The Blood of the Conquerors | Page 5

window. The metropolis of
the northern valley in those days was a sleepy little adobe town of a
few hundred people, reclining about its dusty plaza near the river. The
railroad, scorning to notice it, passed a mile away. Forthwith a new
town began growing up between, the old one and the railroad. And this
new town was such a town as had never before been seen in all the
Southwest. It was built of wood and only half painted. It was ugly,
noisy and raw. It was populated largely by real estate agents, lawyers,
politicians and barkeepers. It cared little for joy, leisure, beauty or
tradition. Its God was money and its occupation was business.
This thing called business was utterly strange to the Delcasars and to all
of the other Dons. They were men of the saddle, fighting men, and

traders only in a primitive way. Business seemed to them a conspiracy
to take their lands and their goods away from them, and a remarkably
successful conspiracy. Debt and mortgage and speculation were the
names of its weapons. Some of the Dons, including many of the
Delcasars, who were now a very numerous family, owning each a
comfortable homestead but no more, sold out and went to Old Mexico.
Many who stayed lost all they had in a few years, and degenerated into
petty politicians or small storekeepers. Some clung to a bit of land and
went on farming, making always less and less money, sinking into
poverty and insignificance, until some of them were no better off than
the men who had once been their peones.
Diego Delcasar and Felipe Delcasar, brothers, were two who owned
houses in the Old Town and farms nearby, who stayed in the country
and held their own for a time and after a fashion. Diego Delcasar was
far the more able of the two, and a true scion of his family. He caught
onto the gringo methods to a certain extent. He divided some farm land
on the edge of town into lots and sold them for a good price. With the
money he bought a great area of mountain land in the northern part of
the state, where he raised sheep and ruled with an iron hand, much as
his forbears had ruled in the valley. He also went into politics, learned
to make a good stump speech and got himself elected to the highly
congenial position of sheriff. In this place he made a great reputation
for fearlessness and for the ruthless and skilful use of a gun. He once
kicked down the locked door of a saloon and arrested ten armed
gamblers, who had threatened to kill him. He was known and feared all
over the territory and was a tyrant in his own section of it. When a
gringo prospector ventured to dispute with him the ownership of a
certain mine, the gringo was found dead in the bottom of the shaft. It
was reported that he had fallen in and broken his neck and no one dared
to look at the bullet hole in his back.
Don Diego's wife died without leaving him any children, but he had
numerous children none-the-less. It was said that one could follow his
wanderings about the territory by the sporadic occurrence of the
unmistakable Delcasar nose among the younger inhabitants. All of his
sons and daughters by the left hand he treated with notable generosity.

He was a sort of hero to the native people--a great fighter, a great
lover--and songs about his adventures were composed and sung around
the fires in sheep camps and by gangs of trackworkers.
Don Diego, in a word, was a true Delcasar and a great man. Had he
used his opportunities wisely he might have been a millionaire. But at
the age of sixty he owned little besides his house and his wild mountain
lands. He drank a good deal and played poker almost every night. Once
he had been a famous winner, but in these later years he generally lost.
He also formed a partnership with a real estate broker named
MacDougall, for the development of his wild lands, and it was
predicted by some that the leading development would be an ultimate
transfer of title to Mr. MacDougall, who was known to be lending the
Don money and taking land as security.
Don Felipe's career was far less spectacular than that of his brother. He
owned more than Don Diego to start with, and he spent his life slowly
losing it, so that when he died he left nothing but a house in Old Town
and a single small sheep ranch, which afforded his widow, two
daughters and one son a scant living.
This son, Ramon Delcasar, was the hope of the family. He