| OCR Text |
Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 27 the proper place for a woman should be some similar institution, he was not vexed so much as puzzled by Esperanza's neglect. She was not a difficult woman; her heart was fulfilled by simple things. She did not complain, or set upon him for conjugal embellishments. Contrary, she was self entertained and worked wonderful things with her own hands. She prepared his soup and washed his drawers. She was decorated beautifully if cheaply, and perfumed herself with flowers from the garden. This absence was a new and strange behavior. When he asked her she told him that she was with friends in a friendly place, and he was satisfied. For his friends also had come home to find their wives away, and it was clear to all, the women had found some pastime to engage one with the other. Once a week he would come home to his loneliness. How rumors move. They caress a whole town as if given to fog; mean to steal the very air a man breathes. The air was awful wet that summer for so arid a clime. So thick you couldn't hear through it for what it said itself. William Jefferson Hightower, that's what the wind said. Taos heard it to a man. Knew that name too well. It was a bachelor, Sal de la Ricci, whom driving home from Questa on the highway had noticed Hightower's new fence as well as the freshly poured foundation to a new manor house. The old ranch house stood already in shadows and not a stick had yet been erected. The earth was broken deep and freshly tilled. The air stood up rank with fertilizer of indeterminate origin, and all in this one month's passing. It was a new attraction, and all of Taos turned out to see the Hightower ranch and the women who worked it. Casabon was no exception. He had heard about it from his friend Escobar Mondragon and hastened on the road thereto. Men by the thousands strove on the highway for the best vantage point from whence to see their wives hard at |
