PAGE 13
The Passing Of Enriquez
by
It WAS the old Enriquez! I perfectly understood his extravagant speech and illustration, and yet for the first time I wondered if others did.
“Tak’-a-drink!” he said, all in one word. “You shall possess the old Bourbon or the rhum from the Santa Cruz! Name your poison, gentlemen!”
He had already dragged me up the steps from the patio to the veranda, and seated me before a small round table still covered with the chocolate equipage of the morning. A little dried-up old Indian woman took it away, and brought the spirits and glasses.
“Mirar the leetle old one!” said Enriquez, with unflinching gravity. “Consider her, Pancho, to the bloosh! She is not truly an Aztec, but she is of years one hundred and one, and LIFS! Possibly she haf not the beauty which ravishes, which devastates. But she shall attent you to the hot water, to the bath. Thus shall you be protect, my leetle brother, from scandal.”
“Enriquez,” I burst out suddenly, “tell me about yourself. Why did you leave the El Bolero board? What was the row about?”
Enriquez’s eyes for a moment glittered; then they danced as before.
“Ah,” he said, “you have heard?”
“Something; but I want to know the truth from you.”
He lighted a cigarette, lifted himself backward into a grass hammock, on which he sat, swinging his feet. Then, pointing to another hammock, he said: “Tranquillize yourself there. I will relate; but, truly, it ees nothing.”
He took a long pull at his cigarette, and for a few moments seemed quietly to exude smoke from his eyes, ears, nose, even his finger-ends–everywhere, in fact, but his mouth. That and his mustache remained fixed. Then he said slowly, flicking away the ashes with his little finger:–
“First you understand, friend Pancho, that I make no row. The other themself make the row, the shindig. They make the dance, the howl, the snap of the finger, the oath, the ‘Helen blazes,’ the ‘Wot the devil,’ the ‘That be d–d,’ the bad language; they themselves finger the revolver, advance the bowie-knife, throw off the coat, square off, and say ‘Come on.’ I remain as you see me now, little brother–tranquil.” He lighted another cigarette, made his position more comfortable in the hammock, and resumed: “The Professor Dobbs, who is the geologian of the company, made a report for which he got two thousand dollar. But thees report–look you, friend Pancho–he is not good for the mine. For in the hole in the ground the Professor Dobbs have found a ‘hoss.'”
“A what?” I asked.
“A hoss,” repeated Enriquez, with infinite gravity. “But not, leetle Pancho, the hoss that run, the hoss that buck-jump, but what the miner call a ‘hoss,’ a something that rear up in the vein and stop him. You pick around the hoss; you pick under him; sometimes you find the vein, sometimes you do not. The hoss rear up, and remain! Eet ees not good for the mine. The board say, ‘D— the hoss!’ ‘Get rid of the hoss.’ ‘Chuck out the hoss.’ Then they talk together, and one say to the Professor Dobbs: ‘Eef you cannot thees hoss remove from the mine, you can take him out of the report.’ He look to me, thees professor. I see nothing; I remain tranquil. Then the board say: ‘Thees report with the hoss in him is worth two thousand dollar, but WITHOUT the hoss he is worth five thousand dollar. For the stockholder is frighted of the rearing hoss. It is of a necessity that the stockholder should remain tranquil. Without the hoss the report is good; the stock shall errise; the director shall sell out, and leave the stockholder the hoss to play with.’ The professor he say, ‘Al-right;’ he scratch out the hoss, sign his name, and get a check for three thousand dollar.”
“Then I errise–so!” He got up from the hammock, suiting the action to the word, and during the rest of his narrative, I honestly believe, assumed the same attitude and deliberate intonation he had exhibited at the board. I could even fancy I saw the reckless, cynical faces of his brother directors turned upon his grim, impassive features. “I am tranquil. I smoke my cigarette. I say that for three hundred year my family have held the land of thees mine; that it pass from father to son, and from son to son; it pass by gift, it pass by grant, but that NEVARRE THERE PASS A LIE WITH IT! I say it was a gift by a Spanish Christian king to a Christian hidalgo for the spread of the gospel, and not for the cheat and the swindle! I say that this mine was worked by the slave, and by the mule, by the ass, but never by the cheat and swindler. I say that if they have struck the hoss in the mine, they have struck a hoss IN THE LAND, a Spanish hoss; a hoss that have no bridle worth five thousand dollar in his mouth, but a hoss to rear, and a hoss that cannot be struck out by a Yankee geologian; and that hoss is Enriquez Saltillo!”