was to give an ironical snort when he happened to see her leaning at sunset against the doorway, looking at the reddening glow—one elbow on the door frame and her cheek in her hand, in imitation of the posture of a certain white lady that she had seen in a chromo, awaiting the knight of her dreams.
Desnoyers had been five years in the house when one day he entered his master’s private office with the brusque air of a timid person who has suddenly reached a decision.
“Don Julio, I am going to leave and I would like our accounts settled.”
Madariaga looked at him slyly. “Going to leave, eh? . . . What for?” But in vain he repeated his questions. The Frenchman was floundering through a series of incoherent explanations—“I’m going; I’ve got to go.”
“Ah, you thief, you false prophet!” shouted the ranchman in stentorian tones.
But Desnoyers did not quail before the insults. He had often heard his Patron use these same words when holding somebody up to ridicule, or haggling with certain cattle drovers.
“Ah, you thief, you false prophet! Do you suppose that I do not know why you are going? Do you suppose old Madariaga has not seen your languishing looks and those of my dead fly of a daughter, clasping each others’ hands in the presence of poor China who is blinded in her judgment? . . . It’s not such a bad stroke, Frenchy. By it, you would be able to get possession of half of the old Spaniard’s dollars, and then say that you had made it in America.”
And while he was storming, or rather howling, all this, he had grasped his lash and with the butt end kept poking his manager in the stomach with such insistence that it might be construed in an affectionate or hostile way.
“For this reason I have come to bid you good-bye,” said Desnoyers haughtily. “I know that my love is absurd, and I wish to leave.”
“The gentleman would go away,” the ranchman continued spluttering. “The gentleman believes that here one can do what one pleases! No, siree! Here nobody commands but old Madariaga, and I order you to stay. . . . Ah, these women! They only serve to antagonize men. And yet we can’t live without them!” . . .
Prev.
Back
Top