From the moment when that idea took possession of her, she became a changed woman. A dormant business instinct in her awakened and made her do things she would never before have dreamed of doing. She began to consider how much half a dozen castles in Spain might cost; how much a duke might spend during his lifetime; how much it would cost to keep up all these castles, including an army of servants, the best horses, elegant carriages, life at court, journeys to France and Italy, and all that was essential for a really great noblewoman married to a pauperized duke or marquis. It reached a fantastic sum. She included the taxes and the special donations to the church she would have to make to be left in peace by that mighty institution. Included in these donations also was a cathedral to be built near the mine and the resting-place of her husband. After she had summed up the whole amount, she decided to double it so as to be on the safe side and to cover any mistake she might have made in her calculations. It came to a figure which, when written down, was almost a foot long. Yet she was not afraid of this figure, for she was convinced that she could have it inside a certain length of time, because the mine seemed to contain unlimited riches.
6
There followed truly hard years in which she had to live and battle for the goal she had set for herself. Far from civilization, far from even the smallest comfort, she was at her post day and night. She knew no rest or fatigue. Whenever she felt as though she would break down, she only had to think of the duke and of the castles in Spain, and back came all her strength.
Doubtless she faced the conditions confronting her far better than her husband ever was able to do. She got along with the laborers without paying them much higher wages than had her husband. She was robust in her way, tenacious, and even hypnotic when dealing with men. If with force she could not make men do what she wanted them to do, then she tried all sorts of diplomacy, and always won them over to her will. She could laugh like a jolly drunken coach-driver; she could weep heartrendingly when it seemed expedient; and she could swear like a highwayman. If nothing else would do, she could pray and preach so convincingly that begging monks would have given her their last highly treasured gold pieces.
She paid her men just enough so that they had always a little more than they needed, and for that they stayed on.
It was not alone the problems concerning the working-men that she had to solve day in, day out. The mine was forever in danger of being robbed by gangs of bandits composed of escaped convicts, murderers at large, deserters from the army, and all sorts of soldiers of fortune and adventurers. Hordes of criminals such as the world has not seen since, and of the scum of the towns, swarmed the country—mestizos, Indians, and white outlaws and outcasts. It was the time when, owing to the American and the French revolutions, the power of Spain on the American continents began to totter, and in consequence of that all sound economic conditions began to break up, for rebirth of political and economic conditions was in sight.
From these hordes of outlaws dona Maria was never secure, and she had to use all kinds of tricks and camouflage to keep them from finding the treasure. When they came upon the mine, as happened at times, she had to pretend to be the poorest of human beings under heaven, working like a slave, not for her own profit, but to atone for a horrible sin she had committed against the church, to conciliate which she had to labor hard to build a cathedral.
Finally there came a time when dona Maria was overcome by such a longing for her native land, for a clean house, for a pretty kitchen, for a beautiful bedroom and a soft bed with a male companion in it, and for surroundings free from mosquitoes, fever, polluted water, snakes, and other horrors that she knew she could stand this life no longer. She felt she had to leave now or she would go insane. She wanted to see the faces of Christians again instead of Indians, of whom she now frequently became really afraid, as a man quite suddenly may become afraid of his great Dane for no particular reason whatever. She was longing to speak to decent persons of her own race in an uncorrupted language; she wanted to be caressed by someone she loved; she wanted to dress like the women she was thinking of who still lived in cities.
All this came over her so suddenly and unexpectedly that she had no time to collect her thoughts or to analyze her feelings as she had done formerly. She found she no longer had the strength to conquer these desires. She knew she had to go or she would do something foolish—perhaps give herself to one of the Indians or kill herself or kill all the men or take out all the bullion and scatter it about.
