Jubilee Trail (38 page)

“I had just arrived here,” said John, “and I was stumbling around in the Spanish language and having a hard time with it. Nikolai spoke Spanish like a native, so we agreed that if he’d teach me Spanish I’d teach him English. That’s all.”

He spoke casually. But the Handsome Brute was looking at him with affection, and Garnet thought she saw a deep friendship between them. It seemed odd for John to have a real friend. The Brute had called him a seldom person. He must mean
unusual
—the two words would be easily confused by a foreigner. The Brute, brought up by half-civilized Siberian trappers, had felt awkward among the dark proud rancheros, and John had not made fun of him. She wished Oliver had not called him a barbarian. John went on,

“Unfortunately, Nikolai hasn’t had as much chance to practice his new language as I’ve had to practice mine. I have to speak Spanish every day to everybody I meet, and he can only speak English to the Yankees.”

“But I will learn,” the Handsome Brute said gravely. “I like the Yankees.”

A servant girl went over to a scrub-oak near them, and struck a gong that hung from one of its limbs. As the noise clanged over the rancho the men shouted, and John and the Handsome Brute scrambled to their feet.

“Supper!” announced the Handsome Brute. Exuberant at the prospect, he put both his enormous hands on Garnet’s waist, picked her up like a doll, and swung her in the air over his head. She squealed with astonishment. “Behave yourself, Nikolai,” said John, but he was laughing, and as the Brute set her down Garnet saw Oliver coming toward them, and Oliver was laughing too. While Garnet caught her breath Oliver greeted the Brute in Spanish. The Brute laughed and answered him. Oliver took Garnet’s arm, and as they walked toward the tables she exclaimed,

“Does he often act like that?”

“Don’t mind him,” said Oliver. “He’s as harmless as a child. And by the way, don’t gasp when you see him eat.”

The tables were set up outdoors, with backless benches on either side. The men were leaping over the benches, finding places with helter-skelter joy. Sighing with ecstasy, they began to gobble.

They ate beef and beans, corn and grapes and olives and oranges. They ate eggs, tortillas, loaves of dark brown bread, strange but delicious dishes made of cornmeal with peppers and onions. They drank chocolate in big thick cups, or bottles of red and white wine, or the fierce Mexican aguardiente. The beef was tough and gamy, for the cattle on the hills were quite wild. Nobody paid them any attention except when they were rounded up once a year. But the beef was good. Everything was good. The dishes were made of bright-colored earthenware. The knives were metal, but the forks and spoons were cut from horn. This made them surprisingly light in weight, but they were easy to handle.

At first, Garnet was eating with such gusto that she did not notice anybody, else. But after a while, when she began to go more slowly, she saw the Handsome Brute sitting across the table from her. Though Oliver had warned her, she stared at him in amazement.

The Handsome Brute had taken off his gloves and turned up his blue satin cuffs. Around his neck he had tied a vast white kerchief. In his hands he held a chunk of beef six ribs thick, from which he was tearing the meat with his teeth.

With the beef he ate a loaf of brown bread and drank a bottle of red wine. Then he picked up a roasted chicken. Pulling off the wings and legs, he disposed of those first, then he took the carcass between his hands and ate the meat off in rows, as though it were corn on the cob. With the chicken he ate a bowl of beans and a bowl of cornmeal porridge, using a spoon which he grasped in his great fist like a spear. When he had finished the chicken and another bottle of wine, he began to peel oranges, piling the skin on top of the bones.

Though he used neither knife nor fork, he was very neat. But he ate and drank until he made even the hungry traders look dainty. He was not self-conscious about it. As he finished his third orange and helped himself to a handful of tortillas, he saw Garnet watching him. She felt ashamed of herself for staring, but the Brute was not abashed. He smiled upon her like a cherub.

“It is good,” he said to her.

“Why—yes,” said Garnet. She felt effete as she cut off a bit of the beef on her plate and picked it up with a fork. The other men were laughing at her surprise. The Brute went on eating.

At last a serving-girl brought him a bowl of water. The Brute smiled upon her winsomely and told her she was beautiful. He washed his hands, took the kerchief from around his neck to dry them, and put the kerchief back into his pocket. This done, he drained the last of the wine in his bottle—Garnet had lost count of how many bottles there had been—and grinned around the table at them all. He was very happy.

When they left the table the Brute walked off with John. Florinda was staring after his broad blue satin back.

“Say, Oliver,” she said, “is that his regular performance?”

“Yes,” Oliver assured her.

“That much,” said Florinda, “and like that?”

“Always.”

“I think he’s wonderful,” said Florinda.

She went over to join Penrose, who was lounging on the grass with several of the other men. Oliver went to make sure the packs were being taken care of, and Garnet started indoors.

At the door, she paused and looked around. The light was beginning to fade and the air was chilly. The men lay about in groups, passing bottles and talking about how good it was to be here at last. Now and then a dog barked, and the horses whinneyed from the grazing-ground. Over to the east was the range of mountains that the train had climbed over to get to California.

What a strange place it was, she thought, so remote and so hard to reach. Cut off on one side by the largest ocean on earth, and on the other by that barrier of desert and mountains, California lay between them unconquered and almost unknown. She wondered how long it would be before somebody would really subdue this wild gaunt countryside, and who would do it at last.

Oliver said they would rest here a week or ten days before going on. As the time went by, Garnet found that the rancho was a very interesting place. Don Antonio Costilla had a vast grant of land, and thousands of cattle grazing on his hills. His land had once been the property of a mission. When Mexico won its independence from Spain the mission lands were broken up, and for some years now the government had been granting them to private owners.

There were several springs in Don Antonio’s mountains, sending down streams of water. The streams were thin now, for there had been no rain for six months, but they were still enough for a little irrigation. The ground beyond the irrigated patches was so dry that it was as hard as the adobe bricks of his house. Around the patches were a few trees. The sycamores were bare, but there were some evergreen scrub-oaks by the streams, and orange and lemon and olive trees, grown from sprigs brought over long ago from Spain. These were evergreens too, but their leaves were furry with dust.

Around the main dwelling were the storehouses, and the homes of the Mexican bosses who supervised the rancho. Farther out were the low thatched huts of the tame Diggers and half-breeds who did the menial work. The Diggers were wretched creatures, dressed in rags or sheepskins that sometimes hardly covered a decent minimum of their blackish skins. They had wild hair and heavy bellies and stupid beady eyes. Garnet had shivered apprehensively when she learned that there were Diggers on the rancho, but Oliver told her these tame Diggers were harmless.

The Diggers were not called slaves, because they were not bought and sold; and they were not bought and sold because they were not worth anything. There were more of them than anybody could use, and the general opinion was that any ranchero who would keep a Digger out of mischief was entitled to any work he could get out of him. They were incredibly stupid. They could take orders, if the orders were given in very simple language. None of them seemed able to learn more than a few hundred words in any language. They were not allowed near the main house, and Garnet was glad of it.

Around the homes of the white people, everything was gay and comfortable. The traders were given rooms indoors, while the drivers slept outside, their heads on their saddles. Penrose and Florinda had a room in one of the smaller buildings around the main house. The lines of caste in California were clear; and Penrose, who owned neither rancho nor cattle, was by no means as important a man as Oliver.

Don Antonio never thought of charging them anything. Food and lodging were free at any rancho in California, and a guest who offered to pay for hospitality would have insulted his host. The traders expressed their thanks by giving presents to Don Antonio—blankets from Santa Fe, or American trinkets for his wife and daughters, bought from the Missouri traders.

The serving-women of the rancho cooked and did laundry, but except at rodeo time the men had very little to do. They played guitars and sang, while the men from the trail danced with the serving-girls and made love to them, and Don Antonio rode about, laughing and saying his home was theirs as long as they would honor him by staying here. His wife appeared sometimes, a stout, handsome woman, riding in state with a silver-mounted bridle. When they saw her all the men sprang to their feet and bowed low. Don Antonio had four sons, who rode about on stallions which they managed with great skill. But the traders never saw the young girls of the family at all. There was a walled courtyard behind the main house, where Don Antonio’s three daughters took the air, but they never appeared. In California, though married women went about freely, girls of aristocratic families were kept in seclusion. Garnet asked how they ever made up their minds about husbands. Oliver answered that they didn’t. Their parents chose husbands for them. “Oh dear,” Garnet said with a shiver, thinking that if this custom had prevailed in New York her parents would probably have chosen Henry Trellen.

After a week of nothing to do but eat and sleep, Garnet felt as well as she ever had. But Florinda was still haggard. The desert had cost her more than a week’s rest could pay back. She insisted that she felt better. But she did not look like it.

Garnet’s arm was still sore, but it did not bother her much. Texas kept an eye on it. “You’ll have a scar, ma’am,” he said to her one afternoon, when he stopped her after dinner to ask how she was. “But it’s a scar to be proud of.”

John passed them, as he walked over toward the field where the horses were grazing. He paused, and smiling a little, he said,

“Then will he strip his sleeve, and show his scars,

And say, ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s Day.’”

“Who said that?” asked Garnet. “Shakespeare?”

“He said nearly everything,” John answered.

Garnet smiled. John could tease her if he liked, but all the same, she was going to be proud of that scar when she got back to New York. She was glad she had been wounded in the arm, instead of some unmentionable spot that she could not boast about. Texas laughed in a friendly fashion. There was an odor of wine about Texas. Now that he had come to the end of the trail, he was no longer keeping away from the bottles. But all the men had been drinking. And anyway, she could never be afraid of anybody as nice as Texas.

John’s eyes went over her smooth hair and her clean cotton dress, as though admiring the difference the week had made in her. John too looked different. He had shaved, and his face had the mark of the trail, half white and half dark. He had on a plaid shirt and coarse dun-colored trousers, faded from sun and scrubbing, but as always he had an air of cool distinction. The corners of his lips quivered provokingly as he said,

“I have a scar too.”

“Yes, you told me Texas had to burn a wound of yours once.”

“I didn’t mean that one,” said John. “I’ve still got the marks of your teeth in my leg.”

Garnet bit her lip, embarrassed. Texas spoke sternly.

“She’s a lady, John.”

“But an intelligent lady,” John answered. He turned and went on toward the horses. Texas patted her wrist.

“Don’t you mind John, Miss Garnet. He knows better than to talk about his lower limbs to a lady. But John just don’t like people, somehow.”

Garnet looked after John’s tall lean figure. “He’s all right, Texas. But I don’t understand him.”

“Don’t try to understand any of us, Miss Garnet. We’re just a lot of lost souls.”

Texas walked off too. Garnet felt a twinge of sadness as she watched him go.

She wondered who he was and why he had taken the trail. It was hard to guess his age. When she had first seen him in Santa Fe she had thought he was about thirty-five, but sometimes when he had been drinking he looked ten years older than that. Texas was of medium height and rather slightly built, but life on the trail had given him a muscular toughness. He looked better riding than he did walking, for he walked with a shambling gait, and he did not stand erect like a man proud to face the world. He did not think much about his appearance. Most of the men, once they reached a place where there were girls to admire them, took pains to look well. Texas had had his hair and beard trimmed when he arrived, but he dressed carelessly, and Garnet suspected that he would soon let himself get shaggy again. He might have been good-looking if he had cared about it. His hair and beard were a rich copper-brown, and his eyes were brown too, under coppery eyebrows. They were sweet, gentle eyes, lovable eyes, but his whole expression had a sad shyness. She thought it was like the look of a child who wanted people to like him but was not sure they would.

His hands were different. They were hard, rough hands with big joints, used to the labor of the trail, and they had no uncertainty. When he tended a wound Texas did it deftly, giving only the necessary minimum of pain. Garnet wondered where he had learned so much, and why he had brought his skill away out here.

Lost souls, she thought as she looked around. Lost souls banished to the desert and these somber hills. Not a part of this life, as Don Antonio was a part of it. Not a part of anything but the great loneliness. Garnet wondered how it would feel to stand in this baked land of exile, and remember your home, and know you could not go back.