“Good-bye, my little brother,” murmured the priest. “May Christ be always with you.” His gown rustled across the room and as he opened the door, Ramon saw his face for a moment—a sallow, shrewd face, bedewed with the sweat of a great effort, but wearing a smile of triumphant satisfaction.
Ramon lay sick and exhausted. It seemed to [pg 103] him that there was no air in the room. He was suffocating. His body burned and prickled. He rose and tore loose his collar. He must get out of this place, must have air and movement.
It was dusk now. The wailing of the old women had ceased. Doubtless they were being rewarded with supper. He began stripping off his clothes—his white shirt and his new suit of black. Eagerly rummaging in the closet he found his old clothes, which he wore on his trips to the mountains.
In the dim light he slipped out of the house, indistinguishable from any Mexican boy that might have been about the place. He saddled the little mare in the corral, mounted and galloped away—through Old Town, where skinny dogs roamed in dark narrow streets and men and women sat and smoked in black doorways—and out upon the valley road. There he spurred his mare without mercy, and they flew over the soft dust. The rush of the air in his face, and the thud and quiver of living flesh under him were infinitely sweet.
He stopped at last five miles from town on the bank of the river. It was a swift muddy river, wandering about in a flood plain a quarter of a mile wide, and at this point chewing noisily at a low bank forested with scrubby cottonwoods.
Dismounting, he stripped and plunged into the [pg 104] river. It was only three feet deep, but he wallowed about in it luxuriously, finding great comfort in the caress of the cool water, and of the soft fine sand upon the bottom which clung about his toes and tickled the soles of his feet. Then he climbed out on the bank and stood where the breeze struck him, rubbing the water off of his slim strong body with the flats of his hands.
When he had put on his clothes, he indulged his love of lying flat on the ground, puffing a cigarette and blowing smoke at the first stars. A hunting owl flitted over his head on muffled wing; a coyote yapped in the bushes; high up in the darkness he heard the whistle of pinions as a flock of early ducks went by.
He took the air deeply into his lungs and stretched out his legs. In this place fear of hell departed from his mind as some strong liquors evaporate when exposed to the open air. The splendid healthy animal in him was again dominant, and it could scarcely conceive of death and had nothing more to do with hell than had the owl and the coyote that killed to live. Here he felt at peace with the earth beneath him and the sky above. But one thought came to disturb him and it was also sweet—the thought of a woman, her eyes full of promise, the curve of her mouth.… She was waiting for him, she would be his. That was real.… Hell was a dream.
He saw now the folly of his fears about Archulera, too. Archulera never went to church. There was no danger that he would ever confess to any one. And even if he did, he could scarcely injure Ramon. For Ramon had done no wrong. He had but promised an old man his due, righted an ancient wrong.… He smiled.
Slowly he mounted and rode home, filled with thoughts of the girl, to put on his mourning clothes and take his decorous place in the circle that watched his uncle’s bier.