“And it’s the same with Mexicans. They are the prettiest babies; nice young men. Ramon, with his fine color and wonderful eyes, is too handsome to live just now. But after a while he’ll grow stout and lazy from over-feeding and acquire pimples and blotches till his face looks like a scorched hide. Right now he’s so romantic he’d twang a guitar all night under Lee’s window. After a while she wouldn’t be able to sleep for his snores. Now he’d fly at her bidding. Later, she’d fly at his. She would live behind bars while she was young; go without love in her middle age, be tyrannized and bulldozed all the time.”
“But do you think she would really do it?”
“Indeed, yes! She’s highly idealistic, and was trained by her father in the old ideas. Now that she has given her word, it will take wild horses to pull her from it—or wild men.”
After a sidelong glance that gave her the hard glint of his eyes above the firm mouth, set jaw, she went on, with a little satisfied nod: “Now listen! Ramon will be easier to handle. Being Mexican, he’s sensitive as a tarantula, irritable as a scorpion, jealous as a cat. Now that she’s promised, he will look upon her as his, body and soul, and if her glance so much as strays in any one else’s direction, he’ll be ready to kill. It ought to be quite easy to provoke him to the point where he will either break the engagement or give her cause. In other words, you must force him to play your hand.”
She continued, with a little deprecatory laugh: “I know it’s a low-down trick, but it may stave off something worse. Before he would let Lee marry Ramon, I feel sure Mr. Perrin would kill him.”
A mischievous grin broke up Gordon’s grimness. “So we are not altogether disinterested. We could never stand to see Bull get in bad.”
She laughed softly, happily, looking away, and lapsed into silence which endured while they rode up and over the last slope that laid the hacienda at their feet.
Its walls and courts, patio, painted adobes, lay, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the rich red brush of the setting sun. The glossy crests of the shading cottonwoods flamed a deep apricot under a sky that spread its glories of saffron, and cinnabar purple, and umber, down over the horizon. All about them the pastures laid an undulating carpet, violet in the hollows, crimson on the hills. From the stubby chimneys soft smoke pennons trailed away till lost in the smoldering dusk of the east. Up through the clear air came a soft cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild.
The widow lowered her voice in harmony with the peace of it all. “It is a great prize.”
He nodded. “It’s beautiful, but—I’d love her as much in rags.”