The Splendid Idle Forties: Stories of Old California

Within memory of the most gnarled and coffee-coloured Montereño never had there been so exciting a race day.  All essential conditions seemed to have held counsel and agreed to combine.  Not a wreath of fog floated across the bay to dim the sparkling air.  Every horse, every vaquero, was alert and physically perfect.  The rains were over; the dust was not gathered.  Pio Pico, Governor of the Californias, was in Monterey on one of his brief infrequent visits.  Clad in black velvet, covered with jewels and ropes of gold, he sat on his big chestnut horse at the upper end of the field, with General Castro, Doña Modeste Castro, and other prominent Montereños, his interest so keen that more than once the official dignity relaxed, and he shouted “Brava!” with the rest.

And what a brilliant sight it was!  The flowers had faded on the hills, for June was upon them; but gayer than the hills had been was the race-field of Monterey.  Caballeros, with silver on their wide gray hats and on their saddles of embossed leather, gold and silver embroidery on their velvet serapes, crimson sashes about their slender waists, silver spurs and buckskin botas, stood tensely in their stirrups as the racers flew by, or, during the short intervals, pressed each other with eager wagers.  There was little money in that time.  The golden skeleton within the sleeping body of California had not yet been laid bare.  But ranchos were lost and won; thousands of cattle would pass to other hands at the next rodeo; many a superbly caparisoned steed would rear and plunge between the spurs of a new master.

And caballeros were not the only living pictures of that memorable day of a time for ever gone.  Beautiful women in silken fluttering gowns, bright flowers holding the mantilla from flushed awakened faces, sat their impatient horses as easily as a gull rides a wave.  The sun beat down, making dark cheeks pink and white cheeks darker, but those great eyes, strong with their own fires, never faltered.  The old women in attendance grumbled vague remonstrances at all things, from the heat to intercepted coquetries.  But their charges gave the good dueñas little heed.  They shouted until their little throats were hoarse, smashed their fans, beat the sides of their mounts with their tender hands, in imitation of the vaqueros.

“It is the gayest, the happiest, the most careless life in the world,” thought Pio Pico, shutting his teeth, as he looked about him.  “But how long will it last?  Curse the Americans!  They are coming.”

But the bright hot spark that convulsed assembled Monterey shot from no ordinary condition.  A stranger was there, a guest of General Castro, Don Vicente de la Vega y Arillaga, of Los Angeles.  Not that a stranger was matter for comment in Monterey, capital of California, but this stranger had brought with him horses which threatened to disgrace the famous winners of the North.  Two races had been won already by the black Southern beasts.

“Dios de mi alma!” cried the girls, one to the other, “their coats are blacker than our hair!  Their nostrils pulse like a heart on fire!  Their eyes flash like water in the sun!  Ay! the handsome stranger, will he roll us in the dust?  Ay! our golden horses, with the tails and manes of silver—­how beautiful is the contrast with the vaqueros in their black and silver, their soft white linen!  The shame! the shame!—­if they are put to shame!  Poor Guido!  Will he lose this day, when he has won so many?  But the stranger is so handsome!  Dios de mi vida! his eyes are like dark blue stars.  And he is so cold!  He alone—­he seems not to care.  Madre de Dios!  Madre de Dios! he wins again!  No! no! no!  Yes!  Ay! yi! yi!  B-r-a-v-o!”

Guido Cabañares dug his spurs into his horse and dashed to the head of the field, where Don Vicente sat at the left of General Castro.  He was followed hotly by several friends, sympathetic and indignant.  As he rode, he tore off his serape and flung it to the ground; even his silk riding-clothes sat heavily upon his fury.  Don Vicente smiled, and rode forward to meet him.

“At your service, señor,” he said, lifting his sombrero.

“Take your mustangs back to Los Angeles!” cried Don Guido, beside himself with rage, the politeness and dignity of his race routed by passion.  “Why do you bring your hideous brutes here to shame me in the eyes of Monterey?  Why—­”

“Yes!  Why?  Why?” demanded his friends, surrounding De la Vega.  “This is not the humiliation of a man, but of the North by the accursed South!  You even would take our capital from us!  Los Angeles, the capital of the Californias!”

“What have politics to do with horse-racing?” asked De la Vega, coldly.  “Other strangers have brought their horses to your field, I suppose.”

“Yes, but they have not won.  They have not been from the South.”

By this time almost every caballero on the field was wheeling about De la Vega.  Some felt with Cabañares, others rejoiced in his defeat, but all resented the victory of the South over the North.

“Will you run again?” demanded Cabañares.

“Certainly.  Do you think of putting your knife into my neck?”

Cabañares drew back, somewhat abashed, the indifference of the other sputtering like water on his passion.

“It is not a matter for blood,” he said sulkily; “but the head is hot and words are quick when horses run neck to neck.  And, by the Mother of God, you shall not have the last race.  My best horse has not run.  Viva El Rayo!”

“Viva El Rayo!” shouted the caballeros.

“And let the race be between you two alone,” cried one.  “The North or the South!  Los Angeles or Monterey!  It will be the race of our life.”

“The North or the South!” cried the caballeros, wheeling and galloping across the field to the doñas.  “Twenty leagues to a real for Guido Cabañares.”

“What a pity that Ysabel is not here!” said Doña Modeste Castro to Pio Pico.  “How those green eyes of hers would flash to-day!”

“She would not come,” said the Governor.  “She said she was tired of the race.”

“Of whom do you speak?” asked De la Vega, who had rejoined them.

“Of Ysabel Herrera, La Favorita of Monterey,” answered Pio Pico.  “The most beautiful woman in the Californias, since Chonita Iturbi y Moncada, my Vicente.  It is at her uncle’s that I stay.  You have heard me speak of my old friend; and surely you have heard of her.”

“Ay!” said De la Vega.  “I have heard of her.”

“Viva El Rayo!”

“Ay, the ugly brute!”

“What name?  Vitriolo?  Mother of God!  Diablo or Demonio would suit him better.  He looks as if he had been bred in hell.  He will not stand the quirto; and El Rayo is more lightly built.  We shall beat by a dozen lengths.”

The two vaqueros who were to ride the horses had stripped to their soft linen shirts and black velvet trousers, cast aside their sombreros, and bound their heads with tightly knotted handkerchiefs.  Their spurs were fastened to bare brown heels; the cruel quirto was in the hand of each; they rode barebacked, winding their wiry legs in and out of a horse-hair rope encircling the body of the animal.  As they slowly passed the crowd on their way to the starting-point at the lower end of the field, and listened to the rattling fire of wagers and comments, they looked defiant, and alive to the importance of the coming event.

El Rayo shone like burnished copper, his silver mane and tail glittering as if powdered with diamond-dust.  He was long and graceful of body, thin of flank, slender of leg.  With arched neck and flashing eyes, he walked with the pride of one who was aware of the admiration he excited.

Vitriolo was black and powerful.  His long neck fitted into well-placed shoulders.  He had great depth of girth, immense length from shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns.  There was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of brute power, such as may have belonged to the knights of the Middle Ages.  Now and again he curled his lips away from the bit and laid his ears back as if he intended to eat of the elegant Beau Brummel stepping so daintily beside him.  Of the antagonistic crowd he took not the slightest notice.

“The race begins!  Holy heaven!” The murmur rose to a shout—­a deep hoarse shout strangely crossed and recrossed by long silver notes; a thrilling volume of sound rising above a sea of flashing eyes and parted lips and a vivid moving mass of colour.

Twice the horses scored, and were sent back.  The third time they bounded by the starting-post neck and neck, nose to nose.  José Abrigo, treasurer of Monterey, dashed his sombrero, heavy with silver eagles, to the ground, and the race was begun.

Almost at once the black began to gain.  Inch by inch he fought his way to the front, and the roar with which the crowd had greeted the start dropped into the silence of apprehension.

El Rayo was not easily to be shaken off.  A third of the distance had been covered, and his nose was abreast of Vitriolo’s flank.  The vaqueros sat as if carved from sun-baked clay, as lightly as if hollowed, watching each other warily out of the corners of their eyes.

The black continued to gain.  Halfway from home light was visible between the two horses.  The pace became terrific, the excitement so intense that not a sound was heard but that of racing hoofs.  The horses swept onward like projectiles, the same smoothness, the same suggestion of eternal flight.  The bodies were extended until the tense muscles rose under the satin coats.  Vitriolo’s eyes flashed viciously; El Rayo’s strained with determination.  Vitriolo’s nostrils were as red as angry craters; El Rayo’s fluttered like paper in the wind.

Three-quarters of the race was run, and the rider of Vitriolo could tell by the sound of the hoof-beats behind him that he had a good lead of at least two lengths over the Northern champion.  A smile curled the corners of his heavy lips; the race was his already.

Suddenly El Rayo’s vaquero raised his hand, and down came the maddening quirto, first on one side, then on the other.  The spurs dug; the blood spurted.  The crowd burst into a howl of delight as their favourite responded.  Startled by the sound, Vitriolo’s rider darted a glance over his shoulder, and saw El Rayo bearing down upon him like a thunder-bolt, regaining the ground that he had lost, not by inches, but by feet.  Two hundred paces from the finish he was at the black’s flanks; one hundred and fifty, he was at his girth; one hundred, and the horses were neck and neck; and still the quirto whirred down on El Rayo’s heaving flanks, the spurs dug deeper into his quivering flesh.

The vaquero of Vitriolo sat like an image, using neither whip nor spur, his teeth set, his eyes rolling from the goal ahead to the rider at his side.

The breathless intensity of the spectators had burst.  They had begun to click their teeth, to mutter hoarsely, then to shout, to gesticulate, to shake their fists in each other’s face, to push and scramble for a better view.

“Holy God!” cried Pio Pico, carried out of himself, “the South is lost!  Vitriolo the magnificent!  Ah, who would have thought?  The black by the gold!  Ay!  What!  No!  Holy Mary!  Holy God!—­”

Six strides more and the race is over.  With the bark of a coyote the vaquero of the South leans forward over Vitriolo’s neck.  The big black responds like a creature of reason.  Down comes the quirto once—­only once.  He fairly lifts his horse ahead and shoots into victory, winner by a neck.  The South has vanquished the North.

The crowd yelled and shouted until it was exhausted.  But even Cabañares made no further demonstration toward De la Vega.  Not only was he weary and depressed, but the victory had been nobly won.

It grew late, and they rode to the town, caballeros pushing as close to doñas as they dared, dueñas in close attendance, one theme on the lips of all.  Anger gave place to respect; moreover, De la Vega was the guest of General Castro, the best-beloved man in California.  They were willing to extend the hand of friendship; but he rode last, between the General and Doña Modeste, and seemed to care as little for their good will as for their ill.

Pio Pico rode ahead, and as the cavalcade entered the town he broke from it and ascended the hill to carry the news to Ysabel Herrera.

Monterey, rising to her pine-spiked hills, swept like a crescent moon about the sapphire bay.  The surf roared and fought the white sand hills of the distant horn; on that nearest the town stood the fort, grim and rude, but pulsating with military life, and alert for American onslaught.  In the valley the red-tiled white adobe houses studded a little city which was a series of corners radiating from a central irregular street.  A few mansions were on the hillside to the right, brush-crowded sand banks on the left; the perfect curve of hills, thick with pine woods and dense green undergrowth, rose high above and around all, a rampart of splendid symmetry.

“Ay!  Ysabel!  Ysabel!” cried the young people, as they swept down the broad street.  “Bring her to us, Excellency.  Tell her she shall not know until she comes down.  We will tell her.  Ay! poor Guido!”

The Governor turned and waved his hand, then continued the ascent of the hill, toward a long low house which showed no sign of life.

He alighted and glanced into a room opening upon the corridor which traversed the front.  The room was large and dimly lighted by deeply set windows.  The floor was bare, the furniture of horse-hair; saints and family portraits adorned the white walls; on a chair lay a guitar; it was a typical Californian sala of that day.  The ships brought few luxuries, beyond raiment and jewels, to even the wealthy of that isolated country.

“Ysabel,” called the Governor, “where art thou?  Come down to the town and hear the fortune of the races.  Alvarado Street streams like a comet.  Why should the Star of Monterey withhold her light?”

A girl rose from a sofa and came slowly forward to the corridor.  Discontent marred her face as she gave her hand to the Governor to kiss, and looked down upon the brilliant town.  The Señorita Doña Ysabel Herrera was poor.  Were it not for her uncle she would not have where to lay her stately head—­and she was La Favorita of Monterey, the proudest beauty in California!  Her father had gambled away his last acre, his horse, his saddle, the serape off his back; then sent his motherless girl to his brother, and buried himself in Mexico.  Don Antonio took the child to his heart, and sent for a widowed cousin to be her dueña.  He bought her beautiful garments from the ships that touched the port, but had no inclination to gratify her famous longing to hang ropes of pearls in her soft black hair, to wind them about her white neck, and band them above her green resplendent eyes.

“Unbend thy brows,” said Pio Pico.  “Wrinkles were not made for youth.”

Ysabel moved her brows apart, but the clouds still lay in her eyes.

“Thou dost not ask of the races, O thou indifferent one!  What is the trouble, my Ysabel?  Will no one bring the pearls?  The loveliest girl in all the Californias has said, ’I will wed no man who does not bring me a lapful of pearls,’ and no one has filled the front of that pretty flowered gown.  But have reason, niña.  Remember that our Alta California has no pearls on its shores, and that even the pearl fisheries of the terrible lower country are almost worn out.  Will nothing less content thee?”

“No, señor.”

“Dios de mi alma!  Thou hast ambition.  No woman has had more offered her than thou.  But thou art worthy of the most that man could give.  Had I not a wife myself, I believe I should throw my jewels and my ugly old head at thy little feet.”

Ysabel glanced with some envy at the magnificent jewels with which the Governor of the Californias was hung, but did not covet the owner.  An uglier man than Pio Pico rarely had entered this world.  The upper lip of his enormous mouth dipped at the middle; the broad thick underlip hung down with its own weight.  The nose was big and coarse, although there was a certain spirited suggestion in the cavernous nostrils.  Intelligence and reflectiveness were also in his little eyes, and they were far apart.  A small white mustache grew above his mouth; about his chin, from ear to ear, was a short stubby beard, whiter by contrast with his copper-coloured skin.  He looked much like an intellectual bear.

And Ysabel?  In truth, she had reason for her pride.  Her black hair, unblemished by gloss or tinge of blue, fell waving to her feet.  California, haughty, passionate, restless, pleasure-loving, looked from her dark green eyes; the soft black lashes dropped quickly when they became too expressive.  Her full mouth was deeply red, but only a faint pink lay in her white cheeks; the nose curved at bridge and nostrils.  About her low shoulders she held a blue reboso, the finger-tips of each slim hand resting on the opposite elbow.  She held her head a little back, and Pio Pico laughed as he looked at her.

“Dios!” he said, “but thou might be an Estenega or an Iturbi y Moncada.  Surely that lofty head better suits old Spain than the republic of Mexico.  Draw the reboso about thy head now, and let us go down.  They expect thee.”

She lifted the scarf above her hair, and walked down the steep rutted hill with the Governor, her flowered gown floating with a silken rustle about her.  In a few moments she was listening to the tale of the races.

“Ay, Ysabel!  Dios de mi alma!  What a day!  A young señor from Los Angeles won the race—­almost all the races—­the Señor Don Vicente de la Vega y Arillaga.  He has never been here, before.  His horses!  Madre de Dios!  They ran like hares.  Poor Guido!  Válgame Dios!  Even thou wouldst have been moved to pity.  But he is so handsome!  Look!  Look!  He comes now, side by side with General Castro.  Dios! his serape is as stiff with gold as the vestments of the padre.”

Ysabel looked up as a man rode past.  His bold profile and thin face were passionate and severe; his dark blue eyes were full of power.  Such a face was rare among the languid shallow men of her race.

“He rides with General Castro,” whispered Benicia Ortega.  “He stays with him.  We shall see him at the ball to-night.”

As Don Vicente passed Ysabel their eyes met for a moment.  His opened suddenly with a bold eager flash, his arched nostrils twitching.  The colour left her face, and her eyes dropped heavily.

Love needed no kindling in the heart of the Californian.