“Catalina! Why did you come here?” he blurted, all his self-possession gone for a moment.
“My father sent me,” she replied, as simply as though that were an all-sufficient explanation.
“But why did you tell him … it was I? Why didn’t you come to me first?”
“He made me tell,” Catalina rolled back her sleeve and showed some blue bruises. “He beat me,” she explained without emotion.
“What did he tell you to say?”
“He told me to come to you and show you how I am.… That is all.”
Ramon swore aloud with a break in his voice. For a long moment he stood looking at her, bewildered, disgusted. It somehow seemed to him utterly wrong, utterly unfair that this thing should have happened, and above all that it should have happened now. He had taken other girls, as had every other man, but never before had any such hard luck as this befallen him. And now, of all times!
In Catalina he felt not the faintest interest. Before him was the proof that once he had desired her. Now that desire had vanished as completely as his childhood.
And she was Archulera’s daughter. That was [pg 143] the hell of it! Archulera was the one man of all men whom he could least afford to offend. And he knew just how hard to appease the old man would be. For among the Mexicans, seduction is a crime which, in theory and often in practice, can be atoned only by marriage or by the shedding of blood. Marriage is the door to freedom for the women, but virginity is a thing greatly revered and carefully guarded. The unmarried girl is always watched, often locked up, and he who appropriates her to his own purpose is violating a sacred right and offending her whole family.
In the towns, all this has been somewhat changed, as the customs of any country suffer change in towns. But old Archulera, living in his lonely canyon, proud of his high lineage, would be the hardest of men to appease. And meantime, what was to be done with the girl?