The Blood of the Conquerors

by Harvey Fergusson

CHAPTER XXV

These were days of power and success, days of a glamour that lingered long in his mind. Beyond a doubt he was destroying MacDougall’s plan and realizing his own. Sometimes he met a surly Mexican who would not listen to him, but nearly always he won the man over in the end. He was amazed at his own resourcefulness and eloquence. It seemed as though some inhibition in him had been broken down, some magical elixir poured into his imagination. He found that he could literally take a sheep camp by storm, entering into the life of the men, telling them stories, singing them songs, passing out presents of tobacco and whisky, often delivering a wildly applauded harangue on the necessity for all Mexicans to act together against the gringos, who would otherwise soon own the country. Never once did he think of the incongruity of thus fanning the flames of race hatred for the love of a girl with grey eyes and yellow hair.

He did not always reach a house or a sheep camp at night. Many a time he camped alone, catching trout for his supper from a mountain stream, and going to sleep to the lonely music of [pg 176] running water in a wilderness. At such times many a man would have lost faith in himself, would have feared his crimes and lost his hopes. But to Ramon this loneliness was an old friend. Like all who have lived much out-of-doors he was at heart a pantheist, and felt more at peace and unity with wild nature than ever he had with men.

But there was one such night when he felt troubled. As he rode up the Tusas Canyon at twilight, a sense of insecurity came over him, amounting almost to fear. He had had a somewhat similar feeling once when a panther had trailed him on a winter night. Now, as then, he had no idea what it was that menaced him; he was simply warned by that sixth sense which belongs to all wild things, and to men in whom there remains something of the feral. His horses shared his unrest. When he picketed them, just before dark, they fed uneasily, stopping now and then to stand like statues with lifted heads, testing the wind with their nostrils, moving their ears to catch some sound beyond human perception.

When he had eaten his supper and made his bed, Ramon took the little automatic revolver out of its scabbard and went down the canyon a quarter of a mile, slipping along in the shadow of the brush that lined the banks of the stream. This was necessary because a half-moon made the open glades bright. He paused and peered a [pg 177] dozen times. So cautious were his movements that he came within forty feet of a drinking deer, and was badly startled when it bounded away with a snort and a smashing of brush. But he saw nothing dangerous and went back to his camp and to bed. There he lay awake for an hour, still troubled, oppressed by a vague feeling of the littleness and insecurity of human life.

A long, rippling snort of fear from his saddle horse, picketed near his bed, awakened him and probably saved his life. When he opened his eyes, he saw the figure of a man standing directly over him. He was about to speak, when the man lifted his arms, swinging upward a heavy club. With quick presence of mind, Ramon jerked the blankets and the heavy canvas tarpaulin about his head, at the same time rolling over. The club came down with crushing force on his right shoulder. He continued to roll and flounder with all his might, going down a sharp slope toward the creek which was only a few yards away. Twice more he felt the club, once on his arm and once on his ribs, but his head escaped and the heavy blankets protected his body.

The next thing he knew, he had gone over the bank of the creek, which was several feet high in that place, and lay in the shallow icy water. Meantime he had gotten his hand on the automatic pistol. He now jerked upright and fired at the [pg 178] form of his assailant, which bulked above him. The man disappeared. For a moment Ramon sat still. He heard footsteps, and something like a grunt or a groan. Then he extricated himself from the cold, sodden blankets, climbed upon the bank, and began cautiously searching about, with his weapon ready. He found the club—a heavy length of green spruce-and put his hand accidentally on something wet, which he ascertained by smelling it to be blood.

He was shivering with cold and badly bruised in several places, but he was afraid to build a fire. In case his enemy were not badly injured or had a companion, that would have been risking another attack. He stood in the shadow of a spruce, stamping his feet and rubbing himself, acutely uncomfortable, waiting for daylight and wondering what this attack meant. He doubted whether MacDougall would have countenanced such tactics, but it might well have been an agent of MacDougall acting on his own responsibility. Or it might have been some one sent by old Archulera. Then, too, there were many poor connections of the Delcasar family who would profit by his death.

As he stood there in the dark, shivering and miserable, the idea of death was not hard for him to conceive. He realized that but for the snort of the saddle horse he would now be lying under the tree with the top of his head crushed in. The [pg 179] man would probably have dragged his body into the thick timber and left it. There he would have lain and rotted. Or perhaps the coyotes would have eaten him and the buzzards afterward picked his bones. He shuddered. Despite his acute misery, life had never seemed more desirable. He thought of sunlight and warmth, of good food and of the love of women, and these things seemed more sweet than ever before. He realized, for the first time, too, that he faced many dangers and that the chance of death walked with him all the time. He resolved fiercely that he would beat all his enemies, that he would live and have his desires which were so sweet to him.

Daylight came at last, showing him first the rim of the mountain serrated with spruce tops, and then lighting the canyon, revealing his disordered camp and his horses grazing quietly in the open. He went immediately and examined the ground where the struggle had taken place. A plain trail of blood lead away from the place, as he had expected. He formed a plan of action immediately.