A TOUCH OF NATURE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1687, 29 June 1904, Page 11

A TOUCH OF NATURE

A lone Americano slept, hard by the place where he hoped some day to have a mill. He stirred uneasily—some one was calling his name: “Don Alfredo! Don Alfredo V* The voice was that of the peon, Ohristobal, who hated him, or had reason to hate him. for the week before he had kicked him out of the assay shop for being insolent. First he heard the voice through his dream. comms nearer and nearer: he saw Ohristobal loosing at him vengefully through a cloud of cigarette smoke; by a supreme effort he opened his eyes—and there was darkness, and a live object beside him, breathing hurriedly, stealthily—and that was all. Ye,t he knew it was Cristobal.

With the swiftness of “un relampago” his memory interviewed the incidents related with his treatment of Cristobal. He had been just, yet stern; inflexible in exacting fair service for wages paid, yet never exceeding; resentful of all atl tempts at imposition on his kindness, yet never chary of kindness when it was deserved;. he had never been violent with this fellow, until a week ago, when he ejected him rather summarily from the assay shop as stated. Since then, though he had been several times at the hovel of Cristobal’s father, he had not laid eyes on the son. He had always liked the old man, for his honesty and friendliness; and now that he was sack, he attended him with as scrupulous care as his labours and imperfect knowledge of remedies would permit. But the disease was pneumonia. The old man, over eighty, was weak and anaemic, with one foot already in the grave, and there was slight hope of recovery. Indeed, that very evening the Americano had told the family soberly' that they might as well prepare for the worst — that the end was like to come before morning.

All this he reviewed in an instant, and the mind made its own deduction. Cristobal, smarting still from the kicks and blows, with a dead or dying father to make him more inclined to “run amuck,” in the way of all semi-orientals, like the real ones, had come to kill him—if he could. Perhaps he could’not. His pistols hung above bis head, but they were out of his reach. He had not even a jack-knife at hand. Why had he been so foolhardy as to leave his door wide open at niglit ? A stuffy room even was preferable to being knifed by a d—d ore-lugger! He knew if be could once get bis hands on the fellow —get his knife away from him—the chances were about equal ; for each would, tip the beam at seven arobas, more or less. The thing to do was to get him to strike —in the wrong part of the bed. He Softly turned his head aside, and resorted to a

trick he had practised as a boy, of throwing the voice from him. “What is itjOhristobal?” lie asked, drowsily. Every nerve was taut—every muscle; he was ready to spring, when the lunge came. . “My father is dying,” said Cristobal huskily ; “will the senor come P” The Americano relaxed. The night was hot and his pyjamas were sticking to him like a wet bathing spit. He sat up in bed, fished for the small mat that should be somewhere, missed it, struck with his bare feet the pebbly floor, stubbed against his heavy boots which he drew on, and followed Cristobal in his pyjamas. He found the hut filled to the doors with the peones and their women; all the town was in attendance at this final act of the old man’s life; the Americano knew it was innate conventionality in Cristobal that had prompted his own summons. But shorn of the superficial incidents, the death scene was tlie same as in any other land ; and the Americano, who had seen it before, was impressed by the sameness of it all. rather than by any external contrasts. There was the same woman on her knees, stunned at the knowledge that her life-mate was slipping away from her, into an unknown place—it was heaven she hoped—and she prayed that it might be so; but nevertheless it was unknown, and her pleading was not devoid of terror. There were the same children weeping about the bed; they had not been over-fond of the old man, perhaps, but death is a great clarifyer of vision, and in its light they saw more than one peep of protecting kindness, ever since they had become men and women grown. The last one to whom they couid turn, as children for food and fire, was being snatched away. And they wept as children do. Last, there was the dying man, with the determined effort to be a man still, in the face of the last great fear, peering with inscrutable, fast-glazing eyes into the mystery, which for him lay beyond the open door, in the dark outside.

The Americano came to himself with a start, as the old woman raised the death wail. With a respectful look at the calm countenance of his old friend, in lieu of the accustomed “Adois!” he turned, and found himself face to face

with Cristobal, who, with streaming eyes, of which he seemed proudly disdainful, regarded him with dogged persistence. For the life of him, the Ameri_ cano could see nothing but another man who was paying the most natural tribute to a dead parent. He put out his hand. Cristobal took it carefully, as 13 the custom of the peon with his betters, and with a hurried “Good night ■!” the Americano went out.

As he crossed the uneven cobbles of the patio in the dark, he heard the dogs of the pueblo repeating the dismal sound of the mourner’s voices, and then—in a momentary lull—the far-off sympathetic cry in the mountains of the coyote. Hastily slipping off his boots, he rolled in again and returned to his dreams of tunnels and bonanzas. It did not occur to him to dose the door.