DON ABRAHAN CRUZ Y GARVANZA rode leisurely ahead of his wagon, in the manner of a man upon whom occasions were accustomed to wait. The low hills at his right hand were green with wild oats; before him the waters of San Pedro Bay leaped gladly in the morning sun. Last night's rain had left pools in the roadside depressions, and ruts cut by lumbering cartwheels in the clayey sand; the refreshment of its passing was still sweet to the nostrils, still gladdening to the eye in the sparkle of clinging drops on grass and verdant leaf.
Although the midwinter California sun was fair around him, Don Abrahan's brow was corrugated with displeasure; in the mask of his gray beard he bit his nether lip as a baffled man sets teeth in his own flesh, or as a rattlesnake is said to turn in the frenzy of impotent anger to sink its fangs into its own loathsome side. When a man has been cheated and has redress at hand, it is one thing; when he knows himself cheated without recourse, it is another.
Don Abrahan knew that the skipper of the Yankee ship lying at anchor far out in the shallow bay had cheated him on yesterday's count of hides. It had happened because Don Abrahan had been detained in the pueblo Los Angeles, leaving the count to the honor of the skipper and the watchfulness of a hired man. Three leagues back upon this morning's journey Don Abrahan had met this hired man Felipe, designated by the high title of mayordomo, and received from him the count.
A trifling thing, this difference of forty-three hides, to a man whose dominion extended over scores of square miles of land, yet a rankling thing to brood upon, a matter touching the dignity and superiority of a don who stood high above these vile Yankees who came shouting and knocking men down with bare fists, raiding in their commercial ways like pirates up and down the California shore.
There, half a league from shore, lay this base captain's ship, a thing of beauty, Don Abrahan was not reluctant to confess, even with its bare yards black against the holy blue of a rain-washed sky. The chains which held it secure in its berth were invisible from Don Abrahan's distance. The ship seemed to float there by some secret power known to the indomitable ruffians whose life was barter and whose heaven was gain, lifting its long and graceful stem to the waves, turning a bit seaward, as if straining with impatience to be away on some new adventure of profit and wrangling trade.
An expedient man, Don Abrahan Cruz y Garvanza, a progressive man for his day and country. The wagon that came behind him was a Yankee wagon, brought from a New England factory by one of these hide-droghers such as lifted to yonder swell; the harness on the eight mules which drew the great wagon was Yankee-made, strong and reliable, even though from such tricky hands. Even the man who drove the eight mules, the confusing lines of leather familiar to him as the strings of a harp to a musician's hands, had learned the art from a Yankee freighter, across the mountains and desert in distant Santa Fe.
More: the capacity of that one wagon, grinding over the sandy road on its broad tires, was that of twenty ox-drawn carts such as Don Abrahan's conservative, tradition-serving neighbors employed. There was a tale of hides piled under that trifling Simon—good for nothing in the world but driving eight mules—to make a man's heart stretch with pride, even a Yankee captain's eyes open in sluggish surprise. To a man who could command such things, a man who graced a station of eminence, to whom men removed their hats, to be cheated of forty-three hides was a humiliation and affront. It was from that reason, all his might and consequence considered, that Don Abrahan gathered his brows as he rode, with a thought of adjustment in his hour.
A boat was putting off from the distant ship, so laden with boxes, bales and barrels of goods that the next sea must overwhelm it, so it seemed to Don Abrahan's eyes. A man stood in the stern, urging the sailors at the oars to bend to their heavy task. Even at that distance Don Abrahan knew him for the Yankee captain who had cheated him out of forty-three sound bullock hides in the count of yesterday.
Don Abrahan halted back a little way from the point where the road bent down the steep hillside, directing by an imperious sweep of the arm his driver to bring the wagon around and halt on the level from which the cliffs fell away sharply to the ocean side. This was as far as any man of consequence went to meet the Yankee traders. From this point the hides were carried down, or thrown over the cliffs, by the sailors to be transported in small boats to the ship; to this point the sailors came laboring up the steep with the goods taken by the Californians in exchange. Here Don Abrahan remained, seated in his saddle, waiting the coming of the captain.
Soon the boat came ashore, shooting through the breakers with such impetuosity that, it seemed to the Mexican rancher who watched in fear and admiration, it must be crushed on the hard sands of the beach, its precious cargo swallowed by the sea. Instead, there seemed scarcely a drop of water to reach the goods heaped between the thwarts, piled high in bow and stern.
The sailors, wearing shoes without stockings, their loose trousers rolled to mid-thigh, leaped out when the withdrawing breaker surged back toward the sea, laid hold of the boat, and ran it inshore until its keel grounded, all with such admirable dexterity that spoke of long training at the hazardous work. Vikings, thought Don Abrahan, pirates of a species, who were insensible to all things but sharp liquor, sharp curses, heavy blows. A gentleman did not stand waiting on foot the arrival of such as these.
The Yankee captain had no such feeling of nicety in the case. If Don Abrahan could have seen into his mind, indeed, he probably would have been rudely disturbed in his stand upon ancient privileges, for aside from the Yankee captain's feeling of condescension and patronage for a people so unenlightened in religion and politics, his one concern was to be done with this dangerous harbor and standing out to sea. He came bounding up the steep shore now, his long legs cutting the distance as shears in a tailor's hands devour their way through a width of cloth.
"Well, Don Abrahan!" the captain hailed, making it hearty, and warm as he knew very well how to put friendliness and equality into a trade salutation. "Glad to see you here so early with them hides. Does this wind it up for you?"
"Wind it up?" Don Abrahan repeated, displeased with what he took for an unwarranted familiarity of address, rather than mystified by the meaning. "If you mean is this all, then this is all—for me."
"Of course that's what I meant," the captain returned, both thought and eyes on the immense load of hides.
He hurried on past Don Abrahan as he spoke, to clamber on a hub, and from there to a wheel-top, where he stood lifting the corners of the hides, as if counting them to form an estimate of the number.
"Must have a hundred and fifty here," he ventured, turning sharply to Don Abrahan.
"Two hundred," Don Abrahan corrected him loftily, yet with gentlemanly indifference.
"That'll bring you up to twenty-eight hundred," the captain said briskly, descending from the wagon, bristling with business.
"And forty-three," Don Abrahan amended, fixing the Yankee captain with accusing eye.
"Not by a dam' sight!" the captain blustered, his weathered face darkening.
"My mayordomo reports to me"—Don Abrahan spoke slowly, each word standing precisely and distinctly alone—"that your count disagreed with mine by forty-three on yesterday."
"I don't doubt you had that many when you piled them: up here, colonel," the captain allowed. "We had a hard off-shore blow here at the harbor night-before-last, it's just likely some of your hides were whisked out to sea. I know I didn't git 'em, anyhow."
"We will balance the difference. Perhaps some mistake"
"Not by a jugful, we won't, old feller! You can take my count or you can leave it, but I tell you once for all that my clerk never makes mistakes."
Don Abrahan crossed his gloved hands on his saddle-horn, and sat so a little while, head bent in consideration, it might be, of the infallible clerk aboard that lifting ship.
"Your mayordomo accepted payment for them hides accordin' to our count of 'em," the captain pursued. "That settles the matter, as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to have these, but if you're not satisfied with the way I do business you can drive off. There's your stuff down there to pay for this lot. Take it or leave it. That's me!"
Still Don Abrahan considered the situation. Shrewd as the captain believed himself to be, crafty at a bargain as he undoubtedly was, and great as the profit between what he gave and what he received, he was only a crude and inelegant savage compared with the finesse of Don Abrahan. There were peones on Don Abrahan's great ranch who labored three months for a pair of those Boston-made shoes which the sailors were unloading from the boat. His pose of consideration was but acting. He wanted it to appear that he yielded only after solemn deliberation, foregoing much that a man should stand for because a squabble and contention in the Yankee way was beneath him.
It might be a fitting thing to his dignity to order Simon to turn and drive away with the load of hides; it might put the blustering pirate of a Yankee in his place, cause him to leap and dance, shout and run after them to stay them, for Don Abrahan knew the cargo was almost complete, that the captain was keen to be setting his prow in the direction of home.
On the other hand, such a move might result only in loss. Don Abrahan needed shoes and cotton goods, sugar, codfish, mackerel, pork. He needed trinkets of combs, buttons, buckles, and gauds for women's hair, the vain adornments of a weak and simple people such as lived in servitude beneath his hand. Fifty thousand cattle fed in his valleys and hills, each one of them representing no more than the value of a hide.
"Very well," said Don Abrahan, lifting his face, the wind from the sea flattening his beard against his breast. "Bring up the goods."
Sailors came running at the captain's shouted command, swarmed upon the wagon, throwing off the hides. The captain himself checked them off as they fell, Simon, the teamster, sitting placidly on the ground beside the mules, smoking in sleepy-eyed indifference of the haste and turbulence around him.
Don Abrahan dismounted, drew off his gauntlets, put them away in his saddle-pouch. He must, by force, accept the captain's count of the hides which were already in his hold; there was no argument that would compel him to accept the captain's count of shoes, or weight of sugar-boxes, or number of bales of cotton goods. He signaled forward several Indians who were loafing somnolently in the sun around a mean camp pitched a little way off, retainers of his who had been employed with the hides already aboard. They brought at Don Abrahan's direction a tripod of strong timbers in which a steelyard swung, setting it up near the wagon for weighing the goods.
Don Abrahan took his stand beside the scales, waiting the coming of four sailors who were toiling up the steep shore bluff of yellow sand and clay. The way was slippery from last night's heavy rain, rough and insecure. Between them the sailors bore upon two oars, held in the manner of a barrow, a large box of goods. Their approach was laborious and slow. Don Abrahan watched them narrowly, thinking only that a slip might precipitate the box down the sharp pitch of the shore into the sea.
Don Abrahan was tall, almost grotesquely thin. His sharp features seemed given an edge by the narrowness of his great nose, no broader it looked than the back of a saber. His dark, languishing, oriental eyes attested to the Moorish stock upon which his foundation was built; his beard, reaching half-way down his breast, was of a fineness and luxuriance that repudiated any charge of Indian blood.
California-born, of Spanish stock, Don Abrahan had been quick to align himself with the Mexican patriots when he saw which way the day was likely to go in the uprising against Spanish oppression. His foresight had saved his lands, where his less sagacious neighbors in many instances had lost theirs and been harried out of the country by the victorious Mexicans. Don Abrahan was fully in the confidence of the new government. He was a magistrate in the name of liberty and equality, yet a despot and an aristocrat to whom the commonalty cringed, in whose presence men removed their hats.
The magistrate's boots of tawny soft leather reached to his knees; the legs of his dark, ribbed velvet pantaloons were gathered into their broad tops. There were silver trinkets and adornments of silver cord on his immense sombrero; the long rowels of his silver spurs goaded the ground as he stood, as if Don Abrahan would urge it beyond its usual bounty to yield according to his desires.
The four sailors came laboring up the shore, a quick, panting word of caution now and then breaking their otherwise silent approach. There was no gaiety in them, no willingness for the work of carrying to the feet of this bearded barbarian, as they esteemed him, the goods which he was too proud or too indolent to come down to the water's edge and take away, after the manner of men in civilized places, everywhere. Now, as the two men in advance reached the top, one of them who held the blade-end of an oar stumbled and fell. The weight of the box thrown thus suddenly and completely on the dropped oar snapped it.
In a commotion of curses and shouts the sailors set their shoulders to the box of goods to hold it, while the captain, lithe as a leopard, came springing forward to add his commands and abuse to the general uproar. In a moment the box was safely heaved to the level near Don Abrahan's feet.
"Who let go his holt on that oar?" the captain demanded, passing his accusing look from face to face.
It was evident in the silence of the men, their averted faces, their dark frowns, that there was no friendliness for the captain among his crew.
"Who was it?" the captain demanded again, his evil temper mounting. He stood with feet set as for a spring, bent forward from the hips, hands fixed before him like a wrestler prepared to engage. "You can't cover it up that way, men, I tell you—you know me, you know my way. I'll fine the butter-fingered dock-loafer that broke that oar ten dollars, and if you don't speak up I'll make it ten dollars apiece!"
"I'm responsible for it, Captain Welliver, as far as there is any responsibility."
The sailor who had missed his footing and precipitated the disaster stepped forward as he spoke. Don Abrahan, bored by the interruption of his business, scornful of the captain's enlargement of a thing so trivial, looked quickly at the speaker, struck by the quality of his word and tone.
The sailor was a man of twenty-three or twenty-five, medium of stature, rather slender, yet nothing about him that suggested weakness or frailty either of body or soul. His bare limbs were smeared with the yellow mud through which he had toiled to his disastrous climax; his sinewy arms were fouled with it, splashes of it flecked his ruddy-brown face. His countenance was frank and handsome, his eyes were quick and blue, a certain merriness in them that seemed the expression of the man's unconquerable hope. His fair hair was long, a waviness in it as irrepressible as the soul that looked out of his eyes. It was tossed and disordered; sweat glistened on his face.
Captain Welliver straightened from his threatening posture, triumph for his small victory glistening in his eyes.
"In your case I'll make it twenty dollars," he announced. "Now, get back to work!"
The other sailors who had brought up the box, joined by the four who had been flinging hides from the wagon, moved dispiritedly down the hill.
"I'll not go back to work until you modify that unreasonable fine, Captain Welliver," said the sailor whose unfortunate slip seemed in a way to cost him so dearly. "No oar that ever was turned is worth twenty dollars."
"Git back to work!" the captain ordered, whirling upon the insubordinate man.
"Not as long as that unjust fine stands against me, sir. I'm willing for you to deduct the cost price of the oar from my wages, although it wasn't my fault that it got broken."
"You'll go to work this minute, or by the Almighty! I'll knock your two eyes into one!"
"When you do me as much justice as your small sense of honesty will allow, Captain Welliver," the sailor returned, unmoved by the captain's threat. "When you meet my terms, I'll go back to work."
The sailor was watching his captain as a fencer holds his opponent in his eye. The captain stood as he had turned, checked both in his physical and mental process, it appeared, by this expression of open defiance.
"I've taken your kicks and curses, I've stood by and seen you haul my mates up and lash them—I've taken your illegal severities in a thousand ways because I was cooped up in that floating kingdom with you," the sailor continued, holding the astonished, raging captain eye to eye.
"You'll take more—yes, by the Almighty! you'll take more than you ever got!" the captain threatened, gathering himself to lay on the chastisement then and there.
"You're ashore now, you're not a hard-tack king here," the sailor defied him. "We're man to man, Captain Welliver. I'm not going back to that ship, you tyrannous brute!"
"I'll learn you, you mutinous cur!"
Captain Welliver leaped as he spoke, sweeping with open hand a blow that must have knocked the sailor senseless if it had reached its aim. But the sailor, nimble as a fly, darted aside, stooped and snatched a piece of the broken oar, and struck with it in the vigor of his wrath and culminated vengeance. The captain seemed to stand a moment, checked so suddenly in his assault, as if surprise persisted above concussion. Don Abrahan drew back a step as he fell, to look down with cold satisfaction into his twitching face.
The mate in charge of unloading the boat came running to his chief's assistance. He scrambled up the steep, fury in his face, ordering his men up to seize the mutineer. The sailor dropped the fragment of oar, exchanging it for the other, and longer, piece. So armed, he stood where the slippery footway met the level.
"I'll brain the first man that comes!" he declared. "Mates, I've got no quarrel with any of you, but I'll brain the first man that tries to lay a hand on me!"
Valiant as he was against defenseless, cowed men on the deck of his ship, the mate stopped to deliberate his chances against the six-foot butt of the oar. The sailor backed away, his weapon ready; the mate, watching calculatively, came on again, the reluctant sailors at his back.
Captain Welliver flopped like a fish, rolled to his side, gathering his dispersed senses and strength with amazing rapidity, and righted himself to his knees, a pistol in his hand.
"No," said Don Abrahan, placing himself between the captain's weapon and the retreating sailor; "there must be no violence on this shore. As a magistrate I command you to respect the law."
"Law hell!" said Captain Welliver, shifting to take aim at the sailor, "that man's desertin' ship!"
"Let him go, then; the world is full of men," said Don Abrahan, calm and undisturbed.
"My ship ain't!" the captain retorted sharply. "Out of my way, damn you! or I'll drill you through."
Don Abrahan waved his arm in what seemed nothing more than a slow, indolent gesture of denial. Simon, the driver, sprang out of his smoky lethargy, which even this affray among the Yankees had not disturbed. Captain Welliver found himself confronting a pistol, which Simon waited but the command of his master's lifted hand to fire. The argument was good with the captain; he put his own weapon away, fairly inundating that shore, and all who stood upon it, with the stream of his profane abuse.
"It will be time to return to business," said Don Abrahan, cutting him short in such relief as he was finding in that wordy vent.
"Twenty-five dollars to the man or men that bring that deserter back!" the captain offered, bringing away his hand from the side of his face, seeing blood on it.
Nobody but the mate moved to win the reward. He sprang up the bank and started after the sailor, who was entering the thick tangle of brushwood a little distance beyond the Indians' camp. Don Abrahan interposed again.
"What is one man, more or less?" he inquired, the inflection of contempt in his words. "There is a good one, an Irishman with red hair, in the jail at Los Angeles. For even fifteen dollars, probably ten, you can get him for your ship, friend captain."
"I don't know what your damned law in this country is, but I know it ain't goin' to stand between me and my man," the captain declared. "I'll make it fifty dollars to anybody that brings that mutineer back."
Still there were no takers, save the battered-face mate, who hesitated against the threat of Simon's great pistol, rusty though it was as if it had been fished up out of the sea.
"For as much as fifty dollars I will, myself, guarantee that your sailor returns again to your ship," Don Abrahan said. He depreciated the matter almost to nothing by the slight lifting of his brows, the waving of his hand, as if to say that a man must descend to small affairs when in the company of despicable inferiors.
"Hell! he'll be forty miles away before you fellows can turn around!" the captain swore.
"Let him go; it cannot be far," Don Abrahan returned. "There are mountains and deserts to turn a man back when he runs away in this country. I have only to give the word, and your man returns."
"And if you don't give the word?" Captain Welliver asked, looking at him sharply.
"Who knows?" Don Abrahan replied. "My hides blow out to sea and never find their way into your ship. Perhaps your sailor may be carried off by a wind, as well. How is any man to know?"
Don Abrahan seemed to beam kindly on the captain, a brightness in his eyes that was like the reflection of inner laughter. Captain Welliver's anger rose black to his face again, and cooled and fell when he saw the Mexican magistrate unmoved and serene, his face softened by the hidden laughter in his eyes as if his heart were warm within him in the satisfaction of some worthy deed.
"That's why you done it, was it? you damned old humanitarian!" Captain Welliver said.
"It will be time to get to business," said Don Abrahan, glancing up at the sun.