“See, Rusidda (says he) now we are husband and wife. What happiness! Now I will buy me a horse, I will make me a cart, and so I will go with loads and we shall get bread. But there is this about it: When I come home, I will not work any more. Then, see, my little Rusidda, from now henceforth when I come home, you take the horse, unharness him from the cart, lead him in and water him; in short, care for him, for I am tired.” The girl began to shrug her shoulders and says, “I won’t do it!” “What do you mean? Then who is to lead the horse in, I?” “I don’t know how to do such things.” “Well,” says the young man, “I will teach you.” “No, I am not used to such things. At my home I was not taught in that way.” “Well, I will teach you now, little by little.” “No, I won’t lead the horse in!” “But what is to be done if you must lead him in?” “And I won’t lead him and I won’t lead him in!” “And I tell you, either you will lead him or you will come out badly.” “No, no; neither now or ever!” At this the young man arose in a rage, and unbuckled his leather belt. “Now I tell you either you lead the horse in, or I will set on you with my hands.... Go lead the horse in!” “No, I will not lead him in!”—“Ah, what is that?... Go lead the horse in” ... and he took her with a great blow of the strap on her shoulders. What would you expect of the girl? She began to scream like one burnt. “Alas, I’m dying ... I won’t lead the horse in! I won’t lead him in!” “Go, lead the horse in, I told you!...” and here blows with the strap that took off the skin. And “Go, lead the horse in,” and “I won’t lead him in!” The neighbors came running. “Children, children, what is it? You are just married and begin the quarrels! What is it? About the horse? Come off, we will lead him in.... Where is the horse?” “But,” says the young man, “It was talk ... we have yet to buy the horse.” “An apoplexy take you! For a talk, you make all this disturbance!” And the whole village fell upon them.
TWO AFTERNOONS
(Buckey O’Neill: San Francisco Chronicle.)
A hot day. The sun directly overhead, glowing with a fire that made the air in the shadeless canyon quiver as if heated in an oven. Not a tree in sight, not a bush—everything brown and barren. Everywhere boulders of lava immense in size and sometimes split in twain, as if in rapid cooling from the intense heat which gave them birth. Here and there between the gray-green of the giant cacti, raising their thorny forms fifty and sixty feet in the air, assuming with their strangely formed limbs the shapes of immense crosses or trunks of trees from which all leaves and smaller branches have been torn. Between the black and brown of the sunburnt lava an occasional tuft of tall, almost colorless grass. Over all a stillness that to one unaccustomed to the land would seem strange and oppressive. Not a bird to break it with its song. Even the lizards sought out what shade they could, making with their green, red and variegated coats, almost the only dash of color to relieve the monotony of the all-prevailing brown and black lava that each moment grew more oppressive to look at under the glow of the fierce heat.
Save these not a living thing was in sight except where off to the west a buzzard floated high in the air, and two men, with a burro lazily following, passing down the canyon.
Prospectors and their outfit.
Opened shirts, showing red, hairy breasts, while their loosely buckled belts, heavy with long, bright cartridges, whose tarnished surfaces, made doubly bright from the rays of the hot sun, seemed strangely out of place in such quietude.
Neither spoke. Each walked along as if alone, looking for the “float” that might indicate the presence of some mineral ledge higher up, more from habit than from hope, as the “formation” gave but little indication of treasure.
How hot the sun. The burro, patient-eyed, forgot his old trick of nipping the tops of the long gaete grass, and contented himself with keeping closely in the trail of the two men, whose worldly possessions of blankets, cooking utensils and tools, capped with an enormous canteen of water, he so patiently bore. Not a breath of air stirring. Only the quivering heat that made the eyes burn and ache. The men shifted their rifles constantly from one hand to another, as if to avoid getting blisters from the places where they touched the highly heated metallic parts of their guns.