Maruja | Page 3

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MARUJA
by BRET HARTE

MARUJA

CHAPTER I
Morning was breaking on the high road to San Jose. The long lines of
dusty, level track were beginning to extend their vanishing point in the
growing light; on either side the awakening fields of wheat and oats
were stretching out and broadening to the sky. In the east and south the
stars were receding before the coming day; in the west a few still
glimmered, caught among the bosky hills of the canada del Raimundo,
where night seemed to linger. Thither some obscure, low-flying birds
were slowly winging; thither a gray coyote, overtaken by the morning,
was awkwardly limping. And thither a tramping wayfarer turned,
plowing through the dust of the highway still unslaked by the dewless
night, to climb the fence and likewise seek the distant cover.
For some moments man and beast kept an equal pace and gait with a
strange similarity of appearance and expression; the coyote bearing that
resemblance to his more civilized and harmless congener, the dog,
which the tramp bore to the ordinary pedestrians, but both exhibiting
the same characteristics of lazy vagabondage and semi- lawlessness;

the coyote's slouching amble and uneasy stealthiness being repeated in
the tramp's shuffling step and sidelong glances. Both were young, and
physically vigorous, but both displayed the same vacillating and
awkward disinclination to direct effort. They continued thus half a mile
apart unconscious of each other, until the superior faculties of the brute
warned him of the contiguity of aggressive civilization, and he cantered
off suddenly to the right, fully five minutes before the barking of dogs
caused the man to make a detour to the left to avoid entrance upon a
cultivated domain that lay before him.
The trail he took led to one of the scant water-courses that issued, half
spent, from the canada, to fade out utterly on the hot June plain. It was
thickly bordered with willows and alders, that made an arbored and
feasible path through the dense woods and undergrowth. He continued
along it as if aimlessly; stopping from time to time to look at different
objects in a dull mechanical fashion, as if rather to prolong his useless
hours, than from any curious instinct, and to occasionally dip in the
unfrequent pools of water the few crusts of bread he had taken from his
pocket. Even this appeared to be suggested more by coincidence of
material in the bread and water, than from the promptings of hunger. At
last he reached a cup-like hollow in the hills lined with wild clover and
thick with resinous odors. Here he crept under a manzanita-bush and
disposed himself to sleep. The act showed he was already familiar with
the local habits of his class, who used the unfailing dry starlit nights for
their wanderings, and spent the hours of glaring sunshine asleep or
resting in some wayside shadow.
Meanwhile the light quickened, and gradually disclosed the form and
outline of the adjacent domain. An avenue cut through a park-like
wood, carefully cleared of the undergrowth of gigantic ferns peculiar to
the locality, led to the entrance of the canada. Here began a vast terrace
of lawn, broken up by enormous bouquets of flower-beds bewildering
in color and profusion, from which again rose the flowering vines and
trailing shrubs that hid pillars, veranda, and even the long facade of a
great and dominant mansion. But the delicacy of floral outlines running
to the capitals of columns and at times mounting to the pediment of the
roof, the opulence of flashing color or the massing of tropical foliage,

could not deprive it of the imperious dignity of size and space. Much of
this was due to the fact that the original casa--an adobe house of no
mean pretensions, dating back to the early Spanish occupation--had
been kept intact, sheathed in a shell of dark-red wood, and still
retaining its patio; or inner court-yard, surrounded by low galleries,
while additions, greater in extent than the main building, had been
erected--not as wings and projections, but massed upon it on either side,
changing its rigid square outlines to a vague parallelogram. While the
patio retained the Spanish conception of al