A Deal in Wheat by Frank Norris
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Frank Norris >> A Deal in Wheat
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Hardenberg and I dived down into the fo'c's'le. Ally Bazan was sound
asleep in his bunk and woke stammering, blinking and bewildered by the
lantern we carried.
"I sye," he cried, all at once scrambling up and clawing at our arms,
"D'd the bally ha'nt show up agyne?" And as we nodded he went on more
aggrievedly than ever--"Oh, I sye, y' know, I daon't like this. I eyen't
shipping in no bloomin' 'ooker wot carries a ha'nt for supercargo. They
waon't no good come o' this cruise--no, they waon't. It's a sign, that's
wot it is. I eyen't goin' to buck again no signs--it eyen't human
nature, no it eyen't. You mark my words, 'Bud' Hardenberg, we clear this
port with a ship wot has a ha'nt an' we waon't never come back agyne, my
hearty."
That night he berthed aft with us on the quarterdeck, but though we
stood watch and watch till well into the dawn, nothing stirred about the
foremast. So it was the next night, and so the night after that. When
three successive days had passed without any manifestation the keen edge
of the business became a little blunted and we declared that an end had
been made.
Ally Bazan returned to his bunk in the fo'c's'le on the fourth night,
and the rest of us slept the hours through unconcernedly.
But in the morning there were the jib and tops'l set and drawing as
before.
IV
After this we began experimenting--on Ally Bazan. We bunked him forward
and we bunked him aft, for some one had pointed out that the "ha'nt"
walked only at the times when the colonial slept in the fo'c's'le. We
found this to be true. Let the little fellow watch on the quarterdeck
with us and the night passed without disturbance. As soon as he took up
his quarters forward the haunting recommenced. Furthermore, it began to
appear that the "ha'nt" carefully refrained from appearing to him. He of
us all had never seen the thing. He of us all was spared the chills and
the harrowings that laid hold upon the rest of us during these still
gray hours after midnight when we huddled on the deck of the _Idaho
Lass_ and watched the sheeted apparition in the rigging; for by now
there was no more charging forward in attempts to run the ghost down. We
had passed that stage long since.
But so far from rejoicing in this immunity or drawing courage therefrom,
Ally Bazan filled the air with his fears and expostulations. Just the
fact that he was in some way differentiated from the others--that he was
singled out, if only for exemption--worked upon him. And that he was
unable to scale his terrors by actual sight of their object excited them
all the more.
And there issued from this a curious consequence. He, the very one who
had never seen the haunting, was also the very one to unsettle what
little common sense yet remained to Hardenberg and Strokher. He never
allowed the subject to be ignored--never lost an opportunity of
referring to the doom that o'erhung the vessel. By the hour he poured
into the ears of his friends lugubrious tales of ships, warned as this
one was, that had cleared from port, never to be seen again. He recalled
to their minds parallel incidents that they themselves had heard; he
foretold the fate of the _Idaho Lass_ when the land should lie behind
and she should be alone in midocean with this horrid supercargo that
took liberties with the rigging, and at last one particular morning, two
days before that which was to witness the schooner's departure, he came
out flatfooted to the effect that "Gaw-blyme him, he couldn't stand the
gaff no longer, no he couldn't, so help him, that if the owners were
wishful for to put to sea" (doomed to some unnamable destruction) "he
for one wa'n't fit to die, an' was going to quit that blessed day." For
the sake of appearances, Hardenberg and Strokher blustered and fumed,
but I could hear the crack in Strokher's voice as plain as in a broken
ship's bell. I was not surprised at what happened later in the day, when
he told the others that he was a very sick man. A congenital stomach
trouble, it seemed--or was it liver complaint--had found him out again.
He had contracted it when a lad at Trincomalee, diving for pearls; it
was acutely painful, it appeared. Why, gentlemen, even at that very
moment, as he stood there talking--Hi, yi! O Lord !--talking, it was
a-griping of him something uncommon, so it was. And no, it was no manner
of use for him to think of going on this voyage; sorry he was, too, for
he'd made up his mind, so he had, to find out just what was wrong with
the foremast, etc.
And thereupon Hardenberg swore a great oath and threw down the capstan
bar he held in his hand.
"Well, then," he cried wrathfully, "we might as well chuck up the whole
business. No use going to sea with a sick man and a scared man."
"An' there's the first word o' sense," cried Ally Bazan, "I've heard
this long day. 'Scared,' he says; aye, right ye are, me bully."
"It's Cy Rider's fault," the three declared after a two-hours' talk. "No
business giving us a schooner with a ghost aboard. Scoovy or no scoovy,
island or no island, guano or no guano, we don't go to sea in the
haunted hooker called the _Idaho Lass_."
No more they did. On board the schooner they had faced the supernatural
with some kind of courage born of the occasion. Once on shore, and no
money could hire, no power force them to go aboard a second time.
The affair ended in a grand wrangle in Cy Rider's back office, and just
twenty-four hours later the bark _Elftruda_, Captain Jens Petersen,
cleared from Portland, bound for "a cruise to South Pacific ports--in
ballast."
* * * * *
Two years after this I took Ally Bazan with me on a duck-shooting
excursion in the "Toolies" back of Sacramento, for he is a handy man
about a camp and can row a boat as softly as a drifting cloud.
We went about in a cabin cat of some thirty feet over all, the rowboat
towing astern. Sometimes we did not go ashore to camp, but slept aboard.
On the second night of this expedient I woke in my blankets on the floor
of the cabin to see the square of gray light that stood for the cabin
door darkened by--it gave me the same old start--a sheeted figure. It
was going up the two steps to the deck. Beyond question it had been in
the cabin. I started up and followed it. I was too frightened not to--if
you can see what I mean. By the time I had got the blankets off and had
thrust my head above the level of the cabin hatch the figure was already
in the bows, and, as a matter of course, hoisting the jib.
I thought of calling Ally Bazan, who slept by me on the cabin floor, but
it seemed to me at the time that if I did not keep that figure in sight
it would elude me again, and, besides, if I went back in the cabin I was
afraid that I would bolt the door and remain under the bedclothes till
morning. I was afraid to go on with the adventure, but I was much more
afraid to go back.
So I crept forward over the deck of the sloop. The "ha'nt" had its back
toward me, fumbling with the ends of the jib halyards. I could hear the
creak of new ropes as it undid the knot, and the sound was certainly
substantial and commonplace. I was so close by now that I could see
every outline of the shape. It was precisely as it had appeared on the
crosstrees of the _Idaho_, only, seen without perspective, and brought
down to the level of the eye, it lost its exaggerated height.
It had been kneeling upon the deck. Now, at last, it rose and turned
about, the end of the halyards in its hand. The light of the earliest
dawn fell squarely on the face and form, and I saw, if you please, Ally
Bazan himself. His eyes were half shut, and through his open lips came
the sound of his deep and regular breathing.
At breakfast the next morning I asked, "Ally Bazan, did you ever walk in
your sleep."
"Aye," he answered, "years ago, when I was by wye o' being a lad, I used
allus to wrap the bloomin' sheets around me. An' crysy things I'd do the
times. But the 'abit left me when I grew old enough to tyke me whisky
strite and have hair on me fyce."
I did not "explain away" the ghost in the crosstrees either to Ally
Bazan or to the other two Black Crows. Furthermore, I do not now refer
to the Island of Paa in the hearing of the trio. The claims and title of
Norway to the island have long since been made good and conceded--even
by the State Department at Washington--and I understand that Captain
Petersen has made a very pretty fortune out of the affair.
THE RIDING OF FELIPE
I. FELIPE
As young Felipe Arillaga guided his pony out of the last intricacies of
Pacheco Pass, he was thinking of Rubia Ytuerate and of the scene he had
had with her a few days before. He reconstructed it now very vividly.
Rubia had been royally angry, and as she had stood before him, her arms
folded and her teeth set, he was forced to admit that she was as
handsome a woman as could be found through all California.
There had been a time, three months past, when Felipe found no
compulsion in the admission, for though betrothed to Buelna Martiarena
he had abruptly conceived a violent infatuation for Rubia, and had
remained a guest upon her rancho many weeks longer than he had intended.
For three months he had forgotten Buelna entirely. At the end of that
time he had remembered her--had awakened to the fact that his
infatuation for Rubia _was_ infatuation, and had resolved to end the
affair and go back to Buelna as soon as it was possible.
But Rubia was quick to notice the cooling of his passion. First she
fixed him with oblique suspicion from under her long lashes, then
avoided him, then kept him at her side for days together. Then at
last--his defection unmistakable--turned on him with furious demands for
the truth.
Felipe had snatched occasion with one hand and courage with the other.
"Well," he had said, "well, it is not my fault. Yes, it is the truth. It
is played out."
He had not thought it necessary to speak of Buelna; but Rubia divined
the other woman.
"So you think you are to throw me aside like that. Ah, it is played out,
is it, Felipe Arillaga? You listen to me. Do not fancy for one moment
you are going back to an old love, or on to a new one. You listen to
me," she had cried, her fist over her head. "I do not know who she is,
but my curse is on her, Felipe Arillaga. My curse is on her who next
kisses you. May that kiss be a blight to her. From that moment may evil
cling to her, bad luck follow her; may she love and not be loved; may
friends desert her, enemies beset her, her sisters shame her, her
brothers disown her, and those whom she has loved abandon her. May her
body waste as your love for me has wasted; may her heart be broken as
your promises to me have been broken; may her joy be as fleeting as your
vows, and her beauty grow as dim as your memory of me. I have said it."
[Illustration: "'My Curse Is On Her Who Next Kisses You'"]
"So be it!" Felipe had retorted with vast nonchalance, and had flung out
from her presence to saddle his pony and start back to Buelna.
But Felipe was superstitious. He half believed in curses, had seen
two-headed calves born because of them, and sheep stampeded over cliffs
for no other reason.
Now, as he drew out of Pacheco Pass and came down into the valley the
idea of Rubia and her curse troubled him. At first, when yet three days'
journey from Buelna, it had been easy to resolve to brave it out. But
now he was already on the Rancho Martiarena (had been traveling over it
for the last ten hours, in fact), and in a short time would be at the
_hacienda_ of Martiarena, uncle and guardian of Buelna. He would see
Buelna, and she, believing always in his fidelity, would expect to kiss
him.
"Well, this is to be thought about," murmured Felipe uneasily. He
touched up the pony with one of his enormous spurs.
"Now I know what I will do," he thought. "I will go to San Juan Bautista
and confess and be absolved, and will buy candles. Then afterward will
go to Buelna."
He found the road that led to the Mission and turned into it, pushing
forward at a canter. Then suddenly at a sharp turning reined up just in
time to avoid colliding with a little cavalcade.
He uttered an exclamation under his breath.
At the head of the cavalcade rode old Martiarena himself, and behind him
came a _peon_ or two, then Manuela, the aged housekeeper and--after a
fashion--duenna. Then at her side, on a saddle of red leather with
silver bosses, which was cinched about the body of a very small white
burro, Buelna herself.
She was just turned sixteen, and being of the best blood of the mother
kingdom (the strain dating back to the Ostrogothic invasion), was fair.
Her hair was blond, her eyes blue-gray, her eyebrows and lashes dark
brown, and as he caught sight of her Felipe wondered how he ever could
have believed the swarthy Rubia beautiful.
There was a jubilant meeting. Old Martiarena kissed both his cheeks,
patting him on the back.
"Oh, ho!" he cried. "Once more back. We have just returned from the
feast of the Santa Cruz at the Mission, and Buelna prayed for your safe
return. Go to her, boy. She has waited long for this hour."
Felipe, his eyes upon those of his betrothed, advanced. She was looking
at him and smiling. As he saw the unmistakable light in her blue eyes,
the light he knew she had kept burning for him alone, Felipe could have
abased himself to the very hoofs of her burro. Could it be possible he
had ever forgotten her for such a one as Rubia--have been unfaithful to
this dear girl for so much as the smallest fraction of a minute?
"You are welcome, Felipe," she said. "Oh, very, very welcome." She gave
him her hand and turned her face to his. But it was her hand and not her
face the young man kissed. Old Martiarena, who looked on, shook with
laughter.
"Hoh! a timid lover this," he called. "We managed different when I was a
lad. Her lips, Felipe. Must an old man teach a youngster gallantry?"
Buelna blushed and laughed, but yet did not withdraw her hand nor turn
her face away.
There was a delicate expectancy in her manner that she nevertheless
contrived to make compatible with her native modesty. Felipe had been
her acknowledged lover ever since the two were children.
"Well?" cried Martiarena as Felipe hesitated.
Even then, if Felipe could have collected his wits, he might have saved
the situation for himself. But no time had been allowed him to think.
Confusion seized upon him. All that was clear in his mind were the last
words of Rubia. It seemed to him that between his lips he carried a
poison deadly to Buelna above all others. Stupidly, brutally he
precipitated the catastrophe.
"No," he exclaimed seriously, abruptly drawing his hand from Buelna's,
"no. It may not be. I cannot."
Martiarena stared. Then:
"Is this a jest, señor?" he demanded. "An ill-timed one, then."
"No," answered Felipe, "it is not a jest."
"But, Felipe," murmured Buelna. "But--why--I do not understand."
"I think I begin to," cried Martiarena. "Señor, you do not," protested
Felipe. "It is not to be explained. I know what you believe. On my
honour, I love Buelna."
"Your actions give you the lie, then, young man. Bah! Nonsense. What
fool's play is all this? Kiss him, Buelna, and have done with it."
Felipe gnawed his nails.
"Believe me, oh, believe me, Señor Martiarena, it must not be."
"Then an explanation."
For a moment Felipe hesitated. But how could he tell them the truth--the
truth that involved Rubia and his disloyalty, temporary though that was.
They could neither understand nor forgive. Here, indeed, was an
_impasse_. One thing only was to be said, and he said it. "I can give
you no explanation," he murmured.
But Buelna suddenly interposed.
"Oh, please," she said, pushing by Felipe, "uncle, we have talked too
long. Please let us go. There is only one explanation. Is it not enough
already?"
"By God, it is not!" vociferated the old man, turning upon Felipe. "Tell
me what it means. Tell me what this means."
"I cannot."
"Then I will tell _you_!" shouted the old fellow in Felipe's face. "It
means that you are a liar and a rascal. That you have played with
Buelna, and that you have deceived me, who have trusted you as a father
would have trusted a son. I forbid you to answer me. For the sake of
what you were I spare you now. But this I will do. Off of my rancho!" he
cried. "Off my rancho, and in the future pray your God, or the devil, to
whom you are sold, to keep you far from me."
"You do not understand, you do not understand," pleaded Felipe, the
tears starting to his eyes. "Oh, believe me, I speak the truth. I love
your niece. _I love Buelna_. Oh, never so truly, never so devoutly as
now. Let me speak to her; she will believe me."
But Buelna, weeping, had ridden on.
II. UNZAR
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:
"Señor, 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 señor'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, señor."
"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 señor'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,
señor?"
"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."
"Wait. Stop!" interposed Felipe. "Your name, señor."
"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, señors. 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,' Señor 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.
"_Three!_" called Lopez Catala in a shaking voice.
III. RUBIA
When Felipe regained consciousness he found that he lay in an upper
chamber of Catala's inn upon a bed. His shoulder, the right one, was
bandaged, and so was his head. He felt no pain, only a little weak, but
there was a comfortable sense of brandy at his lips, an arm supported
his head, and the voice of Rubia Ytuerate spoke his name. He sat up on a
sudden.
"Rubia, _you_!" he cried. "What is it? What happened? Oh, I remember,
Unzar--we fought. Oh, my God, how we fought! But you----What brought you
here?"
"Thank Heaven," she murmured, "you are better. You are not so badly
wounded. As he fell he must have dragged you with him, and your head
struck the threshold of the doorway."
"Is he badly hurt? Will he recover?"
"I hope so. But you are safe."
"But what brought you here?"
"Love," she cried; "my love for you. What I suffered after you had gone!
Felipe, I have fought, too. Pride was strong at first, and it was pride
that made me send Unzar after you. I told him what had happened. I
hounded him to hunt you down. Then when he had gone my battle began. Ah,
dearest, dearest, it all came back, our days together, the life we led,
knowing no other word but love, thinking no thoughts that were not of
each other. And love conquered. Unzar was not a week gone before I
followed him--to call him back, to shield you, to save you from his
fury. I came all but too late, and found you both half dead. My brother
and my lover, your body across his, your blood mingling with his own.
But not too late to love you back to life again. Your life is mine now,
Felipe. I love you, I love you." She clasped her hands together and
pressed them to her cheek. "Ah, if you knew," she cried; "if you could
only look into my heart. Pride is nothing; good name is nothing; friends
are nothing. Oh, it is a glory to give them all for love, to give up
everything; to surrender, to submit, to cry to one's heart: 'Take me; I
am as wax. Take me; conquer me; lead me wherever you will. All is well
lost so only that love remains.' And I have heard all that has
happened--this other one, the Señorita Buelna, how that she for bade you
her lands. Let her go; she is not worthy of your love, cold,
selfish----"
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