The Blood of the Conquerors

The Blood of the Conquerors by
Harvey

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Harvey Fergusson

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Title: The Blood of the Conquerors
Author: Harvey Fergusson
Release Date: March 23, 2007 [Ebook #20888]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO 8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLOOD
OF THE CONQUERORS***

The Blood of the Conquerors by Harvey Fergusson
New York Alfred · A · Knopf 1921

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXX

CHAPTER XXXI

CHAPTER XXXII

CHAPTER XXXIII

CHAPTER XXXIV

CHAPTER XXXV

CHAPTER XXXVI

EXTRA PAGES ERRATA
CHAPTER I
Whenever Ramon Delcasar boarded a railroad train he indulged a habit,
not uncommon among men, of choosing from the women passengers
the one whose appearance most pleased him to be the object of his
attention during the journey. If the woman were reserved or
well-chaperoned, or if she obviously belonged to another man, this
attention might amount to no more than an occasional discreet glance
in her direction. He never tried to make her acquaintance unless her
eyes and mouth unmistakably invited him to do so.
This conservatism on his part was not due to an innate lack of
self-confidence. Whenever he felt sure of his social footing, his attitude
toward women was bold and assured. But his social footing was a
peculiarly uncertain thing for the reason that he was a Mexican. This
meant that he faced in every social contact the possibility of a more or
less covert prejudice against his blood, and that he faced it with an
unduly proud and sensitive spirit concealed beneath a manner of
aristocratic indifference. In the little southwestern town where he had
lived all his life, except the last three years, his social position was
ostensibly of the highest. He was spoken of as belonging to an old and
prominent family. Yet he knew of mothers who carefully guarded their
daughters from the peril of falling in love with him, and most of his
boyhood fights had started when some one called him a "damned
Mexican" or a "greaser."
Except to an experienced eye there was little in his appearance or in his
manner to suggest his race. His swarthy complexion indicated perhaps
a touch of the Moorish blood in his Spanish ancestry, but he was no
darker than are many Americans bearing Anglo-Saxon names, and his
eyes were grey. His features were aquiline and pleasing, and he had in a
high degree that bearing, at once proud and unself-conscious, which is
called aristocratic. He spoke English with a very slight Spanish accent.
When he had gone away to a Catholic law school in St. Louis,

confident of his speech and manner and appearance, he had believed
that he was leaving prejudice behind him; but in this he had been
disappointed. The raw spots in his consciousness, if a little less irritated
at the college, were by no means healed. Some persons, it is true,
seemed to think nothing of his race one way or the other; to some,
mostly women, it gave him an added interest; but in the long run it
worked against him. It kept him out of a fraternity, and it made his
career in football slow and hard.
When he finally won the coveted position of quarterback, in spite of
team politics, he made a reputation by the merciless fashion in which
he drove his eleven, and by the fury of his own playing.
The same bitter emulative spirit which had impelled him in football
drove him to success in his study of the law. Books held no appeal for
him, and he had no definite ambitions, but he had a good head and a
great desire to show the gringos what he could do. So he had graduated
high in his class, thrown his diploma into the bottom of his trunk, and
departed from his alma mater without regret.
The limited train upon which he took passage for