, all that was needed was a little time to allow the miracle
of water to work its own lesser miracles. Then men from all the lands of
the globe began streaming into the dead settlement, eager to break up
and cultivate this new soil which would ultimately belong to them.

A delicate luminous green was now creeping over the fields that had
before been stretches of pebbles and dust. The dry, prickly _matorrales_
gave place to young shade trees. Nourished by the accumulated fertility
of a soil that had slept for thousands of years, constantly refreshed by
the water gliding at their feet, in a marvellously short space of time
these young growths developed prodigiously.

The miserable adobe hovels, that had fallen into decay and ruin during
the period of poverty and abandonment, were now replaced by brick
buildings that were wide and low, with an inner _patio_ copied from the
Spanish architecture of the colonial period. The _Gallego’s_ former
_boliche_ became an enormous store, employing numerous clerks, where
everything that might be required by customers, whose chief occupation
was cultivating the miraculously redeemed soil, could be found; all
manner of business was carried on at the _almacén_, including a large
amount of banking.

The owner of the “store” had other sources of income as well, since his
barren fields too had become irrigated lands. He had even realized his
dream of returning to Spain, leaving one of his clerks in charge of the
business.

“I had a letter from don Antonio yesterday,” said Robledo with
good-natured irony. “He wants us to go to Madrid. He wants to show off
his house and his automobiles, and especially his friends. It seems that
his dinner parties have been getting into the newspapers. And he says
that he has received a decoration, and that one of these days he is to
be presented to the king.... Lucky man!”

But at this reminder of her distant homeland, a shadow passed over
Celinda’s face.

“She’s thinking of her father,” said Watson to his partner. “She can’t
bear to think of La Presa, and of his being there alone. But I don’t see
that we could help it if the old man wouldn’t come with us!”

Robledo nodded, and tried to cheer the down-cast Celinda. They had all
done their best to persuade don Carlos to accompany them but he had not
been able to make up his mind to leave the ranch. For him there was no
particular interest in seeing the Europe where he had committed so many
follies in his youth. No; he clung to his old illusions, he did not want
to risk losing them. And besides, he was afraid that he would not have
time to enjoy all the changes brought about on his estate.

“I have so few years left to live,” he explained; “I don’t want to waste
them wandering about through strange places, when there are so many
things to do here. Celinda is going to give me a lot of grandchildren to
provide for, and I don’t want them to be beggars.”

Robledo’s irrigation ditches had been carried as far as the Rojas ranch,
and had transformed the thin dry pasturage of other times into inviting
meadows of alfalfa, always humid and green. The herds were fattening and
multiplying prodigiously. In the early days don Carlos had had to ride
miles in order to find one of his hard-horned, bony steers, as it
strayed about the barren ranch in the hope of discovering some isolated
patch of coarse grass. But now the steers, sleek and fat, their forelegs
fairly doubling up under the weight of their accumulating flesh, stood
munching the succulent alfalfa that surrounded them without their having
to stir a hoof to reach it.

Besides the reasons he offered for not going with them, don Carlos, who
was by this time the leading citizen of the region, felt that he would
lose his importance in those _gringo_ countries where nobody knew his
name and where no one would make a fuss over him. He had even avoided
trips to Buenos Aires since the friends of his youth had died. Their
sons and grandsons showed only too plainly that they didn’t know who he
was! But at La Presa, where he was known as the wealthiest land-owner of
the district, every one treated him with a respect verging on reverence.
Moreover, he was a municipal judge there, and the immigrants, the
cultivators of _chacras_ or small farms, in recognition of his authority
and wisdom consulted him on all sorts of subjects and accepted his
decisions as gospel.

“What would I be doing in Paris?... Bragging about all I had left at
home?... No, no, leave me with my own people. Let every steer chew his
own cud!”

But it cost the old man something to part with his grandchildren,
although the separation was not to be a long one. And when Celinda, and
the _gringo_, her husband, came back, the oldest boy would be just old
enough for his grandfather to teach him how to ride, as every good
creole should.

This particular grandchild was now playing with Robledo, climbing onto
his knees and delightedly diving off backwards on to the carpet.

“Carlitos, darling!” implored his mother. “Do let your uncle Manuel have
a little peace!”

Then she went on, in reply to what Robledo had been saying about her
father,

“It’s true that he didn’t want to come. But I can’t help feeling
disappointed about his not being here to see all that we see.”

A young woman, elegantly dressed, approached the group. This was the
young French governess, to whom had been deputed the education of young
Carlos. It was time for him now to take a walk in the _Bois de
Boulogne_. But he didn’t want to go and all his mother’s petting did not
succeed in quelling the spoiled child’s protests.

“I want to stay with uncle Manuel!”

But it seemed that uncle Manuel had to go out alone, as he told the
small tyrant, quite with the air of offering him an apology.

“If you do what mama asks and go to the _Bois_ with Mademoiselle, I’ll
tell you a story tonight, a long one, when you go to bed.”

Carlitos gave this promise a favorable reception, and without further
objections, allowed himself to be carried off by his governess.

“There goes our young despot,” exclaimed Robledo, pretending immense
satisfaction at being rid of him.

Celinda smiled. She knew well enough that Robledo had concentrated on
this child of hers all the latent affection that childless and lonely
men have it in them to expend as they draw near the boundaries of old
age. He was already very rich and his fortune could not help but
increase as the irrigated lands came under cultivation. Sometimes, when
mention was made of his millions, he would look at Celinda’s son,
dignifying him with the name of “my chief heir.” A part of his fortune
would of course go to some nephews of his in Spain, whom he had seen
once or twice; but the major part of his fortune was destined to
Carlitos.

For Watson’s other children he had a great deal of affection also; but
this first born had come into the world during a period that for Robledo
was full of bitterness and uncertainty; when all of his work was in
danger of being irretrievably lost; and for this reason he had for the
child that special tenderness that one reserves for the companion of
evil days.

“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Robledo asked of Celinda.
“The same thing as usual, I suppose?... call on the most distinguished
dressmakers of the _Rue de la Paix_, and the adjacent streets?”

Celinda, with a nod, gave her approval of this program, while Watson
laughed good-humoredly.

“I’m afraid you’ll never be able to get on the boat,” warned the
Spaniard gravely.

“But think how hard it is to buy anything where we come from!” exclaimed
Celinda. “The place we live in is just as though it were the first week
after the Creation. The only difference between us and Adam and Eve is
that we have a few more neighbors, a few more clothes, and that we
happen to be millionaires!”

They all laughed. But again their eyes grew dreamy as they thought of
the scenes that they had helped to make. The camp at the dam had
developed into what was now known as “Colonia Celinda”; and it was
impossible to think of it without thinking also of the old man who was
directing the development of the property, and who, as homes multiplied
around him, seemed to grow smaller and smaller, while his profile took
on a new sharpness of outline, making him resemble, as he stood
listening to the men and women who came to him with their difficulties,
a kindly but authoritative old patriarch.

And while the tentacles of the canal system were slowly creeping through
the ancient basin of the Rio Negro, changing the once arid lands into
fertile prairies, a stream of immigrants was bringing new money, new
blood, new energy to the colony; and as they paid in year by year the
purchase price of their farms, millions poured into the company’s
offices.

And to Robledo there was a certain irony in the fact that wealth had
come to him when he was already too old to feel the desires that tempt
and divert other men. Watson’s children were already millionaires, many
times over; it would never fall to their lot to know the enslaving power
of toil, nor the anxieties of the need of money; and at their coming of
age they would undoubtedly come to Paris to pour out on its pleasures a
part of their princely inheritance, attracting attention even there by
their extravagances and the glitter of their idle and useless lives. But
the very force of the contrast between their lives and his amused
Robledo, and with the smiling fatalism of the man who in a long lifetime
has known want and bitterness, he accepted this termination of his
labors, finding it quite in keeping with the usual ironies of life.

There was another contrast too, one which he often pondered, in the
circumstances of his career. While he had been making himself a
millionaire, one half of humanity, all that part of it separated from
him by a wide ocean, had been suffering the horrors of a ghastly war.
The first effect of this cataclysm had been to endanger his own
enterprise, for the foreign colonists on his land had hastened to
abandon their farms in order to join the troops of their respective
nations. Then suddenly this general exodus stopped, to be followed by a
veritable flood of new colonists.

Meanwhile, violent transformations were taking place in Europe. Many of
those whom twelve years earlier he had known as rich men, were now
poverty-stricken, or else had disappeared. On the other hand, he, who in
those days had been a mere aspirant to fortune, a colonist whose future
was of the most doubtful, now felt wearied by the exaggerated dimensions
of his prosperity. He thought of himself as being like the steers of his
friend don Carlos, who, overwhelmed by the very plentifulness of their
fodder, stood knee-deep in alfalfa on legs too slender to support their
enormous weight, while they looked with eyes that showed no trace of
desire at the quantities of pasturage surrounding them.

Watson and Celinda were young, they still had illusions and desires,
they had innumerable uses for their wealth. Celinda knew all the
pleasures of luxury, and her husband could gratify that most universal
of all the desires of a lover, the desire to give Celinda everything
that she wanted. But as to himself, Manuel Robledo, multi-millionaire of
the Argentine, not even the most innocent pleasures reserved to old age
had for him any charm. Riches had come too late; he had no time now to
learn what to do with them.

The greater part of his life had been spent in an effort to simplify,
to do without comforts, and now he no longer needed, no longer desired,
the things other people considered indispensable. Celinda and her
husband kept an expensive automobile standing at the hotel entrance from
early morning till late at night. They could not live without having
this means of locomotion at their beck and call. One would suppose that
these two former crack riders had possessed a car from the moment they
were born. Ah, youth! What a marvellous adaptability it possesses for
every kind of pleasure and luxury! Only in cases of urgent haste did
Robledo remember that he could purchase the services of an automobile.
But on all other occasions he preferred to walk or to employ the same
means of locomotion as those used by people of moderate circumstances.

“It isn’t meanness, nor miserliness,” Celinda used to say, for with her
woman’s keenness of observation, she had learned to understand Robledo.
“He simply doesn’t think of these things, because they mean nothing to
him.”

The two engineers started from their day-dream as they heard Celinda
inquire,

“And what are you going to do this afternoon, don Manuel? Why not come
with me to the dressmaker’s, so that you’ll know just what you are
talking about when you make fun of women’s frivolous pastimes?”

But Robledo had other plans.

“I have a call to make, on a former classmate who wants me to help him
out in a business matter ... a poor devil who’s out of luck ... but he
has a scheme for manufacturing agricultural implements, and it may be
that all he needs to set him on his feet is a little capital. He has
invented a new kind of plow, he writes me.”

The three friends walked slowly out to the street, and Richard and his
young wife got into their car. Robledo however preferred to walk to the
_Place de L’Etoile_, where he took the _métro_ to Montmartre.

It was a late spring afternoon, the air was mild, the sky soft with a
golden haze. Robledo swung along with the quick step of youth. Suddenly
the image of his unfortunate companion Torre Bianca crossed his mind.
This was scarcely strange for when he had last been in Paris it was as
his friend’s guest, and it was together that they had all three set out
from the brilliant capital to seek their fortune in the deserts of
northern Argentine.... Natural enough too that the thought of this other
engineer friend of his whom he was at that moment going to see, who was
in desperate straits also, and burdened with a family, should make him
think of the ill-fated _marqués_.

Very often in the last twelve years, in the life of monotonous work that
he had led, with few new impressions coming in to blot out old ones, he
had thought of Torre Bianca’s tragic story and had wondered what had
been Elena’s fate after her flight....

Nor was it easy to forget the woman whose evil influence persisted so
long after she herself had disappeared. The old inhabitants of La Presa
who had remained faithful to the land and had not abandoned the ruined
town, had handed down the legend of how a woman had come to that desert
community from the old world, a woman who, beautiful and possessed of a
fateful charm, had brought ruin and death to all those who had fallen
under her spell. Those who knew her only from hearing the legend that
had grown up about her, imagined her a kind of witch, and attributed to
the vanished “_Cara Pintada_,” the “_Painted Face_,” all kinds of
nameless crimes! It was even whispered that at times those who strayed
in solitary spots along the river bank, caught glimpses of her, and
always she brought evil upon those to whom she appeared....

On his occasional trips to Buenos Aires, Robledo had tried to get some
news of that Moreno who had been the companion of Elena’s flight. But he
had never been able to learn anything definite. Evidently both fugitives
had vanished in the restless crowds of Europe, as completely and
tracelessly as do those who sink in the frothing sea.

“She must have died,” Robledo would say to himself. “Without doubt she
is dead. A woman of her kind would not be likely to live long.”

And for months at a time she would drop out of his mind; then some
allusion on the part of the old inhabitants would awaken his memories of
the vanished _marquesa_.

As he went down the steps of the station near the _Arc de Triomphe_, he
had quite forgotten the unlucky couple. The human tide sweeping into the
depths of the _métro_ carried him along with it, and in a few minutes he
climbed out to the street level, once more on the opposite side of the
city.

As evening closed in he left his friend’s house which was in a modest
side street, and walked along the _boulevard Rochechuart_, towards the
_Place Pigalle_.

On his evening excursions through Montmartre with South American
friends, eager to enjoy the puerile and specious delights of all-night
restaurants, he had never gone further than this square. Moreover the
aspect of this part of Paris is by night far more pleasing than by day.

The crowds passing along the boulevard he was following were of ordinary
or vulgar appearance. Evidently the Montmartre of which foreigners spoke
with such enthusiasm, whose name was uttered as though it were a magic
word by the members of certain youthful groups on the other side of the
Atlantic, began at the _Place Pigalle_. This _boulevard Rochechuart_ was
like a frontier region and lacked any distinctive character of its own.
Doubtless its inhabitants were poor devils expelled from Montmartre
proper by the necessity of finding cheaper lodgings than were available
in that famous quarter, or else they were novices in the life of
pleasure, who had not yet acquired the clothes nor the manners suitable
for a successful night-restaurant career.

As darkness thickened, the number of women on the street increased....
For them the kind uncertainties of twilight were a necessary assistance
in their pursuit of men and bread.

Robledo passed them as though blind to their glances and deaf to their
whisperings. “Young man,” he thought he heard, and “a handsome fellow.”

“Poor creatures! To get a meal they feel obliged to tell these
outrageous lies....”

Suddenly his attention was drawn to one of them. There was little to
distinguish her from the others. Like them she was looking at him with
bold and provoking glances. But those eyes ... where had he seen those
eyes?

She was dressed with a kind of poverty stricken elegance. Her clothes,
old and faded, had once, long years ago, been of handsome material, and
fashionable cut. From a distance they might still deceive; and she still
preserved a slenderness which, with her unusual height, made one forget
momentarily the ravages poverty and age had made upon her.

When she saw Robledo stopping to look at her, she smiled at him with
childish sincerity. This was a promising catch, the best of the
afternoon. Her prospective customer had all the appearance of being a
rich foreigner wandering without his bearings in a quarter he had never
strayed into before, and to which he was not likely to return. There was
no time to lose.

Meanwhile Robledo stood motionless, looking at her with frowning brows
as he searched his memory.

“Who is this woman?... Where the devil have I seen her?”

She too had stopped, turning back to smile and invite him with a gesture
to follow her.

Robledo’s expression showed that he was alternating between surprise and
doubt.

Could it be?... But he had thought her dead years ago! No, it was
impossible. He had been thinking of her that very afternoon, that was
why he had made this mistake.... It would be too extraordinary a
coincidence....

He was still eyeing her, believing that he recognized the past in
certain lines of that faded face, and confused by others which he did
not recognize. But those eyes! Those eyes!

The woman smiled once more, slightly moving her head, and repeating her
silent invitations. Impelled by curiosity, Robledo involuntarily made a
scarcely perceptible gesture of acceptance, and she walked on. But she
had taken only a few steps when she stopped before the screen door
leading into a bar of squalid appearance through the smeared windows of
which he saw vapid faces staring. Standing at the door of this place she
winked at him and then disappeared into the interior of the filthy
establishment.

Robledo stood hesitant. It disgusted him to think of having the
slightest of relations with this woman, but at the same time his
curiosity about her made him uncomfortable. He felt certain that if he
went away without speaking with her he would forever be tormented by a
persistent doubt, he would always regret not having made sure whether
this phantom of Elena had really been Elena herself.

And fear of being obsessed by this doubt turned the scale of his
indecision.... With a violent push he swung open the door.

Tables, a decrepit cane settee against the wall; dingy mirrors, and a
counter behind which were numerous shelves full of bottles, guarded by a
woman, old and monstrously fat, her face mottled with pimples and scabs.

Robledo recognized the place as one of those frequented by women, who
though dependent on the day’s chance meetings for their sustenance,
still wish to preserve a certain independence, though often enough they
are glad to accept the services of the proprietress of the saloon to
which they bring patrons, as adviser and procuress.

A waiter of effeminate appearance was serving the clients who at this
moment were two; one, a young woman so ghastly pale that it seemed the
hollows and joints of her skull would soon show through the tight-drawn
transparent skin. In the intervals between her convulsive coughs she
puffed hungrily at a cigarette. At another table sat a woman, now old
and abject, who perhaps had been handsome in her youth. She too, like
the woman Robledo had followed, still preserved a distinctive
slenderness, but her clothes and general appearance indicated a more
advanced stage of poverty. She was drinking, with slow gulps, the
contents of a large glass, closing her eyes and rolling her head on the
back of the divan as though she were drunk.

When Robledo came in he noticed that the woman he was seeking had gone
to sit down at a table at the back of the room, at as great a distance
as possible from the counter and the other patrons. His own arrival
created quite a stir. The proprietress welcomed him with an obsequious
smile, and the consumptive girl cast him a glance which was intended to
be passionate but which Robledo took as a pathetic begging for alms. The
drunken woman also gave him a smile which revealed the absence of
several front teeth. Then she winked an invitation at him, but on seeing
that all his attention was directed elsewhere, she cynically shrugged
her shoulders and dozed off again.

He sat down at a table opposite the woman who had aroused his curiosity,
so as to be able to watch her more closely than was possible in the
street; and he almost smiled as he discovered how deceptive the
vagabond’s appearance of shabby elegance was.

From a distance the air with which she wore her clothes might have taken
in the humble or the imaginative man who is disposed to believe in the
elegance of any woman who pays him some attention. But viewed close at
hand this elegance was discovered to be so fictitious as to be
grotesque. Her hat, of impressive proportions, revealed a frayed brim
and broken feathers. Her skirt, when she sat down, left her legs exposed
and it would have been difficult to count the holes and darns in her
stockings. One of her shoes was worn through to the ground, and on the
other the leather had split over one of the toes. Her face was covered
with rouge and a white paste which did not succeed in concealing its
wrinkles and other signs of a hard life. But those eyes!

There were moments when he felt convinced ... this _was_ Elena. They
both looked at one another fixedly. Then, with a gesture, she asked if
she could draw nearer and finally came to sit down at his table.

“I thought we had better come in here to talk. Men don’t usually like to
be seen with a woman in the street. Most of them are married. But
perhaps you are not like the others in that respect....”

Her voice was hoarse; it did not in any way recall the one he had heard
twelve years ago; yet, in spite of this fact, his conviction grew.

“It is she,” he thought. “There is no doubt of it....”

“I may be wrong,” the woman went on. “But I think you must be a
bachelor. I don’t see any wedding ring....”

And she looked smilingly at the masculine hands on the table opposite
her. But something else preoccupied her far more than the civil status
of the gentleman who had followed her. She kept looking anxiously toward
the counter near which the waiter had taken up a position, in
expectation of the new patron’s order.

“May I order something?” she asked. “The whiskey here is fine. There’s
no better in the city.”

When he saw the gentleman nod, the waiter came up, and without waiting
for directions, brought a whiskey bottle and two glasses. After pouring
out the drinks he withdrew to a discreet distance, not, however, without
casting at Robledo a glance and smile that closely resembled those
bestowed upon him by the mistress of the establishment.

The woman drained her glass with avidity, and then, as she noticed that
the contents of the other glass was still untouched, an imploring look
passed through her eyes.

“Before the war, whiskey didn’t cost much, but now ... only kings and
millionaires can afford it. May I ...?”

The hand stretched out toward Robledo’s glass trembled with eagerness.
He nodded, and the woman drained this glass too at a gulp.

The liquor seemed to dispel the torpor he had noticed in her words and
gestures. Her eyes brightened, and she began speaking more rapidly.
Suddenly she asked him in Spanish,

“Where are you from? I knew at once from your accent that you were
American ... South American.... From Buenos Aires perhaps?”

Robledo shook his head, and gravely produced a lie.

“I am a Mexican.”

“I don’t know Mexico very well. I spent a few days in Vera Cruz once,
between steamers. But I know the Argentine. I lived there once, years
ago.... Where haven’t I been! There isn’t a language on earth that I
don’t speak! That’s why the men like me, and my women friends are all
envious.”

Robledo was looking fixedly at her. This woman was Elena, he could no
longer doubt it. Yet there remained here nothing of the woman he had
known in the past. The last twelve years weighed on her more heavily
than all her previous existence, stamping her with all the repugnant and
distressing signs of moral and physical decrepitude.

He had been able to recognize her only because, leading a solitary,
monotonous life, his impressions of the past remained clear and
distinct, refreshed from time to time by long hours of brooding
remembering, and never blotted out under new impressions, superimposed.
She, on the other hand, had lived so rapidly, had seen so many men pass
through her life, that she could not remember Robledo. To do so she
would have to make a determined effort of attention. And besides Robledo
too had changed with the years. Yet, with the never quite dormant
instinct of the professional courtesan, who, living by the chase,
develops a kind of tactual memory, she too felt that somewhere this man
had sat near her before.

“I can’t remember where we have met,” she said, with a reminiscence of
the _marquesa’s_ manners. “I have passed through so many countries and I
have known so many men ...!”




CHAPTER XX


Robledo looked sharply at her, and asked brusquely, “What is your name?”

But, her eyes on the whiskey bottle, she was thinking of something else,
and she replied absently,

“My name is Blanca, though some of the people around here call me _La
marquesa_. But ... will you buy me another drink?... Because, if we drop
in at my house later, there won’t be any whiskey like this there. We
will go there, won’t we?... It’s quite near ... though of course you
might prefer the hotel?”

She took his silence to be consent and hastened to pour out a third
glassful, which she drank with as much avidity as she had the others.

But Robledo interrupted her.

“Your name is Elena, and if people call you _La marquesa_ it is because
someone who knew you when you were married to an Italian _marqués_
recognized you.”

His words startled her so much that she removed the glass from her lips,
and looked with wide eyes at Robledo.

“Since the very first word you spoke, I felt sure that you knew me,” she
murmured.

Mechanically she set down her glass. But she suddenly made haste to
drain it, and then looked at her companion with an expression of
unfathomable amazement.

“But who are you?... Who can you be?... Who _are_ you?”

At the first question she leaned closer to Robledo, but then she drew
back as though afraid to touch him, and as she repeated the question she
raised her hands to her breasts as though making a painful effort to
awaken her memory. Finally, in a discouraged tone, she repeated,

“But there have been so many men in my life!”

Suddenly a look of anxiety came into her eyes, followed by fear and then
the expression of a frightened animal. She was afraid of the man sitting
opposite her.

“I know you now,” she murmured. “Yes, it’s you all right. You’ve
changed, but it’s still you. But I’d never have known you if you hadn’t
mentioned what you did.”

Then she seemed to take courage, and looked long at him without any
signs of fear. At last she added hoarsely,

“It would have been better if we had never met again!”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Elena seemed to have forgotten
the existence of the bottle that she was still caressing mechanically.
But finally the Spaniard’s curiosity broke into this silence.

“What happened to Moreno?”

She listened with an expression of wonder and doubt, as though she did
not understand. From her eyes one could see that she was making a
tremendous mental effort, one which stirred her to the depths.
“Moreno?... Who was Moreno?... She had known so many men!”

As though having recourse to a relieving medicament, she helped herself
to another glass of whiskey, and when she had gulped it down, her face
brightened with a smile.

“Oh, I know who you mean.... Moreno ... a poor sort of fellow, crazy. I
don’t know anything about him.”

Robledo persisted in his questions but for all her good-will the woman
opposite him could not find in the chambers of her memory any clear,
constant image of the man mentioned.

“I think he died.... He went away to his home, and he must have died
there. Did you say he never came back? Well, perhaps he killed himself.
I don’t know, I don’t remember. If I had to remember the history of all
the men I have known, I’d have been crazy years ago.... My head couldn’t
hold them....”

But Robledo, looking sternly at her, continued his questions.

“And Pirovani’s daughter?”

Again she raised her hands to her breasts ... and again her expression
indicated a tremendous mental effort.

“Pirovani ...? Oh yes! That Italian who lived in Rio Negro, and whose
money Moreno ran away with.... No, we never mentioned his daughter....
Moreno spent it all, and I showed him how to have a good time.... Poor
fool ...!”

Now she sat huddled in her chair, her head drooping on her breast. She
appeared to have shrunk; and when, raising her eyes, she met Robledo’s
stern ones, she dropped hers again to the bottle.

In the silence that followed Robledo was saying to himself--

“And to think that for this wretched rag of a creature men should have
killed each other, women wept, and I should have been made to suffer
such torments of anxiety!”

As though divining his thoughts, Elena said humbly,

“You don’t know what I’ve been through these last years.... When the war
came, they began to persecute me ... wanted to drive me out of Paris.
And they suspected me, thought I was a German spy, thought I was this,
and that and the other thing. I went to Italy, I went to many other
countries, even your country.... Aren’t you Spanish?... Don’t wonder at
the question. I don’t remember so many things.... And when I got back to
Paris, I couldn’t find a soul here I knew. Everything was different
before the war. It was another world. Every single soul I knew had died
or disappeared. I felt as though I had dropped onto another planet. How
lonely it has been!”

She sat as though overwhelmed by this new world that was beyond her
comprehension.

“And the only person I have met since then who could remind me of the
past ... is you! Better if we hadn’t met again....”

Then she continued, as though talking to herself,

“And this meeting is going to make me think of things that I thought I
had forgotten forever. Why did you came back from so far away? What
made you come over to this part of Montmartre where rich foreigners
never come, never? Oh, what a cursed chance!”

Suddenly she straightened up, and he noticed a bluish film over her
eyes.

“Let me drink. How grateful I’d be, if you would make me a present of
the rest of this bottle! I’ll need it after meeting you like this. It’s
going to make me think of too many things. I love life!... Better than
anything ... and I’m not afraid of misfortune nor poverty, if I can only
go on living ... but I’m afraid of memories, and whiskey kills them ...
or else it takes the sting out of them.... Let me drink ... don’t
refuse!”

And as Robledo remained silent, Elena took possession of the bottle and
filled her glass twice in succession, but now she drank slowly, enjoying
each drop that crossed her palate. And as she drank she pointed out the
girl who was still smoking and coughing.

“They’re all like that here ... morphine, cocaine, all that kind of
thing is what they go in for. But I’m old-fashioned. Drugs make me sick.
This is the only thing for me!”

And her hands lovingly caressed the neck of the whiskey bottle. A
strange lucidity animated her face more and more as she drank. But, at
finding herself the undisputed owner of the whiskey, she wanted to be
alone to enjoy it quietly, and she said to Robledo,

“Go away now, and forget me. If you want to give me something, I’ll be
grateful of course. But if you don’t I’ll be content with the bottle.
That’s a princely gift ... go away Robledo ... you don’t belong here.”

But he paid no attention to her words. He still wanted to prod her
memory, to draw from it another episode of her mysterious past.

“And Canterac?... Did you ever meet Captain Canterac again?”

But the name was even less effective in bringing her memory to life than
the others he had mentioned. To help her out he recalled the park made
in her honor on the banks of the Rio Negro.

“That was a unique party! I remember.... But other men have done even
more extravagant things for me than that ... still it was an original
idea.... Poor captain! I saw him a great many times afterward. I think
he’s a general now. What did you say his name was?”

She went on talking about what she remembered of him but Robledo
discovered that she was confusing Canterac with some other officer whom
she had known. She was making one person of two whom she had met in
different periods of her life.

Robledo was practically certain that Canterac had died. For some time,
the unhappy Frenchman had wandered from one to another of the republics
on the Pacific coast, making a scant living, now in the Chilian
saltpeter mines, now in the mines of Bolivia and Peru. When the war
broke out he returned to France to join the army. And there like so many
others he had died, in the performance of some act of obscure heroism.

And this woman who had so tragically turned the current of his life, not
only had kept no clear image of him in her memory; she could not even
remember his name!

But as Robledo’s questions pursued her one by one, her memory freed
itself somewhat from its torpor, and some of the images stirred by his
proddings were now crowding in on her mind. Suddenly it was she who had
a question to ask.

“What’s the name of that American boy, a friend of yours, wasn’t he? I
really think he was the only man of all the men who have run after me
that I ever cared for, perhaps because he never really cared anything
about me. Sometimes, at long, long intervals, I have thought of him....
Did he marry?”

Robledo nodded.

“That’s all you need tell me. As I sit here looking at you it seems as
though the years that had passed were passing again, but in a reverse
direction, and I am beginning to remember everything.... That young
man’s name was Richard, and he’s probably married the girl from the
Pampas ... they called her by the name of some flower....”

But these memories, the only ones capable of surging up clear and
living, aroused in her the embittered sadness of hopeless envy. Other
women were prosperous, yes ... and happy; but she had chosen to forget
... why must she be reminded?

She glanced down at herself with a kind of pitying contempt, as though
seeing herself for the first time. She, who for long years had thought
Elena the center of creation, now saw herself sunk very low, and divined
that there were even lower depths to which she was destined to descend.

Other women might find melancholy pleasure in summoning the past to
mind. For them it was like a sweet old tune, or the perfume of faded
flowers. But for her the past was a pack of raging wolves that would
pursue her until death. Only by living in a state of stupor could she
escape the torture of their fangs. And for her only those days were
endurable when she succeeded in drugging her mind with alcohol.

Apparently she wanted the relief afforded by seeing someone else
symbolize the despair she felt. She pointed to the other woman, who,
half-drunk, was dozing on the settee.

“I’ll be like that soon.”

Her face darkened as though the shadow of her last hours had passed over
it. She lowered her eyes, as she added,

“And then, death.”

Robledo kept silence. He had quietly taken his bill-fold from one of his
pockets and was counting something under the table. She, meanwhile, went
on murmuring the thoughts that normally she would have kept to herself.

“Perhaps some one will put a few lines in the papers, announcing the
death of the so-called ‘_marquesa_,’ and perhaps half a dozen people in
the whole world will remember me, perhaps not even so many. And
meanwhile I shall stay at the bottom of the river, forever. And what
shall I have amounted to?”

Robledo picked up one of her hands and under cover of the table pressed
a roll of bills into it. She guessed at once what it was.

“I oughtn’t to take it,” she protested. “I take money only from those
who don’t know me....”

But she nervously tucked the bank notes into her blouse; and as she did
so her eyes, which had suddenly brightened, gave the lie to the tone of
resigned dignity with which she offered excuses for accepting the gift.

But now Robledo was looking at her pityingly. The once fair Elena....
What a pathetic sight! She had swept over the southern seas like a great
albatross, proud of its snowy plumage and the strength of its wings,
plunging down with merciless voracity on the prey it glimpses between
the waves, strong with the belief that the universe has been created
solely to be devoured by it; she had been a majestic, proud Atlantic
eagle, salt from the wide sweeps of the ocean, possessing the
tough-fleshed elasticity of the carnivores.... But the acid of the years
had dissolved the proud illusion all youth possesses of its immortality;
and the eagle that had so many times haughtily planed upward into the
infinite blue, was now obliged to feed on the ocean’s offal as the tide
brought it in to the shore. And when cold and darkness drove it towards
the light, its failing wings bruised themselves against the glass
guarding the fire. Weary, it had gone in search of the window that sent
out into the night the warm glow of the hospitable hearth; and it had
encountered the lens of the lighthouse, hard and unfeeling as any wall,
made to withstand the fury of tempests. And in one of these encounters
it would fall with wings incurably broken, and the sea below, the
surging sea of life, would bear away its body on its tides, with an
indifference as complete as that with which it had earlier borne away
the relentless creature’s victims....

And then Robledo found himself considering his friends and himself as
well, as though they too were animals. Oxen they were, well-fed,
tranquil and good, like the cattle out in the pastures irrigated by the
colony ditches, fat and plain like them, oppressed with wellbeing. They
possessed the virtues characteristic of all those whose maintenance is
assured, and who, safe from all risk, need never injure others in order
to live. And thus they would continue placidly, without violent
pleasures, but also without pain, to the last hour....

And who of all these would have the better justified their existence?...
That woman of novellesque biography, whose brain was incapable of
remembering exactly either her origin or her adventures? Or they, those
peaceful ruminants, who had done on earth what it was required of them
that they do, and who as a result had won a degree, at least, of
happiness?...

But he was not allowed to go on with his meditations. The waiter had
been summoned to the street by a man gesticulating from the other side
of the window, and now he came back with a worried expression to murmur
a few words in the proprietress’s ear.

“Fly away, my doves!” the woman suddenly cried out from behind her
counter to the clients nearest her. Then excitedly she explained that
the police were making a haul of all the women of the quarter, and might
visit her establishment. A faithful friend had just brought the warning.

The consumptive girl threw away her cigarette, and escaped like a
frightened doe. As she went she broke into even more painful coughing.
The drunken woman opened her eyes, looked about her, and closed them
again, murmuring,

“Let them come! A decent woman can sleep just as well in the police
station as here!”

Elena made haste to run for cover. But even though she was scared, she
walked toward the door with a certain dignity at the thought that there
was a man behind her. She did not wish to be confused with the others.

When he found himself alone, Robledo gave the waiter a bank-note, and
went away without waiting for the change. Arrived on the boulevard, he
looked unavailingly this way and that. Elena had disappeared.... He
would never see her again.... When she died he would receive no news of
her death. He would have to live all the rest of his life without
knowing for a certainty whether she were still alive.... Yet, after this
encounter it was easy to divine her end. Undoubtedly she was of the
number of those who leave this life by tragic means but without noise,
without anyone’s even mentioning their names.

“And so this is Elena,” he said to himself. “An Elena, who, like the
heroine of the poets of old, brought about war between men, in a far
away corner of the globe....”

Doubt was troubling him with its questions. Had this woman been really
bad, fully conscious of her perversity? Had she been simply hungry for
the pleasures of life, and ambitious, making her way over the fallen
bodies of others without knowing what she was treading under foot?

While he was looking for a taxi, he said to himself by way of
conclusion,

“It would have been better if she had died twelve years ago. What does
she go on living for?”

He smiled sadly as he thought of the relative importance and
unimportance of human values, and personages, according to the circles
in which they move.

“And this poor human rag was just as important as Homer’s heroine, in
that half-civilized land where women are few!... But what would the men
who did so many mad things for her sake say now, if they were to see her
as I have seen her today?”

       *       *       *       *       *

When he reached the hotel, Watson and Celinda had just returned from
their afternoon’s outing.

Two servants were following Celinda, bearing enormous packages,
evidently the trophies of the afternoon’s shopping.

Watson looked impatiently at his watch.

“Nearly seven, and we have to dress, and eat something before going to
the opera. When women once get into a shop there’s no getting them out
of it!”

Celinda soon disposed of her husband’s pretended ill-humor, and together
the young couple went into the adjoining room to dress for dinner.

“Are you coming with us?” asked Watson.

“No,” Robledo replied. “I am getting old, and it bores me to get into
evening clothes and white gloves just to listen to music. No, I’d rather
stay at the hotel. I’ll see to it that they put Carlos to bed in good
order ... and anyway I promised him a story.”

While he talked he felt all the uneasiness of uncertainty ... should he
tell Celinda and her husband about the afternoon’s chance meeting?...
Would it be more prudent to tell it only to Watson?

On the rare occasions when their conversation had included allusions to
Torre Bianca’s wife, Celinda usually so light-hearted and even-tempered,
had frowned as though she could not bear even the name of the
_marquesa_.

Perhaps now the knowledge of the detested woman’s abject state would
cause her a cruel satisfaction.... But Robledo repented of this thought.
Celinda surely had no room for feelings of revenge in her happiness! And
if so, news of the _marquesa_ could only cause her the discomfort of an
unpleasant memory.

Why revive the past?... Let life go on!...

And Robledo gave all his attention to making up the marvellous story
that he was going to tell to his young friend and chief heir.


FINIS.