CHAPTER XIV
All the ceremonies and procedures, religious and legal, which had been made necessary by the death of Don Diego Delcasar, were done. The body of the Don had been taken to the church in Old Town and placed before the altar, the casket covered with black cloth and surrounded by candles in tall silver candlesticks which stood upon the floor. A Mass of impressive length had been spoken over it by Father Lugaria assisted by numerous priests and altar boys, and at the end of the ceremony the hundreds of friends and relatives of the Don, who filled the church, had lifted up their voices in one of the loudest and most prolonged choruses of wailing ever heard in that country, where wailing at a funeral is as much a matter of formal custom as is cheering at a political convention. Afterwards a cortege nearly a mile in length, headed by a long string of carriages and tailed by a crowd of poor Mexicans trudging hatless in the dust, had made the hot and wearisome journey to the cemetery in the sandhills.
Then the will had been read and had revealed that Ramon Delcasar was heir to the bulk of his [pg 107] uncle’s estate, and that he was thereby placed in possession of money, lands and sheep to the value of about two hundred thousand dollars. It was said by those who knew that the Don’s estate had once been at least twice that large, and there were some who irreverently remarked that he had been taken off none too soon for the best interests of his heirs.
Shortly after the reading of the will, Ramon rode to the Archulera ranch, starting before daylight and returning after dark. He exchanged greetings with the old man, just as he had always done.
“Accept my sympathy, amigo,” Archulera said in his formal, polite way, “that you have lost your uncle, the head of your great family.”
“I thank you, friend,” Ramon replied. “A man must bear these things. Here is something I promised you,” he added, laying a small heavy canvas bag upon the table, just as he had always laid a package of tobacco or some other small gift.
Old Archulera nodded without looking at the bag.
“Thank you,” he said.
Afterward they talked about the bean crop and the weather, and had an excellent dinner of goat meat cooked with chile.
In town Ramon found himself a person of noticeably [pg 108] increased importance. One of his first acts had been to buy a car, and he had attracted much attention while driving this about the streets, learning to manipulate it. He killed one chicken and two dogs and handsomely reimbursed their owners. These minor accidents were due to his tendency, the result of many years of horsemanship, to throw his weight back on the steering wheel and shout “whoa!” whenever a sudden emergency occurred. But he was apt, and soon was running his car like an expert.
His personal appearance underwent a change too. He had long cherished a barbaric leaning toward finery, which lack of money had prevented him from indulging. Large diamonds fascinated him, and a leopard skin vest was a thing he had always wanted to own. But these weaknesses he now rigorously suppressed. Instead he noted carefully the dress of Gordon Roth and of other easterners whom he saw about the hotel, and ordered from the best local tailor a suit of quiet colour and conservative cut, but of the very best English material. He bought no jewelry except a single small pearl for his necktie. His hat, his shoes, the way he had his neck shaved, all were changed as the result of a painstaking observation such as he had never practised before. He wanted to make himself as much as possible like the men of Julia’s kind and class. And this desire [pg 109] modified his manner and speech as well as his appearance. He was careful, always watching himself. His manner was more reserved and quiet than ever, and this made him appear older and more serious. He smiled when he overheard a woman say that “he took the death of his uncle much harder than she would have expected.”
Ramon now received business propositions every day. Men tried to sell him all sorts of things, from an idea to a ranch, and most of them seemed to proceed on the assumption that, being young and newly come into his money, he should part with it easily. Several of the opportunities offered him had to do with the separation of the poor Mexicans from their land holdings. A prominent attorney came all the way from a town in the northern part of the State to lay before him a proposition of this kind. This lawyer, named Cooley, explained that by opening a store in a certain rich section of valley land, opportunities could be created for lending the Mexicans money. Whenever there was a birth, a funeral or a marriage among them, the Mexicans needed money, and could be persuaded to sign mortgages, which they generally could not read. In each Mexican family there would be either a birth, a marriage or a death once in three years on an average. Three such events would enable the lender to gain possession of a ranch. And Cooley [pg 110] had an eastern client who would then buy the land at a good figure. It was a chance for Ramon to double his money.
“You’ve got the money and you know the native people,” Cooley argued earnestly. “I’ve got the sucker and I know the law. It’s a sure thing.”
Ramon thanked him politely and refused firmly. The idea of robbing a poor Mexican of his ranch by nine years of usury did not appeal to him at all. In the first place, it would be a long, slow tedious job, and besides, poor people always aroused his pity, just as rich ones stirred his greed and envy. He was predatory, but lion-like, he scorned to spring on small game. He did not realize that a lion often starves where a jackal grows fat.
Only one opportunity came to him which interested him strongly. A young Irishman named Hurley explained to him that it was possible to buy mules in Mexico, where a revolution was going on, for ten dollars each at considerable personal risk, to run them across the Rio Grande and to sell them to the United States army for twenty dollars. Here was a gambler’s chance, action and adventure. It caught his fancy and tempted him. But he had no thought of yielding. Another purpose engrossed him.
These weeks after his uncle’s funeral gave him his first real grapple with the world of business, and the experience tended to strengthen him in a [pg 111] certain cynical self-assurance which had been growing in him ever since he first went away to college, and had met its first test in action when he spoke the words that lead to the Don’s death. He felt a deep contempt for most of these men who came to him with their schemes and their wares. He saw that most of them were ready enough to swindle him, though few of them would have had the courage to rob him with a gun. Probably not one of them would have dared to kill a man for money, but they were ready enough to cheat a poor pelado out of his living, which often came to the same thing. He felt that he was bigger than most of them, if not better. His self-respect was strengthened.
“Life is a fight,” he told himself, feeling that he had hit upon a profound and original idea. “Every man wants pretty women and money. He gets them if he has enough nerve and enough sense. And somebody else gets hurt, because there aren’t enough pretty women and money to go around.”
It seemed to him that this was the essence of all wisdom.