A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories 20 – Norris · Verses Across
Literature · Western
A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories 20Part 2 · Unzar
18
Literature · Western
A Deal in Wheat and Other Stories 20
Part 2 · Unzar
NorrisEnglish
A fortnight passed. Soon a month had gone by. Felipe gloomed about his rancho, solitary, taciturn, siding the sheep-walks and cattle-ranges for days and nights together, refusing all intercourse with his friends. It seemed as if he had lost Buelna for good and all. At times, as the certainty of this defined itself more clearly, Felipe would fling his hat upon the ground, beat his breast, and then, prone upon his face, his head buried in his folded arms, would lie for hours motionless, while his pony nibbled the sparse alfalfa, and the jack-rabbits limping from the sage peered at him, their noses wrinkling.
But about a month after the meeting and parting with Buelna, word went through all the ranches that a hide-roger had cast anchor in Monterey Bay. At once an abrupt access of activity seized upon the rancheros. Rodeos were held, sheep slaughtered, and the great tallow-pits began to fill up.
Felipe was not behind his neighbours, and, his tallow once in hand, sent it down to Monterey, and himself rode down to see about disposing of it.
On his return he stopped at the wine shop of one Lopez Catala, on the road between Monterey and his rancho.
It was late afternoon when he reached it, and the wine shop was deserted. Outside, the California August lay withering and suffocating over all the land. The far hills were burnt to dry, hay-like grass and brittle clods. The eucalyptus trees in front of the wine shop (the first trees Felipe had seen all that day) were coated with dust. The plains of sagebrush and the alkali flats shimmered and exhaled pallid mirages, glistening like inland seas. Over all blew the trade-wind; prolonged, insistent, harassing, swooping up the red dust of the road and the white powder of the alkali beds, and flinging it--white-and-red banners in a sky of burnt-out blue--here and there about the landscape.
The wine shop, which was also an inn, was isolated, lonely, but it was comfortable, and Felipe decided to lay over there that night, then in the morning reach his rancho by an easy stage.
He had his supper--an omelet, cheese, tortillas, and a glass of wine--and afterward sat outside on a bench smoking innumerable cigarettes and watching the sun set.
While he sat so a young man of about his own age rode up from the eastward with a great flourish, and giving over his horse to the muchacho, entered the wine shop and ordered dinner and a room for the night. Afterward he came out and stood in front of the inn and watched the muchacho cleaning his horse.
Felipe, looking at him, saw that he was of his own age and about his own build--that is to say, twenty-eight or thirty, and tall and lean. But in other respects the difference was great. The stranger was flamboyantly dressed: skin-tight pantaloons, fastened all up and down the leg with round silver buttons; yellow boots with heels high as a girl's, set off with silver spurs; a very short coat faced with galloons of gold, and a very broad-brimmed and very high-crowned sombrero, on which the silver braid alone was worth the price of a good horse. Even for a Spanish Mexican his face was dark. Swart it was, the cheeks hollow; a tiny, tight mustache with ends truculently pointed and erect helped out the belligerency of the tight-shut lips. The eyes were black as bitumen, and flashed continually under heavy brows.
"Perhaps," thought Felipe, "he is a toreador from Mexico."
The stranger followed his horse to the barn, but, returning in a few moments, stood before Felipe and said:
"Senor, I have taken the liberty to put my horse in the stall occupied by yours. Your beast the muchacho turned into the corrale. Mine is an animal of spirit, and in a corrale would fight with the other horses. I rely upon the senor's indulgence."
At ordinary times he would not have relied in vain. But Felipe's nerves were in a jangle these days, and his temper, since Buelna's dismissal of him, was bitter. His perception of offense was keen. He rose, his eyes upon the stranger's eyes.
"My horse is mine," he observed. "Only my friends permit themselves liberties with what is mine."
The other smiled scornfully and drew from his belt a little pouch of gold dust.
"What I take I pay for," he remarked, and, still smiling, tendered Felipe a few grains of the gold.
Felipe struck the outstretched palm.
"Am I a peon?" he vociferated.
"Probably," retorted the other.
"I will take pay for that word," cried Felipe, his face blazing, "but not in your money, senor."
"In that case I may give you more than you ask."
"No, by God, for I shall take all you have."
But the other checked his retort. A sudden change came over him.
"I ask the senor's pardon," he said, with grave earnestness, "for provoking him. You may not fight with me nor I with you. I speak the truth. I have made oath not to fight till I have killed one whom now I seek."
"Very well; I, too, spoke without reflection. You seek an enemy, then, senor?"
"My sister's, who is therefore mine. An enemy truly. Listen, you shall judge. I am absent from my home a year, and when I return what do I find? My sister betrayed, deceived, flouted by a fellow, a nobody, whom she received a guest in her house, a fit return for kindness, for hospitality! Well, he answers to me for the dishonour."
"Unzar Ytuerate, and my enemy is called Arillaga. Him I seek and----"
"Then you shall seek no farther!" shouted Felipe. "It is to Rubia Ytuerate, your sister, whom I owe all my unhappiness, all my suffering. She has hurt not me only, but one--but----Mother of God, we waste words!" he cried. "Knife to knife, Unzar Ytuerate. I am Felipe Arillaga, and may God be thanked for the chance that brings this quarrel to my hand."
"You! You!" gasped Unzar. Fury choked him; his hands clutched and unclutched--now fists, now claws. His teeth grated sharply while a quivering sensation as of a chill crisped his flesh. "Then the sooner the better," he muttered between his set teeth, and the knives flashed in the hands of the two men so suddenly that the gleam of one seemed only the reflection of the other.
Unzar held out his left wrist.
"Are you willing?" he demanded, with a significant glance.
"And ready," returned the other, baring his forearm.
Catala, keeper of the inn, was called.
"Love of the Virgin, not here, senors. My house--the alcalde--"
"You have a strap there." Unzar pointed to a bridle hanging from a peg by the doorway. "No words; quick; do as you are told."
The two men held out their left arms till wrist touched wrist, and Catala, trembling and protesting, lashed them together with a strap.
"Tighter," commanded Felipe; "put all your strength to it."
The strap was drawn up to another hole.
"Now, Catala, stand back," commanded Unzar, "and count three slowly. At the word 'three,' Senor Arillaga, we begin. You understand."
"I understand."
"Ready.... Count."
"One."
Felipe and Unzar each put his right hand grasping the knife behind his back as etiquette demanded.
"Two."
They strained back from each other, the full length of their left arms, till the nails grew bloodless.
