When he married little Dolóres, Ramon Garcia had not dreamed that so many things would happen. He was a rich man as men go; had his house, his garden, his vines, a quintaine of olive-trees, was accounted quite a match by old Manuela, the village go-between, the priest's housekeeper, in whose hands were the hearts of many maids.
These things he, Don Ramon Garcia, had possessed (he was called Don then) and now—he had his knife and the long, well-balanced gun which was placed across the rests in the dryest part of the cavern.
He remembered the day well. He had been from home, down by Porta in the Cerdagne, to buy cattle, and returning home more swiftly than he had expected, his cattle following after in the herdsman's care, the thought of pretty Dolóres making his horse's feet go quicker, a song upon his lips, he had approached the village of Sarria de la Plana, and the home that was his own—and hers.
A swift-falling Spanish twilight it was, he remembered, the sky, broadly banded of orange and rose, was seen behind the highly piled houses. From the whiteness of the long frontage, dots and flecks flashed out. Black oblongs of glassless window-space splashed the white. Here and there a hint of vivid colour flung itself out almost defiantly—a woman's red petticoat drying on a cord, the green slats of a well-to-do window-blind. There came to the ears of Ramon Garcia the click of castanets from the semi-dark of wide-arched doors, and the soft tink-a-tank of lightly thrummed guitars. He saw a lover or two "eating iron," his hands clasping the bars behind which was the listening ear of his mistress.
And throughout this village were peace and well-accustomed pleasance. Ramon smiled. It was his home.
But not as he smiled up among the rocks of the Montblanch on the borderlands betwixt Aragon and Catalunia.
He smiled well-pleased and minded him upon the nights not so long gone by, when he too had "eaten iron," and clung a-tip-toe to the window-bars of little Dolóres, who lent him such a shy attention, scuttling off like a mouse at the least stirring within the house where all her kinsfolk slept.
There was none like her, his little Dolóres! God had given her to a rough old fellow like him, one who had endured the trampling of the threshing floor as the car oxen drave round.
Little Dolóres, how all the men had been wild to have her, but she had loved none but Ramon Garcia alone! So said Manuela Durio, the go-between, the priest's housekeeper, and if any did, she knew. Indeed, there was little told at confession that she did not know. Ramon smiled again, a wicked, knowing smile. For if Manuela owned the legitimate fifty years which qualified her for a place in the Presbytery of Sarria de la Plana, eyes and lips belied her official age. Anyway, she kept the priest's conscience—and—what was more important, she swore that little Dolóres loved Ramon Garcia and Ramon Garcia alone.