Carlota of the Rancho

“My head is in the United States and my feet are in Mexico!” cried Carlos sprawling at ease upon the sun-warmed grass.

Whereupon Carlota, not to be outdone in anything, promptly rolled her plump little person over the sward until its length lay along a lime-line running due east and west across the plain. Her yellow curls touched her twin’s yet her body formed a right angle to his. Then she remarked:

“Pooh! I’m better than that! My heart is in my own country and my—my— What is it that’s on the other side of you from your heart, brother?”

“I don’t know. Maybe gizzard.”

Carlota sat up, amazed and indignant.

“Girls don’t have gizzards, Carlos Manuel. Only chickens and geeses and things like those. You haven’t paid attention when my father teached you.”

Carlos laughed; so merrily and noisily that old Marta came to the door of the adobe house to see what was the fun. Nobody knew the housekeeper’s real age, it was so very great. None could remember things so far back as she, but she had ceased to count the years long, long ago, why not? What matter, if she still had the heart of a child, yes?

Certainly, neither Carlos nor Carlota cared. To them she had never changed, either in appearance or kindness, and they found no birthdays worth remembering except their own. These only, probably, because of the gifts andfiestas then made upon the whole rancho.

“Perhaps, I didn’t, little sister, but neither did you, or you’d never have said ‘geeses’ nor ‘teached’.”

“Both of us was wrong, weren’t we?” returned the girl, with as fine a disregard of grammar as of ill temper. “We’ll be more ’tentive when our father comes home, won’t we? When will that be, Carlos?”

It was a perplexing question, and the boy put it aside, as he put all difficulties, until a more convenient season. Crossing his arms above his head, he gazed unblinkingly upward into the brilliant sky, proposing:

“Let’s find things in the clouds, Carlota. I see a ship, I do, truly. It’s just like the pictures in the books. All its sails are set and flying. Oh! can’t you see? Right there? There! It’s moving northward fast—fast! It might be the ship in which our father will come home.”

He meant to comfort her, but Carlota would not look up. She could not. The sunbeams made prisms of the teardrops on her lashes and blinded her. She buried her face in the grass to escape these tiny “rainbows,” and all at once fell to sobbing bitterly.

Carlos hated that. He hated anything dark or unhappy. He sat up and patted his sister’s shoulder, soothingly, entreating:

“There, don’t! Don’t, girlie. Our father wouldn’t like it if he should come home now, this minute, and find you crying.”

The words were magic. Carlota sprang to her feet and earnestly peered into the distance, crying:

“Is he? Do you see him, brother? Do you?”

Carlos, also, leaped up and threw his arm about her waist:

“I didn’t say that, did I? I only said ‘if.’”

“I don’t like ‘ifs,’” sobbed Carlota.

“Oh, Carlota, don’t cry. You shall not. If you do I will go away myself, to the northwest, to find my father.”

“Oh! let’s!”

“I said ‘I.’ Not you. Girls never go anywhere, because they always cry. If it hadn’t been for that my father might have taken me with him. You see, he couldn’t take you, on account of it; and he couldn’t leave you at home with only Marta and the men, for then—that would make more tears. So I had to stay to take care of you, and I do think, if I were a girl, the very first thing I would do—I wouldn’t cry. Criers never have real good times, I guess.”

This was logic, and from Carlos, whom Carlota idolized only less than their absent father, most convincing. She winked very fast and drew her sleeve across her eyes, to dry the drops which would not be shaken off.