Don José Ramirez was in a gentle mood; a sudden impulse seized him to turn his horse and ride close to the building, turning his eyes searchingly upon the children. Both coquettishly turned their faces away. Rosario covered her eyes with her fingers, glancing coyly through them; then kissing the tips of the other hand, opened them lightly above him in an imaginary shower of kisses. No goddess could have sprinkled them more deftly than did this infantine coquette.
Ramirez answered the salute laughingly, then turned away with a frown on his brow. The slight delay had left him behind the troop, amid the dust of the restive horses. Yet he made no haste to escape the inconvenience, but yielding for the moment to some absorbing thought rode slowly. The voice of a child suddenly caused him to arrest his horse with an ungentle hand. He looked around him with a start,—an object indistinctly seen under a mesquite tree caused his heart to bound. The blood left his cheek, he shook in his saddle. His horse, as startled as he, bounded in the air, and trembled in every limb. A moment later and José Ramirez laughed aloud. His name was repeated. “What do you there, child?” he cried; “thou art a witch, and hast frightened my horse. And by my patron saint,” he added in a lower tone, “I was startled myself!”
Chinita the foundling came forward calmly, though her skirt was in tatters, and her draggled scarf scarce covered her shoulders; but there was an air about her as if she had been dressed in imperial robes. “Ah!” she said quite calmly, “it is the smell of the blood that has startled your horse; they say no animal passes here without shying and plunging, since the American was killed!”
Ramirez glanced around him with wild eyes. “Oh, you cannot see him now,” cried the child; “that happened long ago. No, no, there is nothing here that will hurt you. Why do you look at me like that? It is not I—a poor little girl—who could injure you, but men like those,” and she pointed to the columns of soldiers whose bayonets were glistening in the rising sun. Her eye seemed to single out Gonzales, though he was beyond her vision. The thought of Ramirez perchance followed hers, yet he only sat and stared at her, his eyes fixed, his body shrunken and bowed.
“See here,” she said slowly, raising herself on tiptoe, and with eager hand drawing something from beneath her clothing, “I have a charm of jet: Pedro put it on my neck when I was a baby. It will ward off the evil eye. Take it; wear it. An old man gave it to Pedro on his death-bed; he had been a soldier, a highwayman; he had fought many battles, killed many men, yet had never had a wound! Take it!” She took from her neck a tiny bit of jet, hanging from a hempen string, and thrust it into his hand.
Ramirez was astounded. He looked upon her as a vision from another world,—he who was accustomed to outbursts of strange eloquence, even from the lips of unclothed children amid those untutored peasantry. She seemed to him a thing of witchcraft. His eyes fixed themselves on the child’s face as if fascinated; he saw it grimy, vivacious, beautiful but weird, tempting, mysterious. No angel, he felt, had stopped him on his way. He took the charm mechanically, and the child, with a joyous yet mocking laugh, fled away. He roused as from a spell, called after her, tossed the charm into the air, and caught it again, and called once more, but she neither answered nor stopped. He gazed around him once again. A superstitious awe, akin to terror, crept over him; he shuddered, thrust the talisman[talisman] into his belt, and put spurs to his horse.
That day, for the most part, he rode alone, and when for a time he joined Gonzales, he was silent; silent, too, was his companion, and neither one nor the other divined the thoughts of the man who rode at his side.
XV.
Years passed. The nine days’ feast of the Blessed Virgin, one of the most charming of all the year, was being celebrated with unusual pomp in the church at Tres Hermanos. Since the death of Padre Francisco, no priest had been regularly stationed there; but at the expense of Doña Isabel, one had been sent there to remain through the nine days sacred to Mary, and the people gave their whole time to devotional exercises, much to the neglect of the usual hacienda work. The crops in the fields were untended, while the men crowded to Mass in the morning, and spent their afternoons at the tavern-shop playing monté and drinking pulque; while the women and children streamed in and out of the church,—the women to witness the offering of flowers upon the altar, the children to lay them there, happy once in the year to be chief in the service of the beautiful Queen of Heaven. For though the image above the altar was blackened by time and defaced by many a scar, the robes were brilliant, and glittered with variously colored jewels of glass; the crown was untarnished, and the little yellow babe in the mother’s arms appealed to the strong maternal sentiment which lies deep in the heart of every Mexican woman.
Upon the first day of the feast not one female child of the many who lived within the hacienda limits was absent from the church; and they were so many that the proud mothers, who had spent no little of their time and substance in arraying them, were fain to crowd the aisles and doorways, or stand craning their necks without, hoping to catch a glimpse of the high altar, as the crowd surged to and fro, making way for the tiny representatives of womanhood, who claimed right of entrance from their very powerlessness and innocence. Quaint and ludicrous looked these little creatures, mincing daintily into the church, their wide-spread crinolines expanding skirts stiffly starched, and rustling audibly under brilliant tunics of flowered muslin or purple and green stuffs. These dresses were an exact imitation in material and style of the gala attire of the mothers. The full skirts swept the ground, and over the curiously embroidered linen chemise which formed the bodice was thrown the ever-present reboso, or scarf of shimmering tints. The well-oiled black locks of these miniature rancheras were drawn back tightly from the low foreheads,—the long, smooth braids fastened and adorned by knots of bright ribbon, and crowned with flowers of domestic manufacture, their glaring hues and fantastic shapes contrasting strangely with the masses of beauty and fragrance that each child clasped to her bosom. In spite of its incongruities, a fantastic and pleasant sight was offered; and Doña Rita, looking around her with the eye of a devotee, doubted whether any more pleasing could be devised for God or man.