Never having dwelt elsewhere since his mother
bore him here upon the rim of the desert and with the San Juan
mountains so near that, Ignacio Chavez pridefully knew, a man standing
upon the Mesa Alta might hear the ringing of his bells, he experienced
a pitying contempt for all those other spots in the world which were so
plainly less favored. What do you wish, senor? Fine warm days? You
have them here. Nice cool nights for sound slumber? Right here in San
Juan, _amigo mio_. A desert across which the eye may run without
stopping until it be tired, a wonderful desert whereon at dawn and dusk
God weaves all of the alluring soft mists of mystery? Shaded canons at
noonday with water and birds and flowers? Behold the mountains.
Everything desirable, in short. That there might be men who desired
the splash of waves, the sheen of wet beaches, the boom of surf, did
not suggest itself to one who had never seen the ocean. So, then, San
Juan was "what you will." A man may fix his eye upon the little
Mission cross which is always pointing to heaven and God; or he may
pass through the shaded doors of the Casa Blanca, which, men say, give
pathway into hell the shortest way.
Ignacio, having meditatively enjoyed his whiskey and listened smilingly
to the tinkle of a mandolin in the _patio_ under a grape-vine arbor,
had rolled his cigarette and turned his back square upon the
devil .
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