CHAPTER VI

DON ANABEL AND HIS FAMILY

Don Anabel Lopez was proud of his station in the secure and far-flung territory of New Spain which his forbears had first found and conquered nearly three centuries before his time. He claimed descent straight from a Spanish grandee who had accompanied the expedition of settlement of Juan de Oñate in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Don Anabel felt that the riches of this vast territory belonged rightfully to those who had held it through so many generations for the glory of the Spanish crown, which at last, in this year of grace 1828, had been thrown off through a treaty of independence with her colony, Mexico.

Don Anabel’s sheep grazed over a range of a hundred miles. The unnumbered buffalo were his cattle; his slaves the peons that lived upon the extensive lands granted his grandsires. To Don Anabel’s warehouses the Indians brought the pelts of beaver, lynx, fox, the hides and robes of buffalo and deer. These he exchanged with the great fur-traders of the north at a profit that would have made them wince, had they known that he himself had acquired them for a handful of tawdry merchandise and home-distilled liquors.

Every six months his caravan of burros labored up the Cordilleras from the City of Mexico, bringing all manner of merchandise for the people and for the aristocrats of New Spain. Always there were luxuries brought from Spain and from the far markets of the earth. The Mexican hidalgos prided themselves on having none but imported furniture in their establishments, but Don Anabel considered this an affectation, as it was obviously impossible for the dons of New Mexico.

Don Anabel was proud of living in a way that his Spanish forbears might have lived in that Old Spain which was so like this New Spain. His great adobe hacienda might have been considered only a vast mud house by the European, but it covered nearly an acre of ground. The patio within was fifty feet square, and if the inner walls were whitewashed instead of carved and paneled in fine woods, yet they were hung with brocades and strangely beautiful fabrics now no longer woven, which were made from the silken hair of Peruvian llamas or spun from some flax-like Mexican plant. The carved furniture had a rude and florid beauty that was mediæval, and, like the native Aztec lords of Mexico, the proud Montezumas, Don Anabel’s table was served with dishes of purest silver only.

Don Anabel was feared and respected by his servants, his tenants, and his family. Indulgent in all that made for material comfort, he exacted a deference, not only towards himself as head of the family, but among one another. He was autocrat and despot, and though his courtesy was as exquisite as that of any courtier diplomat of the outside world, his discipline was harsh; cruel even. He had never whipped his children, but had punished Luis, when he was a naughty, wilful, kicking child, in ways that made the lad subservient, secretive. For who would court a bath in the snow in winter merely to practice the dubious virtue of truthfulness? He was stoic, for who would cry when water was poured down his throat till he drowned, strangled, and his screams and throbbing head were drenched to shuddering, smothered sobs.

Perhaps the example of Indian discipline had had its effect on Don Anabel, although towards his small daughter he practiced no such heroic measures. Yet they were not necessary. Fear of her father’s displeasure was sufficient to still one of Consuelo’s tantrums. His solemn entrance upon the scene of biting, scratching, shrieking, spitting, and other infantile atrocities was enough to secure trembling silence, proper behavior, and the obedient reception of oil of the castor bean, or whatever else it was that aroused Consuelo’s displeasure and her violent _disgusto_.

Doña Gertrudis de Chaves y Lopez was exactly the wife for Don Anabel. Her pansy-like beauty when she had come to the hacienda as a bride of sixteen was never marred by tempests. She bloomed, had eight babies, only two of which lived, and grew fat, all without ever questioning her husband’s authority. In her own domain she grew highly excited on important domestic occasions, such as involved the vast responsibility of perfectly bleached sheets, properly seasoned enchiladas, and claret with the venison if the archbishop came to dinner.

It was thought due to her common origin that she molested herself with such things, and Doña Gertrudis made a great pretense of never stepping within the kitchen--save us, no! For there were those who said that Doña Gertrudis was not of pure Spanish blood; that her grandmother had been Aztecan, descended from an Aztec lord. You could see for yourself that her hair was not fine and wispy like Don Anabel’s, but heavy, coarse, though lustrous. But no breath of that! Doña Gertrudis was most devout and her devotions occupied a large part of her time. She did, indeed, a great deal of secret good, and followed often behind Don Anabel’s visits to his ranchos with a soft touch to smooth the sternly dispensed justice.

If Don Anabel’s word was law within his own home, his influence extended no less outside his estates. His father had been a governor of New Mexico, and Don Anabel’s word carried great weight with the successive _jefe politicos_ of the territory of New Mexico. Chihuahua, the seat of government of this province, of which Santa Fe was the chief city, numbering as it did a thousand souls, was three months’ travel to the south. The capital of Mexico was more than nine hundred leagues to the south. Little did the President of the new republic interfere with the overlordship of the _jefe politico_ of the northern territory. At one time Mexican officials had intervened jealously over the intrusion of venturesome Yankees from beyond the mountains, who came exploring and were followed by trains of fresh traders.

They dared to bring in from eastward the goods that Mexico had always supplied to the farthermost parts of New Spain. The luckless ones had been thrown into prison, had languished in Chihuahua jails for a decade, but as soon as they returned to their northern homes it was but to send more and more pack animals back across the deserts.

Don Anabel himself had from the first resented these intruders bitterly. To him the white men from across the plains were still colonists of the hereditarily hated English. They were thrown into the _carcel_, hindered in every way, yet still they came! And in the end Don Anabel traded with them, as every one else did. It was to his advantage. He could not afford not to.

On the morning after this last invasion Don Anabel, straight, forbidding, stood in his warehouse, taking stock not only of merchandise, but of things in general. Luis, a trifle nervous, but much quicker than usual to anticipate his father’s moods and requests, stood by with pencil and pad, while the clerks ran hither and thither.

“And ten bolts of the cotton cloth, with but two more of the linen,” concluded Don Anabel. “They are an ill-mannered lot,” he resumed his grievance, “bursting into a gentleman’s house while he is at dinner with his family. Turning the dances into low brawls. El Coronel St. Vrain is the only one with any measure of dignity or discretion.”

“Discreet indeed,” murmured Luis, sarcastically. “We had better hurry if we are to get the best of the goods.”

“And your mother tells me that while she was at the _baile_ another piece of silver disappeared from the cupboard. You remember that the last time a caravan arrived the same thing happened. I’ll shoot the next sneaking _ladron_ I lay my hands on.”

“It is terrible,” assented Luis, unmoved, as he checked over the bolts of cloth. “Well, shall we go on to the trading?”

They left the warehouse in charge of an overseer and walked down the crooked street, crossed the bridge below which the Santa Fe River flowed, a sparkling racing little stream, and after several turns came to the plaza. There in a large bodega the caravaners had set out their goods. In a short while business would begin. Luis’ eyes searched the Americans assembled in the bodega. Colonel St. Vrain, his young friend, Steven Mercer, Bragdon, a small boy who was the brother of the fair-haired girl--ah, the sister had not come, then. Just as well. He would contrive better opportunities to see this disdainful _exquisita_.

The traders were spreading out their merchandise on the long low tables that served for counters. Several of them were disposing of their goods outside, from the wagons, which were surrounded by Pueblo Indians from Tesuque, above Santa Fe, from Taos, and from the pueblos down upon the Rio Grande. Silver exchanged hands rapidly within the bodega, while outside furs and supple deer hides were bartered for the manufactured articles coveted by the Indians.

Bragdon had already disposed outside of the wagonful of goods which he had acquired on the Trail through the death of the two New England traders. He had earrings, rope, paint, cheap knives and good knives, liquor, and sugar. He had increased the amount of his whisky by diluting a gallon at least one half, and obtaining for the diluted pints a buffalo hide each, or the equivalent in the nearer pelts of the Rockies. The sugar had been amplified by a method all his own and appeared to satisfy the unaccustomed palate of the Indian just as well as the purer product. Bragdon worked quickly and had as quickly retired into the bodega, where he was now ready to dispose of his higher-grade goods.

A line of nankeen trousers was interesting the young men of the town. They sold out rapidly, and the majority were donned at once. Bragdon’s shoes did not meet with approval, however, and Luis scornfully laid down the pair he had been considering when he had discovered that they were neither rights nor lefts, but straight lasts, to be worn on either foot.

“What! These are not _de modo_. Does he think we know nothing here?” Bragdon was much taken aback, but later was able to convince other purchasers of the advantages of the good old-fashioned shoe that would go on either foot. His snipe toes, Bonapartes, goose-and-ganders, Swiss hunting, were soon disposed of. And then came Bragdon’s prize. He opened a case in which were numerous small boxes. Opening one, he extracted a sliver of wood tipped with a yellow and blue substance. Calling attention to what he was about to do, he struck the small stick upon a wall and immediately it flamed, burning like a tiny taper with a full flame, and emitting a sulphurous odor. Bragdon set the flame to his pipe, puffed in, and lit it; then taking a cigarette from the hand of the astonished Steven, he lit that too before the flame flickered and died out, having consumed the small stick.

“_Diablo!_ What is it?” The Santa Feans went wild.

“Matches,” said Bragdon, “they are called; a new thing, just discovered in England last year. I have with me here some of the very first packet brought into the United States. You will see that they are phosphorescent?” he held up one proudly.

“_Fosforo!_” shouted some one, and the name stuck. Everyone gathered round to see the miracle. Fire in a minute. No scratching of flintlocks, no need of burning glasses.

“_Por mi vida_ (By my life),” said St. Vrain to Steven, “it is a pity that he could not have produced one of those little boxes that wet night when we could not strike flint or rub a stick to heat a bit of broth for his own young. _Sacré!_”

The packages went like tortillas, and Bragdon had at length to admit that there were no more. Don Anabel was himself enormously interested, and pleased, too, with this new fancy, though it was his opinion that the things were not in the least practical and would never be of much real use or value.

It was annoying, but he had to pay the tall youth, who was again thrust upon him by St. Vrain, at the rate of four dollars a yard for the two bolts of linen which he decided to take, and in the end he was induced also to buy for his own use and for the use of Doña Gertrudis a piece of cloth, a fine black it was, at twenty dollars the yard. Luis did a good piece of work here in forcing the American down a dollar a yard. This exertion was not at all distasteful to Luis. It appealed to the gaming instinct which every youth of Mexico or New Spain had.

St. Vrain, on the other hand, had been forced that morning to pay thirty dollars apiece for the ten mules which he was taking back to Taos with him, where he and Charles Bent would need them in conducting their branch of the trade that had grown up about Bent’s Fort. Salt at five dollars a load was not difficult to dispose of, although any New Mexican could haul it himself from various places for even less than that amount. St. Vrain showed Steven a pretty little mare which he bought at once for eleven dollars and of which he at once became very fond.

By noon everyone was ready to stop. A good deal remained to be disposed of, and yet an extremely good business had been done. “I do not mind paying thirty dollars for the mules,” St. Vrain confided to Steven, as he locked his warehouse door behind him, “as long as I am not forced to buy back my own mules as those poor chaps did last year. Not four days from La Villa their mules were all stampeded off, nearly three hundred of them, and, having been forced to return to Santa Fe on foot to purchase more, they were offered their own animals and had to buy them back. And they are not nearly so good, either, these mules of New Mexico, as your large Louisiana jackass. Did you notice that Bragdon had six of his mules die in harness just as they reached the end of the Trail?”

“No wonder, with the load he carried and the way he pushed them.”

“Trade is not nearly so good this year as it was last,” St. Vrain considered. “It’s due to such treatment here in Santa Fe and to the terrible ferocity of the Indians. Why, last year there were a hundred wagons to the thirty of this summer. The amount of merchandise brought in and the business done was more than three times as much as for this summer.”

They were walking up the narrow street and Steven now was getting his first real glimpse of Santa Fe. There were no sidewalks and the walls of the houses rose straight from the road. There were occasional glimpses into green patios, and fragrant sprays of deep pink tamarack drooped occasionally over the walls, waving their plumes against a very blue sky. When it wished, the reserve of Old Spain was well housed behind those shuttered windows and crooked little doors. Yet when so disposed it could overflow merrily into the street, or peer intimately from windows through which a hand could thrust to pluck at one’s cloak as he passed, to pick one’s pocket, or to drop a note within the hand.

One may imagine Steven’s surprise to feel a crumpled piece of paper come into contact with his palm. He closed his finger upon the fragment and looked swiftly down. But only the barred shutters of a little blue window were there, and he walked on with scarcely a halt in his stride.

“Indeed!” he replied to the colonel, politely, and answered intelligently upon matters of the trade until they reached the house, where the colonel went to see that lunch was forthcoming at once, before siesta. Then Steven opened his hand and spread out the crumpled paper, half foolishly, half expectantly. Was it from Don Tiburcio de Garcia?

In a fine, painstaking script the note ran thus:

Señor Estevan Mercer: Will you not come below the _balcon_ where first we met yesterday, at the tenth hour tonight? I should esteem it a favor, as I have a word for your safety.

Consuelo Lucero Lopez y Chavez.

Steven was looking for intrigue. But political, not the intrigue of lovely ladies. Still, pleased and puzzled, he revolved the matter in his mind for a moment. Ceran St. Vrain had warned him against girls, this girl in particular. Colonel Bent had warned him against political entanglements. And here he was getting nicely tied up in both, it seemed. For of course he would be beneath the _balcon_ at the stroke of ten. Oh well, time enough yet. Here he was, and he hadn’t done anything, so far. He’d been forced to slight the señorita the night before, and not of his own accord or liking, either. He must make apology for that, in any event. A wonder she would bother about him at all.

Steven’s modesty was not greater than that of the average decent youth, perhaps, yet to tell the truth, as he was unfamiliar with the manners of this new old world, he had not realized that Consuelo was indicating any special favor for him by her actions of the night before. He had seen her twice before that day, and she was smiling at him in pleasant recognition. He had already asked Hope Bragdon to promenade. In New Orleans he had been well schooled in the proper thing to do. Well, at all events, he would be under that balcony at ten.

Had Consuelo been able to know of that decision it would have saved her much suspense. Relegated to her room for the day, she was in disgrace. Yet it was a relief to be there, away from the incessant agitation of Doña Gertrudis’ tongue. Scarcely had the wavering candles been relit in the dance hall the night before when Doña Gertrudis, sweeping her daughter before her, and surrounded by their elderly neighbors and their cousins and their aunts, poured out of the place and down the street, _duennas_ and _muchachas_, chaperons and girls. While some were frightened and many were elated, they themselves were in reality in no danger. The indignant clatter of Doña Gertrudis’ tongue would have caused every drunken trapper or jovial Spaniard to give her a wide berth. When they had reached their own home she poured out her indignation again to Don Anabel.

Imagine, Consuelo, ungrateful daughter of no consideration, had again this night insulted such a noble gentleman as Don Tiburcio. “_Si!_ I saw with my own eyes.” And moreover, she had smiled openly at the Americano, the very trader who had been at their house that same night. At the first of these charges Don Anabel became very stern and dignified. At the second he flew into a fiery rage.

“I will myself have this young scoundrel thrown into jail,” he stormed.

“But what for, papa?” Consuelo protested, aghast at the storm her behaviour had evoked. No matter. She should keep to her room the whole of the following day and learn better how to conduct herself with her inferiors. And so she had, alternating between regret and fury that the ruddy-haired trader had not danced with her. Shortly before noon the faded and faithful Felicita came tiptoeing in, to report all the news. After recounting the events of the morning’s trading, what her father had bought, and how the father of the blonde girl had made fire with naught but a tiny splinter (and she knew, therefore, that he must indeed be in league with the devil), Felicita’s pock-marked face blanched at this, she whispered, “The _caballero_, the young gentleman who stopped beneath the balcony yesterday afternoon--your brother Señor Luis, has threatened that if that one does not abandon the white girl he, Don Luis, will attend to the Yanqui’s funeral himself.

“Yes, and even Don Tiburcio, señorita, is enchanted, they say, by the fair-haired American, and followed the merchants to their house last night. Surely there will be trouble for the handsome lad.” Felicita sighed, for, though old at thirty, romance had not departed from her, and when peeping over the window ledge the day before, she had seen the youth stop, look up and smile at her mistress--as who did not--and bid her good afternoon.

Consuelo’s rage against Estevan Mercer, if that was what they called him, melted into a swift flow of concern. How terrible! She had brought all this upon him. This was a pleasanter thought than that he had brought it upon himself or that Luis was merely visiting his wrath upon Steven.

“What will Luis do, Felicita?” Consuelo barely breathed the question.

“He will shoot or knife him, señorita, the first time he catches him out at night.”

“Oh, I must tell Don Estevan! Where is the American now, Felicita? At the warehouse? Good! good! Quick, Felicita! Give me pencil and paper.” Felicita flew; her young mistress was educated, she could write. This was important.

Consuelo wrote, folded a tiny missive, thrust it into Felicita’s hands. “Here, run with it to the house of my aunt Juana on the street leading from the bodega to the house of Doña Katarina. See if you cannot catch him if he passes that way. I must warn him.” She pushed the willing Felicita out the door just as Doña Gertrudis’ step was heard coming in. Consuelo flew to the bed, and when Doña Gertrudis entered was lying with her head pillowed on her arm, fast asleep.

Siesta; and a long afternoon that dragged through hot, golden hours. Later, in the garden, when there was no trading for the day, Don Anabel sat with Don Tiburcio, drinking a bottle of berry wine that had been cooling in the acequia since that morning.

“It is extraordinary, the amount of goods that those Yanquis pulled out of their wagons this morning,” said Don Tiburcio. “It is incredible, actually. I should have judged that a wagon could have carried but half the amount. But it is to our advantage. Both in the quantity of the useful goods that they bring and in the quality. Competition is invariably a great spur to trade, Don Anabel.”

“Perhaps, as you say, this trade with the Yanquis stimulates our business,” Don Anabel conceded, reluctantly, “but it has many other aspects that are undesirable.”

“Yes, it has,” agreed Don Tiburcio, thinking of Steven Mercer and the American girl. Was she in love with her countryman? He thought not. She seemed to be in love with no one. She was a saint, as delicately tinted as plaster, and as cold, perhaps as hard. He was fascinated; caught on the rebound of his emotions. He realized it. Was he always to love the unattainable? Don Anabel was talking on.

“I have never seen such a vast amount of goods produced as from those wagons. They have already taken in a great deal of silver. But there will be sizable duties upon it, so they will not have the clear profit they look for. Instead of repelling this growing trade and discouraging it,” Don Anabel was arguing, “Colonel Viscarra is doing everything to protect the traders. He himself escorted Colonel Bent’s party from the border to the Fort, and but just missed coming back with this caravan. He has dashed off now to put down a border warfare with the Texans and the Crees. Texas has been claiming, as you know, that the southern route of the Santa Fe Trail lies through her territory. She demands the right of _arancel_, the return-trip duties, instead of Santa Fe.” This seemed to annoy Don Anabel exceedingly, though he’d have admitted no inconsistency in his attitude.

“I think Viscarra has the right policy,” replied Don Tiburcio, suavely. “We shall have to come to rely to a certain extent upon American trade. The old opposition that the traders were sent as spies upon our government has been shown to be without foundation.”

“I do not know,” replied Don Anabel, quickly; “certainly they were looking into the country and the possibilities of trade. La Lande would have gone back, only he found he could prosper here, and as the goods with which he set himself up in business here did not belong to him, but to his employer back on the Missouri River, he would have had to make an accounting had he returned. Pursley--well, we all want to make Pursley’s stay agreeable; or his departure formidable, rather.”

“Don Anabel laughed a frankly cynical laugh. He came here, you may remember, as an emissary. Was one of a thousand men who first crossed our northern Andes, with two thousand animals. In Pursley’s pockets were nuggets of pure gold. He alone knew exactly where he had picked them up. That tale returned across the Trail. But Pursley remains here.

“The question is,” Don Anabel resumed, after a moment’s sipping of his cordial, “to whom does this country belong? To us, the Spaniards who have held it for three centuries, ever since Cabeza de Baca first found it, or to these upstart colonials who have been free from England’s skirts for hardly half a century? Santa Fe is not large. She is remote from Mexico--and its political storms”--Don Tiburcio winced--“and for that very reason little able to withstand a horde of Yanquis coming like bull-headed buffalo over the Trail. The more you kill, the more there are, apparently. Will Mexico fight for us, or is she no longer Spanish? Has she thrown off the traditions of Spain along with the yoke of Spain?”

“I do not know,” Don Tiburcio replied, slowly. “Last winter Mexico expelled all the Cachupines. Every Spanish-born citizen, including the friars, even, and drove out Gomez Pedraza, the first President they had been able to elect constitutionally. That,” he concluded, dryly, “in connection with our treaty of independence of January last year, might be construed as a severing of identity with Spain, and the development of a national identity.”

“National disintegration,” declared Don Anabel. “Mexico was never united until Cortez came. A handful of scattered tribes that even the great Montezuma did not pretend to keep together. Spain’s imprint will never depart, no matter how much you throw off the ‘yoke.’ This whole country is New Spain.”

“Yet one day I think you will find that you, too, will be throwing off Mexico; allegiance is more geographic than of blood. Your capital may be eastward in another century.”

“No,” said Don Anabel, violently. “New Mexico this territory has been since Antonio de Espejo named us in 1583; Santa Fe has been the seat of government since sixteen five, and so shall they always be. Our boundaries began at New Galicia, and extended to New Biscay, and they shall never retreat so far as I can help it.”

“Señor,” replied Don Tiburcio, with frank admiration of the older man in his eyes, “you may be mistaken, but you are admirable, señor.”

* * * * *

Don Tiburcio was relieved not to see Consuelo at dinner that night. Dinner was a quiet affair, with Doña Gertrudis much subdued, Luis abstracted. Don Tiburcio could not like Luis wholly, but there was a certain careless gayety and deference about the boy that was most charming. The family separated immediately after the meal and Don Tiburcio departed up the street where Ceran St. Vrain was lodging; Luis disappeared; and Doña Gertrudis went to see if her poor little Consuelo had eaten her supper, and found her already in bed, so retired herself. _Valga-me!_ it was ten minutes to ten o’clock.

No sooner had her mother departed than Consuelo leaped from her bed, patted the bolster into her own place, pulling the covers up deftly over it. She snatched her shoes from under the bed, flung a white lace scarf over her tumbled hair, and tiptoed through the door at the opposite end of the room, across the room of the sleeping grandmother, into another chamber, unoccupied, and beyond to Felicita’s room. There stood her slave, shivering with excitement, and steadied a chair while Consuelo mounted to the _balcon_, where she crouched, peering between the crudely turned bars.

A yellow harvest moon was just rising over the Sangre de Cristo. Before long its radiance would flood the quiet street. Now it gave but a slight glow. The street below was empty. Consuelo’s heart thumped so loudly that at first she thought it the beat of a horse’s hoofs on the road. _Dios!_ If he did not come. It would be simply not to be supported! She held her breath in an agony of listening. Not a sound, not a footfall, not a breath stirring. Desperately she peered over the railing. He was there, below the _balcon_, close to the wall. Imagine!

She rose bravely and leaned over. “Señor, I thank you for coming. I wished to tell you that you are in danger, señor.”

“It does not matter, señorita. It would be worth it to see you.” Was this he, Steven Mercer, talking? _Maman_ would quite approve of his pretty speeches.

“Ah, but not just this moment. I mean all the while, señor, when you may be abroad at night. For that reason I wished to warn you. Do not go unarmed at night, nor to out-of-the-way places by day, I beg of you.” She was pleading so earnestly that Steven looked up in surprise, at once serious.

“Have you heard anyone threatening me, Señorita Lopez?” he asked.

“Oh, I have heard of threats. My brother Luis he threatens because you danced with the fair girl last night and she would not walk with him. He thinks--you are in love with her, señor?----”

“And would it be his affair if I were?” replied Steven, with a trace of asperity. “But I am not, señorita. She is my countrywoman, and I am bound to protect her and be courteous to her. That is all.”

“I am glad for that.” There was no doubting the sighing voice from the balcony, “but that is not all, Señor Estevan. You are American, and must be very discreet here in Santa Fe. It would be awful to have bloodshed. Although I suppose you are used to that.”

“Oh yes, more or less,” replied Steven, modestly. “The mosquitoes on the Trail were frightful. I lost simply quarts to them.”

Consuelo looked startled. Felicita was pulling at her skirts from below. “I must go, señor. I may be discovered.” She was peering over the rail at him, and all he could see was her eyes and nose. A wave of genuine gratitude, of pleasure, of moonlight and youth, swept Steven up to the rail. Pulling himself up on a level with it, he implanted a kiss on the small fingers clutching there. But somehow the kiss landed instead on a nose.

With a little gasp Consuelo dropped out of sight. Steven slipped to the ground, leaped to the dark side of the street, and, for a novice, lost himself very successfully in the shadows just as the moon escaped fully from the mountains.