The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (10.1896)

By Samuel Mathewson Scott 97

brush away, it’s hard to muster courage for seriousness. Even
the basis of those cares is simple enough—our cotton, our cattle,
and the charcoal, nothing more.

I said there were only three of us, but I must not forget the
fourth, old Juan, our major-domo, the intermediary between our-
selves and the peons, or Indian labourers. Unfortunately, fate has
made him a friend rather than a servant. He is a full-blooded
Indian, and he cannot be less than sixty. He was born on this
hacienda, and was a factor in it long before we ever came here.
H is whole experience of life is limited by its boundaries. Yet he
is a born ruler of men ; with iron will, fluent tongue, and a
physical energy that is marvellous, he wields an unquestioned
authority over the people. In spite of his years he never knows
fatigue. He has a grand body and Herculean shoulders, but life
on horseback has stunted and bowed his legs. The head is
massive and powerful, with a face as wrinkled, brown, and gro-
tesque as a Japanese mask. His anger would make even a Salvini
envious. The clenched fists, the blazing eyes, the trembling body
towering to its height, and the rolling voice full of a thousand
terrible modulations, make up a picture that recalls our dreams of
patriarchal grandeur. The peons cower like curs before it. Then
he has a slave-like, inborn submission and devotion to his masters,
coupled with the more modern, but still instinctive, sense that those
who would rule must first learn to obey. With it all, he is a cynic
of the first water. He knows no illusions, his laugh is a master-
piece of amused contempt. In the old days of his youth he took
all that his narrow life offered. Now the oracle of the country
side, he can rival La Rochefoucald in his sneers at women, and he
could have enjoyed Voltaire. His one occasional weakness is
drink, the native weakness ; and sometimes, in a maudlin mood,
after listening humbly to my reproaches, he will tell me of the

gay