The Blood of the Conquerors | Page 3

tawny levels, the red hills dotted with
little gnarled pinon trees, the purple mystery of distant mountains. A
great friendly warmth filled his body, and his breath came a little
quickly with eagerness. When he saw a group of Mexicans jogging
along the road on their scrawny mounts he wanted to call out to them:
"Como lo va, amigos?" He would have liked to salute this whole
country, which was his country, and to tell it how glad he was to see it
again. It was the one thing in the world that he loved, and the only
thing that had ever given him pleasure without tincture of bitterness.
He heard two men in the seat behind him talking.
"Did you ever see anything so desolate?" one asked.
"I wouldn't live in this country if they gave it to me," said the other.
Ramon turned and looked at them. They were solid, important-looking
men, and having visited upon the country their impressive disapproval,
they opened newspapers and shut it away from their sight. Dull fools,
thought Ramon, who do not know God's country when they see it.

And then he continued to look right over their heads and their
newspapers, for tripping down the aisle all by herself at last, came the
girl of his fruitless choice. His eyes, deep with dreams, met hers. She
smiled upon him, radiantly, blushed a little, and hurried on through the
car.
He sat looking after her with a foolish grin on his face. He was pleased
and shaken. So she had noticed him after all. She had been waiting for
a chance, as well as he. And now that it had come, he was getting off
the train in an hour. It was useless to follow her.{~HORIZONTAL
ELLIPSIS~} He turned to the window again.
CHAPTER II
Usually in each generation of a large and long-established family there
is some one individual who stands out from the rest as a leader and as
the most perfect embodiment of the family traditions and
characteristics. This was especially true of the Delcasar family. It was
established in this country in the year 1790 by Don Eusabio Maria
Delcasar y Morales, an officer in the army of the King of Spain, who
distinguished himself in the conquest of New Mexico, and especially in
certain campaigns against the Navajos. As was customary at that time,
the King rewarded his faithful soldier with a grant of land in the new
province. This Delcasar estate lay in the Rio Grande Valley and the
surrounding mesa lands. By the provisions of the King's grant, its
dimensions were each the distance that Don Delcasar could ride in a
day. The Don chose good horses and did not spare them, so that he
secured to his family more than a thousand square miles of land with a
strip of rich valley through the middle and a wilderness of desert and
mountain on either side. Much of this principality was never seen by
Don Eusabio, and even the four sons who divided the estate upon his
death had each more land than he could well use.
The outstanding figure of this second generation was Don Solomon
Delcasar, who was noted for the magnificence of his establishment, and
for his autocratic spirit.

No Borgia or Bourbon ever ruled more absolutely over his own domain
than did Don Solomon over the hundreds of square miles which made
up his estate. He owned not only lands and herds but also men and
women. The peones who worked his lands were his possessions as
much as were his horses. He had them beaten when they offended him
and their daughters were his for the taking. He could not sell them, but
this restriction did not apply to the Navajo and Apache slaves whom he
captured in war. These were his to be sold or retained for his own use
as he preferred. Adult Indians were seldom taken prisoner, as they were
untameable, but boys and girls below the age of fifteen were always
taken alive, when possible, and were valued at five hundred pesos each.
Don Solomon usually sold the boys, as he had plenty of peones, but he
never sold a comely Indian girl.
The Don was a man of proud and irascible temper, but kindly when not
crossed. He had been known to kill a peon in a fit of anger, and then
afterward to bestow all sorts of benefits upon the man's wife and
children.
The life of his home, like that of all the other Mexican gentlemen in his
time, was an easy and pleasant one. He owned a great adobe house,
built about a square courtyard like a fort, and shaded pleasantly by
cottonwood trees. There he dwelt with his numerous family, his peones
and