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What Happened at The Fonda
by
Ramierez himself–round-whiskered and Sancho Panza-like in build–welcomed the editor with fat, perfunctory urbanity. The fonda and all it contained was at his disposicion.
The senora coquettishly bewailed, in rising and falling inflections, his long absence, his infidelity and general perfidiousness. Truly he was growing great in writing of the affairs of his nation–he could no longer see his humble friends! Yet not long ago–truly that very week–there was the head impresor of Don Pancho’s imprenta himself who had been there!
A great man, of a certainty, and they must take what they could get! They were only poor innkeepers; when the governor came not they must welcome the alcalde. To which the editor–otherwise Don Pancho–replied with equal effusion. He had indeed recommended the fonda to his impresor, who was but a courier before him. But what was this? The impresor had been ravished at the sight of a beautiful girl–a mere muchacha–yet of a beauty that deprived the senses–this angel–clearly the daughter of his friend! Here was the old miracle of the orange in full fruition and the lovely fragrant blossom all on the same tree–at the fonda. And this had been kept from him!
“Yes, it was but a thing of yesterday,” said the senora, obviously pleased. “The muchacha–for she was but that–had just returned from the convent at San Jose, where she had been for four years. Ah! what would you? The fonda was no place for the child, who should know only the litany of the Virgin–and they had kept her there. And now–that she was home again–she cared only for the horse. From morning to night! Caballeros might come and go! There might be a festival–all the same to her, it made nothing if she had the horse to ride! Even now she was with one in the fields. Would Don Pancho attend and see Cota and her horse?”
The editor smilingly assented, and accompanied his hostess along the corridor to a few steps which brought them to the level of the open meadows of the old farm inclosure. A slight white figure on horseback was careering in the distance. At a signal from Senora Ramierez it wheeled and came down rapidly towards them. But when within a hundred yards the horse was suddenly pulled up vaquero fashion, and the little figure leaped off and advanced toward them on foot, leading the horse.
To his surprise, Mr. Grey saw that she had been riding bareback, and from her discreet halt at that distance he half suspected ASTRIDE! His effusive compliments to the mother on this exhibition of skill were sincere, for he was struck by the girl’s fearlessness. But when both horse and rider at last stood before him, he was speechless and embarrassed.
For Richards had not exaggerated the girl’s charms. She was indeed dangerously pretty, from her tawny little head to her small feet, and her figure, although comparatively diminutive, was perfectly proportioned. Gray eyed and blonde as she was in color, her racial peculiarities were distinct, and only the good-humored and enthusiastic Richards could have likened her to an American girl.
But he was the more astonished in noticing that her mustang was as distinct and peculiar as herself–a mongrel mare of the extraordinary type known as a “pinto,” or “calico” horse, mottled in lavender and pink, Arabian in proportions, and half broken! Her greenish gray eyes, in which too much of the white was visible, had, he fancied, a singular similarity of expression to Cota’s own!
Utterly confounded, and staring at the girl in her white, many flounced frock, bare head, and tawny braids, as she stood beside this incarnation of equine barbarism, Grey could remember nothing like it outside of a circus.
He stammered a few words of admiration of the mare. Miss Cota threw out her two arms with a graceful gesture and a profound curtsey, and said–
“A la disposicion de le Usted, senor.”
Grey was quick to understand the malicious mischief which underlay this formal curtsey and danced in the girl’s eyes, and even fancied it shared by the animal itself. But he was a singularly good rider of untrained stock, and rather proud of his prowess. He bowed.