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Updated: June 28, 2025
But finding that Ramon listened tolerantly, if not sympathetically, he had told the story over and over, each time with more detail and more abundant and picturesque denunciation of Diego Delcasar, but with substantial uniformity as to the facts. As he spoke he watched the face of Ramon narrowly. Always the recital ended about the same way.
I am sorry that I must refuse. I have other plans.…” MacDougall nodded, interrupting. This was evidently a contingency he had calculated. “I’m sorry, Mr. Delcasar. I had hoped to be permanently associated with you in this venture. But I think I understand. You are young.
And to you—I give you my word as a Delcasar that I will serve you well, that I will be as a brother to you.” There was a silence during which Alfego stared with profound gravity at the ash on the end of his cigar. “Have you heard,” Ramon went on, in the same soft and emotional tone of voice, “that the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is going to build a line through the San Antonio Valley?”
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.
Thus the Eldorado Hotel was rich in that contrast between the old and the new which everywhere characterized the town. Generally speaking, the old was on exhibition or at work, while the new was at leisure or in charge. When the Delcasar carriage reached the hotel, it had to take its place in a long line of crawling vehicles, most of which were motor cars.
When he had been there about half an hour, Mrs. Roth turned to her daughter. “Julia,” she said, “If we are going to get to Mrs. MacDougall’s at half-past four you must go and get ready. You will excuse her, won’t you Mr. Delcasar?”
He was following the same route that Diego Delcasar had followed on the day of his death, and he passed within a few miles of Archulera’s ranch; but no thought either of his uncle or of Archulera entered his mind. For in his pocket was a letter consisting of a single sentence hastily scrawled in a large round upright hand on lavender-scented note paper. The sentence was:
Afterward, when the girl had gone, there were many cigarettes and much talk, as before, Archulera telling over again the brave wild record of his youth. And, as always, he told, just as though he had never told it before, the story of how Diego Delcasar had cheated him out of his interest in a silver mine in the Guadelupe Mountains.
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.
“The proposition is a singularly attractive one. Not only could the right-of-way be sold for a very large sum, but we would afterward own a splendid bit of cattle range, with farming land in the valley, and with a railroad running through the centre of it. There is nothing less than a fortune to be made in the San Antonio Valley, Mr. Delcasar. “And the lands in the valley can be acquired.
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