TOWARD the first part of last century, upon one of the folds of Sierra Morena, stood a tavern called El Ventorro de la Sangre (Bloody Tavern). It was half way between Pozo Blanco and Cordova, in a fertile little pasture near an olive orchard.

Its name arose from a bloody encounter between the dragoons and guerillas in that spot at the time of the French intervention.

The tavern was situated on a small clearing that was always kept green. It was surrounded by tall prickly-pears, a ravine, and an olive orchard in which one could see ruins—vestiges of a fortress and a watch-tower. This land belonged to a village perched upon the most rugged and broken part of the mountain.... Its name does not at present concern the story.

The tavern was neither very large, nor very spacious; it had neither the characteristics of a hostelry, nor even of a store. Its front, which was six metres long, whitewashed, and pierced by a door and three windows, faced a bad horse-shoe road strewn with loose stones; its humble roof leaned toward the ground, and joined that of a shed which contained the stables, the manger, and the straw-loft.[83]

One passed through the entrance of the little tavern from whose lintel hung a bunch of sarment—which indicated, for your enlightenment, that in the house thus decorated wine was sold—and entered a miserable vestibule, which also served as a kitchen, a larder, and, at times, a dormitory.

During the years 1838 and ’39, the proprietor of El Ventorro de la Sangre was a man named El Cartagenero, who, so evil tongues asserted, had been a licentiate—though not of philosophy—in a university with mayors for professors, and sticks for beadles. No one knew the truth—a clear indication that the tavern was not run badly; the man paid well, behaved himself as a man should, and was capable, if the occasion arose, of lending a hand to any of the neighbouring farmers.

El Cartagenero demonstrated in his delightful and entertaining conversation, that he had travelled extensively, both by land and by sea; he knew the business of innkeeping—which has its secrets as well as anything else in the world; robbed very little; was hard-working, sensible, upright, and if need be, firm, generous, and brave.

El Cartagenero was to all appearances a fugitive; and that very condition of his made him most reserved and taciturn, in no way a prier, and very little given to mixing himself in other people’s affairs.

When he had run the little tavern for six years, El Cartagenero rented an oil-press; he then installed a tile-kiln, and by his activity and perseverance, was getting along splendidly, when one day, unfortunately for him, while he was loading a cart with bricks, he fell in such a way that he struck his head on the iron-shod wheel, and was instantly killed.[84]

From that very day, the tavern began to run down; La Cartagenera did not care to continue the renting of the press, because, as she said, she could not attend to it; she abandoned the kiln for the same reason, and neglected the tavern for no pretext at all, though, if there was no pretext or motive, there was an explanation; and this was La Cartagenera’s vice of drinking brandy, and the laziness and idleness of her daughters—two very sly and very slothful un-belled cows.

The elder of El Cartagenero’s daughters made her arrangements with a swaggering rascal from Cordova; and the other, not to be outdone by her sister, took for her good man, one of those country loafers—and what with the sweetheart of the former, and the friend of the other, and the brandy of the mother, the house began to run down hill.

The muleteers soon guessed what was up; they no longer found good wine there as before; nor a diligent person to prepare their meals and feed their animals; so now because the hosier had left the place swearing mad, again because the pedlar had quarrelled with them, all of their customers began to leave; and for a whole year no one dismounted at the tavern; and the mother and her daughters, with the two corresponding swains, passed the time insulting and growling at each other, stretched out in the sun in the summer, toasting sarment at the fire-place in the winter, and in all the seasons hurling bitter complaints against an adverse destiny.

After a year of this régime, there was nothing left in the house to eat, nor to drink, nor to sell—for they had sold everything including the doors—the family determined to get rid of the tavern. The girls’ two[85] friends came to Cordova and opened up negotiations with all their acquaintances, and were about despairing of making a sale, when a farmer from these parts by the name of El Mojoso, presented himself at the tavern. He was a clever, sensible chap, and the owner of a drove of five very astute little donkeys.

El Mojoso entered into negotiations with the widow, and for less than nothing, became possessed of the establishment. El Mojoso was very sagacious, and immediately comprehended the situation at the tavern; so he began to think about conducive methods of restoring the credit of the house. The first thing that occurred to him after he had been installed a few days, was to change its name, and he had a painter friend of his paint in huge letters upon the whitewashed wall above the door, this sign:

THE CROSS-ROADS STORE

El Mojoso had a wife and three children: one, employed as a miner in Pueblo Nuevo del Terrible; and two girls, with whom and his wife he established himself in the store.

His wife, whom they called La Temeraria, was a tall, strong, industrious, and determined matron. The daughters were splendid girls, but too refined to live in that deserted spot.

El Mojoso himself was a tough sort of a chap, crazy about bulls, slangy, and somewhat of a boaster. As a man who had spent his childhood in the Matadero district, which is the finest school of bull-fighting in the world, he knew how to differentiate the several tricks of the bull-ring.[86]

At first, El Mojoso did not abandon his drove; the returns from the inn were very small, and it did not seem expedient to him to quit his carrying business. But instead of walking the streets of Cordova, he devoted himself to going to and from the mountain villages carrying wheat to the mill, farming utensils to the farms, and doing a lot of errands and favours that were gaining him many friends in the neighbourhood.

When he had no errands or favours to do, he carried stones to his house on his donkeys and piled them under the shed. After a year of this work, when he had gathered together the wherewithal, he got a mason from Cordova, and under his direction, La Temeraria and he and his daughters, and a youth whom they had hired as a servant, lengthened the house, raised it a story, tiled the roof, and whitewashed it.

El Mojoso had to sell his donkeys to pay the costs—only keeping one. The muleteers were already resuming their old custom of stopping at the store.

During the first months, the wine was pure, and there was a pardillo and a claret such as had not been known in those parts for many years. Little by little the store commenced to grow in fame; lively and genial folk met there; the wine grew worse, according to the opinion of the intelligent, but good wine was not lacking if the customer who asked for it had the means of paying without protest or objection three or four times its worth. During the slaughter season there was pork chine when they wanted it, and at other times of the year, pork sausage, blood pudding and other such delicacies.

El Mojoso learned his new business very quickly. Without doubt, he was a thief a nativitate. He watered[87] the wine and perjured himself by swearing that it was the only pure wine that was sold in the entire mountain district; he put pepper in the brandy; he cheated in grain and hay; tangled up the accounts, and—always came out ahead.

Nearly every day he went to the city with his donkey under the pretext of shopping; but the truth is that his trips were to carry instructions and orders from a few timid men who went about the mountain, blunderbuss in hand, to some poor chaps in prison.

La Temeraria knew how to help her husband. She was a quiet, hard-working woman as long as no one interfered with her; but if any one dared to fail her, she was a she-wolf, more vengeful than God. She had enough spirit to look upon robbing as a pardonable and permissible thing, and even to the extent of not considering it extraordinary for a man to bring down a militia-man and leave him on the ground chewing mud.

In fine, the husband and wife were the most artful ... innkeepers in these parts. At the Cross-roads Store, the traveller could spend the night in peace, whether he was an orderly person or had some little account to settle with the police; or whether he was a merchant or a horseman, he could be sure of being undisturbed. One day . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

“But tell me, my friend,” Don Gil asked Quentin; “how does the beginning of the story strike you?”

“Very well.”

“Did you like the exposition?”

“I should say so! You are a master.”

“Thanks!” exclaimed Don Gil, satisfied. “To your health, comrade.[88]”

“To yours.”

“Now you’ll hear the good part.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

One rainy day in the month of February, just at dusk, there was gathered in the kitchen of the Cross-roads Store, a group of muleteers from the near-by village. Some of them, imbued with a love of heat, were seated upon two long benches on either side of the hearth; others were seated upon chairs and stools of wicker and lambskin, further away from the fire.

By the light of the blackened lamp and the flame of the candle, the whole circumference of the kitchen, which was a large one, could be seen: its enormous mantel, its rafters twisted and blackened with smoke, the big stones in the floor, and th............