Ramon passed through a narrow hallway into a courtyard and across it to his room. The light of the oil lamp which he lit showed a large oblong chamber with a low ceiling supported by heavy timbers, whitewashed walls and heavy old-fashioned walnut furniture. A large coloured print of Mary and the Babe in a gilt frame hung over the wash-stand, and next to it a college pennant was tacked over a photograph of his graduating class. Several Navajo blankets covered most of the floor and a couple of guns stood in a corner.
When he was in bed his overstimulated state of mind became a torment. He rolled and tossed, beset by exciting images and ideas. Every time that a growing confusion of these indicated the approach of sleep, he was brought sharply back to full consciousness by the crowing of a rooster in the backyard. Finally he threw off the covers and sat up, cursing the rooster in two languages and resolving to eat him.
Sleep was out of the question now. Suddenly he remembered that this was Sunday morning, and that he had intended going to the mountains. To start at once would enable him to avoid an argument with his mother concerning the inevitability of damnation for those who miss early [pg 40] Mass. He rose and dressed himself, putting on a cotton shirt, a faded and dirty pair of overalls and coarse leather riding boots; tied a red and white bandana about his neck and stuck on his head an old felt hat minus a band and with a drooping brim. So attired he looked exactly like a Mexican countryman—a poor ranchero or a woodcutter. This masquerade was not intentional nor was he conscious of it. He simply wore for his holiday the kind of clothes he had always worn about the sheep ranches.
Nevertheless he felt almost as different from his usual self as he looked. A good part of his identity as a poor, discontented and somewhat lazy young lawyer was hanging in the closet with his ready-made business suit. He took a long and noisy drink from the pitcher on the wash-stand, picked up his shot-gun and slipped cautiously out of the house, feeling care-free and happy.
Behind the house was a corral with an adobe wall that was ten feet high except where it had fallen down and been patched with boards. A scrub cow and three native horses were kept there. Two of the horses made the ill-matched team that hauled his mother and sister to church and town. The other was a fiery ragged little roan mare which he kept for his own use. None of these horses was worth more than thirty dollars, [pg 41] and they were easily kept on a few tons of alfalfa a year.
The little mare laid back her ears and turned as though to annihilate him with a kick. He quickly stepped right up against the threatening hind legs, after the fashion of experienced horsemen who know that a kick is harmless at short range, and laid his hand on her side. She trembled but dared not move. He walked to her head, sliding his hand along the rough, uncurried belly and talking to her in Spanish. In a moment he had the bridle on her.
The town was impressively empty and still as he galloped through it. Hoof beats rang out like shots, scaring a late-roaming cat, which darted across the street like a runaway shadow.
Near the railroad station he came to a large white van, with a beam of light emerging from its door. This was a local institution of longstanding, known as the chile-wagon, and was the town’s only all-night [restaurant]. Here he aroused a fat, sleepy old Mexican.
“Un tamale y cafe,” he ordered, and then had the proprietor make him a couple of sandwiches to put in his pocket. He consumed his breakfast hurriedly, rolled and lit a little brown cigarette, and was off again.
His way led up a long steep street lined with new houses and vacant lots; then out upon the high [pg 42] empty level of the mesa. It was daylight now, of a clear, brilliant morning. He was riding across a level prairie, which was a grey desert most of the year, but which the rainy season of late summer had now touched with rich colours. The grass in many of the hollows was almost high enough to cut with a scythe, and its green expanse was patched with purple-flowered weeds. Meadow larks bugled from the grass; flocks of wild doves rose on whistling wings from the weed patches; a great grey jack-rabbit with jet-tipped ears sprang from his form beside the road and went sailing away in long effortless bounds, like a wind-blown thing. Miles ahead were the mountains—an angular mass of blue distance and purple shadow, rising steep five thousand feet above the mesa, with little round foothills clustering at their feet. A brisk cool wind fanned his face and fluttered the brim of his hat.