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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Heart of the West, by O. Henry
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Heart of the West
+
+Author: O. Henry
+
+Release Date: April 1999 [eBook #1725]
+[Most recently updated: October 25, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: John Bickers and Dagny
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEART OF THE WEST ***
+
+
+
+
+HEART OF THE WEST
+
+by O. Henry
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ I. Hearts and Crosses
+ II. The Ransom of Mack
+ III. Telemachus, Friend
+ IV. The Handbook of Hymen
+ V. The Pimienta Pancakes
+ VI. Seats of the Haughty
+ VII. Hygeia at the Solito
+ VIII. An Afternoon Miracle
+ IX. The Higher Abdication
+ X. Cupid à la Carte
+ XI. The Caballero’s Way
+ XII. The Sphinx Apple
+ XIII. The Missing Chord
+ XIV. A Call Loan
+ XV. The Princess and the Puma
+ XVI. The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson
+ XVII. Christmas by Injunction
+ XVIII. A Chaparral Prince
+ XIX. The Reformation of Calliope
+
+
+
+
+HEART OF THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+I
+HEARTS AND CROSSES
+
+
+Baldy Woods reached for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went for
+anything he usually—but this is not Baldy’s story. He poured out a
+third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second.
+Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.
+
+“I’d be king if I was you,” said Baldy, so positively that his holster
+creaked and his spurs rattled.
+
+Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson, and made further
+disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being
+without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful
+Baldy.
+
+“If a man marries a queen, it oughtn’t to make him a two-spot,”
+declared Webb, epitomising his grievances.
+
+“Sure not,” said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely
+solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. “By rights
+you’re a king. If I was you, I’d call for a new deal. The cards have
+been stacked on you—I’ll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager.”
+
+“What?” asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale-blue eyes.
+
+“You’re a prince-consort.”
+
+“Go easy,” said Webb. “I never blackguarded you none.”
+
+“It’s a title,” explained Baldy, “up among the picture-cards; but it
+don’t take no tricks. I’ll tell you, Webb. It’s a brand they’re got for
+certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch
+dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be
+queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation
+ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand Custodian
+of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to appear in
+photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-apparent. That
+ain’t any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you’re a prince-consort; and if
+I was you, I’d start a interregnum or a habeus corpus or somethin’; and
+I’d be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the deck.”
+
+Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.
+
+“Baldy,” said Webb, solemnly, “me and you punched cows in the same
+outfit for years. We been runnin’ on the same range, and ridin’ the
+same trails since we was boys. I wouldn’t talk about my family affairs
+to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I
+married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I
+don’t amount to a knot in a stake rope.”
+
+“When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,” continued
+Baldy with Satanic sweetness, “you was some tallow. You had as much to
+say on the ranch as he did.”
+
+“I did,” admitted Webb, “up to the time he found out I was tryin’ to
+get my rope over Santa’s head. Then he kept me out on the range as far
+from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they commenced
+to call Santa the ‘cattle queen.’ I’m boss of the cattle—that’s all.
+She ’tends to all the business; she handles all the money; I can’t sell
+even a beef-steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa’s the ‘queen’;
+and I’m Mr. Nobody.”
+
+“I’d be king if I was you,” repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. “When a
+man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her—on the hoof—
+dressed—dried—corned—any old way from the chaparral to the
+packing-house. Lots of folks thinks it’s funny, Webb, that you don’t
+have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain’t reflectin’ none on Miz
+Yeager—she’s the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next
+Christmas—but a man ought to be boss of his own camp.”
+
+The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded
+melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and
+guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose
+leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But
+his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers
+forbade the comparison.
+
+“What was that you called me, Baldy?” he asked. “What kind of a concert
+was it?”
+
+“A ‘consort,’” corrected Baldy—“a ‘prince-consort.’ It’s a kind of
+short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a
+four-card flush.”
+
+Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester scabbard
+from the floor.
+
+“I’m ridin’ back to the ranch to-day,” he said half-heartedly. “I’ve
+got to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning.”
+
+“I’m your company as far as Dry Lake,” announced Baldy. “I’ve got a
+round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin’ out two-year-olds.”
+
+The two _compañeros_ mounted their ponies and trotted away from the
+little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in the thirsty
+morning.
+
+At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a parting
+cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the soft drum
+of the ponies’ hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the rattle of
+the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas discourse is
+seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a murder between
+your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, without apology,
+Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had begun ten miles
+away.
+
+“You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa wasn’t
+quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister was
+keepin’ us apart, and how she used to send me the sign that she wanted
+to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander if I
+ever come in gun-shot of the ranch. You remember the sign she used to
+send, Baldy—the heart with a cross inside of it?”
+
+“Me?” cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. “You old sugar-stealing
+coyote! Don’t I remember! Why, you dad-blamed old long-horned
+turtle-dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them
+hiroglyphs. The ‘gizzard-and-crossbones’ we used to call it. We used to
+see ’em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked in
+charcoal on the sacks of flour and in lead-pencil on the newspapers. I
+see one of ’em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man
+McAllister sent out from the ranch—danged if I didn’t.”
+
+“Santa’s father,” explained Webb gently, “got her to promise that she
+wouldn’t write to me or send me any word. That heart-and-cross sign was
+her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she managed to
+put that mark on somethin’ at the ranch that she knew I’d see. And I
+never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the ranch the same
+night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the little
+horse-corral.”
+
+“We knowed it,” chanted Baldy; “but we never let on. We was all for
+you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when we
+see that gizzard-and-crossbones figured out on the truck from the ranch
+we knowed old Pinto was goin’ to eat up miles that night instead of
+grass. You remember Scurry—that educated horse-wrangler we had— the
+college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever Scurry saw
+that come-meet-your-honey brand on anything from the ranch, he’d wave
+his hand like that, and say, ‘Our friend Lee Andrews will again swim
+the Hell’s point to-night.’”
+
+“The last time Santa sent me the sign,” said Webb, “was once when she
+was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto
+forty mile that night. She wasn’t at the coma mott. I went to the
+house; and old McAllister met me at the door. ‘Did you come here to get
+killed?’ says he; ‘I’ll disoblige you for once. I just started a
+Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. And
+then come out here and see me.’
+
+“Santa was lyin’ in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a
+smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed—
+mud and spurs and chaps and all. ‘I’ve heard you ridin’ across the
+grass for hours, Webb,’ she says. ‘I was sure you’d come. You saw the
+sign?’ she whispers. ‘The minute I hit camp,’ says I. ‘’Twas marked on
+the bag of potatoes and onions.’ ‘They’re always together,’ says she,
+soft like—‘always together in life.’ ‘They go well together,’ I says,
+‘in a stew.’ ‘I mean hearts and crosses,’ says Santa. ‘Our sign—to love
+and to suffer—that’s what they mean.’
+
+“And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin’ himself with whisky and a
+palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels her
+forehead; and he says to me: ‘You’re not such a bad febrifuge. But
+you’d better slide out now; for the diagnosis don’t call for you in
+regular doses. The little lady’ll be all right when she wakes up.’
+
+“I seen old McAllister outside. ‘She’s asleep,’ says I. ‘And now you
+can start in with your colander-work. Take your time; for I left my gun
+on my saddle-horn.’
+
+“Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: ‘Pumpin’ lead into the best
+ranch-boss in West Texas don’t seem to me good business policy. I don’t
+know where I could get as good a one. It’s the son-in-law idea, Webb,
+that makes me admire for to use you as a target. You ain’t my idea for
+a member of the family. But I can use you on the Nopalito if you’ll
+keep outside of a radius with the ranch-house in the middle of it. You
+go upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when you get some sleep we’ll
+talk it over.’”
+
+Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his
+saddle-horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anxious to
+be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.
+
+“_Adios_, Baldy,” said Webb, “I’m glad I seen you and had this talk.”
+
+With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of quail,
+the riders sped away toward different points of the compass. A hundred
+yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare knoll, and
+emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on foot, the earth
+would have risen and conquered him; but in the saddle he was a master
+of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and despised the centre of
+gravity.
+
+Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.
+
+“If I was you,” came Baldy’s strident and perverting tones, “I’d be
+king!”
+
+At eight o’clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled from his
+saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled with whizzing
+rowels toward the gallery. Bud was in charge of the bunch of
+beef-cattle that was to strike the trail that morning for San Antonio.
+Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster of hyacinths growing
+in a red earthenware jar.
+
+“King” McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his strong
+characteristics—his resolution, his gay courage, his contumacious
+self-reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs and horns.
+_Allegro_ and _fortissimo_ had been McAllister’s temp and tone. In
+Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. Substantially, she
+preserved the image of the mother who had been summoned to wander in
+other and less finite green pastures long before the waxing herds of
+kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had her mother’s slim,
+strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that relieved in her the
+severity of the imperious McAllister eye and the McAllister air of
+royal independence.
+
+Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three
+sub-bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for
+instructions.
+
+“Morning,” said Bud briefly. “Where do you want them beeves to go in
+town—to Barber’s, as usual?”
+
+Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the
+reins of business—buying, selling, and banking—had been held by her
+capable fingers. The handling of cattle had been entrusted fully to her
+husband. In the days of “King” McAllister, Santa had been his secretary
+and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom and profit. But
+before she could reply, the prince-consort spake up with calm decision:
+
+“You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit’s pens. I spoke to
+Zimmerman about it some time ago.”
+
+Bud turned on his high boot-heels.
+
+“Wait!” called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise
+in her steady gray eyes.
+
+“Why, what do you mean, Webb?” she asked, with a small wrinkle
+gathering between her brows. “I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit.
+Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market
+for five years. I’m not going to take the business out of his hands.”
+She faced Bud Turner. “Deliver those cattle to Barber,” she concluded
+positively.
+
+Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood on
+his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-leaf.
+
+“I want this bunch of beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit,” said Webb,
+with a frosty light in his blue eyes.
+
+“Nonsense,” said Santa impatiently. “You’d better start on, Bud, so as
+to noon at the Little Elm water-hole. Tell Barber we’ll have another
+lot of culls ready in about a month.”
+
+Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb’s. Webb saw
+apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration.
+
+“You deliver them cattle,” he said grimly, “to—”
+
+“Barber,” finished Santa sharply. “Let that settle it. Is there
+anything else you are waiting for, Bud?”
+
+“No, m’m,” said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow’s tail
+could have switched thrice; for man is man’s ally; and even the
+Philistines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they
+did.
+
+“You hear your boss!” cried Webb sardonically. He took off his hat, and
+bowed until it touched the floor before his wife.
+
+“Webb,” said Santa rebukingly, “you’re acting mighty foolish to-day.”
+
+“Court fool, your Majesty,” said Webb, in his slow tones, which had
+changed their quality. “What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I
+was a man before I married a cattle-queen. What am I now? The
+laughing-stock of the camps. I’ll be a man again.”
+
+Santa looked at him closely.
+
+“Don’t be unreasonable, Webb,” she said calmly. “You haven’t been
+slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the
+cattle? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do.
+I learned it from Dad. Be sensible.”
+
+“Kingdoms and queendoms,” said Webb, “don’t suit me unless I am in the
+pictures, too. I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. All right.
+I’d rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than the eight-spot in
+a queen-high flush. It’s your ranch; and Barber gets the beeves.”
+
+Webb’s horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and brought
+out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on long
+rides, and his “slicker,” and his longest stake-rope of plaited
+raw-hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a
+little pale, followed him.
+
+Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without
+expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.
+
+“There’s a herd of cows and calves,” said he, “near the Hondo
+water-hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos
+have killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You’d better
+tell Simms to attend to it.”
+
+Santa laid a hand on the horse’s bridle, and looked her husband in the
+eye.
+
+“Are you going to leave me, Webb?” she asked quietly.
+
+“I am going to be a man again,” he answered.
+
+“I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt,” she said, with a sudden
+coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house.
+
+Webb Yeager rode to the southeast as straight as the topography of West
+Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have ridden
+on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito went. And
+the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal squads;
+and the weeks, captained by the full moon, closed ranks into menstrual
+companies crying “Tempus fugit” on their banners; and the months
+marched on toward the vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb Yeager
+came no more to the dominions of his queen.
+
+One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheep-man—and therefore of little
+account—from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight of the
+Nopalito ranch-house, and felt hunger assail him. _Ex consuetudine_ he
+was soon seated at the mid-day dining table of that hospitable kingdom.
+Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten with
+Aaron’s rod—that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is vouchsafed
+him whose ears are not overgrown with wool.
+
+“Missis Yeager,” he babbled, “I see a man the other day on the Rancho
+Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name—Webb Yeager was his. He’d just
+been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not saying
+much. Perhaps he was some kin of yours, do you think?”
+
+“A husband,” said Santa cordially. “The Seco has done well. Mr. Yeager
+is one of the best stockmen in the West.”
+
+The dropping out of a prince-consort rarely disorganises a monarchy.
+Queen Santa had appointed as _mayordomo_ of the ranch a trusty subject,
+named Ramsay, who had been one of her father’s faithful vassals. And
+there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save when the
+gulf-breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide acres.
+
+For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an
+English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt
+upon the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory; and
+a pasture had been set aside for the blue-bloods. The fame of them had
+gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in saddles.
+Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new
+dissatisfaction upon the long-horns.
+
+As a consequence, one day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed
+nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three
+Mexican _vaqueros_, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the
+following business-like epistle to the queen thereof:
+
+Mrs. Yeager—The Nopalito Ranch:
+    Dear Madam:
+    I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100
+    head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by
+    you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the
+    bearer; and a check will be forwarded to you at once.
+
+
+Respectfully,
+Webster Yeager,
+Manager the Rancho Seco.
+
+
+Business is business, even—very scantily did it escape being written
+“especially”—in a kingdom.
+
+That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture and
+penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the morning.
+
+When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager throw
+herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping, and
+calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had kept
+from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter, in her business
+way, retaining her royal balance and strength?
+
+Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. But
+this much you shall learn:
+
+At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranch-house, clothed in
+something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak
+trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale
+orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the
+mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers
+scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped
+and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the
+southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none to
+see.
+
+Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and
+what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed red; and
+there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens
+his arrow-points.
+
+Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one hand,
+and a portable furnace, such as are seen in branding-camps, in the
+other. To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with
+these things swiftly in the moonlight.
+
+She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex cattle
+were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that was milky
+white—notable among the others.
+
+And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not seen
+before—a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in
+her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.
+
+The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one
+horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the
+animal fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it scrambled
+up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of grass.
+
+Again she made her cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the
+four sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the
+white cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made
+the lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple
+knot, and had leaped upon the cow again with the rawhide hobbles.
+
+In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking
+deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time,
+panting and lax.
+
+And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the
+branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot.
+
+The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, should
+have stirred the slumbering auricular nerves and consciences of the
+near-by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid the
+deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the
+ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed—sobbed as though
+queens had hearts as simple ranchmen’s wives have, and as though she
+would gladly make kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back again
+from over the hills and far away.
+
+In the morning the capable, revolvered youth and his _vaqueros_ set
+forth, driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the
+Rancho Seco. Ninety miles it was; a six days’ journey, grazing and
+watering the animals on the way.
+
+The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were
+received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.
+
+The next morning at eight o’clock a horseman loped out of the brush to
+the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with
+whizzing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed
+foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.
+
+But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel.
+To-day, in Nopalito horse-pasture he survives, pampered, beloved,
+unridden, cherished record-holder of long-distance rides.
+
+The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his neck,
+and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: “Webb— oh,
+Webb!”
+
+“I was a skunk,” said Webb Yeager.
+
+“Hush,” said Santa, “did you see it?”
+
+“I saw it,” said Webb.
+
+What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the
+primer of events.
+
+“Be the cattle-queen,” said Webb; “and overlook it if you can. I was a
+mangy, sheep-stealing coyote.”
+
+“Hush!” said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. “There’s
+no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of
+the Bedchamber. Come here.”
+
+She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. There
+stood a cradle with an infant in it—a red, ribald, unintelligible,
+babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner.
+
+“There’s no queen on this ranch,” said Santa again. “Look at the king.
+He’s got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at his Highness.”
+
+But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled
+there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few
+days, a year ago.
+
+“‘Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I drive
+’em to Barber’s, or—”
+
+He saw Webb and stopped, open-mouthed.
+
+“Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!” shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air
+with his fists.
+
+“You hear your boss, Bud,” said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin—just as
+he had said a year ago.
+
+And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho
+Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had
+bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager:
+
+“What’s the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?”
+
+“X Bar Y,” said Wilson.
+
+“I thought so,” said Quinn. “But look at that white heifer there; she’s
+got another brand—a heart with a cross inside of it. What brand is
+that?”
+
+
+
+
+II
+THE RANSOM OF MACK
+
+
+Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold
+mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say “old” Mack; but he wasn’t
+old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.
+
+“Andy,” he says to me, “I’m tired of hustling. You and me have been
+working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while,
+and spend some of this idle money we’ve coaxed our way.”
+
+“The proposition hits me just right,” says I. “Let’s be nabobs for a
+while and see how it feels. What’ll we do—take in the Niagara Falls, or
+buck at faro?”
+
+“For a good many years,” says Mack, “I’ve thought that if I ever had
+extravagant money I’d rent a two-room cabin somewhere, hire a Chinaman
+to cook, and sit in my stocking feet and read Buckle’s History of
+Civilisation.”
+
+“That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar ostentation,”
+says I; “and I don’t see how money could be better invested. Give me a
+cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner’s Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I’ll
+join you.”
+
+A week afterwards me and Mack hits this small town of Piña, about
+thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that
+just suits us. We deposited half-a-peck of money in the Piña bank and
+shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought
+along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor
+with us from Denver; and they made the cabin seem like home at once.
+
+Never believe it when they tell you riches don’t bring happiness. If
+you could have seen old Mack sitting in his rocking-chair with his
+blue-yarn sock feet up in the window and absorbing in that Buckle stuff
+through his specs you’d have seen a picture of content that would have
+made Rockefeller jealous. And I was learning to pick out “Old Zip Coon”
+on the banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his remarks, and Ah Sing
+was messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest smell of ham and eggs
+that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade. When it got too dark to
+make out Buckle’s nonsense and the notes in the Instructor, me and Mack
+would light our pipes and talk about science and pearl diving and
+sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish and trade-winds and leather
+and gratitude and eagles, and a lot of subjects that we’d never had
+time to explain our sentiments about before.
+
+One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the
+habits and policies of women folks.
+
+“Why, yes,” says I, in a tone of voice; “I know ’em from Alfred to
+Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude,” says I, “is as plain to my
+sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I’m onto all
+their little side-steps and punctual discrepancies.”
+
+“I tell you, Andy,” says Mack, with a kind of sigh, “I never had the
+least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might
+have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took the
+time. I made my own living since I was fourteen; and I never seemed to
+get my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually depicted
+toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had,” says old Mack.
+
+“They’re an adverse study,” says I, “and adapted to points of view.
+Although they vary in rationale, I have found ’em quite often obviously
+differing from each other in divergences of contrast.”
+
+“It seems to me,” goes on Mack, “that a man had better take ’em in and
+secure his inspirations of the sect when he’s young and so preordained.
+I let my chance go by; and I guess I’m too old now to go hopping into
+the curriculum.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” I tells him. “Maybe you better credit yourself with
+a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of
+uncontent. Still, I don’t regret my knowledge of ’em,” I says. “It
+takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks to
+take care of himself in this world.”
+
+We stayed on in Piña because we liked the place. Some folks might enjoy
+their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and Mack we
+had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were friendly;
+Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle were as
+thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial
+resemblance to “Buffalo Gals, Can’t You Come Out To-night,” on the
+banjo.
+
+One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a
+mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there; and
+I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Piña and enjoy life
+once more.
+
+When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the
+door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be
+smiling then.
+
+That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was
+the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and shiny
+shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big as an
+order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking and
+warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid with colic.
+
+“Hello, Andy,” says Mack, out of his face. “Glad to see you back.
+Things have happened since you went away.”
+
+“I know it,” says I, “and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made
+you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this
+presumptuous kind of ribaldry?”
+
+“Why, Andy,” says he, “they’ve elected me justice of the peace since
+you left.”
+
+I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the
+peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.
+
+Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of
+half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and
+bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.
+
+“No hope for you,” says I, “if you’ve got the Mary-Jane infirmity at
+your age. I thought it wasn’t going to take on you. And patent leather
+shoes! All this in two little short months!”
+
+“I’m going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night,” says
+Mack, in a kind of flutter.
+
+“I forgot something at the post-office,” says I, and walked away quick.
+
+I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and
+told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She
+blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from the
+“Two Orphans.”
+
+“I understand you are to be married to-night,” I said.
+
+“Correct,” says she. “You got any objections?”
+
+“Listen, sissy,” I begins.
+
+“My name is Miss Rebosa Redd,” says she in a pained way.
+
+“I know it,” says I. “Now, Rebosa, I’m old enough to have owed money to
+your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled, sea-sick
+ptomaine prancing about avidiously like an irremediable turkey gobbler
+with patent leather shoes on is my best friend. Why did you go and get
+him invested in this marriage business?”
+
+“Why, he was the only chance there was,” answers Miss Rebosa.
+
+“Nay,” says I, giving a sickening look of admiration at her complexion
+and style of features; “with your beauty you might pick any kind of a
+man. Listen, Rebosa. Old Mack ain’t the man you want. He was twenty-two
+when you was _née_ Reed, as the papers say. This bursting into bloom
+won’t last with him. He’s all ventilated with oldness and rectitude and
+decay. Old Mack’s down with a case of Indian summer. He overlooked his
+bet when he was young; and now he’s suing Nature for the interest on
+the promissory note he took from Cupid instead of the cash. Rebosa, are
+you bent on having this marriage occur?”
+
+“Why, sure I am,” says she, oscillating the pansies on her hat, “and so
+is somebody else, I reckon.”
+
+“What time is it to take place?” I asks.
+
+“At six o’clock,” says she.
+
+I made up my mind right away what to do. I’d save old Mack if I could.
+To have a good, seasoned, ineligible man like that turn chicken for a
+girl that hadn’t quit eating slate pencils and buttoning in the back
+was more than I could look on with easiness.
+
+“Rebosa,” says I, earnest, drawing upon my display of knowledge
+concerning the feminine intuitions of reason—“ain’t there a young man
+in Piña—a nice young man that you think a heap of?”
+
+“Yep,” says Rebosa, nodding her pansies—“Sure there is! What do you
+think! Gracious!”
+
+“Does he like you?” I asks. “How does he stand in the matter?”
+
+“Crazy,” says Rebosa. “Ma has to wet down the front steps to keep him
+from sitting there all the time. But I guess that’ll be all over after
+to-night,” she winds up with a sigh.
+
+“Rebosa,” says I, “you don’t really experience any of this adoration
+called love for old Mack, do you?”
+
+“Lord! no,” says the girl, shaking her head. “I think he’s as dry as a
+lava bed. The idea!”
+
+“Who is this young man that you like, Rebosa?” I inquires.
+
+“It’s Eddie Bayles,” says she. “He clerks in Crosby’s grocery. But he
+don’t make but thirty-five a month. Ella Noakes was wild about him
+once.”
+
+“Old Mack tells me,” I says, “that he’s going to marry you at six
+o’clock this evening.”
+
+“That’s the time,” says she. “It’s to be at our house.”
+
+“Rebosa,” says I, “listen to me. If Eddie Bayles had a thousand dollars
+cash—a thousand dollars, mind you, would buy him a store of his own—if
+you and Eddie had that much to excuse matrimony on, would you consent
+to marry him this evening at five o’clock?”
+
+The girl looks at me a minute; and I can see these inaudible
+cogitations going on inside of her, as women will.
+
+“A thousand dollars?” says she. “Of course I would.”
+
+“Come on,” says I. “We’ll go and see Eddie.”
+
+We went up to Crosby’s store and called Eddie outside. He looked to be
+estimable and freckled; and he had chills and fever when I made my
+proposition.
+
+“At five o’clock?” says he, “for a thousand dollars? Please don’t wake
+me up! Well, you _are_ the rich uncle retired from the spice business
+in India! I’ll buy out old Crosby and run the store myself.”
+
+We went inside and got old man Crosby apart and explained it. I wrote
+my check for a thousand dollars and handed it to him. If Eddie and
+Rebosa married each other at five he was to turn the money over to
+them.
+
+And then I gave ’em my blessing, and went to wander in the wildwood for
+a season. I sat on a log and made cogitations on life and old age and
+the zodiac and the ways of women and all the disorder that goes with a
+lifetime. I passed myself congratulations that I had probably saved my
+old friend Mack from his attack of Indian summer. I knew when he got
+well of it and shed his infatuation and his patent leather shoes, he
+would feel grateful. “To keep old Mack disinvolved,” thinks I, “from
+relapses like this, is worth more than a thousand dollars.” And most of
+all I was glad that I’d made a study of women, and wasn’t to be
+deceived any by their means of conceit and evolution.
+
+It must have been half-past five when I got back home. I stepped in;
+and there sat old Mack on the back of his neck in his old clothes with
+his blue socks on the window and the History of Civilisation propped up
+on his knees.
+
+“This don’t look like getting ready for a wedding at six,” I says, to
+seem innocent.
+
+“Oh,” says Mack, reaching for his tobacco, “that was postponed back to
+five o’clock. They sent me over a note saying the hour had been
+changed. It’s all over now. What made you stay away so long, Andy?”
+
+“You heard about the wedding?” I asks.
+
+“I operated it,” says he. “I told you I was justice of the peace. The
+preacher is off East to visit his folks, and I’m the only one in town
+that can perform the dispensations of marriage. I promised Eddie and
+Rebosa a month ago I’d marry ’em. He’s a busy lad; and he’ll have a
+grocery of his own some day.”
+
+“He will,” says I.
+
+“There was lots of women at the wedding,” says Mack, smoking up. “But I
+didn’t seem to get any ideas from ’em. I wish I was informed in the
+structure of their attainments like you said you was.”
+
+“That was two months ago,” says I, reaching up for the banjo.
+
+
+
+
+III
+TELEMACHUS, FRIEND
+
+
+Returning from a hunting trip, I waited at the little town of Los
+Piños, in New Mexico, for the south-bound train, which was one hour
+late. I sat on the porch of the Summit House and discussed the
+functions of life with Telemachus Hicks, the hotel proprietor.
+
+Perceiving that personalities were not out of order, I asked him what
+species of beast had long ago twisted and mutilated his left ear. Being
+a hunter, I was concerned in the evils that may befall one in the
+pursuit of game.
+
+“That ear,” says Hicks, “is the relic of true friendship.”
+
+“An accident?” I persisted.
+
+“No friendship is an accident,” said Telemachus; and I was silent.
+
+“The only perfect case of true friendship I ever knew,” went on my
+host, “was a cordial intent between a Connecticut man and a monkey. The
+monkey climbed palms in Barranquilla and threw down cocoanuts to the
+man. The man sawed them in two and made dippers, which he sold for two
+_reales_ each and bought rum. The monkey drank the milk of the nuts.
+Through each being satisfied with his own share of the graft, they
+lived like brothers.
+
+“But in the case of human beings, friendship is a transitory art,
+subject to discontinuance without further notice.
+
+“I had a friend once, of the entitlement of Paisley Fish, that I
+imagined was sealed to me for an endless space of time. Side by side
+for seven years we had mined, ranched, sold patent churns, herded
+sheep, took photographs and other things, built wire fences, and picked
+prunes. Thinks I, neither homocide nor flattery nor riches nor
+sophistry nor drink can make trouble between me and Paisley Fish. We
+was friends an amount you could hardly guess at. We was friends in
+business, and we let our amicable qualities lap over and season our
+hours of recreation and folly. We certainly had days of Damon and
+nights of Pythias.
+
+“One summer me and Paisley gallops down into these San Andrés mountains
+for the purpose of a month’s surcease and levity, dressed in the
+natural store habiliments of man. We hit this town of Los Piños, which
+certainly was a roof-garden spot of the world, and flowing with
+condensed milk and honey. It had a street or two, and air, and hens,
+and a eating-house; and that was enough for us.
+
+“We strikes the town after supper-time, and we concludes to sample
+whatever efficacy there is in this eating-house down by the railroad
+tracks. By the time we had set down and pried up our plates with a
+knife from the red oil-cloth, along intrudes Widow Jessup with the hot
+biscuit and the fried liver.
+
+“Now, there was a woman that would have tempted an anchovy to forget
+his vows. She was not so small as she was large; and a kind of welcome
+air seemed to mitigate her vicinity. The pink of her face was the _in
+hoc signo_ of a culinary temper and a warm disposition, and her smile
+would have brought out the dogwood blossoms in December.
+
+“Widow Jessup talks to us a lot of garrulousness about the climate and
+history and Tennyson and prunes and the scarcity of mutton, and finally
+wants to know where we came from.
+
+“‘Spring Valley,’ says I.
+
+“‘Big Spring Valley,’ chips in Paisley, out of a lot of potatoes and
+knuckle-bone of ham in his mouth.
+
+“That was the first sign I noticed that the old _fidus Diogenes_
+business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I
+hated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation
+with his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big
+Spring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a
+thousand times.
+
+“Without saying any more, we went out after supper and set on the
+railroad track. We had been pardners too long not to know what was
+going on in each other’s mind.
+
+“‘I reckon you understand,’ says Paisley, ‘that I’ve made up my mind to
+accrue that widow woman as part and parcel in and to my hereditaments
+forever, both domestic, sociable, legal, and otherwise, until death us
+do part.’
+
+“‘Why, yes,’ says I, ‘I read it between the lines, though you only
+spoke one. And I suppose you are aware,’ says I, ‘that I have a
+movement on foot that leads up to the widow’s changing her name to
+Hicks, and leaves you writing to the society column to inquire whether
+the best man wears a japonica or seamless socks at the wedding!’
+
+“‘There’ll be some hiatuses in your program,’ says Paisley, chewing up
+a piece of a railroad tie. ‘I’d give in to you,’ says he, ‘in ’most any
+respect if it was secular affairs, but this is not so. The smiles of
+woman,’ goes on Paisley, ‘is the whirlpool of Squills and Chalybeates,
+into which vortex the good ship Friendship is often drawn and
+dismembered. I’d assault a bear that was annoying you,’ says Paisley,
+‘or I’d endorse your note, or rub the place between your
+shoulder-blades with opodeldoc the same as ever; but there my sense of
+etiquette ceases. In this fracas with Mrs. Jessup we play it alone.
+I’ve notified you fair.’
+
+“And then I collaborates with myself, and offers the following
+resolutions and by-laws:
+
+“‘Friendship between man and man,’ says I, ‘is an ancient historical
+virtue enacted in the days when men had to protect each other against
+lizards with eighty-foot tails and flying turtles. And they’ve kept up
+the habit to this day, and stand by each other till the bellboy comes
+up and tells them the animals are not really there. I’ve often heard,’
+I says, ‘about ladies stepping in and breaking up a friendship between
+men. Why should that be? I’ll tell you, Paisley, the first sight and
+hot biscuit of Mrs. Jessup appears to have inserted a oscillation into
+each of our bosoms. Let the best man of us have her. I’ll play you a
+square game, and won’t do any underhanded work. I’ll do all of my
+courting of her in your presence, so you will have an equal
+opportunity. With that arrangement I don’t see why our steamboat of
+friendship should fall overboard in the medicinal whirlpools you speak
+of, whichever of us wins out.’
+
+“‘Good old hoss!’ says Paisley, shaking my hand. ‘And I’ll do the
+same,’ says he. ‘We’ll court the lady synonymously, and without any of
+the prudery and bloodshed usual to such occasions. And we’ll be friends
+still, win or lose.’
+
+“At one side of Mrs. Jessup’s eating-house was a bench under some trees
+where she used to sit in the breeze after the south-bound had been fed
+and gone. And there me and Paisley used to congregate after supper and
+make partial payments on our respects to the lady of our choice. And we
+was so honorable and circuitous in our calls that if one of us got
+there first we waited for the other before beginning any gallivantery.
+
+“The first evening that Mrs. Jessup knew about our arrangement I got to
+the bench before Paisley did. Supper was just over, and Mrs. Jessup was
+out there with a fresh pink dress on, and almost cool enough to handle.
+
+“I sat down by her and made a few specifications about the moral
+surface of nature as set forth by the landscape and the contiguous
+perspective. That evening was surely a case in point. The moon was
+attending to business in the section of sky where it belonged, and the
+trees was making shadows on the ground according to science and nature,
+and there was a kind of conspicuous hullabaloo going on in the bushes
+between the bullbats and the orioles and the jack-rabbits and other
+feathered insects of the forest. And the wind out of the mountains was
+singing like a Jew’s-harp in the pile of old tomato-cans by the
+railroad track.
+
+“I felt a kind of sensation in my left side—something like dough rising
+in a crock by the fire. Mrs. Jessup had moved up closer.
+
+“‘Oh, Mr. Hicks,’ says she, ‘when one is alone in the world, don’t they
+feel it more aggravated on a beautiful night like this?’
+
+“I rose up off the bench at once.
+
+“‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ says I, ‘but I’ll have to wait till Paisley comes
+before I can give a audible hearing to leading questions like that.’
+
+“And then I explained to her how we was friends cinctured by years of
+embarrassment and travel and complicity, and how we had agreed to take
+no advantage of each other in any of the more mushy walks of life, such
+as might be fomented by sentiment and proximity. Mrs. Jessup appears to
+think serious about the matter for a minute, and then she breaks into a
+species of laughter that makes the wildwood resound.
+
+“In a few minutes Paisley drops around, with oil of bergamot on his
+hair, and sits on the other side of Mrs. Jessup, and inaugurates a sad
+tale of adventure in which him and Pieface Lumley has a skinning-match
+of dead cows in ’95 for a silver-mounted saddle in the Santa Rita
+valley during the nine months’ drought.
+
+“Now, from the start of that courtship I had Paisley Fish hobbled and
+tied to a post. Each one of us had a different system of reaching out
+for the easy places in the female heart. Paisley’s scheme was to
+petrify ’em with wonderful relations of events that he had either come
+across personally or in large print. I think he must have got his idea
+of subjugation from one of Shakespeare’s shows I see once called
+‘Othello.’ There is a coloured man in it who acquires a duke’s daughter
+by disbursing to her a mixture of the talk turned out by Rider Haggard,
+Lew Dockstader, and Dr. Parkhurst. But that style of courting don’t
+work well off the stage.
+
+“Now, I give you my own recipe for inveigling a woman into that state
+of affairs when she can be referred to as ‘_née_ Jones.’ Learn how to
+pick up her hand and hold it, and she’s yours. It ain’t so easy. Some
+men grab at it so much like they was going to set a dislocation of the
+shoulder that you can smell the arnica and hear ’em tearing off
+bandages. Some take it up like a hot horseshoe, and hold it off at
+arm’s length like a druggist pouring tincture of asafœtida in a bottle.
+And most of ’em catch hold of it and drag it right out before the
+lady’s eyes like a boy finding a baseball in the grass, without giving
+her a chance to forget that the hand is growing on the end of her arm.
+Them ways are all wrong.
+
+“I’ll tell you the right way. Did you ever see a man sneak out in the
+back yard and pick up a rock to throw at a tomcat that was sitting on a
+fence looking at him? He pretends he hasn’t got a thing in his hand,
+and that the cat don’t see him, and that he don’t see the cat. That’s
+the idea. Never drag her hand out where she’ll have to take notice of
+it. Don’t let her know that you think she knows you have the least idea
+she is aware you are holding her hand. That was my rule of tactics; and
+as far as Paisley’s serenade about hostilities and misadventure went,
+he might as well have been reading to her a time-table of the Sunday
+trains that stop at Ocean Grove, New Jersey.
+
+“One night when I beat Paisley to the bench by one pipeful, my
+friendship gets subsidised for a minute, and I asks Mrs. Jessup if she
+didn’t think a ‘H’ was easier to write than a ‘J.’ In a second her head
+was mashing the oleander flower in my button-hole, and I leaned over
+and—but I didn’t.
+
+“‘If you don’t mind,’ says I, standing up, ‘we’ll wait for Paisley to
+come before finishing this. I’ve never done anything dishonourable yet
+to our friendship, and this won’t be quite fair.’
+
+“‘Mr. Hicks,’ says Mrs. Jessup, looking at me peculiar in the dark, ‘if
+it wasn’t for but one thing, I’d ask you to hike yourself down the
+gulch and never disresume your visits to my house.’
+
+“‘And what is that, ma’am?’ I asks.
+
+“‘You are too good a friend not to make a good husband,’ says she.
+
+“In five minutes Paisley was on his side of Mrs. Jessup.
+
+“‘In Silver City, in the summer of ’98,’ he begins, ‘I see Jim
+Batholomew chew off a Chinaman’s ear in the Blue Light Saloon on
+account of a crossbarred muslin shirt that—what was that noise?’
+
+“I had resumed matters again with Mrs. Jessup right where we had left
+off.
+
+“‘Mrs. Jessup,’ says I, ‘has promised to make it Hicks. And this is
+another of the same sort.’
+
+“Paisley winds his feet round a leg of the bench and kind of groans.
+
+“‘Lem,’ says he, ‘we been friends for seven years. Would you mind not
+kissing Mrs. Jessup quite so loud? I’d do the same for you.’
+
+“‘All right,’ says I. ‘The other kind will do as well.’
+
+“‘This Chinaman,’ goes on Paisley, ‘was the one that shot a man named
+Mullins in the spring of ’97, and that was—’
+
+“Paisley interrupted himself again.
+
+“‘Lem,’ says he, ‘if you was a true friend you wouldn’t hug Mrs. Jessup
+quite so hard. I felt the bench shake all over just then. You know you
+told me you would give me an even chance as long as there was any.’
+
+“‘Mr. Man,’ says Mrs. Jessup, turning around to Paisley, ‘if you was to
+drop in to the celebration of mine and Mr. Hicks’s silver wedding,
+twenty-five years from now, do you think you could get it into that
+Hubbard squash you call your head that you are _nix cum rous_ in this
+business? I’ve put up with you a long time because you was Mr. Hicks’s
+friend; but it seems to me it’s time for you to wear the willow and
+trot off down the hill.’
+
+“‘Mrs. Jessup,’ says I, without losing my grasp on the situation as
+fiancé, ‘Mr. Paisley is my friend, and I offered him a square deal and
+a equal opportunity as long as there was a chance.’
+
+“‘A chance!’ says she. ‘Well, he may think he has a chance; but I hope
+he won’t think he’s got a cinch, after what he’s been next to all the
+evening.’
+
+“Well, a month afterwards me and Mrs. Jessup was married in the Los
+Piños Methodist Church; and the whole town closed up to see the
+performance.
+
+“When we lined up in front and the preacher was beginning to sing out
+his rituals and observances, I looks around and misses Paisley. I calls
+time on the preacher. ‘Paisley ain’t here,’ says I. ‘We’ve got to wait
+for Paisley. A friend once, a friend always—that’s Telemachus Hicks,’
+says I. Mrs. Jessup’s eyes snapped some; but the preacher holds up the
+incantations according to instructions.
+
+“In a few minutes Paisley gallops up the aisle, putting on a cuff as he
+comes. He explains that the only dry-goods store in town was closed for
+the wedding, and he couldn’t get the kind of a boiled shirt that his
+taste called for until he had broke open the back window of the store
+and helped himself. Then he ranges up on the other side of the bride,
+and the wedding goes on. I always imagined that Paisley calculated as a
+last chance that the preacher might marry him to the widow by mistake.
+
+“After the proceedings was over we had tea and jerked antelope and
+canned apricots, and then the populace hiked itself away. Last of all
+Paisley shook me by the hand and told me I’d acted square and on the
+level with him and he was proud to call me a friend.
+
+“The preacher had a small house on the side of the street that he’d
+fixed up to rent; and he allowed me and Mrs. Hicks to occupy it till
+the ten-forty train the next morning, when we was going on a bridal
+tour to El Paso. His wife had decorated it all up with hollyhocks and
+poison ivy, and it looked real festal and bowery.
+
+“About ten o’clock that night I sets down in the front door and pulls
+off my boots a while in the cool breeze, while Mrs. Hicks was fixing
+around in the room. Right soon the light went out inside; and I sat
+there a while reverberating over old times and scenes. And then I heard
+Mrs. Hicks call out, ‘Ain’t you coming in soon, Lem?’
+
+“‘Well, well!’ says I, kind of rousing up. ‘Durn me if I wasn’t waiting
+for old Paisley to—’
+
+“But when I got that far,” concluded Telemachus Hicks, “I thought
+somebody had shot this left ear of mine off with a forty-five. But it
+turned out to be only a lick from a broomhandle in the hands of Mrs.
+Hicks.”
+
+
+
+
+IV
+THE HANDBOOK OF HYMEN
+
+
+’Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that
+the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of
+the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t
+tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the
+meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they
+could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the
+main office what kind of weather to expect. But there’s the other side
+of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished
+me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.
+
+We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line
+prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a
+line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in
+the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army
+through a peace conference.
+
+Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and
+stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of
+modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather,
+and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck
+was “warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes.”
+
+That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and
+Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain,
+thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on
+a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We
+got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough
+for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought
+proper.
+
+If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up
+in a eighteen by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won’t
+stand it.
+
+When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each
+other’s jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and
+called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a
+edict to me. Says he:
+
+“I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the
+bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears
+compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates
+out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half-masticated noises
+that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow’s cud, only she’s lady
+enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain’t.”
+
+“Mr. Green,” says I, “you having been a friend of mine once, I have
+some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for
+society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of
+the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at
+present.”
+
+This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking
+to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks
+his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is
+up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.
+
+You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing
+“if John had three apples and James five” on a slate. We never felt any
+special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species
+of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could
+use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots,
+we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and
+fractions and the higher branches of information, we’d have had some
+resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I’ve seen them
+Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the West, and I
+never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to ’em than you
+would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams’
+saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of
+these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died.
+
+One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little
+shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I
+started toward ’em, but caught Idaho’s eye. He speaks for the first
+time in a week.
+
+“Don’t burn your fingers,” says he. “In spite of the fact that you’re
+only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I’ll give you a
+square deal. And that’s more than your parents did when they turned you
+loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the
+bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I’ll play you a game of seven-up,
+the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the
+other.”
+
+We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then
+each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.
+
+I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And
+Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.
+
+Mine was a little book about five by six inches called “Herkimer’s
+Handbook of Indispensable Information.” I may be wrong, but I think
+that was the greatest book that ever was written. I’ve got it to-day;
+and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the
+information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York _Tribune!_
+Herkimer had cases on both of ’em. That man must have put in fifty
+years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There
+was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl’s
+age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest
+tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for
+chicken pox to break out, what a lady’s neck ought to measure, the veto
+powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds
+of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average annual
+temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant
+an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of
+hairs on a blond lady’s head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all
+the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles, and
+how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of tacks
+in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to
+do before the doctor comes—and a hundred times as many things besides.
+If there was anything Herkimer didn’t know I didn’t miss it out of the
+book.
+
+I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education
+was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old
+Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away
+with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through
+his tan-bark whiskers.
+
+“Idaho,” says I, “what kind of a book is yours?”
+
+Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any
+slander or malignity.
+
+“Why,” says he, “this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M.”
+
+“Homer K. M. what?” I asks.
+
+“Why, just Homer K. M.,” says he.
+
+“You’re a liar,” says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me
+up a tree. “No man is going ’round signing books with his initials. If
+it’s Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M.
+Jones, why don’t you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of
+it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes-line?”
+
+“I put it to you straight, Sandy,” says Idaho, quiet. “It’s a poem
+book,” says he, “by Homer K. M. I couldn’t get colour out of it at
+first, but there’s a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn’t have missed
+this book for a pair of red blankets.”
+
+“You’re welcome to it,” says I. “What I want is a disinterested
+statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that’s what I seem to
+find in the book I’ve drawn.”
+
+“What you’ve got,” says Idaho, “is statistics, the lowest grade of
+information that exists. They’ll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.’s
+system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular
+toast is ‘nothing doing,’ and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps
+it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an
+invitation to split a quart. But it’s poetry,” says Idaho, “and I have
+sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense
+in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of
+philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat
+by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual
+rainfall.”
+
+So that’s the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement
+we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine
+lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had
+stepped up to me suddenly and said: “Sanderson Pratt, what would it
+cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-eight tin at
+nine dollars and fifty cents per box?” I’d have told you as quick as
+light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one
+hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it?
+You wake up ’most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask
+him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton
+exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska
+Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.
+
+About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn’t exactly
+know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but
+I wasn’t so sure.
+
+This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho,
+seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin
+can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits
+down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says:
+
+“Oh, well, since we can’t shake the growler, let’s get it filled at the
+corner, and all have a drink on me.”
+
+Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia
+producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and
+Maltese cats.
+
+That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell
+out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight
+thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town
+of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and
+have our whiskers harvested.
+
+Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of
+uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There
+was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me
+and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at
+nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as
+travelled, we was soon _pro re nata_ with the best society in Rosa, and
+was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments.
+It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in the city hall,
+for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs.
+De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.
+
+Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town.
+It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see
+it as plain as egg on the chin of an O’Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two
+men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that
+yellow house.
+
+There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked
+out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs.
+Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked
+permission to escort her home. That’s where I made a hit.
+
+On the way home says she:
+
+“Ain’t the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?”
+
+“For the chance they’ve got,” says I, “they’re humping themselves in a
+mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles
+distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an
+eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of ’em,
+including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out
+now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years.”
+
+“My!” says Mrs. Sampson. “I never knew that before. How warm it is! I’m
+as damp as I can be from dancing so much.”
+
+“That’s easy to account for,” says I, “when you happen to know that
+you’ve got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one
+of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was
+placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles.”
+
+“Lawsy!” says Mrs. Sampson. “It sounds like an irrigation ditch you was
+describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of
+information?”
+
+“From observation, Mrs. Sampson,” I tells her. “I keep my eyes open
+when I go about the world.”
+
+“Mr. Pratt,” says she, “I always did admire a man of education. There
+are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that
+it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I’d be
+gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined.”
+
+And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow
+house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her
+about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and
+compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of
+the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.
+
+I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with old
+K. M.’s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way over
+to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down the
+lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her hat made a
+dangerous dip over one eye.
+
+“Mr. Pratt,” she opens up, “this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I
+believe.”
+
+“For nine years,” says I.
+
+“Cut him out,” says she. “He’s no gentleman!”
+
+“Why ma’am,” says I, “he’s a plain incumbent of the mountains, with
+asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I
+never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was
+a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance
+and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma’am, I’ve found him
+impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years
+of Idaho’s society, Mrs. Sampson,” I winds up, “I should hate to impute
+him, and I should hate to see him imputed.”
+
+“It’s right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. Sampson, “to take
+up the curmudgeons in your friend’s behalf; but it don’t alter the fact
+that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the
+ignominy of any lady.”
+
+“Why, now, now, now!” says I. “Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of
+myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a
+blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the
+mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry,
+which may have corrupted his demeanour.”
+
+“It has,” says Mrs. Sampson. “Ever since I knew him he has been
+reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby
+Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her
+poetry.”
+
+“Then Idaho has struck a new book,” says I, “for the one he had was by
+a man who writes under the _nom de plume_ of K. M.”
+
+“He’d better have stuck to it,” says Mrs. Sampson, “whatever it was.
+And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and
+on ’em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see
+her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a
+moment that I’d skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of
+wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down
+under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I’m
+not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain
+in any such style as that. And of course he’d bring his book of verses
+along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or
+let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn’t kick unless
+it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you
+think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?”
+
+“Well, ’m,” says I, “it may be that Idaho’s invitation was a kind of
+poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes
+they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent
+through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they
+don’t say. I’d be glad on Idaho’s account if you’d overlook it,” says
+I, “and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to
+the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like
+this, Mrs. Sampson,” I goes on, “we should let our thoughts dwell
+accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the
+equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen
+thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine
+degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. Sampson, “it’s such a comfort to hear you
+say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a
+Ruby’s poetry!”
+
+“Let us sit on this log at the roadside,” says I, “and forget the
+inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of
+ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found. In
+this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson,” says I, “is statistics more
+wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the
+depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand
+years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near
+Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight
+inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it
+above the wound. A man’s leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London
+was burned in 1841.”
+
+“Go on, Mr. Pratt,” says Mrs. Sampson. “Them ideas is so original and
+soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be.”
+
+But it wasn’t till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me
+out of Herkimer.
+
+One night I was waked up by folks hollering “Fire!” all around. I
+jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene.
+When I see it was Mrs. Sampson’s house, I gave forth a kind of yell,
+and I was there in two minutes.
+
+The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every
+masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and
+barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to
+get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him
+the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and
+come out alive.
+
+“Where’s Mrs. Sampson?” I asks.
+
+“She hasn’t been seen,” says one of the firemen. “She sleeps up-stairs.
+We’ve tried to get in, but we can’t, and our company hasn’t got any
+ladders yet.”
+
+I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out
+of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands —I
+reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.
+
+“Herky, old boy,” I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, “you ain’t
+ever lied to me yet, and you ain’t ever throwed me down at a scratch
+yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!” says I.
+
+I turned to “What to do in Case of Accidents,” on page 117. I run my
+finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never
+overlooked anything! It said:
+
+Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.—There is nothing better than
+flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.
+
+
+I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was
+running by.
+
+“Here,” says I, giving him some money, “run to the drug store and bring
+a dollar’s worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you’ll get another one for
+yourself. Now,” I sings out to the crowd, “we’ll have Mrs. Sampson!”
+And I throws away my coat and hat.
+
+Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It’s sure death,
+they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall
+through.
+
+“How in blazes,” I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling
+like it, “do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?”
+
+I jabbed each elbow in a fireman’s face, kicked the bark off of one
+citizen’s shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I
+busted into the house. If I die first I’ll write you a letter and tell
+you if it’s any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house
+was; but don’t believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the
+hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The
+fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame
+Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water,
+and I got to Mrs. Sampson’s room. She’d lost conscientiousness from the
+smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder.
+Well, the floors wasn’t as bad as they said, or I never could have done
+it—not by no means.
+
+I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass.
+Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff’s to the
+lady’s hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her.
+And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.
+
+I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson’s head. She opened her eyes
+and says:
+
+“Is that you, Mr. Pratt?”
+
+“S-s-sh,” says I. “Don’t talk till you’ve had the remedy.”
+
+I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks
+the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends
+over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her
+eye.
+
+Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs
+at Mrs. Sampson’s pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such
+sandblasted nonsense.
+
+“Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed,” says I, “I’m no regular
+practitioner, but I’ll show you my authority, anyway.”
+
+They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.
+
+“Look on page 117,” says I, “at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or
+gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don’t know
+whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound
+gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was
+called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation,
+there’s no objection.”
+
+Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a
+fireman’s lantern.
+
+“Well, Mr. Pratt,” says he, “you evidently got on the wrong line in
+reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: ‘Get the
+patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining
+position.’ The flaxseed remedy is for ‘Dust and Cinders in the Eye,’ on
+the line above. But, after all—”
+
+“See here,” interrupts Mrs. Sampson, “I reckon I’ve got something to
+say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything
+I ever tried.” And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my
+arm again, and says: “Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear.”
+
+And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day,
+you’d see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs.
+Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside
+you’d see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour “Herkimer’s
+Handbook of Indispensable Information,” all rebound in red morocco, and
+ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and
+wisdom.
+
+
+
+
+V
+THE PIMIENTA PANCAKES
+
+
+While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio
+bottoms a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup
+and gave my ankle a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week.
+
+On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub
+wagon, and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson
+Odom, the camp cook. Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with
+customary blundering, had set in a profession wherein he was bereaved,
+for the greater portion of his time, of an audience.
+
+Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud’s obmutescence.
+
+Betimes I was stirred by invalid longings for something to eat that did
+not come under the caption of “grub.” I had visions of the maternal
+pantry “deep as first love, and wild with all regret,” and then I
+asked:
+
+“Jud, can you make pancakes?”
+
+Jud laid down his six-shooter, with which he was preparing to pound an
+antelope steak, and stood over me in what I felt to be a menacing
+attitude. He further endorsed my impression that his pose was resentful
+by fixing upon me with his light blue eyes a look of cold suspicion.
+
+“Say, you,” he said, with candid, though not excessive, choler, “did
+you mean that straight, or was you trying to throw the gaff into me?
+Some of the boys been telling you about me and that pancake racket?”
+
+“No, Jud,” I said, sincerely, “I meant it. It seems to me I’d swap my
+pony and saddle for a stack of buttered brown pancakes with some first
+crop, open kettle, New Orleans sweetening. Was there a story about
+pancakes?”
+
+Jud was mollified at once when he saw that I had not been dealing in
+allusions. He brought some mysterious bags and tin boxes from the grub
+wagon and set them in the shade of the hackberry where I lay reclined.
+I watched him as he began to arrange them leisurely and untie their
+many strings.
+
+“No, not a story,” said Jud, as he worked, “but just the logical
+disclosures in the case of me and that pink-eyed snoozer from Mired
+Mule Canada and Miss Willella Learight. I don’t mind telling you.
+
+“I was punching then for old Bill Toomey, on the San Miguel. One day I
+gets all ensnared up in aspirations for to eat some canned grub that
+hasn’t ever mooed or baaed or grunted or been in peck measures. So, I
+gets on my bronc and pushes the wind for Uncle Emsley Telfair’s store
+at the Pimienta Crossing on the Nueces.
+
+“About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle rein over a mesquite
+limb and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle Emsley’s store. I got
+up on the counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to the
+devastation of the fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of
+crackers and a long-handled spoon, with an open can each of apricots
+and pineapples and cherries and greengages beside of me with Uncle
+Emsley busy chopping away with the hatchet at the yellow clings. I was
+feeling like Adam before the apple stampede, and was digging my spurs
+into the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch spoon
+when I happened to look out of the window into the yard of Uncle
+Emsley’s house, which was next to the store.
+
+“There was a girl standing there—an imported girl with fixings on—
+philandering with a croquet maul and amusing herself by watching my
+style of encouraging the fruit canning industry.
+
+“I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley.
+
+“‘That’s my niece,’ says he; ‘Miss Willella Learight, down from
+Palestine on a visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?’
+
+“‘The Holy Land,’ I says to myself, my thoughts milling some as I tried
+to run ’em into the corral. ‘Why not? There was sure angels in
+Pales—Why, yes, Uncle Emsley,’ I says out loud, ‘I’d be awful edified
+to meet Miss Learight.’
+
+“So Uncle Emsley took me out in the yard and gave us each other’s
+entitlements.
+
+“I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some men who
+can break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get all
+left-handed and full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bold
+of calico draped around what belongs to it. Inside of eight minutes me
+and Miss Willella was aggravating the croquet balls around as amiable
+as second cousins. She gave me a dig about the quantity of canned fruit
+I had eaten, and I got back at her, flat-footed, about how a certain
+lady named Eve started the fruit trouble in the first free-grass
+pasture—‘Over in Palestine, wasn’t it?’ says I, as easy and pat as
+roping a one-year-old.
+
+“That was how I acquired cordiality for the proximities of Miss
+Willella Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time passed. She
+was stopping at Pimienta Crossing for her health, which was very good,
+and for the climate, which was forty per cent. hotter than Palestine. I
+rode over to see her once every week for a while; and then I figured it
+out that if I doubled the number of trips I would see her twice as
+often.
+
+“One week I slipped in a third trip; and that’s where the pancakes and
+the pink-eyed snoozer busted into the game.
+
+“That evening, while I set on the counter with a peach and two damsons
+in my mouth, I asked Uncle Emsley how Miss Willella was.
+
+“‘Why,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘she’s gone riding with Jackson Bird, the
+sheep man from over at Mired Mule Canada.’
+
+“I swallowed the peach seed and the two damson seeds. I guess somebody
+held the counter by the bridle while I got off; and then I walked out
+straight ahead till I butted against the mesquite where my roan was
+tied.
+
+“‘She’s gone riding,’ I whisper in my bronc’s ear, ‘with Birdstone
+Jack, the hired mule from Sheep Man’s Canada. Did you get that, old
+Leather-and-Gallops?’
+
+“That bronc of mine wept, in his way. He’d been raised a cow pony and
+he didn’t care for snoozers.
+
+“I went back and said to Uncle Emsley: ‘Did you say a sheep man?’
+
+“‘I said a sheep man,’ says Uncle Emsley again. ‘You must have heard
+tell of Jackson Bird. He’s got eight sections of grazing and four
+thousand head of the finest Merinos south of the Arctic Circle.’
+
+“I went out and sat on the ground in the shade of the store and leaned
+against a prickly pear. I sifted sand into my boots with unthinking
+hands while I soliloquised a quantity about this bird with the Jackson
+plumage to his name.
+
+“I never had believed in harming sheep men. I see one, one day, reading
+a Latin grammar on hossback, and I never touched him! They never
+irritated me like they do most cowmen. You wouldn’t go to work now, and
+impair and disfigure snoozers, would you, that eat on tables and wear
+little shoes and speak to you on subjects? I had always let ’em pass,
+just as you would a jack-rabbit; with a polite word and a guess about
+the weather, but no stopping to swap canteens. I never thought it was
+worth while to be hostile with a snoozer. And because I’d been lenient,
+and let ’em live, here was one going around riding with Miss Willella
+Learight!
+
+“An hour by sun they come loping back, and stopped at Uncle Emsley’s
+gate. The sheep person helped her off; and they stood throwing each
+other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while. And then this
+feathered Jackson flies up in his saddle and raises his little stewpot
+of a hat, and trots off in the direction of his mutton ranch. By this
+time I had turned the sand out of my boots and unpinned myself from the
+prickly pear; and by the time he gets half a mile out of Pimienta, I
+singlefoots up beside him on my bronc.
+
+“I said that snoozer was pink-eyed, but he wasn’t. His seeing
+arrangement was grey enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair
+was sandy, and that gave you the idea. Sheep man?—he wasn’t more than a
+lamb man, anyhow—a little thing with his neck involved in a yellow silk
+handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.
+
+“‘Afternoon!’ says I to him. ‘You now ride with a equestrian who is
+commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I
+shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself
+before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.’
+
+“‘Ah,’ says he, just like that—‘Ah, I’m glad to know you, Mr. Judson.
+I’m Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.’
+
+“Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with
+a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk
+sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the
+other with my forty-five, just to show him. ‘Two out of three,’ says I.
+‘Birds just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go.’
+
+“‘Nice shooting,’ says the sheep man, without a flutter. ‘But don’t you
+sometimes ever miss the third shot? Elegant fine rain that was last
+week for the young grass, Mr. Judson?’ says he.
+
+“‘Willie,’ says I, riding over close to his palfrey, ‘your infatuated
+parents may have denounced you by the name of Jackson, but you sure
+moulted into a twittering Willie—let us slough off this here analysis
+of rain and the elements, and get down to talk that is outside the
+vocabulary of parrots. That is a bad habit you have got of riding with
+young ladies over at Pimienta. I’ve known birds,’ says I, ‘to be served
+on toast for less than that. Miss Willella,’ says I, ‘don’t ever want
+any nest made out of sheep’s wool by a tomtit of the Jacksonian branch
+of ornithology. Now, are you going to quit, or do you wish for to
+gallop up against this Dead-Moral-Certainty attachment to my name,
+which is good for two hyphens and at least one set of funeral
+obsequies?’
+
+“Jackson Bird flushed up some, and then he laughed.
+
+“‘Why, Mr. Judson,’ says he, ‘you’ve got the wrong idea. I’ve called on
+Miss Learight a few times; but not for the purpose you imagine. My
+object is purely a gastronomical one.’
+
+“I reached for my gun.
+
+“‘Any coyote,’ says I, ‘that would boast of dishonourable—’
+
+“‘Wait a minute,’ says this Bird, ‘till I explain. What would I do with
+a wife? If you ever saw that ranch of mine! I do my own cooking and
+mending. Eating—that’s all the pleasure I get out of sheep raising. Mr.
+Judson, did you ever taste the pancakes that Miss Learight makes?’
+
+“‘Me? No,’ I told him. ‘I never was advised that she was up to any
+culinary manoeuvres.’
+
+“‘They’re golden sunshine,’ says he, ‘honey-browned by the ambrosial
+fires of Epicurus. I’d give two years of my life to get the recipe for
+making them pancakes. That’s what I went to see Miss Learight for,’
+says Jackson Bird, ‘but I haven’t been able to get it from her. It’s an
+old recipe that’s been in the family for seventy-five years. They hand
+it down from one generation to another, but they don’t give it away to
+outsiders. If I could get that recipe, so I could make them pancakes
+for myself on my ranch, I’d be a happy man,’ says Bird.
+
+“‘Are you sure,’ I says to him, ‘that it ain’t the hand that mixes the
+pancakes that you’re after?’
+
+“‘Sure,’ says Jackson. ‘Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can
+assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro—’ but he seen my
+hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude—‘than the
+desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,’ he finishes.
+
+“‘You ain’t such a bad little man,’ says I, trying to be fair. ‘I was
+thinking some of making orphans of your sheep, but I’ll let you fly
+away this time. But you stick to pancakes,’ says I, ‘as close as the
+middle one of a stack; and don’t go and mistake sentiments for syrup,
+or there’ll be singing at your ranch, and you won’t hear it.’
+
+“‘To convince you that I am sincere,’ says the sheep man, ‘I’ll ask you
+to help me. Miss Learight and you being closer friends, maybe she would
+do for you what she wouldn’t for me. If you will get me a copy of that
+pancake recipe, I give you my word that I’ll never call upon her
+again.’
+
+“‘That’s fair,’ I says, and I shook hands with Jackson Bird. ‘I’ll get
+it for you if I can, and glad to oblige.’ And he turned off down the
+big pear flat on the Piedra, in the direction of Mired Mule; and I
+steered northwest for old Bill Toomey’s ranch.
+
+“It was five days afterward when I got another chance to ride over to
+Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle
+Emsley’s. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with
+quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and
+told her about Snaky McFee’s new way of skinning cows, and described
+the trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one
+another’s estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be
+persuaded to migrate, I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake
+receipt, and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give it
+to him; and then if I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I’ll make
+him hop the twig.
+
+“So, along about ten o’clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to
+Miss Willella: ‘Now, if there’s anything I do like better than the
+sight of a red steer on green grass it’s the taste of a nice hot
+pancake smothered in sugar-house molasses.’
+
+“Miss Willella gives a little jump on the piano stool, and looked at me
+curious.
+
+“‘Yes,’ says she, ‘they’re real nice. What did you say was the name of
+that street in Saint Louis, Mr. Odom, where you lost your hat?’
+
+“‘Pancake Avenue,’ says I, with a wink, to show her that I was on about
+the family receipt, and couldn’t be side-corralled off of the subject.
+‘Come, now, Miss Willella,’ I says; ‘let’s hear how you make ’em.
+Pancakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels. Start her off,
+now—pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on. How does the catalogue
+of constituents run?’
+
+“‘Excuse me for a moment, please,’ says Miss Willella, and she gives me
+a quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She ambled out
+into the other room, and directly Uncle Emsley comes in in his shirt
+sleeves, with a pitcher of water. He turns around to get a glass on the
+table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket. ‘Great post-holes!’
+thinks I, ‘but here’s a family thinks a heap of cooking receipts,
+protecting it with firearms. I’ve known outfits that wouldn’t do that
+much by a family feud.’
+
+“‘Drink this here down,’ says Uncle Emsley, handing me the glass of
+water. ‘You’ve rid too far to-day, Jud, and got yourself over-excited.
+Try to think about something else now.’
+
+“‘Do you know how to make them pancakes, Uncle Emsley?’ I asked.
+
+“‘Well, I’m not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some,’ says Uncle
+Emsley, ‘but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of Paris and a
+little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix ’em with eggs and
+buttermilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City
+again this spring, Jud?’
+
+“That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I
+didn’t wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the
+subject and talked with Uncle Emsley for a while about hollow-horn and
+cyclones. And then Miss Willella came and said ‘Good-night,’ and I hit
+the breeze for the ranch.
+
+“About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as I
+rode in, and we stopped on the road for a few frivolous remarks.
+
+“‘Got the bill of particulars for them flapjacks yet?’ I asked him.
+
+“‘Well, no,’ says Jackson. ‘I don’t seem to have any success in getting
+hold of it. Did you try?’
+
+“‘I did,’ says I, ‘and ’twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of
+his hole with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a jookalorum,
+the way they hold on to it.’
+
+“‘I’m most ready to give it up,’ says Jackson, so discouraged in his
+pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; ‘but I did want to know how
+to make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch,’ says he. ‘I lie awake
+at nights thinking how good they are.’
+
+“‘You keep on trying for it,’ I tells him, ‘and I’ll do the same. One
+of us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well, so-long,
+Jacksy.’
+
+“You see, by this time we were on the peacefullest of terms. When I saw
+that he wasn’t after Miss Willella, I had more endurable contemplations
+of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the ambitions of his
+appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt from Miss Willella. But
+every time I would say ‘pancakes’ she would get sort of remote and
+fidgety about the eye, and try to change the subject. If I held her to
+it she would slide out and round up Uncle Emsley with his pitcher of
+water and hip-pocket howitzer.
+
+“One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue
+verbenas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog
+Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at ’em with one eye shut and says:
+
+“‘Haven’t ye heard the news?’
+
+“‘Cattle up?’ I asks.
+
+“‘Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday,’ says
+he. ‘Just got a letter this morning.’
+
+“I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle
+in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it got
+to my feet.
+
+“‘Would you mind saying that over again once more, Uncle Emsley?’ says
+I. ‘Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime
+heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.’
+
+“‘Married yesterday,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘and gone to Waco and Niagara
+Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn’t you see none of the signs all
+along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he
+took her out riding.’
+
+“‘Then,’ says I, in a kind of yell, ‘what was all this zizzaparoola he
+gives me about pancakes? Tell me _that_.’
+
+“When I said ‘pancakes’ Uncle Emsley sort of dodged and stepped back.
+
+“‘Somebody’s been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the deck,’ I
+says, ‘and I’ll find out. I believe you know. Talk up,’ says I, ‘or
+we’ll mix a panful of batter right here.’
+
+“I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun, but
+it was in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the front
+of his shirt and shoved him in a corner.
+
+“‘Talk pancakes,’ says I, ‘or be made into one. Does Miss Willella make
+’em?’
+
+“‘She never made one in her life and I never saw one,’ says Uncle
+Emsley, soothing. ‘Calm down now, Jud—calm down. You’ve got excited,
+and that wound in your head is contaminating your sense of
+intelligence. Try not to think about pancakes.’
+
+“‘Uncle Emsley,’ says I, ‘I’m not wounded in the head except so far as
+my natural cognitive instincts run to runts. Jackson Bird told me he
+was calling on Miss Willella for the purpose of finding out her system
+of producing pancakes, and he asked me to help him get the bill of
+lading of the ingredients. I done so, with the results as you see. Have
+I been sodded down with Johnson grass by a pink-eyed snoozer, or what?’
+
+“‘Slack up your grip in my dress shirt,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘and I’ll
+tell you. Yes, it looks like Jackson Bird has gone and humbugged you
+some. The day after he went riding with Willella he came back and told
+me and her to watch out for you whenever you got to talking about
+pancakes. He said you was in camp once where they was cooking
+flapjacks, and one of the fellows cut you over the head with a frying
+pan. Jackson said that whenever you got overhot or excited that wound
+hurt you and made you kind of crazy, and you went raving about
+pancakes. He told us to just get you worked off of the subject and
+soothed down, and you wouldn’t be dangerous. So, me and Willella done
+the best by you we knew how. Well, well,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘that
+Jackson Bird is sure a seldom kind of a snoozer.’”
+
+During the progress of Jud’s story he had been slowly but deftly
+combining certain portions of the contents of his sacks and cans.
+Toward the close of it he set before me the finished product—a pair of
+red-hot, rich-hued pancakes on a tin plate. From some secret hoarding
+he also brought a lump of excellent butter and a bottle of golden
+syrup.
+
+“How long ago did these things happen?” I asked him.
+
+“Three years,” said Jud. “They’re living on the Mired Mule Ranch now.
+But I haven’t seen either of ’em since. They say Jackson Bird was
+fixing his ranch up fine with rocking chairs and window curtains all
+the time he was putting me up the pancake tree. Oh, I got over it after
+a while. But the boys kept the racket up.”
+
+“Did you make these cakes by the famous recipe?” I asked.
+
+“Didn’t I tell you there wasn’t no receipt?” said Jud. “The boys
+hollered pancakes till they got pancake hungry, and I cut this recipe
+out of a newspaper. How does the truck taste?”
+
+“They’re delicious,” I answered. “Why don’t you have some, too, Jud?”
+
+I was sure I heard a sigh.
+
+“Me?” said Jud. “I don’t ever eat ’em.”
+
+
+
+
+VI
+SEATS OF THE HAUGHTY
+
+
+Golden by day and silver by night, a new trail now leads to us across
+the Indian Ocean. Dusky kings and princes have found our Bombay of the
+West; and few be their trails that do not lead down to Broadway on
+their journey for to admire and for to see.
+
+If chance should ever lead you near a hotel that transiently shelters
+some one of these splendid touring grandees, I counsel you to seek
+Lucullus Polk among the republican tuft-hunters that besiege its
+entrances. He will be there. You will know him by his red, alert,
+Wellington-nosed face, by his manner of nervous caution mingled with
+determination, by his assumed promoter’s or broker’s air of busy
+impatience, and by his bright-red necktie, gallantly redressing the
+wrongs of his maltreated blue serge suit, like a battle standard still
+waving above a lost cause. I found him profitable; and so may you. When
+you do look for him, look among the light-horse troop of Bedouins that
+besiege the picket-line of the travelling potentate’s guards and
+secretaries—among the wild-eyed genii of Arabian Afternoons that gather
+to make astounding and egregrious demands upon the prince’s coffers.
+
+I first saw Mr. Polk coming down the steps of the hotel at which
+sojourned His Highness the Gaekwar of Baroda, most enlightened of the
+Mahratta princes, who, of late, ate bread and salt in our Metropolis of
+the Occident.
+
+Lucullus moved rapidly, as though propelled by some potent moral force
+that imminently threatened to become physical. Behind him closely
+followed the impetus—a hotel detective, if ever white Alpine hat,
+hawk’s nose, implacable watch chain, and loud refinement of manner
+spoke the truth. A brace of uniformed porters at his heels preserved
+the smooth decorum of the hotel, repudiating by their air of
+disengagement any suspicion that they formed a reserve squad of
+ejectment.
+
+Safe on the sidewalk, Lucullus Polk turned and shook a freckled fist at
+the caravansary. And, to my joy, he began to breathe deep invective in
+strange words:
+
+“Rides in howdays, does he?” he cried loudly and sneeringly. “Rides on
+elephants in howdahs and calls himself a prince! Kings—yah! Comes over
+here and talks horse till you would think he was a president; and then
+goes home and rides in a private dining-room strapped onto an elephant.
+Well, well, well!”
+
+The ejecting committee quietly retired. The scorner of princes turned
+to me and snapped his fingers.
+
+“What do you think of that?” he shouted derisively. “The Gaekwar of
+Baroda rides in an elephant in a howdah! And there’s old Bikram
+Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a
+motor-cycle. Wouldn’t that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that
+ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he’s got the
+palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea—wouldn’t you
+think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in a
+dynasty or two? Nothing doing! His idea of a Balaklava charge is to
+tuck his skirts under him and do his mile in six days over the
+hog-wallows of Seoul in a bull-cart. That’s the kind of visiting
+potentates that come to this country now. It’s a hard deal, friend.”
+
+I murmured a few words of sympathy. But it was uncomprehending, for I
+did not know his grievance against the rulers who flash, meteor-like,
+now and then upon our shores.
+
+“The last one I sold,” continued the displeased one, “was to that
+three-horse-tailed Turkish pasha that came over a year ago. Five
+hundred dollars he paid for it, easy. I says to his executioner or
+secretary—he was a kind of a Jew or a Chinaman—‘His Turkey Gibbets is
+fond of horses, then?’
+
+“‘Him?’ says the secretary. ‘Well, no. He’s got a big, fat wife in the
+harem named Bad Dora that he don’t like. I believe he intends to saddle
+her up and ride her up and down the board-walk in the Bulbul Gardens a
+few times every day. You haven’t got a pair of extra-long spurs you
+could throw in on the deal, have you?’ Yes, sir; there’s mighty few
+real rough-riders among the royal sports these days.”
+
+As soon as Lucullus Polk got cool enough I picked him up, and with no
+greater effort than you would employ in persuading a drowning man to
+clutch a straw, I inveigled him into accompanying me to a cool corner
+in a dim café.
+
+And it came to pass that man-servants set before us brewage; and
+Lucullus Polk spake unto me, relating the wherefores of his
+beleaguering the antechambers of the princes of the earth.
+
+“Did you ever hear of the S.A. & A.P. Railroad in Texas? Well, that
+don’t stand for Samaritan Actor’s Aid Philanthropy. I was down that way
+managing a summer bunch of the gum and syntax-chewers that play the
+Idlewild Parks in the Western hamlets. Of course, we went to pieces
+when the soubrette ran away with a prominent barber of Beeville. I
+don’t know what became of the rest of the company. I believe there were
+some salaries due; and the last I saw of the troupe was when I told
+them that forty-three cents was all the treasury contained. I say I
+never saw any of them after that; but I heard them for about twenty
+minutes. I didn’t have time to look back. But after dark I came out of
+the woods and struck the S.A. & A.P. agent for means of transportation.
+He at once extended to me the courtesies of the entire railroad, kindly
+warning me, however, not to get aboard any of the rolling stock.
+
+“About ten the next morning I steps off the ties into a village that
+calls itself Atascosa City. I bought a thirty-cent breakfast and a
+ten-cent cigar, and stood on the Main Street jingling the three pennies
+in my pocket—dead broke. A man in Texas with only three cents in his
+pocket is no better off than a man that has no money and owes two
+cents.
+
+“One of luck’s favourite tricks is to soak a man for his last dollar so
+quick that he don’t have time to look it. There I was in a swell St.
+Louis tailor-made, blue-and-green plaid suit, and an eighteen-carat
+sulphate-of-copper scarf-pin, with no hope in sight except the two
+great Texas industries, the cotton fields and grading new railroads. I
+never picked cotton, and I never cottoned to a pick, so the outlook had
+ultramarine edges.
+
+“All of a sudden, while I was standing on the edge of the wooden
+sidewalk, down out of the sky falls two fine gold watches in the middle
+of the street. One hits a chunk of mud and sticks. The other falls hard
+and flies open, making a fine drizzle of little springs and screws and
+wheels. I looks up for a balloon or an airship; but not seeing any, I
+steps off the sidewalk to investigate.
+
+“But I hear a couple of yells and see two men running up the street in
+leather overalls and high-heeled boots and cartwheel hats. One man is
+six or eight feet high, with open-plumbed joints and a heartbroken cast
+of countenance. He picks up the watch that has stuck in the mud. The
+other man, who is little, with pink hair and white eyes, goes for the
+empty case, and says, ‘I win.’ Then the elevated pessimist goes down
+under his leather leg-holsters and hands a handful of twenty-dollar
+gold pieces to his albino friend. I don’t know how much money it was;
+it looked as big as an earthquake-relief fund to me.
+
+“‘I’ll have this here case filled up with works,’ says Shorty, ‘and
+throw you again for five hundred.’
+
+“‘I’m your company,’ says the high man. ‘I’ll meet you at the Smoked
+Dog Saloon an hour from now.’
+
+“The little man hustles away with a kind of Swiss movement toward a
+jewelry store. The heartbroken person stoops over and takes a
+telescopic view of my haberdashery.
+
+“‘Them’s a mighty slick outfit of habiliments you have got on, Mr.
+Man,’ says he. ‘I’ll bet a hoss you never acquired the right, title,
+and interest in and to them clothes in Atascosa City.’
+
+“‘Why, no,’ says I, being ready enough to exchange personalities with
+this moneyed monument of melancholy. ‘I had this suit tailored from a
+special line of coatericks, vestures, and pantings in St. Louis. Would
+you mind putting me sane,’ says I, ‘on this watch-throwing contest?
+I’ve been used to seeing time-pieces treated with more politeness and
+esteem—except women’s watches, of course, which by nature they abuse by
+cracking walnuts with ’em and having ’em taken showing in tintype
+pictures.’
+
+“‘Me and George,’ he explains, ‘are up from the ranch, having a spell
+of fun. Up to last month we owned four sections of watered grazing down
+on the San Miguel. But along comes one of these oil prospectors and
+begins to bore. He strikes a gusher that flows out twenty thousand —or
+maybe it was twenty million—barrels of oil a day. And me and George
+gets one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—seventy-five thousand
+dollars apiece—for the land. So now and then we saddles up and hits the
+breeze for Atascosa City for a few days of excitement and damage.
+Here’s a little bunch of the _dinero_ that I drawed out of the bank
+this morning,’ says he, and shows a roll of twenties and fifties as big
+around as a sleeping-car pillow. The yellowbacks glowed like a sunset
+on the gable end of John D.’s barn. My knees got weak, and I sat down
+on the edge of the board sidewalk.
+
+“‘You must have knocked around a right smart,’ goes on this oil
+Grease-us. ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if you have saw towns more
+livelier than what Atascosa City is. Sometimes it seems to me that
+there ought to be some more ways of having a good time than there is
+here, ’specially when you’ve got plenty of money and don’t mind
+spending it.’
+
+“Then this Mother Cary’s chick of the desert sits down by me and we
+hold a conversationfest. It seems that he was money-poor. He’d lived in
+ranch camps all his life; and he confessed to me that his supreme idea
+of luxury was to ride into camp, tired out from a round-up, eat a peck
+of Mexican beans, hobble his brains with a pint of raw whisky, and go
+to sleep with his boots for a pillow. When this barge-load of
+unexpected money came to him and his pink but perky partner, George,
+and they hied themselves to this clump of outhouses called Atascosa
+City, you know what happened to them. They had money to buy anything
+they wanted; but they didn’t know what to want. Their ideas of
+spendthriftiness were limited to three—whisky, saddles, and gold
+watches. If there was anything else in the world to throw away fortunes
+on, they had never heard about it. So, when they wanted to have a hot
+time, they’d ride into town and get a city directory and stand in front
+of the principal saloon and call up the population alphabetically for
+free drinks. Then they would order three or four new California saddles
+from the storekeeper, and play crack-loo on the sidewalk with
+twenty-dollar gold pieces. Betting who could throw his gold watch the
+farthest was an inspiration of George’s; but even that was getting to
+be monotonous.
+
+“Was I on to the opportunity? Listen.
+
+“In thirty minutes I had dashed off a word picture of metropolitan joys
+that made life in Atascosa City look as dull as a trip to Coney Island
+with your own wife. In ten minutes more we shook hands on an agreement
+that I was to act as his guide, interpreter and friend in and to the
+aforesaid wassail and amenity. And Solomon Mills, which was his name,
+was to pay all expenses for a month. At the end of that time, if I had
+made good as director-general of the rowdy life, he was to pay me one
+thousand dollars. And then, to clinch the bargain, we called the roll
+of Atascosa City and put all of its citizens except the ladies and
+minors under the table, except one man named Horace Westervelt St.
+Clair. Just for that we bought a couple of hatfuls of cheap silver
+watches and egged him out of town with ’em. We wound up by dragging the
+harness-maker out of bed and setting him to work on three new saddles;
+and then we went to sleep across the railroad track at the depot, just
+to annoy the S.A. & A.P. Think of having seventy-five thousand dollars
+and trying to avoid the disgrace of dying rich in a town like that!
+
+“The next day George, who was married or something, started back to the
+ranch. Me and Solly, as I now called him, prepared to shake off our
+moth balls and wing our way against the arc-lights of the joyous and
+tuneful East.
+
+“‘No way-stops,’ says I to Solly, ‘except long enough to get you
+barbered and haberdashed. This is no Texas feet shampetter,’ says I,
+‘where you eat chili-concarne-con-huevos and then holler “Whoopee!”
+across the plaza. We’re now going against the real high life. We’re
+going to mingle with the set that carries a Spitz, wears spats, and
+hits the ground in high spots.’
+
+“Solly puts six thousand dollars in century bills in one pocket of his
+brown ducks, and bills of lading for ten thousand dollars on Eastern
+banks in another. Then I resume diplomatic relations with the S.A. &
+A.P., and we hike in a northwesterly direction on our circuitous route
+to the spice gardens of the Yankee Orient.
+
+“We stopped in San Antonio long enough for Solly to buy some clothes,
+and eight rounds of drinks for the guests and employees of the Menger
+Hotel, and order four Mexican saddles with silver trimmings and white
+Angora _suaderos_ to be shipped down to the ranch. From there we made a
+big jump to St. Louis. We got there in time for dinner; and I put our
+thumb-prints on the register of the most expensive hotel in the city.
+
+“‘Now,’ says I to Solly, with a wink at myself, ‘here’s the first
+dinner-station we’ve struck where we can get a real good plate of
+beans.’ And while he was up in his room trying to draw water out of the
+gas-pipe, I got one finger in the buttonhole of the head waiter’s
+Tuxedo, drew him apart, inserted a two-dollar bill, and closed him up
+again.
+
+“‘Frankoyse,’ says I, ‘I have a pal here for dinner that’s been
+subsisting for years on cereals and short stogies. You see the chef and
+order a dinner for us such as you serve to Dave Francis and the general
+passenger agent of the Iron Mountain when they eat here. We’ve got more
+than Bernhardt’s tent full of money; and we want the nose-bags crammed
+with all the Chief Deveries _de cuisine_. Object is no expense. Now,
+show us.’
+
+“At six o’clock me and Solly sat down to dinner. Spread! There’s
+nothing been seen like it since the Cambon snack. It was all served at
+once. The chef called it _dinnay à la poker_. It’s a famous thing among
+the gormands of the West. The dinner comes in threes of a kind. There
+was guinea-fowls, guinea-pigs, and Guinness’s stout; roast veal, mock
+turtle soup, and chicken pâté; shad-roe, caviar, and tapioca;
+canvas-back duck, canvas-back ham, and cotton-tail rabbit; Philadelphia
+capon, fried snails, and sloe-gin—and so on, in threes. The idea was
+that you eat nearly all you can of them, and then the waiter takes away
+the discard and gives you pears to fill on.
+
+
+“I was sure Solly would be tickled to death with these hands, after the
+bobtail flushes he’d been eating on the ranch; and I was a little
+anxious that he should, for I didn’t remember his having honoured my
+efforts with a smile since we left Atascosa City.
+
+“We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd
+there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics,
+the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast
+that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and that
+has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre. And over in
+the corner was a fine brass band playing; and now, thinks I, Solly will
+become conscious of the spiritual oats of life nourishing and
+exhilarating his system. But _nong, mong frang_.
+
+“He gazed across the table at me. There was four square yards of it,
+looking like the path of a cyclone that has wandered through a
+stock-yard, a poultry-farm, a vegetable-garden, and an Irish linen
+mill. Solly gets up and comes around to me.
+
+“‘Luke,’ says he, ‘I’m pretty hungry after our ride. I thought you said
+they had some beans here. I’m going out and get something I can eat.
+You can stay and monkey with this artificial layout of grub if you want
+to.’
+
+“‘Wait a minute,’ says I.
+
+“I called the waiter, and slapped ‘S. Mills’ on the back of the check
+for thirteen dollars and fifty cents.
+
+“‘What do you mean,’ says I, ‘by serving gentlemen with a lot of truck
+only suitable for deck-hands on a Mississippi steamboat? We’re going
+out to get something decent to eat.’
+
+“I walked up the street with the unhappy plainsman. He saw a
+saddle-shop open, and some of the sadness faded from his eyes. We went
+in, and he ordered and paid for two more saddles—one with a solid
+silver horn and nails and ornaments and a six-inch border of
+rhinestones and imitation rubies around the flaps. The other one had to
+have a gold-mounted horn, quadruple-plated stirrups, and the leather
+inlaid with silver beadwork wherever it would stand it. Eleven hundred
+dollars the two cost him.
+
+“Then he goes out and heads toward the river, following his nose. In a
+little side street, where there was no street and no sidewalks and no
+houses, he finds what he is looking for. We go into a shanty and sit on
+high stools among stevedores and boatmen, and eat beans with tin
+spoons. Yes, sir, beans—beans boiled with salt pork.
+
+“‘I kind of thought we’d strike some over this way,’ says Solly.
+
+“‘Delightful,’ says I, ‘That stylish hotel grub may appeal to some; but
+for me, give me the husky _table d’goat_.’
+
+“When we had succumbed to the beans I leads him out of the
+tarpaulin-steam under a lamp post and pulls out a daily paper with the
+amusement column folded out.
+
+“‘But now, what ho for a merry round of pleasure,’ says I. ‘Here’s one
+of Hall Caine’s shows, and a stock-yard company in “Hamlet,” and
+skating at the Hollowhorn Rink, and Sarah Bernhardt, and the Shapely
+Syrens Burlesque Company. I should think, now, that the Shapely—’
+
+“But what does this healthy, wealthy, and wise man do but reach his
+arms up to the second-story windows and gape noisily.
+
+“‘Reckon I’ll be going to bed,’ says he; ‘it’s about my time. St. Louis
+is a kind of quiet place, ain’t it?’
+
+“‘Oh, yes,’ says I; ‘ever since the railroads ran in here the town’s
+been practically ruined. And the building-and-loan associations and the
+fair have about killed it. Guess we might as well go to bed. Wait till
+you see Chicago, though. Shall we get tickets for the Big Breeze
+to-morrow?’
+
+“‘Mought as well,’ says Solly. ‘I reckon all these towns are about
+alike.’
+
+“Well, maybe the wise cicerone and personal conductor didn’t fall hard
+in Chicago! Loolooville-on-the-Lake is supposed to have one or two
+things in it calculated to keep the rural visitor awake after the
+curfew rings. But not for the grass-fed man of the pampas! I tried him
+with theatres, rides in automobiles, sails on the lake, champagne
+suppers, and all those little inventions that hold the simple life in
+check; but in vain. Solly grew sadder day by day. And I got fearful
+about my salary, and knew I must play my trump card. So I mentioned New
+York to him, and informed him that these Western towns were no more
+than gateways to the great walled city of the whirling dervishes.
+
+“After I bought the tickets I missed Solly. I knew his habits by then;
+so in a couple of hours I found him in a saddle-shop. They had some new
+ideas there in the way of trees and girths that had strayed down from
+the Canadian mounted police; and Solly was so interested that he almost
+looked reconciled to live. He invested about nine hundred dollars in
+there.
+
+“At the depot I telegraphed a cigar-store man I knew in New York to
+meet me at the Twenty-third Street ferry with a list of all the
+saddle-stores in the city. I wanted to know where to look for Solly
+when he got lost.
+
+“Now I’ll tell you what happened in New York. I says to myself: ‘Friend
+Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty to the sad
+sultan of the sour countenance, or it’ll be the bowstring for yours.’
+But I never had any doubt I could do it.
+
+“I began with him like you’d feed a starving man. I showed him the
+horse-cars on Broadway and the Staten Island ferry-boats. And then I
+piled up the sensations on him, but always keeping a lot of warmer ones
+up my sleeve.
+
+“At the end of the third day he looked like a composite picture of five
+thousand orphans too late to catch a picnic steamboat, and I was
+wilting down a collar every two hours wondering how I could please him
+and whether I was going to get my thou. He went to sleep looking at the
+Brooklyn Bridge; he disregarded the sky-scrapers above the third story;
+it took three ushers to wake him up at the liveliest vaudeville in
+town.
+
+“Once I thought I had him. I nailed a pair of cuffs on him one morning
+before he was awake; and I dragged him that evening to the palm-cage of
+one of the biggest hotels in the city—to see the Johnnies and the
+Alice-sit-by-the-hours. They were out in numerous quantities, with the
+fat of the land showing in their clothes. While we were looking them
+over, Solly divested himself of a fearful, rusty kind of laugh—like
+moving a folding bed with one roller broken. It was his first in two
+weeks, and it gave me hope.
+
+“‘Right you are,’ says I. ‘They’re a funny lot of post-cards, aren’t
+they?’
+
+“‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking of them dudes and culls on the hoof,’ says he.
+‘I was thinking of the time me and George put sheep-dip in Horsehead
+Johnson’s whisky. I wish I was back in Atascosa City,’ says he.
+
+“I felt a cold chill run down my back. ‘Me to play and mate in one
+move,’ says I to myself.
+
+“I made Solly promise to stay in the café for half an hour and I hiked
+out in a cab to Lolabelle Delatour’s flat on Forty-third Street. I knew
+her well. She was a chorus-girl in a Broadway musical comedy.
+
+“‘Jane,’ says I when I found her, ‘I’ve got a friend from Texas here.
+He’s all right, but—well, he carries weight. I’d like to give him a
+little whirl after the show this evening—bubbles, you know, and a buzz
+out to a casino for the whitebait and pickled walnuts. Is it a go?’
+
+“‘Can he sing?’ asks Lolabelle.
+
+“‘You know,’ says I, ‘that I wouldn’t take him away from home unless
+his notes were good. He’s got pots of money—bean-pots full of it.’
+
+“‘Bring him around after the second act,’ says Lolabelle, ‘and I’ll
+examine his credentials and securities.’
+
+“So about ten o’clock that evening I led Solly to Miss Delatour’s
+dressing-room, and her maid let us in. In ten minutes in comes
+Lolabelle, fresh from the stage, looking stunning in the costume she
+wears when she steps from the ranks of the lady grenadiers and says to
+the king, ‘Welcome to our May-day revels.’ And you can bet it wasn’t
+the way she spoke the lines that got her the part.
+
+“As soon as Solly saw her he got up and walked straight out through the
+stage entrance into the street. I followed him. Lolabelle wasn’t paying
+my salary. I wondered whether anybody was.
+
+“‘Luke,’ says Solly, outside, ‘that was an awful mistake. We must have
+got into the lady’s private room. I hope I’m gentleman enough to do
+anything possible in the way of apologies. Do you reckon she’d ever
+forgive us?’
+
+“‘She may forget it,’ says I. ‘Of course it was a mistake. Let’s go
+find some beans.’
+
+“That’s the way it went. But pretty soon afterward Solly failed to show
+up at dinner-time for several days. I cornered him. He confessed that
+he had found a restaurant on Third Avenue where they cooked beans in
+Texas style. I made him take me there. The minute I set foot inside the
+door I threw up my hands.
+
+“There was a young woman at the desk, and Solly introduced me to her.
+And then we sat down and had beans.
+
+“Yes, sir, sitting at the desk was the kind of a young woman that can
+catch any man in the world as easy as lifting a finger. There’s a way
+of doing it. She knew. I saw her working it. She was healthy-looking
+and plain dressed. She had her hair drawn back from her forehead and
+face—no curls or frizzes; that’s the way she looked. Now I’ll tell you
+the way they work the game; it’s simple. When she wants a man, she
+manages it so that every time he looks at her he finds her looking at
+him. That’s all.
+
+“The next evening Solly was to go to Coney Island with me at seven. At
+eight o’clock he hadn’t showed up. I went out and found a cab. I felt
+sure there was something wrong.
+
+“‘Drive to the Back Home Restaurant on Third Avenue,’ says I. ‘And if I
+don’t find what I want there, take in these saddle-shops.’ I handed him
+the list.
+
+“‘Boss,’ says the cabby, ‘I et a steak in that restaurant once. If
+you’re real hungry, I advise you to try the saddle-shops first.’
+
+“‘I’m a detective,’ says I, ‘and I don’t eat. Hurry up!’
+
+“As soon as I got to the restaurant I felt in the lines of my palms
+that I should beware of a tall, red, damfool man, and I was going to
+lose a sum of money.
+
+“Solly wasn’t there. Neither was the smooth-haired lady.
+
+“I waited; and in an hour they came in a cab and got out, hand in hand.
+I asked Solly to step around the corner for a few words. He was
+grinning clear across his face; but I had not administered the grin.
+
+“‘She’s the greatest that ever sniffed the breeze,’ says he.
+
+“‘Congrats,’ says I. ‘I’d like to have my thousand now, if you please.’
+
+“‘Well, Luke,’ says he, ‘I don’t know that I’ve had such a skyhoodlin’
+fine time under your tutelage and dispensation. But I’ll do the best I
+can for you—I’ll do the best I can,’ he repeats. ‘Me and Miss Skinner
+was married an hour ago. We’re leaving for Texas in the morning.’
+
+“‘Great!’ says I. ‘Consider yourself covered with rice and Congress
+gaiters. But don’t let’s tie so many satin bows on our business
+relations that we lose sight of ’em. How about my honorarium?’
+
+“‘Missis Mills,’ says he, ‘has taken possession of my money and papers
+except six bits. I told her what I’d agreed to give you; but she says
+it’s an irreligious and illegal contract, and she won’t pay a cent of
+it. But I ain’t going to see you treated unfair,’ says he. ‘I’ve got
+eighty-seven saddles on the ranch what I’ve bought on this trip; and
+when I get back I’m going to pick out the best six in the lot and send
+’em to you.’”
+
+“And did he?” I asked, when Lucullus ceased talking.
+
+“He did. And they are fit for kings to ride on. The six he sent me must
+have cost him three thousand dollars. But where is the market for ’em?
+Who would buy one except one of these rajahs and princes of Asia and
+Africa? I’ve got ’em all on the list. I know every tan royal dub and
+smoked princerino from Mindanao to the Caspian Sea.”
+
+“It’s a long time between customers,” I ventured.
+
+“They’re coming faster,” said Polk. “Nowadays, when one of the
+murdering mutts gets civilised enough to abolish suttee and quit using
+his whiskers for a napkin, he calls himself the Roosevelt of the East,
+and comes over to investigate our Chautauquas and cocktails. I’ll place
+’em all yet. Now look here.”
+
+From an inside pocket he drew a tightly folded newspaper with much-worn
+edges, and indicated a paragraph.
+
+“Read that,” said the saddler to royalty. The paragraph ran thus:
+
+His Highness Seyyid Feysal bin Turkee, Imam of Muskat, is one of the
+most progressive and enlightened rulers of the Old World. His stables
+contain more than a thousand horses of the purest Persian breeds. It is
+said that this powerful prince contemplates a visit to the United
+States at an early date.
+
+
+“There!” said Mr. Polk triumphantly. “My best saddle is as good as
+sold—the one with turquoises set in the rim of the cantle. Have you
+three dollars that you could loan me for a short time?”
+
+It happened that I had; and I did.
+
+If this should meet the eye of the Imam of Muskat, may it quicken his
+whim to visit the land of the free! Otherwise I fear that I shall be
+longer than a short time separated from my dollars three.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+HYGEIA AT THE SOLITO
+
+
+If you are knowing in the chronicles of the ring you will recall to
+mind an event in the early ’nineties when, for a minute and sundry odd
+seconds, a champion and a “would-be” faced each other on the alien side
+of an international river. So brief a conflict had rarely imposed upon
+the fair promise of true sport. The reporters made what they could of
+it, but, divested of padding, the action was sadly fugacious. The
+champion merely smote his victim, turned his back upon him, remarking,
+“I know what I done to dat stiff,” and extended an arm like a ship’s
+mast for his glove to be removed.
+
+Which accounts for a trainload of extremely disgusted gentlemen in an
+uproar of fancy vests and neck-wear being spilled from their pullmans
+in San Antonio in the early morning following the fight. Which also
+partly accounts for the unhappy predicament in which “Cricket” McGuire
+found himself as he tumbled from his car and sat upon the depot
+platform, torn by a spasm of that hollow, racking cough so familiar to
+San Antonian ears. At that time, in the uncertain light of dawn, that
+way passed Curtis Raidler, the Nueces County cattleman—may his shadow
+never measure under six foot two.
+
+The cattleman, out this early to catch the south-bound for his ranch
+station, stopped at the side of the distressed patron of sport, and
+spoke in the kindly drawl of his ilk and region, “Got it pretty bad,
+bud?”
+
+“Cricket” McGuire, ex-feather-weight prizefighter, tout, jockey,
+follower of the “ponies,” all-round sport, and manipulator of the gum
+balls and walnut shells, looked up pugnaciously at the imputation cast
+by “bud.”
+
+“G’wan,” he rasped, “telegraph pole. I didn’t ring for yer.”
+
+Another paroxysm wrung him, and he leaned limply against a convenient
+baggage truck. Raidler waited patiently, glancing around at the white
+hats, short overcoats, and big cigars thronging the platform. “You’re
+from the No’th, ain’t you, bud?” he asked when the other was partially
+recovered. “Come down to see the fight?”
+
+“Fight!” snapped McGuire. “Puss-in-the-corner! ’Twas a hypodermic
+injection. Handed him just one like a squirt of dope, and he’s asleep,
+and no tanbark needed in front of his residence. Fight!” He rattled a
+bit, coughed, and went on, hardly addressing the cattleman, but rather
+for the relief of voicing his troubles. “No more dead sure t’ings for
+me. But Rus Sage himself would have snatched at it. Five to one dat de
+boy from Cork wouldn’t stay t’ree rounds is what I invested in. Put my
+last cent on, and could already smell the sawdust in dat all-night
+joint of Jimmy Delaney’s on T’irty-seventh Street I was goin’ to buy.
+And den—say, telegraph pole, what a gazaboo a guy is to put his whole
+roll on one turn of the gaboozlum!”
+
+“You’re plenty right,” said the big cattleman; “more ’specially when
+you lose. Son, you get up and light out for a hotel. You got a mighty
+bad cough. Had it long?”
+
+“Lungs,” said McGuire comprehensively. “I got it. The croaker says I’ll
+come to time for six months longer—maybe a year if I hold my gait. I
+wanted to settle down and take care of myself. Dat’s why I speculated
+on dat five to one perhaps. I had a t’ousand iron dollars saved up. If
+I winned I was goin’ to buy Delaney’s café. Who’d a t’ought dat stiff
+would take a nap in de foist round—say?”
+
+“It’s a hard deal,” commented Raidler, looking down at the diminutive
+form of McGuire crumpled against the truck. “But you go to a hotel and
+rest. There’s the Menger and the Maverick, and—”
+
+“And the Fi’th Av’noo, and the Waldorf-Astoria,” mimicked McGuire.
+“Told you I went broke. I’m on de bum proper. I’ve got one dime left.
+Maybe a trip to Europe or a sail in me private yacht would fix me up—
+pa-per!”
+
+He flung his dime at a newsboy, got his _Express_, propped his back
+against the truck, and was at once rapt in the account of his Waterloo,
+as expanded by the ingenious press.
+
+Curtis Raidler interrogated an enormous gold watch, and laid his hand
+on McGuire’s shoulder.
+
+“Come on, bud,” he said. “We got three minutes to catch the train.”
+
+Sarcasm seemed to be McGuire’s vein.
+
+“You ain’t seen me cash in any chips or call a turn since I told you I
+was broke, a minute ago, have you? Friend, chase yourself away.”
+
+“You’re going down to my ranch,” said the cattleman, “and stay till you
+get well. Six months’ll fix you good as new.” He lifted McGuire with
+one hand, and half-dragged him in the direction of the train.
+
+“What about the money?” said McGuire, struggling weakly to escape.
+
+“Money for what?” asked Raidler, puzzled. They eyed each other, not
+understanding, for they touched only as at the gear of bevelled
+cog-wheels—at right angles, and moving upon different axes.
+
+Passengers on the south-bound saw them seated together, and wondered at
+the conflux of two such antipodes. McGuire was five feet one, with a
+countenance belonging to either Yokohama or Dublin. Bright-beady of
+eye, bony of cheek and jaw, scarred, toughened, broken and reknit,
+indestructible, grisly, gladiatorial as a hornet, he was a type neither
+new nor unfamiliar. Raidler was the product of a different soil. Six
+feet two in height, miles broad, and no deeper than a crystal brook, he
+represented the union of the West and South. Few accurate pictures of
+his kind have been made, for art galleries are so small and the
+mutoscope is as yet unknown in Texas. After all, the only possible
+medium of portrayal of Raidler’s kind would be the fresco—something
+high and simple and cool and unframed.
+
+They were rolling southward on the International. The timber was
+huddling into little, dense green motts at rare distances before the
+inundation of the downright, vert prairies. This was the land of the
+ranches; the domain of the kings of the kine.
+
+McGuire sat, collapsed into his corner of the seat, receiving with acid
+suspicion the conversation of the cattleman. What was the “game” of
+this big “geezer” who was carrying him off? Altruism would have been
+McGuire’s last guess. “He ain’t no farmer,” thought the captive, “and
+he ain’t no con man, for sure. W’at’s his lay? You trail in, Cricket,
+and see how many cards he draws. You’re up against it, anyhow. You got
+a nickel and gallopin’ consumption, and you better lay low. Lay low and
+see w’at’s his game.”
+
+At Rincon, a hundred miles from San Antonio, they left the train for a
+buckboard which was waiting there for Raidler. In this they travelled
+the thirty miles between the station and their destination. If anything
+could, this drive should have stirred the acrimonious McGuire to a
+sense of his ransom. They sped upon velvety wheels across an exhilarant
+savanna. The pair of Spanish ponies struck a nimble, tireless trot,
+which gait they occasionally relieved by a wild, untrammelled gallop.
+The air was wine and seltzer, perfumed, as they absorbed it, with the
+delicate redolence of prairie flowers. The road perished, and the
+buckboard swam the uncharted billows of the grass itself, steered by
+the practised hand of Raidler, to whom each tiny distant mott of trees
+was a signboard, each convolution of the low hills a voucher of course
+and distance. But McGuire reclined upon his spine, seeing nothing but a
+desert, and receiving the cattleman’s advances with sullen distrust.
+“W’at’s he up to?” was the burden of his thoughts; “w’at kind of a gold
+brick has the big guy got to sell?” McGuire was only applying the
+measure of the streets he had walked to a range bounded by the horizon
+and the fourth dimension.
+
+A week before, while riding the prairies, Raidler had come upon a sick
+and weakling calf deserted and bawling. Without dismounting he had
+reached and slung the distressed bossy across his saddle, and dropped
+it at the ranch for the boys to attend to. It was impossible for
+McGuire to know or comprehend that, in the eyes of the cattleman, his
+case and that of the calf were identical in interest and demand upon
+his assistance. A creature was ill and helpless; he had the power to
+render aid—these were the only postulates required for the cattleman to
+act. They formed his system of logic and the most of his creed. McGuire
+was the seventh invalid whom Raidler had picked up thus casually in San
+Antonio, where so many thousand go for the ozone that is said to linger
+about its contracted streets. Five of them had been guests of Solito
+Ranch until they had been able to leave, cured or better, and
+exhausting the vocabulary of tearful gratitude. One came too late, but
+rested very comfortably, at last, under a ratama tree in the garden.
+
+So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun
+to the door, and Raidler took up his debile _protégé_ like a handful of
+rags and set him down upon the gallery.
+
+McGuire looked upon things strange to him. The ranch-house was the best
+in the country. It was built of brick hauled one hundred miles by
+wagon, but it was of but one story, and its four rooms were completely
+encircled by a mud floor “gallery.” The miscellaneous setting of
+horses, dogs, saddles, wagons, guns, and cow-punchers’ paraphernalia
+oppressed the metropolitan eyes of the wrecked sportsman.
+
+“Well, here we are at home,” said Raidler, cheeringly.
+
+“It’s a h—l of a looking place,” said McGuire promptly, as he rolled
+upon the gallery floor in a fit of coughing.
+
+“We’ll try to make it comfortable for you, buddy,” said the cattleman
+gently. “It ain’t fine inside; but it’s the outdoors, anyway, that’ll
+do you the most good. This’ll be your room, in here. Anything we got,
+you ask for it.”
+
+He led McGuire into the east room. The floor was bare and clean. White
+curtains waved in the gulf breeze through the open windows. A big
+willow rocker, two straight chairs, a long table covered with
+newspapers, pipes, tobacco, spurs, and cartridges stood in the centre.
+Some well-mounted heads of deer and one of an enormous black javeli
+projected from the walls. A wide, cool cot-bed stood in a corner.
+Nueces County people regarded this guest chamber as fit for a prince.
+McGuire showed his eyeteeth at it. He took out his nickel and spun it
+up to the ceiling.
+
+“T’ought I was lyin’ about the money, did ye? Well, you can frisk me if
+you wanter. Dat’s the last simoleon in the treasury. Who’s goin’ to
+pay?”
+
+The cattleman’s clear grey eyes looked steadily from under his grizzly
+brows into the huckleberry optics of his guest. After a little he said
+simply, and not ungraciously, “I’ll be much obliged to you, son, if you
+won’t mention money any more. Once was quite a plenty. Folks I ask to
+my ranch don’t have to pay anything, and they very scarcely ever offers
+it. Supper’ll be ready in half an hour. There’s water in the pitcher,
+and some, cooler, to drink, in that red jar hanging on the gallery.”
+
+“Where’s the bell?” asked McGuire, looking about.
+
+“Bell for what?”
+
+“Bell to ring for things. I can’t—see here,” he exploded in a sudden,
+weak fury, “I never asked you to bring me here. I never held you up for
+a cent. I never gave you a hard-luck story till you asked me. Here I am
+fifty miles from a bellboy or a cocktail. I’m sick. I can’t hustle.
+Gee! but I’m up against it!” McGuire fell upon the cot and sobbed
+shiveringly.
+
+Raidler went to the door and called. A slender, bright-complexioned
+Mexican youth about twenty came quickly. Raidler spoke to him in
+Spanish.
+
+“Ylario, it is in my mind that I promised you the position of _vaquero_
+on the San Carlos range at the fall _rodeo_.”
+
+“_Si, señor_, such was your goodness.”
+
+“Listen. This _señorito_ is my friend. He is very sick. Place yourself
+at his side. Attend to his wants at all times. Have much patience and
+care with him. And when he is well, or—and when he is well, instead of
+_vaquero_ I will make you _mayordomo_ of the Rancho de las Piedras.
+_Esta bueno?_”
+
+“_Si, si—mil gracias, señor_.” Ylario tried to kneel upon the floor in
+his gratitude, but the cattleman kicked at him benevolently, growling,
+“None of your opery-house antics, now.”
+
+Ten minutes later Ylario came from McGuire’s room and stood before
+Raidler.
+
+“The little _señor_,” he announced, “presents his compliments” (Raidler
+credited Ylario with the preliminary) “and desires some pounded ice,
+one hot bath, one gin feez-z, that the windows be all closed, toast,
+one shave, one Newyorkheral’, cigarettes, and to send one telegram.”
+
+Raidler took a quart bottle of whisky from his medicine cabinet. “Here,
+take him this,” he said.
+
+Thus was instituted the reign of terror at the Solito Ranch. For a few
+weeks McGuire blustered and boasted and swaggered before the
+cow-punchers who rode in for miles around to see this latest
+importation of Raidler’s. He was an absolutely new experience to them.
+He explained to them all the intricate points of sparring and the
+tricks of training and defence. He opened to their minds’ view all the
+indecorous life of a tagger after professional sports. His jargon of
+slang was a continuous joy and surprise to them. His gestures, his
+strange poses, his frank ribaldry of tongue and principle fascinated
+them. He was like a being from a new world.
+
+Strange to say, this new world he had entered did not exist to him. He
+was an utter egoist of bricks and mortar. He had dropped out, he felt,
+into open space for a time, and all it contained was an audience for
+his reminiscences. Neither the limitless freedom of the prairie days
+nor the grand hush of the close-drawn, spangled nights touched him. All
+the hues of Aurora could not win him from the pink pages of a sporting
+journal. “Get something for nothing,” was his mission in life;
+“Thirty-seventh” Street was his goal.
+
+Nearly two months after his arrival he began to complain that he felt
+worse. It was then that he became the ranch’s incubus, its harpy, its
+Old Man of the Sea. He shut himself in his room like some venomous
+kobold or flibbertigibbet, whining, complaining, cursing, accusing. The
+keynote of his plaint was that he had been inveigled into a gehenna
+against his will; that he was dying of neglect and lack of comforts.
+With all his dire protestations of increasing illness, to the eye of
+others he remained unchanged. His currant-like eyes were as bright and
+diabolic as ever; his voice was as rasping; his callous face, with the
+skin drawn tense as a drum-head, had no flesh to lose. A flush on his
+prominent cheek bones each afternoon hinted that a clinical thermometer
+might have revealed a symptom, and percussion might have established
+the fact that McGuire was breathing with only one lung, but his
+appearance remained the same.
+
+In constant attendance upon him was Ylario, whom the coming reward of
+the _mayordomo_ship must have greatly stimulated, for McGuire chained
+him to a bitter existence. The air—the man’s only chance for life—he
+commanded to be kept out by closed windows and drawn curtains. The room
+was always blue and foul with cigarette smoke; whosoever entered it
+must sit, suffocating, and listen to the imp’s interminable gasconade
+concerning his scandalous career.
+
+The oddest thing of all was the relation existing between McGuire and
+his benefactor. The attitude of the invalid toward the cattleman was
+something like that of a peevish, perverse child toward an indulgent
+parent. When Raidler would leave the ranch McGuire would fall into a
+fit of malevolent, silent sullenness. When he returned, he would be met
+by a string of violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler’s attitude
+toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman
+seemed actually to assume and feel the character assigned to him by
+McGuire’s intemperate accusations—the character of tyrant and guilty
+oppressor. He seemed to have adopted the responsibility of the fellow’s
+condition, and he always met his tirades with a pacific, patient, and
+even remorseful kindness that never altered.
+
+One day Raidler said to him, “Try more air, son. You can have the
+buckboard and a driver every day if you’ll go. Try a week or two in one
+of the cow camps. I’ll fix you up plumb comfortable. The ground, and
+the air next to it—them’s the things to cure you. I knowed a man from
+Philadelphy, sicker than you are, got lost on the Guadalupe, and slept
+on the bare grass in sheep camps for two weeks. Well, sir, it started
+him getting well, which he done. Close to the ground—that’s where the
+medicine in the air stays. Try a little hossback riding now. There’s a
+gentle pony—”
+
+“What’ve I done to yer?” screamed McGuire. “Did I ever doublecross yer?
+Did I ask you to bring me here? Drive me out to your camps if you
+wanter; or stick a knife in me and save trouble. Ride! I can’t lift my
+feet. I couldn’t sidestep a jab from a five-year-old kid. That’s what
+your d—d ranch has done for me. There’s nothing to eat, nothing to see,
+and nobody to talk to but a lot of Reubens who don’t know a punching
+bag from a lobster salad.”
+
+“It’s a lonesome place, for certain,” apologised Raidler abashedly. “We
+got plenty, but it’s rough enough. Anything you think of you want, the
+boys’ll ride up and fetch it down for you.”
+
+It was Chad Murchison, a cow-puncher from the Circle Bar outfit, who
+first suggested that McGuire’s illness was fraudulent. Chad had brought
+a basket of grapes for him thirty miles, and four out of his way, tied
+to his saddle-horn. After remaining in the smoke-tainted room for a
+while, he emerged and bluntly confided his suspicions to Raidler.
+
+“His arm,” said Chad, “is harder’n a diamond. He interduced me to what
+he called a shore-perplexus punch, and ’twas like being kicked twice by
+a mustang. He’s playin’ it low down on you, Curt. He ain’t no sicker’n
+I am. I hate to say it, but the runt’s workin’ you for range and
+shelter.”
+
+The cattleman’s ingenuous mind refused to entertain Chad’s view of the
+case, and when, later, he came to apply the test, doubt entered not
+into his motives.
+
+One day, about noon, two men drove up to the ranch, alighted, hitched,
+and came in to dinner; standing and general invitations being the
+custom of the country. One of them was a great San Antonio doctor,
+whose costly services had been engaged by a wealthy cowman who had been
+laid low by an accidental bullet. He was now being driven back to the
+station to take the train back to town. After dinner Raidler took him
+aside, pushed a twenty-dollar bill against his hand, and said:
+
+“Doc, there’s a young chap in that room I guess has got a bad case of
+consumption. I’d like for you to look him over and see just how bad he
+is, and if we can do anything for him.”
+
+“How much was that dinner I just ate, Mr. Raidler?” said the doctor
+bluffly, looking over his spectacles. Raidler returned the money to his
+pocket. The doctor immediately entered McGuire’s room, and the
+cattleman seated himself upon a heap of saddles on the gallery, ready
+to reproach himself in the event the verdict should be unfavourable.
+
+In ten minutes the doctor came briskly out. “Your man,” he said
+promptly, “is as sound as a new dollar. His lungs are better than mine.
+Respiration, temperature, and pulse normal. Chest expansion four
+inches. Not a sign of weakness anywhere. Of course I didn’t examine for
+the bacillus, but it isn’t there. You can put my name to the diagnosis.
+Even cigarettes and a vilely close room haven’t hurt him. Coughs, does
+he? Well, you tell him it isn’t necessary. You asked if there is
+anything we could do for him. Well, I advise you to set him digging
+post-holes or breaking mustangs. There’s our team ready. Good-day,
+sir.” And like a puff of wholesome, blustery wind the doctor was off.
+
+Raidler reached out and plucked a leaf from a mesquite bush by the
+railing, and began chewing it thoughtfully.
+
+The branding season was at hand, and the next morning Ross Hargis,
+foreman of the outfit, was mustering his force of some twenty-five men
+at the ranch, ready to start for the San Carlos range, where the work
+was to begin. By six o’clock the horses were all saddled, the grub
+wagon ready, and the cow-punchers were swinging themselves upon their
+mounts, when Raidler bade them wait. A boy was bringing up an extra
+pony, bridled and saddled, to the gate. Raidler walked to McGuire’s
+room and threw open the door. McGuire was lying on his cot, not yet
+dressed, smoking.
+
+“Get up,” said the cattleman, and his voice was clear and brassy, like
+a bugle.
+
+“How’s that?” asked McGuire, a little startled.
+
+“Get up and dress. I can stand a rattlesnake, but I hate a liar. Do I
+have to tell you again?” He caught McGuire by the neck and stood him on
+the floor.
+
+“Say, friend,” cried McGuire wildly, “are you bug-house? I’m sick— see?
+I’ll croak if I got to hustle. What’ve I done to yer?”—he began his
+chronic whine—“I never asked yer to—”
+
+“Put on your clothes,” called Raidler in a rising tone.
+
+Swearing, stumbling, shivering, keeping his amazed, shining eyes upon
+the now menacing form of the aroused cattleman, McGuire managed to
+tumble into his clothes. Then Raidler took him by the collar and shoved
+him out and across the yard to the extra pony hitched at the gate. The
+cow-punchers lolled in their saddles, open-mouthed.
+
+“Take this man,” said Raidler to Ross Hargis, “and put him to work.
+Make him work hard, sleep hard, and eat hard. You boys know I done what
+I could for him, and he was welcome. Yesterday the best doctor in San
+Antone examined him, and says he’s got the lungs of a burro and the
+constitution of a steer. You know what to do with him, Ross.”
+
+Ross Hargis only smiled grimly.
+
+“Aw,” said McGuire, looking intently at Raidler, with a peculiar
+expression upon his face, “the croaker said I was all right, did he?
+Said I was fakin’, did he? You put him onto me. You t’ought I wasn’t
+sick. You said I was a liar. Say, friend, I talked rough, I know, but I
+didn’t mean most of it. If you felt like I did—aw! I forgot—I ain’t
+sick, the croaker says. Well, friend, now I’ll go work for yer. Here’s
+where you play even.”
+
+He sprang into the saddle easily as a bird, got the quirt from the
+horn, and gave his pony a slash with it. “Cricket,” who once brought in
+Good Boy by a neck at Hawthorne—and a 10 to 1 shot—had his foot in the
+stirrups again.
+
+McGuire led the cavalcade as they dashed away for San Carlos, and the
+cow-punchers gave a yell of applause as they closed in behind his dust.
+
+But in less than a mile he had lagged to the rear, and was last man
+when they struck the patch of high chaparral below the horse pens.
+Behind a clump of this he drew rein, and held a handkerchief to his
+mouth. He took it away drenched with bright, arterial blood, and threw
+it carefully into a clump of prickly pear. Then he slashed with his
+quirt again, gasped “G’wan” to his astonished pony, and galloped after
+the gang.
+
+That night Raidler received a message from his old home in Alabama.
+There had been a death in the family; an estate was to divide, and they
+called for him to come. Daylight found him in the buckboard, skimming
+the prairies for the station. It was two months before he returned.
+When he arrived at the ranch house he found it well-nigh deserted save
+for Ylario, who acted as a kind of steward during his absence. Little
+by little the youth made him acquainted with the work done while he was
+away. The branding camp, he was informed, was still doing business. On
+account of many severe storms the cattle had been badly scattered, and
+the branding had been accomplished but slowly. The camp was now in the
+valley of the Guadalupe, twenty miles away.
+
+“By the way,” said Raidler, suddenly remembering, “that fellow I sent
+along with them—McGuire—is he working yet?”
+
+“I do not know,” said Ylario. “Mans from the camp come verree few times
+to the ranch. So plentee work with the leetle calves. They no say. Oh,
+I think that fellow McGuire he dead much time ago.”
+
+“Dead!” said Raidler. “What you talking about?”
+
+“Verree sick fellow, McGuire,” replied Ylario, with a shrug of his
+shoulder. “I theenk he no live one, two month when he go away.”
+
+“Shucks!” said Raidler. “He humbugged you, too, did he? The doctor
+examined him and said he was sound as a mesquite knot.”
+
+“That doctor,” said Ylario, smiling, “he tell you so? That doctor no
+see McGuire.”
+
+“Talk up,” ordered Raidler. “What the devil do you mean?”
+
+“McGuire,” continued the boy tranquilly, “he getting drink water
+outside when that doctor come in room. That doctor take me and pound me
+all over here with his fingers”—putting his hand to his chest—“I not
+know for what. He put his ear here and here and here, and listen— I not
+know for what. He put little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my arm
+here. He make me count like whisper—so—twenty, _treinta_, _cuarenta_.
+Who knows,” concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of his hands,
+“for what that doctor do those verree droll and such-like things?”
+
+“What horses are up?” asked Raidler shortly.
+
+“Paisano is grazing out behind the little corral, _señor_.”
+
+“Saddle him for me at once.”
+
+Within a very few minutes the cattleman was mounted and away. Paisano,
+well named after that ungainly but swift-running bird, struck into his
+long lope that ate up the ground like a strip of macaroni. In two hours
+and a quarter Raidler, from a gentle swell, saw the branding camp by a
+water hole in the Guadalupe. Sick with expectancy of the news he
+feared, he rode up, dismounted, and dropped Paisano’s reins. So gentle
+was his heart that at that moment he would have pleaded guilty to the
+murder of McGuire.
+
+The only being in the camp was the cook, who was just arranging the
+hunks of barbecued beef, and distributing the tin coffee cups for
+supper. Raidler evaded a direct question concerning the one subject in
+his mind.
+
+“Everything all right in camp, Pete?” he managed to inquire.
+
+“So, so,” said Pete, conservatively. “Grub give out twice. Wind
+scattered the cattle, and we’ve had to rake the brush for forty mile. I
+need a new coffee-pot. And the mosquitos is some more hellish than
+common.”
+
+“The boys—all well?”
+
+Pete was no optimist. Besides, inquiries concerning the health of
+cow-punchers were not only superfluous, but bordered on flaccidity. It
+was not like the boss to make them.
+
+“What’s left of ’em don’t miss no calls to grub,” the cook conceded.
+
+“What’s left of ’em?” repeated Raidler in a husky voice. Mechanically
+he began to look around for McGuire’s grave. He had in his mind a white
+slab such as he had seen in the Alabama church-yard. But immediately he
+knew that was foolish.
+
+“Sure,” said Pete; “what’s left. Cow camps change in two months. Some’s
+gone.”
+
+Raidler nerved himself.
+
+“That—chap—I sent along—McGuire—did—he—”
+
+“Say,” interrupted Pete, rising with a chunk of corn bread in each
+hand, “that was a dirty shame, sending that poor, sick kid to a cow
+camp. A doctor that couldn’t tell he was graveyard meat ought to be
+skinned with a cinch buckle. Game as he was, too—it’s a scandal among
+snakes—lemme tell you what he done. First night in camp the boys
+started to initiate him in the leather breeches degree. Ross Hargis
+busted him one swipe with his chaparreras, and what do you reckon the
+poor child did? Got up, the little skeeter, and licked Ross. Licked
+Ross Hargis. Licked him good. Hit him plenty and everywhere and hard.
+Ross’d just get up and pick out a fresh place to lay down on agin.
+
+“Then that McGuire goes off there and lays down with his head in the
+grass and bleeds. A hem’ridge they calls it. He lays there eighteen
+hours by the watch, and they can’t budge him. Then Ross Hargis, who
+loves any man who can lick him, goes to work and damns the doctors from
+Greenland to Poland Chiny; and him and Green Branch Johnson they gets
+McGuire into a tent, and spells each other feedin’ him chopped raw meat
+and whisky.
+
+“But it looks like the kid ain’t got no appetite to git well, for they
+misses him from the tent in the night and finds him rootin’ in the
+grass, and likewise a drizzle fallin’. ‘G’wan,’ he says, ‘lemme go and
+die like I wanter. He said I was a liar and a fake and I was playin’
+sick. Lemme alone.’
+
+“Two weeks,” went on the cook, “he laid around, not noticin’ nobody,
+and then—”
+
+A sudden thunder filled the air, and a score of galloping centaurs
+crashed through the brush into camp.
+
+“Illustrious rattlesnakes!” exclaimed Pete, springing all ways at once;
+“here’s the boys come, and I’m an assassinated man if supper ain’t
+ready in three minutes.”
+
+But Raidler saw only one thing. A little, brown-faced, grinning chap,
+springing from his saddle in the full light of the fire. McGuire was
+not like that, and yet—
+
+In another instant the cattleman was holding him by the hand and
+shoulder.
+
+“Son, son, how goes it?” was all he found to say.
+
+“Close to the ground, says you,” shouted McGuire, crunching Raidler’s
+fingers in a grip of steel; “and dat’s where I found it—healt’ and
+strengt’, and tumbled to what a cheap skate I been actin’. T’anks fer
+kickin’ me out, old man. And—say! de joke’s on dat croaker, ain’t it? I
+looked t’rough the window and see him playin’ tag on dat Dago kid’s
+solar plexus.”
+
+“You son of a tinker,” growled the cattleman, “whyn’t you talk up and
+say the doctor never examined you?”
+
+“Ah—g’wan!” said McGuire, with a flash of his old asperity, “nobody
+can’t bluff me. You never ast me. You made your spiel, and you t’rowed
+me out, and I let it go at dat. And, say, friend, dis chasin’ cows is
+outer sight. Dis is de whitest bunch of sports I ever travelled with.
+You’ll let me stay, won’t yer, old man?”
+
+Raidler looked wonderingly toward Ross Hargis.
+
+“That cussed little runt,” remarked Ross tenderly, “is the
+Jo-dartin’est hustler—and the hardest hitter in anybody’s cow camp.”
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+AN AFTERNOON MIRACLE
+
+
+At the United States end of an international river bridge, four armed
+rangers sweltered in a little ’dobe hut, keeping a fairly faithful
+espionage upon the lagging trail of passengers from the Mexican side.
+
+Bud Dawson, proprietor of the Top Notch Saloon, had, on the evening
+previous, violently ejected from his premises one Leandro Garcia, for
+alleged violation of the Top Notch code of behaviour. Garcia had
+mentioned twenty-four hours as a limit, by which time he would call and
+collect a painful indemnity for personal satisfaction.
+
+This Mexican, although a tremendous braggart, was thoroughly
+courageous, and each side of the river respected him for one of these
+attributes. He and a following of similar bravoes were addicted to the
+pastime of retrieving towns from stagnation.
+
+The day designated by Garcia for retribution was to be further
+signalised on the American side by a cattlemen’s convention, a bull
+fight, and an old settlers’ barbecue and picnic. Knowing the avenger to
+be a man of his word, and believing it prudent to court peace while
+three such gently social relaxations were in progress, Captain McNulty,
+of the ranger company stationed there, detailed his lieutenant and
+three men for duty at the end of the bridge. Their instructions were to
+prevent the invasion of Garcia, either alone or attended by his gang.
+
+Travel was slight that sultry afternoon, and the rangers swore gently,
+and mopped their brows in their convenient but close quarters. For an
+hour no one had crossed save an old woman enveloped in a brown wrapper
+and a black mantilla, driving before her a burro loaded with kindling
+wood tied in small bundles for peddling. Then three shots were fired
+down the street, the sound coming clear and snappy through the still
+air.
+
+The four rangers quickened from sprawling, symbolic figures of
+indolence to alert life, but only one rose to his feet. Three turned
+their eyes beseechingly but hopelessly upon the fourth, who had gotten
+nimbly up and was buckling his cartridge-belt around him. The three
+knew that Lieutenant Bob Buckley, in command, would allow no man of
+them the privilege of investigating a row when he himself might go.
+
+The agile, broad-chested lieutenant, without a change of expression in
+his smooth, yellow-brown, melancholy face, shot the belt strap through
+the guard of the buckle, hefted his sixes in their holsters as a belle
+gives the finishing touches to her toilette, caught up his Winchester,
+and dived for the door. There he paused long enough to caution his
+comrades to maintain their watch upon the bridge, and then plunged into
+the broiling highway.
+
+The three relapsed into resigned inertia and plaintive comment.
+
+“I’ve heard of fellows,” grumbled Broncho Leathers, “what was wedded to
+danger, but if Bob Buckley ain’t committed bigamy with trouble, I’m a
+son of a gun.”
+
+“Peculiarness of Bob is,” inserted the Nueces Kid, “he ain’t had proper
+trainin’. He never learned how to git skeered. Now, a man ought to be
+skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker after readin’ his name
+on the list of survivors, anyway.”
+
+“Buckley,” commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided Eastern man,
+burdened with an education, “scraps in such a solemn manner that I have
+been led to doubt its spontaneity. I’m not quite onto his system, but
+he fights, like Tybalt, by the book of arithmetic.”
+
+“I never heard,” mentioned Broncho, “about any of Dibble’s ways of
+mixin’ scrappin’ and cipherin’.”
+
+“Triggernometry?” suggested the Nueces infant.
+
+“That’s rather better than I hoped from you,” nodded the Easterner,
+approvingly. “The other meaning is that Buckley never goes into a fight
+without giving away weight. He seems to dread taking the slightest
+advantage. That’s quite close to foolhardiness when you are dealing
+with horse-thieves and fence-cutters who would ambush you any night,
+and shoot you in the back if they could. Buckley’s too full of sand.
+He’ll play Horatius and hold the bridge once too often some day.”
+
+“I’m on there,” drawled the Kid; “I mind that bridge gang in the
+reader. Me, I go instructed for the other chap—Spurious Somebody—the
+one that fought and pulled his freight, to fight ’em on some other
+day.”
+
+“Anyway,” summed up Broncho, “Bob’s about the gamest man I ever see
+along the Rio Bravo. Great Sam Houston! If she gets any hotter she’ll
+sizzle!” Broncho whacked at a scorpion with his four-pound Stetson
+felt, and the three watchers relapsed into comfortless silence.
+
+How well Bob Buckley had kept his secret, since these men, for two
+years his side comrades in countless border raids and dangers, thus
+spake of him, not knowing that he was the most arrant physical coward
+in all that Rio Bravo country! Neither his friends nor his enemies had
+suspected him of aught else than the finest courage. It was purely a
+physical cowardice, and only by an extreme, grim effort of will had he
+forced his craven body to do the bravest deeds. Scourging himself
+always, as a monk whips his besetting sin, Buckley threw himself with
+apparent recklessness into every danger, with the hope of some day
+ridding himself of the despised affliction. But each successive test
+brought no relief, and the ranger’s face, by nature adapted to
+cheerfulness and good-humour, became set to the guise of gloomy
+melancholy. Thus, while the frontier admired his deeds, and his prowess
+was celebrated in print and by word of mouth in many camp-fires in the
+valley of the Bravo, his heart was sick within him. Only himself knew
+of the horrible tightening of the chest, the dry mouth, the weakening
+of the spine, the agony of the strung nerves—the never-failing symptoms
+of his shameful malady.
+
+One mere boy in his company was wont to enter a fray with a leg perched
+flippantly about the horn of his saddle, a cigarette hanging from his
+lips, which emitted smoke and original slogans of clever invention.
+Buckley would have given a year’s pay to attain that devil-may-care
+method. Once the debonair youth said to him: “Buck, you go into a scrap
+like it was a funeral. Not,” he added, with a complimentary wave of his
+tin cup, “but what it generally is.”
+
+Buckley’s conscience was of the New England order with Western
+adjustments, and he continued to get his rebellious body into as many
+difficulties as possible; wherefore, on that sultry afternoon he chose
+to drive his own protesting limbs to investigation of that sudden alarm
+that had startled the peace and dignity of the State.
+
+Two squares down the street stood the Top Notch Saloon. Here Buckley
+came upon signs of recent upheaval. A few curious spectators pressed
+about its front entrance, grinding beneath their heels the fragments of
+a plate-glass window. Inside, Buckley found Bud Dawson utterly ignoring
+a bullet wound in his shoulder, while he feelingly wept at having to
+explain why he failed to drop the “blamed masquerooter,” who shot him.
+At the entrance of the ranger Bud turned appealingly to him for
+confirmation of the devastation he might have dealt.
+
+“You know, Buck, I’d ’a’ plum got him, first rattle, if I’d thought a
+minute. Come in a-masque-rootin’, playin’ female till he got the drop,
+and turned loose. I never reached for a gun, thinkin’ it was sure
+Chihuahua Betty, or Mrs. Atwater, or anyhow one of the Mayfield girls
+comin’ a-gunnin’, which they might, liable as not. I never thought of
+that blamed Garcia until—”
+
+“Garcia!” snapped Buckley. “How did he get over here?”
+
+Bud’s bartender took the ranger by the arm and led him to the side
+door. There stood a patient grey burro cropping the grass along the
+gutter, with a load of kindling wood tied across its back. On the
+ground lay a black shawl and a voluminous brown dress.
+
+“Masquerootin’ in them things,” called Bud, still resisting attempted
+ministrations to his wounds. “Thought he was a lady till he gave a yell
+and winged me.”
+
+“He went down this side street,” said the bartender. “He was alone, and
+he’ll hide out till night when his gang comes over. You ought to find
+him in that Mexican lay-out below the depot. He’s got a girl down
+there—Pancha Sales.”
+
+“How was he armed?” asked Buckley.
+
+“Two pearl-handled sixes, and a knife.”
+
+“Keep this for me, Billy,” said the ranger, handing over his
+Winchester. Quixotic, perhaps, but it was Bob Buckley’s way. Another
+man—and a braver one—might have raised a posse to accompany him. It was
+Buckley’s rule to discard all preliminary advantage.
+
+The Mexican had left behind him a wake of closed doors and an empty
+street, but now people were beginning to emerge from their places of
+refuge with assumed unconsciousness of anything having happened. Many
+citizens who knew the ranger pointed out to him with alacrity the
+course of Garcia’s retreat.
+
+As Buckley swung along upon the trail he felt the beginning of the
+suffocating constriction about his throat, the cold sweat under the
+brim of his hat, the old, shameful, dreaded sinking of his heart as it
+went down, down, down in his bosom.
+
+
+The morning train of the Mexican Central had that day been three hours
+late, thus failing to connect with the I. & G.N. on the other side of
+the river. Passengers for _Los Estados Unidos_ grumblingly sought
+entertainment in the little swaggering mongrel town of two nations,
+for, until the morrow, no other train would come to rescue them.
+Grumblingly, because two days later would begin the great fair and
+races in San Antone. Consider that at that time San Antone was the hub
+of the wheel of Fortune, and the names of its spokes were Cattle, Wool,
+Faro, Running Horses, and Ozone. In those times cattlemen played at
+crack-loo on the sidewalks with double-eagles, and gentlemen backed
+their conception of the fortuitous card with stacks limited in height
+only by the interference of gravity. Wherefore, thither journeyed the
+sowers and the reapers—they who stampeded the dollars, and they who
+rounded them up. Especially did the caterers to the amusement of the
+people haste to San Antone. Two greatest shows on earth were already
+there, and dozens of smallest ones were on the way.
+
+On a side track near the mean little ’dobe depot stood a private car,
+left there by the Mexican train that morning and doomed by an
+ineffectual schedule to ignobly await, amid squalid surroundings,
+connection with the next day’s regular.
+
+The car had been once a common day-coach, but those who had sat in it
+and gringed to the conductor’s hat-band slips would never have
+recognised it in its transformation. Paint and gilding and certain
+domestic touches had liberated it from any suspicion of public
+servitude. The whitest of lace curtains judiciously screened its
+windows. From its fore end drooped in the torrid air the flag of
+Mexico. From its rear projected the Stars and Stripes and a busy
+stovepipe, the latter reinforcing in its suggestion of culinary
+comforts the general suggestion of privacy and ease. The beholder’s
+eye, regarding its gorgeous sides, found interest to culminate in a
+single name in gold and blue letters extending almost its entire
+length—a single name, the audacious privilege of royalty and genius.
+Doubly, then, was this arrogant nomenclature here justified; for the
+name was that of “Alvarita, Queen of the Serpent Tribe.” This, her car,
+was back from a triumphant tour of the principal Mexican cities, and
+now headed for San Antonio, where, according to promissory
+advertisement, she would exhibit her “Marvellous Dominion and Fearless
+Control over Deadly and Venomous Serpents, Handling them with Ease as
+they Coil and Hiss to the Terror of Thousands of Tongue-tied
+Tremblers!”
+
+One hundred in the shade kept the vicinity somewhat depeopled. This
+quarter of the town was a ragged edge; its denizens the bubbling froth
+of five nations; its architecture tent, _jacal_, and ’dobe; its
+distractions the hurdy-gurdy and the informal contribution to the
+sudden stranger’s store of experience. Beyond this dishonourable fringe
+upon the old town’s jowl rose a dense mass of trees, surmounting and
+filling a little hollow. Through this bickered a small stream that
+perished down the sheer and disconcerting side of the great cañon of
+the Rio Bravo del Norte.
+
+In this sordid spot was condemned to remain for certain hours the
+impotent transport of the Queen of the Serpent Tribe.
+
+The front door of the car was open. Its forward end was curtained off
+into a small reception-room. Here the admiring and propitiatory
+reporters were wont to sit and transpose the music of Señorita
+Alvarita’s talk into the more florid key of the press. A picture of
+Abraham Lincoln hung against a wall; one of a cluster of school-girls
+grouped upon stone steps was in another place; a third was Easter
+lilies in a blood-red frame. A neat carpet was under foot. A pitcher,
+sweating cold drops, and a glass stood on a fragile stand. In a willow
+rocker, reading a newspaper, sat Alvarita.
+
+Spanish, you would say; Andalusian, or, better still, Basque; that
+compound, like the diamond, of darkness and fire. Hair, the shade of
+purple grapes viewed at midnight. Eyes, long, dusky, and disquieting
+with their untroubled directness of gaze. Face, haughty and bold,
+touched with a pretty insolence that gave it life. To hasten conviction
+of her charm, but glance at the stacks of handbills in the corner,
+green, and yellow, and white. Upon them you see an incompetent
+presentment of the señorita in her professional garb and pose.
+Irresistible, in black lace and yellow ribbons, she faces you; a blue
+racer is spiralled upon each bare arm; coiled twice about her waist and
+once about her neck, his horrid head close to hers, you perceive Kuku,
+the great eleven-foot Asian python.
+
+A hand drew aside the curtain that partitioned the car, and a
+middle-aged, faded woman holding a knife and a half-peeled potato
+looked in and said:
+
+“Alviry, are you right busy?”
+
+“I’m reading the home paper, ma. What do you think! that pale,
+tow-headed Matilda Price got the most votes in the _News_ for the
+prettiest girl in Gallipo—_lees_.”
+
+“Shush! She wouldn’t of done it if _you’d_ been home, Alviry. Lord
+knows, I hope we’ll be there before fall’s over. I’m tired gallopin’
+round the world playin’ we are dagoes, and givin’ snake shows. But that
+ain’t what I wanted to say. That there biggest snake’s gone again. I’ve
+looked all over the car and can’t find him. He must have been gone an
+hour. I remember hearin’ somethin’ rustlin’ along the floor, but I
+thought it was you.”
+
+“Oh, blame that old rascal!” exclaimed the Queen, throwing down her
+paper. “This is the third time he’s got away. George never _will_
+fasten down the lid to his box properly. I do believe he’s _afraid_ of
+Kuku. Now I’ve got to go hunt him.”
+
+“Better hurry; somebody might hurt him.”
+
+The Queen’s teeth showed in a gleaming, contemptuous smile. “No danger.
+When they see Kuku outside they simply scoot away and buy bromides.
+There’s a crick over between here and the river. That old scamp’d swap
+his skin any time for a drink of running water. I guess I’ll find him
+there, all right.”
+
+A few minutes later Alvarita stopped upon the forward platform, ready
+for her quest. Her handsome black skirt was shaped to the most recent
+proclamation of fashion. Her spotless shirt-waist gladdened the eye in
+that desert of sunshine, a swelling oasis, cool and fresh. A man’s
+split-straw hat sat firmly on her coiled, abundant hair. Beneath her
+serene, round, impudent chin a man’s four-in-hand tie was jauntily
+knotted about a man’s high, stiff collar. A parasol she carried, of
+white silk, and its fringe was lace, yellowly genuine.
+
+I will grant Gallipolis as to her costume, but firmly to Seville or
+Valladolid I am held by her eyes; castanets, balconies, mantillas,
+serenades, ambuscades, escapades—all these their dark depths
+guaranteed.
+
+“Ain’t you afraid to go out alone, Alviry?” queried the Queen-mother
+anxiously. “There’s so many rough people about. Mebbe you’d better—”
+
+“I never saw anything I was afraid of yet, ma. ’Specially people. And
+men in particular. Don’t you fret. I’ll trot along back as soon as I
+find that runaway scamp.”
+
+The dust lay thick upon the bare ground near the tracks. Alvarita’s eye
+soon discovered the serrated trail of the escaped python. It led across
+the depot grounds and away down a smaller street in the direction of
+the little cañon, as predicted by her. A stillness and lack of
+excitement in the neighbourhood encouraged the hope that, as yet, the
+inhabitants were unaware that so formidable a guest traversed their
+highways. The heat had driven them indoors, whence outdrifted
+occasional shrill laughs, or the depressing whine of a maltreated
+concertina. In the shade a few Mexican children, like vivified stolid
+idols in clay, stared from their play, vision-struck and silent, as
+Alvarita came and went. Here and there a woman peeped from a door and
+stood dumb, reduced to silence by the aspect of the white silk parasol.
+
+A hundred yards and the limits of the town were passed, scattered
+chaparral succeeding, and then a noble grove, overflowing the bijou
+cañon. Through this a small bright stream meandered. Park-like it was,
+with a kind of cockney ruralness further endorsed by the waste papers
+and rifled tins of picnickers. Up this stream, and down it, among its
+pseudo-sylvan glades and depressions, wandered the bright and unruffled
+Alvarita. Once she saw evidence of the recreant reptile’s progress in
+his distinctive trail across a spread of fine sand in the arroyo. The
+living water was bound to lure him; he could not be far away.
+
+So sure was she of his immediate proximity that she perched herself to
+idle for a time in the curve of a great creeper that looped down from a
+giant water-elm. To reach this she climbed from the pathway a little
+distance up the side of a steep and rugged incline. Around her
+chaparral grew thick and high. A late-blooming ratama tree dispensed
+from its yellow petals a sweet and persistent odour. Adown the ravine
+rustled a seductive wind, melancholy with the taste of sodden, fallen
+leaves.
+
+Alvarita removed her hat, and undoing the oppressive convolutions of
+her hair, began to slowly arrange it in two long, dusky plaits.
+
+From the obscure depths of a thick clump of evergreen shrubs five feet
+away, two small jewel-bright eyes were steadfastly regarding her.
+Coiled there lay Kuku, the great python; Kuku, the magnificent, he of
+the plated muzzle, the grooved lips, the eleven-foot stretch of
+elegantly and brilliantly mottled skin. The great python was viewing
+his mistress without a sound or motion to disclose his presence.
+Perhaps the splendid truant forefelt his capture, but, screened by the
+foliage, thought to prolong the delight of his escapade. What pleasure
+it was, after the hot and dusty car, to lie thus, smelling the running
+water, and feeling the agreeable roughness of the earth and stones
+against his body! Soon, very soon the Queen would find him, and he,
+powerless as a worm in her audacious hands, would be returned to the
+dark chest in the narrow house that ran on wheels.
+
+Alvarita heard a sudden crunching of the gravel below her. Turning her
+head she saw a big, swarthy Mexican, with a daring and evil expression,
+contemplating her with an ominous, dull eye.
+
+“What do you want?” she asked as sharply as five hairpins between her
+lips would permit, continuing to plait her hair, and looking him over
+with placid contempt. The Mexican continued to gaze at her, and showed
+his teeth in a white, jagged smile.
+
+“I no hurt-y you, Señorita,” he said.
+
+“You bet you won’t,” answered the Queen, shaking back one finished,
+massive plait. “But don’t you think you’d better move on?”
+
+“Not hurt-y you—no. But maybeso take one _beso_—one li’l kees, you call
+him.”
+
+The man smiled again, and set his foot to ascend the slope. Alvarita
+leaned swiftly and picked up a stone the size of a cocoanut.
+
+“Vamoose, quick,” she ordered peremptorily, “you _coon!_”
+
+The red of insult burned through the Mexican’s dark skin.
+
+“_Hidalgo, Yo!_” he shot between his fangs. “I am not neg-r-ro! _Diabla
+bonita_, for that you shall pay me.”
+
+He made two quick upward steps this time, but the stone, hurled by no
+weak arm, struck him square in the chest. He staggered back to the
+footway, swerved half around, and met another sight that drove all
+thoughts of the girl from his head. She turned her eyes to see what had
+diverted his interest. A man with red-brown, curling hair and a
+melancholy, sunburned, smooth-shaven face was coming up the path,
+twenty yards away. Around the Mexican’s waist was buckled a pistol belt
+with two empty holsters. He had laid aside his sixes—possibly in the
+_jacal_ of the fair Pancha—and had forgotten them when the passing of
+the fairer Alvarita had enticed him to her trail. His hands now flew
+instinctively to the holsters, but finding the weapons gone, he spread
+his fingers outward with the eloquent, abjuring, deprecating Latin
+gesture, and stood like a rock. Seeing his plight, the newcomer
+unbuckled his own belt containing two revolvers, threw it upon the
+ground, and continued to advance.
+
+“Splendid!” murmured Alvarita, with flashing eyes.
+
+As Bob Buckley, according to the mad code of bravery that his sensitive
+conscience imposed upon his cowardly nerves, abandoned his guns and
+closed in upon his enemy, the old, inevitable nausea of abject fear
+wrung him. His breath whistled through his constricted air passages.
+His feet seemed like lumps of lead. His mouth was dry as dust. His
+heart, congested with blood, hurt his ribs as it thumped against them.
+The hot June day turned to moist November. And still he advanced,
+spurred by a mandatory pride that strained its uttermost against his
+weakling flesh.
+
+The distance between the two men slowly lessened. The Mexican stood,
+immovable, waiting. When scarce five yards separated them a little
+shower of loosened gravel rattled down from above to the ranger’s feet.
+He glanced upward with instinctive caution. A pair of dark eyes,
+brilliantly soft, and fierily tender, encountered and held his own. The
+most fearful heart and the boldest one in all the Rio Bravo country
+exchanged a silent and inscrutable communication. Alvarita, still
+seated within her vine, leaned forward above the breast-high chaparral.
+One hand was laid across her bosom. One great dark braid curved forward
+over her shoulder. Her lips were parted; her face was lit with what
+seemed but wonder—great and absolute wonder. Her eyes lingered upon
+Buckley’s. Let no one ask or presume to tell through what subtle medium
+the miracle was performed. As by a lightning flash two clouds will
+accomplish counterpoise and compensation of electric surcharge, so on
+that eyeglance the man received his complement of manhood, and the maid
+conceded what enriched her womanly grace by its loss.
+
+The Mexican, suddenly stirring, ventilated his attitude of apathetic
+waiting by conjuring swiftly from his bootleg a long knife. Buckley
+cast aside his hat, and laughed once aloud, like a happy school-boy at
+a frolic. Then, empty-handed, he sprang nimbly, and Garcia met him
+without default.
+
+So soon was the engagement ended that disappointment imposed upon the
+ranger’s warlike ecstasy. Instead of dealing the traditional downward
+stroke, the Mexican lunged straight with his knife. Buckley took the
+precarious chance, and caught his wrist, fair and firm. Then he
+delivered the good Saxon knock-out blow—always so pathetically
+disastrous to the fistless Latin races—and Garcia was down and out,
+with his head under a clump of prickly pears. The ranger looked up
+again to the Queen of the Serpents.
+
+Alvarita scrambled down to the path.
+
+“I’m mighty glad I happened along when I did,” said the ranger.
+
+“He—he frightened me so!” cooed Alvarita.
+
+They did not hear the long, low hiss of the python under the shrubs.
+Wiliest of the beasts, no doubt he was expressing the humiliation he
+felt at having so long dwelt in subjection to this trembling and
+colouring mistress of his whom he had deemed so strong and potent and
+fearsome.
+
+Then came galloping to the spot the civic authorities; and to them the
+ranger awarded the prostrate disturber of the peace, whom they bore
+away limply across the saddle of one of their mounts. But Buckley and
+Alvarita lingered.
+
+Slowly, slowly they walked. The ranger regained his belt of weapons.
+With a fine timidity she begged the indulgence of fingering the great
+.45’s, with little “Ohs” and “Ahs” of new-born, delicious shyness.
+
+The _cañoncito_ was growing dusky. Beyond its terminus in the river
+bluff they could see the outer world yet suffused with the waning glory
+of sunset.
+
+A scream—a piercing scream of fright from Alvarita. Back she cowered,
+and the ready, protecting arm of Buckley formed her refuge. What terror
+so dire as to thus beset the close of the reign of the
+never-before-daunted Queen?
+
+Across the path there crawled a _caterpillar_—a horrid, fuzzy, two-inch
+caterpillar! Truly, Kuku, thou went avenged. Thus abdicated the Queen
+of the Serpent Tribe—_viva la reina!_
+
+
+
+
+IX
+THE HIGHER ABDICATION
+
+
+Curly the tramp sidled toward the free-lunch counter. He caught a
+fleeting glance from the bartender’s eye, and stood still, trying to
+look like a business man who had just dined at the Menger and was
+waiting for a friend who had promised to pick him up in his motor car.
+Curly’s histrionic powers were equal to the impersonation; but his
+make-up was wanting.
+
+The bartender rounded the bar in a casual way, looking up at the
+ceiling as though he was pondering some intricate problem of
+kalsomining, and then fell upon Curly so suddenly that the roadster had
+no excuses ready. Irresistibly, but so composedly that it seemed almost
+absendmindedness on his part, the dispenser of drinks pushed Curly to
+the swinging doors and kicked him out, with a nonchalance that almost
+amounted to sadness. That was the way of the Southwest.
+
+Curly arose from the gutter leisurely. He felt no anger or resentment
+toward his ejector. Fifteen years of tramphood spent out of the
+twenty-two years of his life had hardened the fibres of his spirit. The
+slings and arrows of outrageous fortune fell blunted from the buckler
+of his armoured pride. With especial resignation did he suffer
+contumely and injury at the hands of bartenders. Naturally, they were
+his enemies; and unnaturally, they were often his friends. He had to
+take his chances with them. But he had not yet learned to estimate
+these cool, languid, Southwestern knights of the bungstarter, who had
+the manners of an Earl of Pawtucket, and who, when they disapproved of
+your presence, moved you with the silence and despatch of a chess
+automaton advancing a pawn.
+
+Curly stood for a few moments in the narrow, mesquite-paved street. San
+Antonio puzzled and disturbed him. Three days he had been a non-paying
+guest of the town, having dropped off there from a box car of an I. &
+G.N. freight, because Greaser Johnny had told him in Des Moines that
+the Alamo City was manna fallen, gathered, cooked, and served free with
+cream and sugar. Curly had found the tip partly a good one. There was
+hospitality in plenty of a careless, liberal, irregular sort. But the
+town itself was a weight upon his spirits after his experience with the
+rushing, business-like, systematised cities of the North and East. Here
+he was often flung a dollar, but too frequently a good-natured kick
+would follow it. Once a band of hilarious cowboys had roped him on
+Military Plaza and dragged him across the black soil until no
+respectable rag-bag would have stood sponsor for his clothes. The
+winding, doubling streets, leading nowhere, bewildered him. And then
+there was a little river, crooked as a pot-hook, that crawled through
+the middle of the town, crossed by a hundred little bridges so nearly
+alike that they got on Curly’s nerves. And the last bartender wore a
+number nine shoe.
+
+The saloon stood on a corner. The hour was eight o’clock. Homefarers
+and outgoers jostled Curly on the narrow stone sidewalk. Between the
+buildings to his left he looked down a cleft that proclaimed itself
+another thoroughfare. The alley was dark except for one patch of light.
+Where there was light there were sure to be human beings. Where there
+were human beings after nightfall in San Antonio there might be food,
+and there was sure to be drink. So Curly headed for the light.
+
+The illumination came from Schwegel’s Café. On the sidewalk in front of
+it Curly picked up an old envelope. It might have contained a check for
+a million. It was empty; but the wanderer read the address, “Mr. Otto
+Schwegel,” and the name of the town and State. The postmark was
+Detroit.
+
+Curly entered the saloon. And now in the light it could be perceived
+that he bore the stamp of many years of vagabondage. He had none of the
+tidiness of the calculating and shrewd professional tramp. His wardrobe
+represented the cast-off specimens of half a dozen fashions and eras.
+Two factories had combined their efforts in providing shoes for his
+feet. As you gazed at him there passed through your mind vague
+impressions of mummies, wax figures, Russian exiles, and men lost on
+desert islands. His face was covered almost to his eyes with a curly
+brown beard that he kept trimmed short with a pocket-knife, and that
+had furnished him with his _nom de route_. Light-blue eyes, full of
+sullenness, fear, cunning, impudence, and fawning, witnessed the stress
+that had been laid upon his soul.
+
+The saloon was small, and in its atmosphere the odours of meat and
+drink struggled for the ascendancy. The pig and the cabbage wrestled
+with hydrogen and oxygen. Behind the bar Schwegel laboured with an
+assistant whose epidermal pores showed no signs of being obstructed.
+Hot weinerwurst and sauerkraut were being served to purchasers of beer.
+Curly shuffled to the end of the bar, coughed hollowly, and told
+Schwegel that he was a Detroit cabinet-maker out of a job.
+
+It followed as the night the day that he got his schooner and lunch.
+
+“Was you acquainted maybe with Heinrich Strauss in Detroit?” asked
+Schwegel.
+
+“Did I know Heinrich Strauss?” repeated Curly, affectionately. “Why,
+say, ’Bo, I wish I had a dollar for every game of pinochle me and Heine
+has played on Sunday afternoons.”
+
+More beer and a second plate of steaming food was set before the
+diplomat. And then Curly, knowing to a fluid-drachm how far a “con”
+game would go, shuffled out into the unpromising street.
+
+And now he began to perceive the inconveniences of this stony Southern
+town. There was none of the outdoor gaiety and brilliancy and music
+that provided distraction even to the poorest in the cities of the
+North. Here, even so early, the gloomy, rock-walled houses were closed
+and barred against the murky dampness of the night. The streets were
+mere fissures through which flowed grey wreaths of river mist. As he
+walked he heard laughter and the chink of coin and chips behind
+darkened windows, and music coming from every chink of wood and stone.
+But the diversions were selfish; the day of popular pastimes had not
+yet come to San Antonio.
+
+But at length Curly, as he strayed, turned the sharp angle of another
+lost street and came upon a rollicking band of stockmen from the
+outlying ranches celebrating in the open in front of an ancient wooden
+hotel. One great roisterer from the sheep country who had just
+instigated a movement toward the bar, swept Curly in like a stray goat
+with the rest of his flock. The princes of kine and wool hailed him as
+a new zoological discovery, and uproariously strove to preserve him in
+the diluted alcohol of their compliments and regards.
+
+An hour afterward Curly staggered from the hotel barroom dismissed by
+his fickle friends, whose interest in him had subsided as quickly as it
+had risen. Full—stoked with alcoholic fuel and cargoed with food, the
+only question remaining to disturb him was that of shelter and bed.
+
+A drizzling, cold Texas rain had begun to fall—an endless, lazy,
+unintermittent downfall that lowered the spirits of men and raised a
+reluctant steam from the warm stones of the streets and houses. Thus
+comes the “norther” dousing gentle spring and amiable autumn with the
+chilling salutes and adieux of coming and departing winter.
+
+Curly followed his nose down the first tortuous street into which his
+irresponsible feet conducted him. At the lower end of it, on the bank
+of the serpentine stream, he perceived an open gate in a cemented rock
+wall. Inside he saw camp fires and a row of low wooden sheds built
+against three sides of the enclosing wall. He entered the enclosure.
+Under the sheds many horses were champing at their oats and corn. Many
+wagons and buckboards stood about with their teams’ harness thrown
+carelessly upon the shafts and doubletrees. Curly recognised the place
+as a wagon-yard, such as is provided by merchants for their out-of-town
+friends and customers. No one was in sight. No doubt the drivers of
+those wagons were scattered about the town “seeing the elephant and
+hearing the owl.” In their haste to become patrons of the town’s
+dispensaries of mirth and good cheer the last ones to depart must have
+left the great wooden gate swinging open.
+
+Curly had satisfied the hunger of an anaconda and the thirst of a
+camel, so he was neither in the mood nor the condition of an explorer.
+He zigzagged his way to the first wagon that his eyesight distinguished
+in the semi-darkness under the shed. It was a two-horse wagon with a
+top of white canvas. The wagon was half filled with loose piles of wool
+sacks, two or three great bundles of grey blankets, and a number of
+bales, bundles, and boxes. A reasoning eye would have estimated the
+load at once as ranch supplies, bound on the morrow for some outlying
+hacienda. But to the drowsy intelligence of Curly they represented only
+warmth and softness and protection against the cold humidity of the
+night. After several unlucky efforts, at last he conquered gravity so
+far as to climb over a wheel and pitch forward upon the best and
+warmest bed he had fallen upon in many a day. Then he became
+instinctively a burrowing animal, and dug his way like a prairie-dog
+down among the sacks and blankets, hiding himself from the cold air as
+snug and safe as a bear in his den. For three nights sleep had visited
+Curly only in broken and shivering doses. So now, when Morpheus
+condescended to pay him a call, Curly got such a strangle hold on the
+mythological old gentleman that it was a wonder that anyone else in the
+whole world got a wink of sleep that night.
+
+Six cowpunchers of the Cibolo Ranch were waiting around the door of the
+ranch store. Their ponies cropped grass near by, tied in the Texas
+fashion—which is not tied at all. Their bridle reins had been dropped
+to the earth, which is a more effectual way of securing them (such is
+the power of habit and imagination) than you could devise out of a
+half-inch rope and a live-oak tree.
+
+These guardians of the cow lounged about, each with a brown cigarette
+paper in his hand, and gently but unceasingly cursed Sam Revell, the
+storekeeper. Sam stood in the door, snapping the red elastic bands on
+his pink madras shirtsleeves and looking down affectionately at the
+only pair of tan shoes within a forty-mile radius. His offence had been
+serious, and he was divided between humble apology and admiration for
+the beauty of his raiment. He had allowed the ranch stock of “smoking”
+to become exhausted.
+
+“I thought sure there was another case of it under the counter, boys,”
+he explained. “But it happened to be catterdges.”
+
+“You’ve sure got a case of happenedicitis,” said Poky Rodgers, fence
+rider of the Largo Verde _potrero_. “Somebody ought to happen to give
+you a knock on the head with the butt end of a quirt. I’ve rode in nine
+miles for some tobacco; and it don’t appear natural and seemly that you
+ought to be allowed to live.”
+
+“The boys was smokin’ cut plug and dried mesquite leaves mixed when I
+left,” sighed Mustang Taylor, horse wrangler of the Three Elm camp.
+“They’ll be lookin’ for me back by nine. They’ll be settin’ up, with
+their papers ready to roll a whiff of the real thing before bedtime.
+And I’ve got to tell ’em that this pink-eyed, sheep-headed,
+sulphur-footed, shirt-waisted son of a calico broncho, Sam Revell,
+hasn’t got no tobacco on hand.”
+
+Gregorio Falcon, Mexican vaquero and best thrower of the rope on the
+Cibolo, pushed his heavy, silver-embroidered straw sombrero back upon
+his thicket of jet black curls, and scraped the bottoms of his pockets
+for a few crumbs of the precious weed.
+
+“Ah, Don Samuel,” he said, reproachfully, but with his touch of
+Castilian manners, “escuse me. Dthey say dthe jackrabbeet and dthe
+sheep have dthe most leetle _sesos_—how you call dthem—brain-es? Ah
+don’t believe dthat, Don Samuel—escuse me. Ah dthink people w’at don’t
+keep esmokin’ tobacco, dthey—bot you weel escuse me, Don Samuel.”
+
+“Now, what’s the use of chewin’ the rag, boys,” said the untroubled
+Sam, stooping over to rub the toes of his shoes with a red-and-yellow
+handkerchief. “Ranse took the order for some more smokin’ to San Antone
+with him Tuesday. Pancho rode Ranse’s hoss back yesterday; and Ranse is
+goin’ to drive the wagon back himself. There wa’n’t much of a load—just
+some woolsacks and blankets and nails and canned peaches and a few
+things we was out of. I look for Ranse to roll in to-day sure. He’s an
+early starter and a hell-to-split driver, and he ought to be here not
+far from sundown.”
+
+“What plugs is he drivin’?” asked Mustang Taylor, with a smack of hope
+in his tones.
+
+“The buckboard greys,” said Sam.
+
+“I’ll wait a spell, then,” said the wrangler. “Them plugs eat up a
+trail like a road-runner swallowin’ a whip snake. And you may bust me
+open a can of greengage plums, Sam, while I’m waitin’ for somethin’
+better.”
+
+“Open me some yellow clings,” ordered Poky Rodgers. “I’ll wait, too.”
+
+The tobaccoless punchers arranged themselves comfortably on the steps
+of the store. Inside Sam chopped open with a hatchet the tops of the
+cans of fruit.
+
+The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards
+from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still
+farther the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens—for the
+Rancho Cibolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a
+little distance, were the grass-thatched _jacals_ of the Mexicans who
+bestowed their allegiance upon the Cibolo.
+
+The ranch-house was composed of four large rooms, with plastered adobe
+walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide “gallery”
+circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks
+and water-elms near a lake—a long, not very wide, and tremendously deep
+lake in which at nightfall, great gars leaped to the surface and
+plunged with the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath. From
+the trees hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy grey
+moss of the South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of the
+South than of the West. It looked as if old “Kiowa” Truesdell might
+have brought it with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when he came
+to Texas with his rifle in the hollow of his arm in ’55.
+
+But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring
+something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting than
+brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family feud.
+And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles from
+the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the
+chaparral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned
+the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or two
+Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried a
+brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at Cibolo.
+And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the ranches
+between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the head of his
+rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning his sobriquet.
+Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and broadening lands.
+And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with his great mane of
+hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his fierce, pale-blue
+eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like the pumas that he
+had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the bitter taste to life
+did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his lips was that his
+only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last youthful survivor of
+the other end of the feud.
+
+For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling
+of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the
+cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a
+doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair for
+the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.
+
+From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch
+of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowy
+mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly
+black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the
+ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old government trail
+to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its
+grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of sunshine.
+
+That evening ears were quicker than eyes.
+
+The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin against
+tin.
+
+“One waggeen,” said he, “cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel.
+Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo.”
+
+“You’ve got good ears, Gregorio,” said Mustang Taylor. “I never heard
+nothin’ but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin’
+across the peaceful dell.”
+
+In ten minutes Taylor remarked: “I see the dust of a wagon risin’ right
+above the fur end of the flat.”
+
+“You have verree good eyes, señor,” said Gregorio, smiling.
+
+Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the
+mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses’
+hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket,
+whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy.
+
+From the _jacals_ came a cry of: “_El Amo! El Amo!_” Four Mexican
+youths raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of
+greeting and delight.
+
+Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed.
+
+“It’s under the wagon sheet, boys,” he said. “I know what you’re
+waiting for. If Sam lets it run out again we’ll use those yellow shoes
+of his for a target. There’s two cases. Pull ’em out and light up. I
+know you all want a smoke.”
+
+After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the
+bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty hands
+dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the
+cases of tobacco.
+
+Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode
+with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm
+like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket
+and pulled out a fearful thing—a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied
+together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and
+claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.
+
+“Who-ee!” yelled Long Collins. “Ranse, are you a-packin’ around of
+corpuses? Here’s a—howlin’ grasshoppers!”
+
+Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its
+burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable,
+drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and
+cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were
+swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the
+wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cléo
+de Mérode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.
+
+Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with
+wide-open eyes.
+
+“Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get in
+there?”
+
+The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had
+forgotten tobacco.
+
+Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a
+Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.
+
+“Where is this?” he rasped through his parched throat. “It’s a damn
+farm in an old field. What’d you bring me here for—say? Did I say I
+wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin’ at—hey? G’wan or I’ll
+punch some of yer faces.”
+
+“Drag him out, Collins,” said Ranse.
+
+Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his
+shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering
+from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out
+a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to
+glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.
+
+“How’d you come in my wagon?” repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that
+drew a reply.
+
+Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and
+large persons in blue carrying clubs.
+
+“Me?” he growled. “Oh, was you talkin’ to me? Why, I was on my way to
+the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled
+into that wagon in the wagon-yard—see? I never told you to bring me out
+to this bloomin’ farm—see?”
+
+“What is it, Mustang?” asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke
+in his ecstasy. “What do it live on?”
+
+“It’s a galliwampus, Poky,” said Mustang. “It’s the thing that hollers
+‘willi-walloo’ up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don’t
+know if it bites.”
+
+“No, it ain’t, Mustang,” volunteered Long Collins. “Them galliwampuses
+has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a
+hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don’t stand
+so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile
+tail.”
+
+Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their
+first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.
+
+“Well, ain’t that a Willie for your whiskers?” he commented. “Where’d
+you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin’ to make an auditorium for inbreviates
+out of the ranch?”
+
+“Say,” said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell
+blunted. “Any of you kiddin’ guys got a drink on you? Have your fun.
+Say, I’ve been hittin’ the stuff till I don’t know straight up.”
+
+He turned to Ranse. “Say, you shanghaied me on your d—d old prairie
+schooner—did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I’m
+goin’ all to little pieces. What’s doin’?”
+
+Ranse saw that the tramp’s nerves were racking him. He despatched one
+of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly
+gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow—as human
+as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog.
+
+“Thanky, boss,” he said, quietly.
+
+“You’re thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon,”
+said Ranse.
+
+Curly fell back weakly against the steps.
+
+“Since you are here,” continued the ranchman, “come along with me. We
+can’t turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces.”
+
+He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept.
+There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets.
+
+“I don’t suppose you can sleep,” said Ranse, “since you’ve been
+pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till
+morning. I’ll have Pedro fetch you up some grub.”
+
+“Sleep!” said Curly. “I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a
+coffin nail on you?”
+
+Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what
+he did.
+
+Old “Kiowa” Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the
+light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh
+from town at his elbow.
+
+“Back, Ranse?” said the old man, looking up.
+
+“Son,” old “Kiowa” continued, “I’ve been thinking all day about a
+certain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again.
+I’ve lived for you. I’ve fought wolves and Indians and worse white men
+to protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I’ve
+taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I’ve
+worked to pile up dollars that’ll be yours. You’ll be a rich man,
+Ranse, when my chunk goes out. I’ve made you. I’ve licked you into
+shape like a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don’t belong to yourself
+—you’ve got to be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more
+nonsense about this Curtis girl?”
+
+“I’ll tell you once more,” said Ranse, slowly. “As I am a Truesdell and
+as you are my father, I’ll never marry a Curtis.”
+
+“Good boy,” said old “Kiowa.” “You’d better go get some supper.”
+
+Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican
+cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove.
+
+“Just a cup of coffee, Pedro,” he said, and drank it standing. And
+then:
+
+“There’s a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to eat.
+Better make it enough for two.”
+
+Ranse walked out toward the _jacals_. A boy came running.
+
+“Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?”
+
+“Why not, señor? I saw him near the _puerta_ but two hours past. He
+bears a drag-rope.”
+
+“Get him and saddle him as quick as you can.”
+
+“_Prontito, señor_.”
+
+Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his
+knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his
+guitar in the moonlight.
+
+Vaminos shall have a word—Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans, who
+have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him _gruyo_. He
+was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roan-dun, if you can
+conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of
+black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many
+miles in the world as he could travel in a day.
+
+Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure
+of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow
+ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of
+France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal sky
+for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together like
+kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to
+have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their
+course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos.
+
+In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony
+Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.
+
+“I ought to have ridden nearer your home,” said Ranse. “But you never
+will let me.”
+
+Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white
+teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the
+moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse
+Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to
+meet him.
+
+“How often have I told you, Ranse,” she said, “that I am your half-way
+girl? Always half-way.”
+
+“Well?” said Ranse, with a question in his tones.
+
+“I did,” said Yenna, with almost a sigh. “I told him after dinner when
+I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion,
+Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost tore
+the ranch to pieces. It’s all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I’m
+afraid—I’m afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I’d never
+marry a Truesdell. I promised. That’s all. What luck did you have?”
+
+“The same,” said Ranse, slowly. “I promised him that his son would
+never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn’t go against him. He’s mighty
+old. I’m sorry, Yenna.”
+
+The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse’s, on the horn
+of his saddle.
+
+“I never thought I’d like you better for giving me up,” she said
+ardently, “but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the
+house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour.”
+
+“Good-night,” said Ranse. “Ride carefully over them badger holes.”
+
+They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her
+saddle and called clearly:
+
+“Don’t forget I’m your half-way girl, Ranse.”
+
+“Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps,” muttered Ranse
+vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.
+
+Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room.
+He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of
+letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to
+Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it
+savagely—as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his
+shins—as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an
+envelope fell from somewhere—probably from where it had lodged in one
+of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.
+
+Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican _jacals_.
+
+“Tia Juana,” he said, “I would like to talk with you a while.”
+
+An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose
+from a stool.
+
+“Sit down,” said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in
+the _jacal_. “Who am I, Tia Juana?” he asked, speaking Spanish.
+
+“Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?” answered
+the old woman wonderingly.
+
+“Tia Juana, who am I?” he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into
+hers.
+
+A frightened look came in the old woman’s face. She fumbled with her
+black shawl.
+
+“Who am I, Tia Juana?” said Ranse once more.
+
+“Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo,” said Tia Juana.
+“I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before
+these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will
+speak. I see in your face that you know.”
+
+An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana’s closed door. As he was on his
+way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.
+
+The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.
+
+“Say, sport,” he grumbled. “This is no way to treat a man after
+kidnappin’ him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that
+fresh guy and had a shave. But that ain’t all a man needs. Say—can’t
+you loosen up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never asked
+you to bring me to your d—d farm.”
+
+“Stand up out here in the light,” said Ranse, looking at him closely.
+
+Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two.
+
+His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been
+combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a
+peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink;
+and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost
+gave distinction to his looks.
+
+Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.
+
+“Where did you come from—have you got any home or folks anywhere?”
+
+“Me? Why, I’m a dook,” said Curly. “I’m Sir Reginald—oh, cheese it. No;
+I don’t know anything about my ancestors. I’ve been a tramp ever since
+I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set ’em up again
+to-night or not?”
+
+“You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a
+tramp?”
+
+“Me?” answered Curly. “Why, I adopted that profession when I was an
+infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a
+big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses to
+beg. I wasn’t hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate.”
+
+“Did he ever tell you how he got you?” asked Ranse.
+
+“Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter and
+six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what’s the
+diff? That’s all I know.”
+
+“All right,” said Ranse. “I reckon you’re a maverick for certain. I’m
+going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I’ll start you to work in
+one of the camps to-morrow.”
+
+“Work!” sniffed Curly, disdainfully. “What do you take me for? Do you
+think I’d chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep
+like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget
+it.”
+
+“Oh, you’ll like it when you get used to it,” said Ranse. “Yes, I’ll
+send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you’ll make a first-class
+cowpuncher before I get through with you.”
+
+“Me?” said Curly. “I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go
+chase themselves. Don’t forget my nightcap, please, boss.”
+
+Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell
+was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed.
+
+“Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the
+morning?” asked Ranse.
+
+“Long Collins,” said Sam briefly. “For the mail.”
+
+“Tell him,” said Ranse, “to take that tramp out to camp with him and
+keep him till I get there.”
+
+Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing
+talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next
+afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with
+dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in favour
+of the conventions.
+
+Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly.
+
+“He’s a plumb buzzard,” said Buck. “He won’t work, and he’s the
+low-downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn’t know what you
+wanted done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit
+him. He’s been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told
+’em maybe you was savin’ him for the torture.”
+
+Ranse took off his coat.
+
+“I’ve got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done.
+I’ve got to make a man out of that thing. That’s what I’ve come to camp
+for.”
+
+He went up to Curly.
+
+“Brother,” he said, “don’t you think if you had a bath it would allow
+you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less
+injustice to the atmosphere.”
+
+“Run away, farmer,” said Curly, sardonically. “Willie will send for
+nursey when he feels like having his tub.”
+
+The _charco_, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of
+Curly’s ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink.
+Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the
+offending member of society far into the lake.
+
+Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise.
+
+Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands.
+
+“Go to the other end of the lake and use this,” he said. “Buck will
+give you some dry clothes at the wagon.”
+
+The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he had
+returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognised in his new shirt and
+brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of his eye.
+
+“Lordy, I hope he ain’t a coward,” he was saying to himself. “I hope he
+won’t turn out to be a coward.”
+
+His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood.
+His light-blue eyes were blazing.
+
+“Now I’m clean,” he said meaningly, “maybe you’ll talk to me. Think
+you’ve got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run
+over a man because you know he can’t get away. All right. Now, what do
+you think of that?”
+
+Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse’s left cheek. The print of
+his hand stood out a dull red against the tan.
+
+Ranse smiled happily.
+
+The cowpunchers talk to this day of the battle that followed.
+
+Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the art
+of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid
+strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred
+by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no
+formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The last
+time Curly went down from one of the ranchman’s awkward but powerful
+blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an unquenched eye.
+
+Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his
+chin in the stream from the faucet.
+
+On his face was a grin of satisfaction.
+
+Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could know
+the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse put
+his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp. The
+ranchman had no fine theories to work out—perhaps his whole stock of
+pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a belief in
+heredity.
+
+The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of the
+strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly organised
+themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system was their
+own.
+
+Curly’s first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate
+terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was
+that his “subject” held his ground at each successive higher step. But
+the steps were sometimes far apart.
+
+Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub
+tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass,
+magnificently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move
+was to find his soap and towel and start for the _charco_. And once,
+when a treat came from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh
+tomatoes and young onions, Curly devoured the entire consignment before
+the punchers reached the camp at supper time.
+
+And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days
+they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or
+remarks. And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They
+played tricks on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and
+affectionately; they heaped upon one another’s heads friendly curses
+and obloquy; but they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung him
+as much as Ranse hoped it would.
+
+Then came a night that brought a cold, wet norther. Wilson, the
+youngest of the outfit, had lain in camp two days, ill with fever. When
+Joe got up at daylight to begin breakfast he found Curly sitting asleep
+against a wheel of the grub wagon with only a saddle blanket around
+him, while Curly’s blankets were stretched over Wilson to protect him
+from the rain and wind.
+
+Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and went to
+sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and began to make
+preparations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope to the horn of a
+saddle. Others were getting out their six-shooters.
+
+“Boys,” said Ranse, “I’m much obliged. I was hoping you would. But I
+didn’t like to ask.”
+
+Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop—awful yells rent the air—Long
+Collins galloped wildly across Curly’s bed, dragging the saddle after
+him. That was merely their way of gently awaking their victim. Then
+they hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code
+of cow camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over
+a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather
+leggings.
+
+And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving
+the puncher’s accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he
+would be their “pardner” and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.
+
+When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe’s big
+coffee-pot by the fire for a Java nightcap. Ranse watched the new
+knight carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped
+with his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed
+and sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other.
+Curly—grinned.
+
+And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equipment,
+and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the job.
+
+Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb’s camp, which was
+then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day’s ride. He
+sought out Long Collins among them.
+
+“How about that bronco?” he asked.
+
+Long Collins grinned.
+
+“Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell,” he said, “and you’ll touch him.
+And you can shake his’n, too, if you like, for he’s plumb white and
+there’s none better in no camp.”
+
+Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cowpuncher who
+stood at Collins’s side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand, and
+Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster.
+
+“I want you at the ranch,” said Ranse.
+
+“All right, sport,” said Curly, heartily. “But I want to come back
+again. Say, pal, this is a dandy farm. And I don’t want any better fun
+than hustlin’ cows with this bunch of guys. They’re all to the
+merry-merry.”
+
+At the Cibolo ranch-house they dismounted. Ranse bade Curly wait at the
+door of the living room. He walked inside. Old “Kiowa” Truesdell was
+reading at a table.
+
+“Good-morning, Mr. Truesdell,” said Ranse.
+
+The old man turned his white head quickly.
+
+“How is this?” he began. “Why do you call me ‘Mr.—’?”
+
+When he looked at Ranse’s face he stopped, and the hand that held his
+newspaper shook slightly.
+
+“Boy,” he said slowly, “how did you find it out?”
+
+“It’s all right,” said Ranse, with a smile. “I made Tia Juana tell me.
+It was kind of by accident, but it’s all right.”
+
+“You’ve been like a son to me,” said old “Kiowa,” trembling.
+
+“Tia Juana told me all about it,” said Ranse. “She told me how you
+adopted me when I was knee-high to a puddle duck out of a wagon train
+of prospectors that was bound West. And she told me how the kid—your
+own kid, you know—got lost or was run away with. And she said it was
+the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the
+ranch.”
+
+“Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old,” said the
+old man. “And then along came those emigrant wagons with a youngster
+they didn’t want; and we took you. I never intended you to know, Ranse.
+We never heard of our boy again.”
+
+“He’s right outside, unless I’m mighty mistaken,” said Ranse, opening
+the door and beckoning.
+
+Curly walked in.
+
+No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same sweep
+of hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light-blue
+eyes.
+
+Old “Kiowa” rose eagerly.
+
+Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came over
+his face. He pointed to the wall opposite.
+
+“Where’s the tick-tock?” he asked, absent-mindedly.
+
+“The clock,” cried old “Kiowa” loudly. “The eight-day clock used to
+stand there. Why—”
+
+He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there.
+
+Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was
+bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards
+the Rancho de los Olmos.
+
+
+
+
+X
+CUPID À LA CARTE
+
+
+“The dispositions of woman,” said Jeff Peters, after various opinions
+on the subject had been advanced, “run, regular, to diversions. What a
+woman wants is what you’re out of. She wants more of a thing when it’s
+scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She
+likes to be reminded of things she never heard of. A one-sided view of
+objects is disjointing to the female composition.
+
+“’Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel,” continued
+Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery
+stove, “to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I’ve
+breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town
+in the United States. I’ve held ’em spellbound with music, oratory,
+sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I’ve sold ’em jewelry,
+medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk of other nominations. And during
+my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I’ve taken
+cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about
+one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious
+and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One
+lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of
+Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from
+Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby’s Anti-explosive Lamp
+Oil Powder. ’Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom. Guthrie
+was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising dough. It
+was a boom town of the regular kind—you stood in line to get a chance
+to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a lodging bill
+added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged it to you as
+board the next morning.
+
+“By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering
+choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a
+proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent
+just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the
+boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did
+the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side.
+That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the
+world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and
+pick-me-up hotels. ‘Try Mother’s Home-Made Biscuits,’ ‘What’s the
+Matter with Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?’ ‘Hot Cakes and Maple
+Syrup Like You Ate When a Boy,’ ‘Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to
+Crow’— there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I
+said to myself that mother’s wandering boy should munch there that
+night. And so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case
+of Mame Dugan.
+
+“Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his
+time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty
+memorialising the great corn-crop failure of ’96. Ma Dugan did the
+cooking, and Mame waited on the table.
+
+“As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census
+reports. There wasn’t but one girl in the United States. When you come
+to specifications it isn’t easy. She was about the size of an angel,
+and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a
+girl she was, you’ll find a belt of ’em reaching from the Brooklyn
+Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They earn
+their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices.
+They’re chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look
+life straight in the eye. They’ve met man face to face, and discovered
+that he’s a poor creature. They’ve dropped to it that the reports in
+the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation.
+
+“Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she
+passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you’d have
+smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the
+insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the
+diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should
+be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. ’Tis my opinion that the
+biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical
+romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So,
+you’ll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame.
+
+“Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at
+irregular times when there wasn’t so many around. Mame would sail in
+with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: ‘Hello, Jeff
+—why don’t you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you can
+be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie’—and so
+on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached.
+Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used
+as they came to hand. I’d eat about two meals before I left, and string
+’em out like a society spread where they changed plates and wives, and
+josh one another festively between bites. Mame stood for it, pleasant,
+for it wasn’t up to her to take any canvas off the tent by declining
+dollars just because they were whipped in after meal times.
+
+“It wasn’t long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got the
+between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between
+breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed
+circus of that tent, and Mame’s turn as waiter a continuous
+performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and
+contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or
+something—I’ve forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with
+gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of
+view. So, Collier and me infested the grub tent with care and activity.
+Mame was level full of impartiality. ’Twas like a casino hand the way
+she dealt out her favours—one to Collier and one to me and one to the
+board, and not a card up her sleeve.
+
+“Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some
+on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant
+chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility.
+
+“‘I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after
+the guests have fled,’ says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions.
+
+“‘Well, yes,’ says Collier, reflecting; ‘the tumult of a crowded board
+seems to harass my sensitive nerves.’
+
+“‘It exasperates mine some, too,’ says I. ‘Nice little girl, don’t you
+think?’
+
+“‘I see,’ says Collier, laughing. ‘Well, now that you mention it, I
+have noticed that she doesn’t seem to displease the optic nerve.’
+
+“‘She’s a joy to mine,’ says I, ‘and I’m going after her. Notice is
+hereby served.’
+
+“‘I’ll be as candid as you,’ admits Collier, ‘and if the drug stores
+don’t run out of pepsin I’ll give you a run for your money that’ll
+leave you a dyspeptic at the wind-up.’
+
+“So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new
+supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable, and it looks
+like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in Dugan’s
+restaurant.
+
+“’Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after
+supper when the things were all cleared away. We strolled out a
+distance and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such
+opportunities was seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the
+Brazilian diamonds and the fire kindler were laying up sufficient
+treasure to guarantee the happiness of two, and that both of ’em
+together couldn’t equal the light from somebody’s eyes, and that the
+name of Dugan should be changed to Peters, or reasons why not would be
+in order.
+
+“Mame didn’t say anything right away. Directly she gave a kind of
+shudder, and I began to learn something.
+
+“‘Jeff,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry you spoke. I like you as well as any of
+them, but there isn’t a man in the world I’d ever marry, and there
+never will be. Do you know what a man is in my eye? He’s a tomb. He’s a
+sarcophagus for the interment of
+Beafsteakporkchopsliver’nbaconham-andeggs. He’s that and nothing more.
+For two years I’ve watched men eat, eat, eat, until they represent
+nothing on earth to me but ruminant bipeds. They’re absolutely nothing
+but something that goes in front of a knife and fork and plate at the
+table. They’re fixed that way in my mind and memory. I’ve tried to
+overcome it, but I can’t. I’ve heard girls rave about their
+sweethearts, but I never could understand it. A man and a sausage
+grinder and a pantry awake in me exactly the same sentiments. I went to
+a matinée once to see an actor the girls were crazy about. I got
+interested enough to wonder whether he liked his steak rare, medium, or
+well done, and his eggs over or straight up. That was all. No, Jeff;
+I’ll marry no man and see him sit at the breakfast table and eat, and
+come back to dinner and eat, and happen in again at supper to eat, eat,
+eat.’
+
+“‘But, Mame,’ says I, ‘it’ll wear off. You’ve had too much of it.
+You’ll marry some time, of course. Men don’t eat always.’
+
+“‘As far as my observation goes, they do. No, I’ll tell you what I’m
+going to do.’ Mame turns, sudden, to animation and bright eyes.
+‘There’s a girl named Susie Foster in Terre Haute, a chum of mine. She
+waits in the railroad eating house there. I worked two years in a
+restaurant in that town. Susie has it worse than I do, because the men
+who eat at railroad stations gobble. They try to flirt and gobble at
+the same time. Whew! Susie and I have it all planned out. We’re saving
+our money, and when we get enough we’re going to buy a little cottage
+and five acres we know of, and live together, and grow violets for the
+Eastern market. A man better not bring his appetite within a mile of
+that ranch.’
+
+“‘Don’t girls ever—’ I commenced, but Mame heads me off, sharp.
+
+“‘No, they don’t. They nibble a little bit sometimes; that’s all.’
+
+“‘I thought the confect—’
+
+“‘For goodness’ sake, change the subject,’ says Mame.
+
+“As I said before, that experience puts me wise that the feminine
+arrangement ever struggles after deceptions and illusions. Take
+England—beef made her; wieners elevated Germany; Uncle Sam owes his
+greatness to fried chicken and pie, but the young ladies of the
+Shetalkyou schools, they’ll never believe it. Shakespeare, they allow,
+and Rubinstein, and the Rough Riders is what did the trick.
+
+“’Twas a situation calculated to disturb. I couldn’t bear to give up
+Mame; and yet it pained me to think of abandoning the practice of
+eating. I had acquired the habit too early. For twenty-seven years I
+had been blindly rushing upon my fate, yielding to the insidious lures
+of that deadly monster, food. It was too late. I was a ruminant biped
+for keeps. It was lobster salad to a doughnut that my life was going to
+be blighted by it.
+
+“I continued to board at the Dugan tent, hoping that Mame would relent.
+I had sufficient faith in true love to believe that since it has often
+outlived the absence of a square meal it might, in time, overcome the
+presence of one. I went on ministering to my fatal vice, although I
+felt that each time I shoved a potato into my mouth in Mame’s presence
+I might be burying my fondest hopes.
+
+“I think Collier must have spoken to Mame and got the same answer, for
+one day he orders a cup of coffee and a cracker, and sits nibbling the
+corner of it like a girl in the parlour, that’s filled up in the
+kitchen, previous, on cold roast and fried cabbage. I caught on and did
+the same, and maybe we thought we’d made a hit! The next day we tried
+it again, and out comes old man Dugan fetching in his hands the fairy
+viands.
+
+“‘Kinder off yer feed, ain’t ye, gents?’ he asks, fatherly and some
+sardonic. ‘Thought I’d spell Mame a bit, seein’ the work was light, and
+my rheumatiz can stand the strain.’
+
+“So back me and Collier had to drop to the heavy grub again. I noticed
+about that time that I was seized by a most uncommon and devastating
+appetite. I ate until Mame must have hated to see me darken the door.
+Afterward I found out that I had been made the victim of the first dark
+and irreligious trick played on me by Ed Collier. Him and me had been
+taking drinks together uptown regular, trying to drown our thirst for
+food. That man had bribed about ten bartenders to always put a big slug
+of Appletree’s Anaconda Appetite Bitters in every one of my drinks. But
+the last trick he played me was hardest to forget.
+
+“One day Collier failed to show up at the tent. A man told me he left
+town that morning. My only rival now was the bill of fare. A few days
+before he left Collier had presented me with a two-gallon jug of fine
+whisky which he said a cousin had sent him from Kentucky. I now have
+reason to believe that it contained Appletree’s Anaconda Appetite
+Bitters almost exclusively. I continued to devour tons of provisions.
+In Mame’s eyes I remained a mere biped, more ruminant than ever.
+
+“About a week after Collier pulled his freight there came a kind of
+side-show to town, and hoisted a tent near the railroad. I judged it
+was a sort of fake museum and curiosity business. I called to see Mame
+one night, and Ma Dugan said that she and Thomas, her younger brother,
+had gone to the show. That same thing happened for three nights that
+week. Saturday night I caught her on the way coming back, and got to
+sit on the steps a while and talk to her. I noticed she looked
+different. Her eyes were softer, and shiny like. Instead of a Mame
+Dugan to fly from the voracity of man and raise violets, she seemed to
+be a Mame more in line as God intended her, approachable, and suited to
+bask in the light of the Brazilians and the Kindler.
+
+“‘You seem to be right smart inveigled,’ says I, ‘with the Unparalleled
+Exhibition of the World’s Living Curiosities and Wonders.’
+
+“‘It’s a change,’ says Mame.
+
+“‘You’ll need another,’ says I, ‘if you keep on going every night.’
+
+“‘Don’t be cross, Jeff,’ says she; ‘it takes my mind off business.’
+
+“‘Don’t the curiosities eat?’ I ask.
+
+“‘Not all of them. Some of them are wax.’
+
+“‘Look out, then, that you don’t get stuck,’ says I, kind of flip and
+foolish.
+
+“Mame blushed. I didn’t know what to think about her. My hopes raised
+some that perhaps my attentions had palliated man’s awful crime of
+visibly introducing nourishment into his system. She talked some about
+the stars, referring to them with respect and politeness, and I
+drivelled a quantity about united hearts, homes made bright by true
+affection, and the Kindler. Mame listened without scorn, and I says to
+myself, ‘Jeff, old man, you’re removing the hoodoo that has clung to
+the consumer of victuals; you’re setting your heel upon the serpent
+that lurks in the gravy bowl.’
+
+“Monday night I drop around. Mame is at the Unparalleled Exhibition
+with Thomas.
+
+“‘Now, may the curse of the forty-one seven-sided sea cooks,’ says I,
+‘and the bad luck of the nine impenitent grasshoppers rest upon this
+self-same sideshow at once and forever more. Amen. I’ll go to see it
+myself to-morrow night and investigate its baleful charm. Shall man
+that was made to inherit the earth be bereft of his sweetheart first by
+a knife and fork and then by a ten-cent circus?’
+
+“The next night before starting out for the exhibition tent I inquire
+and find out that Mame is not at home. She is not at the circus with
+Thomas this time, for Thomas waylays me in the grass outside of the
+grub tent with a scheme of his own before I had time to eat supper.
+
+“‘What’ll you give me, Jeff,’ says he, ‘if I tell you something?’
+
+“‘The value of it, son,’ I says.
+
+“‘Sis is stuck on a freak,’ says Thomas, ‘one of the side-show freaks.
+I don’t like him. She does. I overheard ’em talking. Thought maybe
+you’d like to know. Say, Jeff, does it put you wise two dollars’ worth?
+There’s a target rifle up town that—’
+
+“I frisked my pockets and commenced to dribble a stream of halves and
+quarters into Thomas’s hat. The information was of the pile-driver
+system of news, and it telescoped my intellects for a while. While I
+was leaking small change and smiling foolish on the outside, and
+suffering disturbances internally, I was saying, idiotically and
+pleasantly:
+
+“‘Thank you, Thomas—thank you—er—a freak, you said, Thomas. Now, could
+you make out the monstrosity’s entitlements a little clearer, if you
+please, Thomas?’
+
+“‘This is the fellow,’ says Thomas, pulling out a yellow handbill from
+his pocket and shoving it under my nose. ‘He’s the Champion Faster of
+the Universe. I guess that’s why Sis got soft on him. He don’t eat
+nothing. He’s going to fast forty-nine days. This is the sixth. That’s
+him.’
+
+“I looked at the name Thomas pointed out—‘Professor Eduardo Collieri.’
+‘Ah!’ says I, in admiration, ‘that’s not so bad, Ed Collier. I give you
+credit for the trick. But I don’t give you the girl until she’s Mrs.
+Freak.’
+
+“I hit the sod in the direction of the show. I came up to the rear of
+the tent, and, as I did so, a man wiggled out like a snake from under
+the bottom of the canvas, scrambled to his feet, and ran into me like a
+locoed bronco. I gathered him by the neck and investigated him by the
+light of the stars. It is Professor Eduardo Collieri, in human
+habiliments, with a desperate look in one eye and impatience in the
+other.
+
+“‘Hello, Curiosity,’ says I. ‘Get still a minute and let’s have a look
+at your freakship. How do you like being the willopus-wallopus or the
+bim-bam from Borneo, or whatever name you are denounced by in the
+side-show business?’
+
+“‘Jeff Peters,’ says Collier, in a weak voice. ‘Turn me loose, or I’ll
+slug you one. I’m in the extremest kind of a large hurry. Hands off!’
+
+“‘Tut, tut, Eddie,’ I answers, holding him hard; ‘let an old friend
+gaze on the exhibition of your curiousness. It’s an eminent graft you
+fell onto, my son. But don’t speak of assaults and battery, because
+you’re not fit. The best you’ve got is a lot of nerve and a mighty
+empty stomach.’ And so it was. The man was as weak as a vegetarian cat.
+
+“‘I’d argue this case with you, Jeff,’ says he, regretful in his style,
+‘for an unlimited number of rounds if I had half an hour to train in
+and a slab of beefsteak two feet square to train with. Curse the man, I
+say, that invented the art of going foodless. May his soul in eternity
+be chained up within two feet of a bottomless pit of red-hot hash. I’m
+abandoning the conflict, Jeff; I’m deserting to the enemy. You’ll find
+Miss Dugan inside contemplating the only living mummy and the informed
+hog. She’s a fine girl, Jeff. I’d have beat you out if I could have
+kept up the grubless habit a little while longer. You’ll have to admit
+that the fasting dodge was aces-up for a while. I figured it out that
+way. But say, Jeff, it’s said that love makes the world go around. Let
+me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It’s the wind from
+the dinner horn that does it. I love that Mame Dugan. I’ve gone six
+days without food in order to coincide with her sentiments. Only one
+bite did I have. That was when I knocked the tattooed man down with a
+war club and got a sandwich he was gobbling. The manager fined me all
+my salary; but salary wasn’t what I was after. ’Twas that girl. I’d
+give my life for her, but I’d endanger my immortal soul for a beef
+stew. Hunger is a horrible thing, Jeff. Love and business and family
+and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words
+when a man’s starving!’
+
+“In such language Ed Collier discoursed to me, pathetic. I gathered the
+diagnosis that his affections and his digestions had been implicated in
+a scramble and the commissary had won out. I never disliked Ed Collier.
+I searched my internal admonitions of suitable etiquette to see if I
+could find a remark of a consoling nature, but there was none
+convenient.
+
+“‘I’d be glad, now,’ says Ed, ‘if you’ll let me go. I’ve been hard hit,
+but I’ll hit the ration supply harder. I’m going to clean out every
+restaurant in town. I’m going to wade waist deep in sirloins and swim
+in ham and eggs. It’s an awful thing, Jeff Peters, for a man to come to
+this pass—to give up his girl for something to eat—it’s worse than that
+man Esau, that swapped his copyright for a partridge— but then,
+hunger’s a fierce thing. You’ll excuse me, now, Jeff, for I smell a
+pervasion of ham frying in the distance, and my legs are crying out to
+stampede in that direction.’
+
+“‘A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier,’ I says to him, ‘and no hard
+feelings. For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I
+have condolence for your predicaments.’
+
+“There was a sudden big whiff of frying ham smell on the breeze; and
+the Champion Faster gives a snort and gallops off in the dark toward
+fodder.
+
+“I wish some of the cultured outfit that are always advertising the
+extenuating circumstances of love and romance had been there to see.
+There was Ed Collier, a fine man full of contrivances and flirtations,
+abandoning the girl of his heart and ripping out into the contiguous
+territory in the pursuit of sordid grub. ’Twas a rebuke to the poets
+and a slap at the best-paying element of fiction. An empty stomach is a
+sure antidote to an overfull heart.
+
+“I was naturally anxious to know how far Mame was infatuated with
+Collier and his stratagems. I went inside the Unparalleled Exhibition,
+and there she was. She looked surprised to see me, but unguilty.
+
+“‘It’s an elegant evening outside,’ says I. ‘The coolness is quite nice
+and gratifying, and the stars are lined out, first class, up where they
+belong. Wouldn’t you shake these by-products of the animal kingdom long
+enough to take a walk with a common human who never was on a programme
+in his life?’
+
+“Mame gave a sort of sly glance around, and I knew what that meant.
+
+“‘Oh,’ says I, ‘I hate to tell you; but the curiosity that lives on
+wind has flew the coop. He just crawled out under the tent. By this
+time he has amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in
+town.’
+
+“‘You mean Ed Collier?’ says Mame.
+
+“‘I do,’ I answers; ‘and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime
+again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of
+devastating the food crop of the world. ’Tis enormously sad when one’s
+ideal descends from his pedestal to make a seventeen-year locust of
+himself.’
+
+“Mame looked me straight in the eye until she had corkscrewed my
+reflections.
+
+“‘Jeff,’ says she, ‘it isn’t quite like you to talk that way. I don’t
+care to hear Ed Collier ridiculed. A man may do ridiculous things, but
+they don’t look ridiculous to the girl he does ’em for. That was one
+man in a hundred. He stopped eating just to please me. I’d be
+hard-hearted and ungrateful if I didn’t feel kindly toward him. Could
+you do what he did?’
+
+“‘I know,’ says I, seeing the point, ‘I’m condemned. I can’t help it.
+The brand of the consumer is upon my brow. Mrs. Eve settled that
+business for me when she made the dicker with the snake. I fell from
+the fire into the frying-pan. I guess I’m the Champion Feaster of the
+Universe.’ I spoke humble, and Mame mollified herself a little.
+
+“‘Ed Collier and I are good friends,’ she said, ‘the same as me and
+you. I gave him the same answer I did you—no marrying for me. I liked
+to be with Ed and talk with him. There was something mighty pleasant to
+me in the thought that here was a man who never used a knife and fork,
+and all for my sake.’
+
+“‘Wasn’t you in love with him?’ I asks, all injudicious. ‘Wasn’t there
+a deal on for you to become Mrs. Curiosity?’
+
+“All of us do it sometimes. All of us get jostled out of the line of
+profitable talk now and then. Mame put on that little lemon _glacé_
+smile that runs between ice and sugar, and says, much too pleasant:
+‘You’re short on credentials for asking that question, Mr. Peters.
+Suppose you do a forty-nine day fast, just to give you ground to stand
+on, and then maybe I’ll answer it.’
+
+“So, even after Collier was kidnapped out of the way by the revolt of
+his appetite, my own prospects with Mame didn’t seem to be improved.
+And then business played out in Guthrie.
+
+“I had stayed too long there. The Brazilians I had sold commenced to
+show signs of wear, and the Kindler refused to light up right frequent
+on wet mornings. There is always a time, in my business, when the star
+of success says, ‘Move on to the next town.’ I was travelling by wagon
+at that time so as not to miss any of the small towns; so I hitched up
+a few days later and went down to tell Mame good-bye. I wasn’t
+abandoning the game; I intended running over to Oklahoma City and work
+it for a week or two. Then I was coming back to institute fresh
+proceedings against Mame.
+
+“What do I find at the Dugans’ but Mame all conspicuous in a blue
+travelling dress, with her little trunk at the door. It seems that
+sister Lottie Bell, who is a typewriter in Terre Haute, is going to be
+married next Thursday, and Mame is off for a week’s visit to be an
+accomplice at the ceremony. Mame is waiting for a freight wagon that is
+going to take her to Oklahoma, but I condemns the freight wagon with
+promptness and scorn, and offers to deliver the goods myself. Ma Dugan
+sees no reason why not, as Mr. Freighter wants pay for the job; so,
+thirty minutes later Mame and I pull out in my light spring wagon with
+white canvas cover, and head due south.
+
+“That morning was of a praiseworthy sort. The breeze was lively, and
+smelled excellent of flowers and grass, and the little cottontail
+rabbits entertained themselves with skylarking across the road. My two
+Kentucky bays went for the horizon until it come sailing in so fast you
+wanted to dodge it like a clothesline. Mame was full of talk and
+rattled on like a kid about her old home and her school pranks and the
+things she liked and the hateful ways of those Johnson girls just
+across the street, ‘way up in Indiana. Not a word was said about Ed
+Collier or victuals or such solemn subjects. About noon Mame looks and
+finds that the lunch she had put up in a basket had been left behind. I
+could have managed quite a collation, but Mame didn’t seem to be
+grieving over nothing to eat, so I made no lamentations. It was a sore
+subject with me, and I ruled provender in all its branches out of my
+conversation.
+
+“I am minded to touch light on explanations how I came to lose the way.
+The road was dim and well grown with grass; and there was Mame by my
+side confiscating my intellects and attention. The excuses are good or
+they are not, as they may appear to you. But I lost it, and at dusk
+that afternoon, when we should have been in Oklahoma City, we were
+seesawing along the edge of nowhere in some undiscovered river bottom,
+and the rain was falling in large, wet bunches. Down there in the
+swamps we saw a little log house on a small knoll of high ground. The
+bottom grass and the chaparral and the lonesome timber crowded all
+around it. It seemed to be a melancholy little house, and you felt
+sorry for it. ’Twas that house for the night, the way I reasoned it. I
+explained to Mame, and she leaves it to me to decide. She doesn’t
+become galvanic and prosecuting, as most women would, but she says it’s
+all right; she knows I didn’t mean to do it.
+
+“We found the house was deserted. It had two empty rooms. There was a
+little shed in the yard where beasts had once been kept. In a loft of
+it was a lot of old hay. I put my horses in there and gave them some of
+it, for which they looked at me sorrowful, expecting apologies. The
+rest of the hay I carried into the house by armfuls, with a view to
+accommodations. I also brought in the patent kindler and the
+Brazilians, neither of which are guaranteed against the action of
+water.
+
+“Mame and I sat on the wagon seats on the floor, and I lit a lot of the
+kindler on the hearth, for the night was chilly. If I was any judge,
+that girl enjoyed it. It was a change for her. It gave her a different
+point of view. She laughed and talked, and the kindler made a dim light
+compared to her eyes. I had a pocketful of cigars, and as far as I was
+concerned there had never been any fall of man. We were at the same old
+stand in the Garden of Eden. Out there somewhere in the rain and the
+dark was the river of Zion, and the angel with the flaming sword had
+not yet put up the keep-off-the-grass sign. I opened up a gross or two
+of the Brazilians and made Mame put them on—rings, brooches, necklaces,
+eardrops, bracelets, girdles, and lockets. She flashed and sparkled
+like a million-dollar princess until she had pink spots in her cheeks
+and almost cried for a looking-glass.
+
+“When it got late I made a fine bunk on the floor for Mame with the hay
+and my lap robes and blankets out of the wagon, and persuaded her to
+lie down. I sat in the other room burning tobacco and listening to the
+pouring rain and meditating on the many vicissitudes that came to a man
+during the seventy years or so immediately preceding his funeral.
+
+“I must have dozed a little while before morning, for my eyes were
+shut, and when I opened them it was daylight, and there stood Mame with
+her hair all done up neat and correct, and her eyes bright with
+admiration of existence.
+
+“‘Gee whiz, Jeff!’ she exclaims, ‘but I’m hungry. I could eat a—’
+
+“I looked up and caught her eye. Her smile went back in and she gave me
+a cold look of suspicion. Then I laughed, and laid down on the floor to
+laugh easier. It seemed funny to me. By nature and geniality I am a
+hearty laugher, and I went the limit. When I came to, Mame was sitting
+with her back to me, all contaminated with dignity.
+
+“‘Don’t be angry, Mame,’ I says, ‘for I couldn’t help it. It’s the
+funny way you’ve done up your hair. If you could only see it!’
+
+“‘You needn’t tell stories, sir,’ said Mame, cool and advised. ‘My hair
+is all right. I know what you were laughing about. Why, Jeff, look
+outside,’ she winds up, peeping through a chink between the logs. I
+opened the little wooden window and looked out. The entire river bottom
+was flooded, and the knob of land on which the house stood was an
+island in the middle of a rushing stream of yellow water a hundred
+yards wide. And it was still raining hard. All we could do was to stay
+there till the doves brought in the olive branch.
+
+“I am bound to admit that conversations and amusements languished
+during that day. I was aware that Mame was getting a too prolonged
+one-sided view of things again, but I had no way to change it.
+Personally, I was wrapped up in the desire to eat. I had hallucinations
+of hash and visions of ham, and I kept saying to myself all the time,
+‘What’ll you have to eat, Jeff?—what’ll you order now, old man, when
+the waiter comes?’ I picks out to myself all sorts of favourites from
+the bill of fare, and imagines them coming. I guess it’s that way with
+all hungry men. They can’t get their cogitations trained on anything
+but something to eat. It shows that the little table with the
+broken-legged caster and the imitation Worcester sauce and the napkin
+covering up the coffee stains is the paramount issue, after all,
+instead of the question of immortality or peace between nations.
+
+“I sat there, musing along, arguing with myself quite heated as to how
+I’d have my steak—with mushrooms, or _à la créole_. Mame was on the
+other seat, pensive, her head leaning on her hand. ‘Let the potatoes
+come home-fried,’ I states in my mind, ‘and brown the hash in the pan,
+with nine poached eggs on the side.’ I felt, careful, in my own pockets
+to see if I could find a peanut or a grain or two of popcorn.
+
+“Night came on again with the river still rising and the rain still
+falling. I looked at Mame and I noticed that desperate look on her face
+that a girl always wears when she passes an ice-cream lair. I knew that
+poor girl was hungry—maybe for the first time in her life. There was
+that anxious look in her eye that a woman has only when she has missed
+a meal or feels her skirt coming unfastened in the back.
+
+“It was about eleven o’clock or so on the second night when we sat,
+gloomy, in our shipwrecked cabin. I kept jerking my mind away from the
+subject of food, but it kept flopping back again before I could fasten
+it. I thought of everything good to eat I had ever heard of. I went
+away back to my kidhood and remembered the hot biscuit sopped in
+sorghum and bacon gravy with partiality and respect. Then I trailed
+along up the years, pausing at green apples and salt, flapjacks and
+maple, lye hominy, fried chicken Old Virginia style, corn on the cob,
+spareribs and sweet potato pie, and wound up with Georgia Brunswick
+stew, which is the top notch of good things to eat, because it
+comprises ’em all.
+
+“They say a drowning man sees a panorama of his whole life pass before
+him. Well, when a man’s starving he sees the ghost of every meal he
+ever ate set out before him, and he invents new dishes that would make
+the fortune of a chef. If somebody would collect the last words of men
+who starved to death, they’d have to sift ’em mighty fine to discover
+the sentiment, but they’d compile into a cook book that would sell into
+the millions.
+
+“I guess I must have had my conscience pretty well inflicted with
+culinary meditations, for, without intending to do so, I says, out
+loud, to the imaginary waiter, ‘Cut it thick and have it rare, with the
+French fried, and six, soft-scrambled, on toast.’
+
+“Mame turned her head quick as a wing. Her eyes were sparkling and she
+smiled sudden.
+
+“‘Medium for me,’ she rattles out, ‘with the Juliennes, and three,
+straight up. Draw one, and brown the wheats, double order to come. Oh,
+Jeff, wouldn’t it be glorious! And then I’d like to have a half fry,
+and a little chicken curried with rice, and a cup custard with ice
+cream, and—’
+
+“‘Go easy,’ I interrupts; ‘where’s the chicken liver pie, and the
+kidney _sauté_ on toast, and the roast lamb, and—’
+
+“‘Oh,’ cuts in Mame, all excited, ‘with mint sauce, and the turkey
+salad, and stuffed olives, and raspberry tarts, and—’
+
+“‘Keep it going,’ says I. ‘Hurry up with the fried squash, and the hot
+corn pone with sweet milk, and don’t forget the apple dumpling with
+hard sauce, and the cross-barred dew-berry pie—’
+
+“Yes, for ten minutes we kept up that kind of restaurant repartee. We
+ranges up and down and backward and forward over the main trunk lines
+and the branches of the victual subject, and Mame leads the game, for
+she is apprised in the ramifications of grub, and the dishes she
+nominates aggravates my yearnings. It seems that there is a feeling
+that Mame will line up friendly again with food. It seems that she
+looks upon the obnoxious science of eating with less contempt than
+before.
+
+“The next morning we find that the flood has subsided. I geared up the
+bays, and we splashed out through the mud, some precarious, until we
+found the road again. We were only a few miles wrong, and in two hours
+we were in Oklahoma City. The first thing we saw was a big restaurant
+sign, and we piled into there in a hurry. Here I finds myself sitting
+with Mame at table, with knives and forks and plates between us, and
+she not scornful, but smiling with starvation and sweetness.
+
+“’Twas a new restaurant and well stocked. I designated a list of
+quotations from the bill of fare that made the waiter look out toward
+the wagon to see how many more might be coming.
+
+“There we were, and there was the order being served. ’Twas a banquet
+for a dozen, but we felt like a dozen. I looked across the table at
+Mame and smiled, for I had recollections. Mame was looking at the table
+like a boy looks at his first stem-winder. Then she looked at me,
+straight in the face, and two big tears came in her eyes. The waiter
+was gone after more grub.
+
+“‘Jeff,’ she says, soft like, ‘I’ve been a foolish girl. I’ve looked at
+things from the wrong side. I never felt this way before. Men get
+hungry every day like this, don’t they? They’re big and strong, and
+they do the hard work of the world, and they don’t eat just to spite
+silly waiter girls in restaurants, do they, Jeff? You said once—that
+is, you asked me—you wanted me to—well, Jeff, if you still care—I’d be
+glad and willing to have you always sitting across the table from me.
+Now give me something to eat, quick, please.’
+
+“So, as I’ve said, a woman needs to change her point of view now and
+then. They get tired of the same old sights—the same old dinner table,
+washtub, and sewing machine. Give ’em a touch of the various—a little
+travel and a little rest, a little tomfoolery along with the tragedies
+of keeping house, a little petting after the blowing-up, a little
+upsetting and a little jostling around—and everybody in the game will
+have chips added to their stack by the play.”
+
+
+
+
+XI
+THE CABALLERO’S WAY
+
+
+The Cisco Kid had killed six men in more or less fair scrimmages, had
+murdered twice as many (mostly Mexicans), and had winged a larger
+number whom he modestly forbore to count. Therefore a woman loved him.
+
+The Kid was twenty-five, looked twenty; and a careful insurance company
+would have estimated the probable time of his demise at, say,
+twenty-six. His habitat was anywhere between the Frio and the Rio
+Grande. He killed for the love of it—because he was quick-tempered— to
+avoid arrest—for his own amusement—any reason that came to his mind
+would suffice. He had escaped capture because he could shoot
+five-sixths of a second sooner than any sheriff or ranger in the
+service, and because he rode a speckled roan horse that knew every
+cow-path in the mesquite and pear thickets from San Antonio to
+Matamoras.
+
+Tonia Perez, the girl who loved the Cisco Kid, was half Carmen, half
+Madonna, and the rest—oh, yes, a woman who is half Carmen and half
+Madonna can always be something more—the rest, let us say, was
+humming-bird. She lived in a grass-roofed _jacal_ near a little Mexican
+settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio. With her lived a
+father or grandfather, a lineal Aztec, somewhat less than a thousand
+years old, who herded a hundred goats and lived in a continuous drunken
+dream from drinking _mescal_. Back of the _jacal_ a tremendous forest
+of bristling pear, twenty feet high at its worst, crowded almost to its
+door. It was along the bewildering maze of this spinous thicket that
+the speckled roan would bring the Kid to see his girl. And once,
+clinging like a lizard to the ridge-pole, high up under the peaked
+grass roof, he had heard Tonia, with her Madonna face and Carmen beauty
+and humming-bird soul, parley with the sheriff’s posse, denying
+knowledge of her man in her soft _mélange_ of Spanish and English.
+
+One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, _ex offico_,
+commander of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain
+Duval of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and
+undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said
+captain’s territory.
+
+The captain turned the colour of brick dust under his tan, and
+forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private
+Bill Adamson, to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole on
+the Nueces with a squad of five men in preservation of law and order.
+
+Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful _couleur de rose_ through his
+ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket,
+and chewed off the ends of his gamboge moustache.
+
+The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican
+settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.
+
+Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a
+machine gun, Sandridge moved among the _Jacales_, patiently seeking
+news of the Cisco Kid.
+
+Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain
+vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of
+the Kid’s pastimes to shoot Mexicans “to see them kick”: if he demanded
+from them moribund Terpsichorean feats, simply that he might be
+entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain to
+follow should they anger him! One and all they lounged with upturned
+palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with “_quien sabes_” and
+denials of the Kid’s acquaintance.
+
+But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing—a man
+of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.
+
+“No use to ask them Mexicans,” he said to Sandridge. “They’re afraid to
+tell. This _hombre_ they call the Kid—Goodall is his name, ain’t
+it?—he’s been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run
+across him at—but I guess I don’t keer to say, myself. I’m two seconds
+later in pulling a gun than I used to be, and the difference is worth
+thinking about. But this Kid’s got a half-Mexican girl at the Crossing
+that he comes to see. She lives in that _jacal_ a hundred yards down
+the arroyo at the edge of the pear. Maybe she—no, I don’t suppose she
+would, but that _jacal_ would be a good place to watch, anyway.”
+
+Sandridge rode down to the _jacal_ of Perez. The sun was low, and the
+broad shade of the great pear thicket already covered the
+grass-thatched hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush
+corral near by. A few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral
+leaves. The old Mexican lay upon a blanket on the grass, already in a
+stupor from his mescal, and dreaming, perhaps, of the nights when he
+and Pizarro touched glasses to their New World fortunes—so old his
+wrinkled face seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the
+_jacal_ stood Tonia. And Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle staring
+at her like a gannet agape at a sailorman.
+
+The Cisco Kid was a vain person, as all eminent and successful
+assassins are, and his bosom would have been ruffled had he known that
+at a simple exchange of glances two persons, in whose minds he had been
+looming large, suddenly abandoned (at least for the time) all thought
+of him.
+
+Never before had Tonia seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made of
+sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to
+illuminate the shadow of the pear when he smiled, as though the sun
+were rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark. Even
+the Kid, in spite of his achievements, was a stripling no larger than
+herself, with black, straight hair and a cold, marble face that chilled
+the noonday.
+
+As for Tonia, though she sends description to the poorhouse, let her
+make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue-black hair, smoothly divided
+in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes full of
+the Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions and air
+spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she had
+inherited from the _gitanas_ of the Basque province. As for the
+humming-bird part of her, that dwelt in her heart; you could not
+perceive it unless her bright red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you a
+symbolic hint of the vagarious bird.
+
+The newly lighted sun-god asked for a drink of water. Tonia brought it
+from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter. Sandridge considered
+it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her
+ministrations.
+
+I play no spy; nor do I assume to master the thoughts of any human
+heart; but I assert, by the chronicler’s right, that before a quarter
+of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plaint a
+six-strand rawhide stake-rope, and Tonia had explained to him that were
+it not for her little English book that the peripatetic _padre_ had
+given her and the little crippled _chivo_, that she fed from a bottle,
+she would be very, very lonely indeed.
+
+Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid’s fences needed repairing, and
+that the adjutant-general’s sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil.
+
+In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announced and
+reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the
+black loam of the Frio country prairies or of haling him before a judge
+and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over to the
+Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia’s slim, slightly
+lemon-tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly growing
+lariata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to teach.
+
+The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He kept
+his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at the
+rear of the _jacal_. Thus he might bring down the kite and the
+humming-bird with one stone.
+
+While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the Cisco
+Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily shot up a
+saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek, killed the town
+marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge), and then
+rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by
+shooting an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.
+
+On his way the Kid suddenly experienced the yearning that all men feel
+when wrong-doing loses its keen edge of delight. He yearned for the
+woman he loved to reassure him that she was his in spite of it. He
+wanted her to call his bloodthirstiness bravery and his cruelty
+devotion. He wanted Tonia to bring him water from the red jar under the
+brush shelter, and tell him how the _chivo_ was thriving on the bottle.
+
+The Kid turned the speckled roan’s head up the ten-mile pear flat that
+stretches along the Arroyo Hondo until it ends at the Lone Wolf
+Crossing of the Frio. The roan whickered; for he had a sense of
+locality and direction equal to that of a belt-line street-car horse;
+and he knew he would soon be nibbling the rich mesquite grass at the
+end of a forty-foot stake-rope while Ulysses rested his head in Circe’s
+straw-roofed hut.
+
+More weird and lonesome than the journey of an Amazonian explorer is
+the ride of one through a Texas pear flat. With dismal monotony and
+startling variety the uncanny and multiform shapes of the cacti lift
+their twisted trunks, and fat, bristly hands to encumber the way. The
+demon plant, appearing to live without soil or rain, seems to taunt the
+parched traveller with its lush grey greenness. It warps itself a
+thousand times about what look to be open and inviting paths, only to
+lure the rider into blind and impassable spine-defended “bottoms of the
+bag,” leaving him to retreat, if he can, with the points of the compass
+whirling in his head.
+
+To be lost in the pear is to die almost the death of the thief on the
+cross, pierced by nails and with grotesque shapes of all the fiends
+hovering about.
+
+But it was not so with the Kid and his mount. Winding, twisting,
+circling, tracing the most fantastic and bewildering trail ever picked
+out, the good roan lessened the distance to the Lone Wolf Crossing with
+every coil and turn that he made.
+
+While they fared the Kid sang. He knew but one tune and sang it, as he
+knew but one code and lived it, and but one girl and loved her. He was
+a single-minded man of conventional ideas. He had a voice like a coyote
+with bronchitis, but whenever he chose to sing his song he sang it. It
+was a conventional song of the camps and trail, running at its
+beginning as near as may be to these words:
+
+Don’t you monkey with my Lulu girl
+Or I’ll tell you what I’ll do—
+
+
+and so on. The roan was inured to it, and did not mind.
+
+But even the poorest singer will, after a certain time, gain his own
+consent to refrain from contributing to the world’s noises. So the Kid,
+by the time he was within a mile or two of Tonia’s _jacal_, had
+reluctantly allowed his song to die away—not because his vocal
+performance had become less charming to his own ears, but because his
+laryngeal muscles were aweary.
+
+As though he were in a circus ring the speckled roan wheeled and danced
+through the labyrinth of pear until at length his rider knew by certain
+landmarks that the Lone Wolf Crossing was close at hand. Then, where
+the pear was thinner, he caught sight of the grass roof of the _jacal_
+and the hackberry tree on the edge of the arroyo. A few yards farther
+the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly
+openings. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan’s reins, and proceeded
+on foot, stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan, knowing his
+part, stood still, making no sound.
+
+The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and
+reconnoitred between the leaves of a clump of cactus.
+
+Ten yards from his hiding-place, in the shade of the _jacal_, sat his
+Tonia calmly plaiting a rawhide lariat. So far she might surely escape
+condemnation; women have been known, from time to time, to engage in
+more mischievous occupations. But if all must be told, there is to be
+added that her head reposed against the broad and comfortable chest of
+a tall red-and-yellow man, and that his arm was about her, guiding her
+nimble fingers that required so many lessons at the intricate
+six-strand plait.
+
+Sandridge glanced quickly at the dark mass of pear when he heard a
+slight squeaking sound that was not altogether unfamiliar. A
+gun-scabbard will make that sound when one grasps the handle of a
+six-shooter suddenly. But the sound was not repeated; and Tonia’s
+fingers needed close attention.
+
+And then, in the shadow of death, they began to talk of their love; and
+in the still July afternoon every word they uttered reached the ears of
+the Kid.
+
+“Remember, then,” said Tonia, “you must not come again until I send for
+you. Soon he will be here. A _vaquero_ at the _tienda_ said to-day he
+saw him on the Guadalupe three days ago. When he is that near he always
+comes. If he comes and finds you here he will kill you. So, for my
+sake, you must come no more until I send you the word.”
+
+“All right,” said the stranger. “And then what?”
+
+“And then,” said the girl, “you must bring your men here and kill him.
+If not, he will kill you.”
+
+“He ain’t a man to surrender, that’s sure,” said Sandridge. “It’s kill
+or be killed for the officer that goes up against Mr. Cisco Kid.”
+
+“He must die,” said the girl. “Otherwise there will not be any peace in
+the world for thee and me. He has killed many. Let him so die. Bring
+your men, and give him no chance to escape.”
+
+“You used to think right much of him,” said Sandridge.
+
+Tonia dropped the lariat, twisted herself around, and curved a
+lemon-tinted arm over the ranger’s shoulder.
+
+“But then,” she murmured in liquid Spanish, “I had not beheld thee,
+thou great, red mountain of a man! And thou art kind and good, as well
+as strong. Could one choose him, knowing thee? Let him die; for then I
+will not be filled with fear by day and night lest he hurt thee or me.”
+
+“How can I know when he comes?” asked Sandridge.
+
+“When he comes,” said Tonia, “he remains two days, sometimes three.
+Gregorio, the small son of old Luisa, the _lavendera_, has a swift
+pony. I will write a letter to thee and send it by him, saying how it
+will be best to come upon him. By Gregorio will the letter come. And
+bring many men with thee, and have much care, oh, dear red one, for the
+rattlesnake is not quicker to strike than is ‘_El Chivato_,’ as they
+call him, to send a ball from his _pistola_.”
+
+“The Kid’s handy with his gun, sure enough,” admitted Sandridge, “but
+when I come for him I shall come alone. I’ll get him by myself or not
+at all. The Cap wrote one or two things to me that make me want to do
+the trick without any help. You let me know when Mr. Kid arrives, and
+I’ll do the rest.”
+
+“I will send you the message by the boy Gregorio,” said the girl. “I
+knew you were braver than that small slayer of men who never smiles.
+How could I ever have thought I cared for him?”
+
+It was time for the ranger to ride back to his camp on the water hole.
+Before he mounted his horse he raised the slight form of Tonia with one
+arm high from the earth for a parting salute. The drowsy stillness of
+the torpid summer air still lay thick upon the dreaming afternoon. The
+smoke from the fire in the _jacal_, where the _frijoles_ blubbered in
+the iron pot, rose straight as a plumb-line above the clay-daubed
+chimney. No sound or movement disturbed the serenity of the dense pear
+thicket ten yards away.
+
+When the form of Sandridge had disappeared, loping his big dun down the
+steep banks of the Frio crossing, the Kid crept back to his own horse,
+mounted him, and rode back along the tortuous trail he had come.
+
+But not far. He stopped and waited in the silent depths of the pear
+until half an hour had passed. And then Tonia heard the high, untrue
+notes of his unmusical singing coming nearer and nearer; and she ran to
+the edge of the pear to meet him.
+
+The Kid seldom smiled; but he smiled and waved his hat when he saw her.
+He dismounted, and his girl sprang into his arms. The Kid looked at her
+fondly. His thick, black hair clung to his head like a wrinkled mat.
+The meeting brought a slight ripple of some undercurrent of feeling to
+his smooth, dark face that was usually as motionless as a clay mask.
+
+“How’s my girl?” he asked, holding her close.
+
+“Sick of waiting so long for you, dear one,” she answered. “My eyes are
+dim with always gazing into that devil’s pincushion through which you
+come. And I can see into it such a little way, too. But you are here,
+beloved one, and I will not scold. _Que mal muchacho!_ not to come to
+see your _alma_ more often. Go in and rest, and let me water your horse
+and stake him with the long rope. There is cool water in the jar for
+you.”
+
+The Kid kissed her affectionately.
+
+“Not if the court knows itself do I let a lady stake my horse for me,”
+said he. “But if you’ll run in, _chica_, and throw a pot of coffee
+together while I attend to the _caballo_, I’ll be a good deal obliged.”
+
+Besides his marksmanship the Kid had another attribute for which he
+admired himself greatly. He was _muy caballero_, as the Mexicans
+express it, where the ladies were concerned. For them he had always
+gentle words and consideration. He could not have spoken a harsh word
+to a woman. He might ruthlessly slay their husbands and brothers, but
+he could not have laid the weight of a finger in anger upon a woman.
+Wherefore many of that interesting division of humanity who had come
+under the spell of his politeness declared their disbelief in the
+stories circulated about Mr. Kid. One shouldn’t believe everything one
+heard, they said. When confronted by their indignant men folk with
+proof of the _caballero’s_ deeds of infamy, they said maybe he had been
+driven to it, and that he knew how to treat a lady, anyhow.
+
+Considering this extremely courteous idiosyncrasy of the Kid and the
+pride he took in it, one can perceive that the solution of the problem
+that was presented to him by what he saw and heard from his
+hiding-place in the pear that afternoon (at least as to one of the
+actors) must have been obscured by difficulties. And yet one could not
+think of the Kid overlooking little matters of that kind.
+
+At the end of the short twilight they gathered around a supper of
+_frijoles_, goat steaks, canned peaches, and coffee, by the light of a
+lantern in the _jacal_. Afterward, the ancestor, his flock corralled,
+smoked a cigarette and became a mummy in a grey blanket. Tonia washed
+the few dishes while the Kid dried them with the flour-sacking towel.
+Her eyes shone; she chatted volubly of the inconsequent happenings of
+her small world since the Kid’s last visit; it was as all his other
+home-comings had been.
+
+Then outside Tonia swung in a grass hammock with her guitar and sang
+sad _canciones de amor_.
+
+“Do you love me just the same, old girl?” asked the Kid, hunting for
+his cigarette papers.
+
+“Always the same, little one,” said Tonia, her dark eyes lingering upon
+him.
+
+“I must go over to Fink’s,” said the Kid, rising, “for some tobacco. I
+thought I had another sack in my coat. I’ll be back in a quarter of an
+hour.”
+
+“Hasten,” said Tonia, “and tell me—how long shall I call you my own
+this time? Will you be gone again to-morrow, leaving me to grieve, or
+will you be longer with your Tonia?”
+
+“Oh, I might stay two or three days this trip,” said the Kid, yawning.
+“I’ve been on the dodge for a month, and I’d like to rest up.”
+
+He was gone half an hour for his tobacco. When he returned Tonia was
+still lying in the hammock.
+
+“It’s funny,” said the Kid, “how I feel. I feel like there was somebody
+lying behind every bush and tree waiting to shoot me. I never had
+mullygrubs like them before. Maybe it’s one of them presumptions. I’ve
+got half a notion to light out in the morning before day. The Guadalupe
+country is burning up about that old Dutchman I plugged down there.”
+
+“You are not afraid—no one could make my brave little one fear.”
+
+“Well, I haven’t been usually regarded as a jack-rabbit when it comes
+to scrapping; but I don’t want a posse smoking me out when I’m in your
+_jacal_. Somebody might get hurt that oughtn’t to.”
+
+“Remain with your Tonia; no one will find you here.”
+
+The Kid looked keenly into the shadows up and down the arroyo and
+toward the dim lights of the Mexican village.
+
+“I’ll see how it looks later on,” was his decision.
+
+At midnight a horseman rode into the rangers’ camp, blazing his way by
+noisy “halloes” to indicate a pacific mission. Sandridge and one or two
+others turned out to investigate the row. The rider announced himself
+to be Domingo Sales, from the Lone Wolf Crossing. he bore a letter for
+Señor Sandridge. Old Luisa, the _lavendera_, had persuaded him to bring
+it, he said, her son Gregorio being too ill of a fever to ride.
+
+Sandridge lighted the camp lantern and read the letter. These were its
+words:
+
+_Dear One:_ He has come. Hardly had you ridden away when he came out of
+the pear. When he first talked he said he would stay three days or
+more. Then as it grew later he was like a wolf or a fox, and walked
+about without rest, looking and listening. Soon he said he must leave
+before daylight when it is dark and stillest. And then he seemed to
+suspect that I be not true to him. He looked at me so strange that I am
+frightened. I swear to him that I love him, his own Tonia. Last of all
+he said I must prove to him I am true. He thinks that even now men are
+waiting to kill him as he rides from my house. To escape he says he
+will dress in my clothes, my red skirt and the blue waist I wear and
+the brown mantilla over the head, and thus ride away. But before that
+he says that I must put on his clothes, his _pantalones_ and _camisa_
+and hat, and ride away on his horse from the _jacal_ as far as the big
+road beyond the crossing and back again. This before he goes, so he can
+tell if I am true and if men are hidden to shoot him. It is a terrible
+thing. An hour before daybreak this is to be. Come, my dear one, and
+kill this man and take me for your Tonia. Do not try to take hold of
+him alive, but kill him quickly. Knowing all, you should do that. You
+must come long before the time and hide yourself in the little shed
+near the _jacal_ where the wagon and saddles are kept. It is dark in
+there. He will wear my red skirt and blue waist and brown mantilla. I
+send you a hundred kisses. Come surely and shoot quickly and straight.
+
+
+THINE OWN TONIA.
+
+
+Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the
+missive. The rangers protested against his going alone.
+
+“I’ll get him easy enough,” said the lieutenant. “The girl’s got him
+trapped. And don’t even think he’ll get the drop on me.”
+
+Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the Lone Wolf Crossing. He tied
+his big dun in a clump of brush on the arroyo, took his Winchester from
+its scabbard, and carefully approached the Perez _jacal_. There was
+only the half of a high moon drifted over by ragged, milk-white gulf
+clouds.
+
+The wagon-shed was an excellent place for ambush; and the ranger got
+inside it safely. In the black shadow of the brush shelter in front of
+the _jacal_ he could see a horse tied and hear him impatiently pawing
+the hard-trodden earth.
+
+He waited almost an hour before two figures came out of the _jacal_.
+One, in man’s clothes, quickly mounted the horse and galloped past the
+wagon-shed toward the crossing and village. And then the other figure,
+in skirt, waist, and mantilla over its head, stepped out into the faint
+moonlight, gazing after the rider. Sandridge thought he would take his
+chance then before Tonia rode back. He fancied she might not care to
+see it.
+
+“Throw up your hands,” he ordered loudly, stepping out of the
+wagon-shed with his Winchester at his shoulder.
+
+There was a quick turn of the figure, but no movement to obey, so the
+ranger pumped in the bullets—one—two—three—and then twice more; for you
+never could be too sure of bringing down the Cisco Kid. There was no
+danger of missing at ten paces, even in that half moonlight.
+
+The old ancestor, asleep on his blanket, was awakened by the shots.
+Listening further, he heard a great cry from some man in mortal
+distress or anguish, and rose up grumbling at the disturbing ways of
+moderns.
+
+The tall, red ghost of a man burst into the _jacal_, reaching one hand,
+shaking like a _tule_ reed, for the lantern hanging on its nail. The
+other spread a letter on the table.
+
+“Look at this letter, Perez,” cried the man. “Who wrote it?”
+
+“_Ah, Dios!_ it is Señor Sandridge,” mumbled the old man, approaching.
+“_Pues, señor_, that letter was written by ‘_El Chivato_,’ as he is
+called—by the man of Tonia. They say he is a bad man; I do not know.
+While Tonia slept he wrote the letter and sent it by this old hand of
+mine to Domingo Sales to be brought to you. Is there anything wrong in
+the letter? I am very old; and I did not know. _Valgame Dios!_ it is a
+very foolish world; and there is nothing in the house to drink— nothing
+to drink.”
+
+Just then all that Sandridge could think of to do was to go outside and
+throw himself face downward in the dust by the side of his
+humming-bird, of whom not a feather fluttered. He was not a _caballero_
+by instinct, and he could not understand the niceties of revenge.
+
+A mile away the rider who had ridden past the wagon-shed struck up a
+harsh, untuneful song, the words of which began:
+
+Don’t you monkey with my Lulu girl
+Or I’ll tell you what I’ll do—
+
+
+
+
+XII
+THE SPHINX APPLE
+
+
+Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise
+City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow
+had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The
+remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along
+the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both snow and
+night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be thought of, said
+Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses, and delivered to
+his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.
+
+Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as
+upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his
+fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore,
+to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their
+prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a
+young woman, remained in the coach.
+
+Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two
+rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper
+fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house.
+Upon this house descended—or rather ascended—Judge Menefee and his
+cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called;
+they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed
+restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers, and invaded
+the premises.
+
+The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the
+interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,
+glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back
+through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply pitched
+than the clarion—even orchestral in volume—the voice of Judge Menefee
+proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with their state of
+travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he said, and bare
+of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and they had
+discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the rear.
+Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus assured. For
+the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable, not ruined
+beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house.
+
+“Gentlemen,” cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and
+robes, “tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That
+is old man Redruth’s shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took
+him to the foolish house in August.”
+
+Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The
+exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice
+from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The driver
+and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee opened the
+door of the coach, and removed his hat.
+
+“I have to announce, Miss Garland,” said he, “the enforced suspension
+of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the
+mountain road by night is too great even to consider. It will be
+necessary to remain in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg
+that you will feel that there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary
+inconvenience. I have personally inspected the house, and find that
+there are means to provide against the rigour of the weather, at least.
+You shall be made as comfortable as possible. Permit me to assist you
+to alight.”
+
+To the Judge’s side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the
+placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dunwoody; but that
+matters not much. In travelling merely from Paradise to Sunrise City
+one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide
+honours with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognomenal peg upon
+which Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the
+aerial miller:
+
+“Guess you’ll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This wigwam
+isn’t exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they won’t
+search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. _We’ve_ got a fire
+going; and _we’ll_ fix you up with dry Tilbys and keep the mice away,
+anyhow, all right, all right.”
+
+One of the two passengers who were struggling in a _melée_ of horses,
+harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called
+loudly from the whirl of his volunteer duties: “Say! some of you
+fellows get Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you
+confounded brute!”
+
+Again must it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise to
+Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee—
+sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute—had
+introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly
+breathed a name, in response, that the hearing of the male passengers
+had variously interpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of rivalry that
+eventuated, each clung stubbornly to his own theory. For the lady
+passenger to have reasseverated or corrected would have seemed didactic
+if not unduly solicitous of a specific acquaintance. Therefore the lady
+passenger permitted herself to be Garlanded and McFarlanded and
+Solomoned with equal and discreet complacency. It is thirty-five miles
+from Paradise to Sunrise City. _Compagnon de voyage_ is name enough, by
+the gripsack of the Wandering Jew! for so brief a journey.
+
+Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful
+arc before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable
+portions of the coach had been brought in and put to service. The lady
+passenger chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc. There
+she graced almost a throne that her subjects had prepared. She sat upon
+cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe bespread,
+which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She extended her
+feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved her hands, but
+retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable flames half
+revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her face— a youthful
+face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm with beauty’s
+unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here vying to please
+and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs—not piquantly, as
+one courted and attended; nor preeningly, as many of her sex unworthily
+reap their honours; not yet stolidly, as the ox receives his hay; but
+concordantly with nature’s own plan—as the lily ingests the drop of dew
+foreordained to its refreshment.
+
+Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the
+cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the
+elements did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was attorney
+for the storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by special
+pleading to convince his companions in that frigid jury-box that they
+sojourned in a bower of roses, beset only by benignant zephyrs. He drew
+upon a fund of gaiety, wit, and anecdote, sophistical, but crowned with
+success. His cheerfulness communicated itself irresistibly. Each one
+hastened to contribute his own quota toward the general optimism. Even
+the lady passenger was moved to expression.
+
+“I think it is quite charming,” she said, in her slow, crystal tones.
+
+At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously
+explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its
+habitation by old man Redruth.
+
+Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit’s history.
+Now, since the stage-driver’s horses were fairly comfortable and his
+passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him.
+
+“The old didapper,” began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, “infested this
+here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come nigh him.
+He’d duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team drove
+along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He used to
+buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly’s store, on the Little
+Muddy. Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt, and told
+Sam he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was coming to
+visit him. He fetched along all the money he had—a little bag full of
+silver—and dropped it in Sam’s well. ‘She won’t come,’ says old man
+Redruth to Sam, ‘if she knows I’ve got any money.’
+
+“As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and
+money they knowed he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to the
+foolish asylum.”
+
+“Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary
+existence?” asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an Agency.
+
+“No,” said Bildad, “not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary
+trouble. They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love
+derangements with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted
+red bed-quilts and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never
+heard of no romance.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; “a case of unrequited
+affection, no doubt.”
+
+“No, sir,” returned Bildad, “not at all. She never married him.
+Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from
+old Redruth’s town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you
+kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener
+and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady—Miss Alice—
+something was her name; I’ve forgot. This man said she was the kind of
+girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well,
+there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed up
+with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she was a
+staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual
+kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the post
+office and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the
+engagement ring and other presents—‘a rift within the loot,’ the poetry
+man calls it.
+
+“One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the
+gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last
+anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew.”
+
+“What about the young lady?” asked the young man who had an Agency.
+
+“Never heard,” answered Bildad. “Right there is where my lode of
+information turns to an old spavined crowbait, and folds its wings, for
+I’ve pumped it dry.”
+
+“A very sad—” began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed by a
+higher authority.
+
+“What a charming story!” said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.
+
+A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of the
+fire.
+
+The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its
+inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man who
+was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to ease his
+cramped muscles.
+
+Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a dusky
+corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was an
+apple—a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a paper
+bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could have been
+no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious soundness
+repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf since
+August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the deserted
+house, had left it there.
+
+Dunwoody—again his exploits demand for him the honours of
+nomenclature—flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners.
+“See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!” he cried, vaingloriously. He held
+the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still
+richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly—always calmly.
+
+“What a charming apple!” she murmured, clearly.
+
+For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.
+Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished
+man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover
+the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a
+function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of
+comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady
+passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an
+admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill
+man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods, puffed up with
+the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward the domain of the
+star.
+
+While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin’s apple, was receiving
+the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed a plan to
+recover his own laurels.
+
+With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge
+Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the
+hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.
+
+“A fine apple,” he said, approvingly. “Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy,
+you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This
+apple shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by
+the mind and heart of beauty upon the most deserving.”
+
+The audience, except one, applauded. “Good on the stump, ain’t he?”
+commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young man
+who had an Agency.
+
+The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to
+the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his
+apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten,
+to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and
+naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going to
+name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be—but ’twas
+too late now.
+
+“The apple,” continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, “in modern
+days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem.
+Indeed, it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the
+commercial that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits. But
+in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and
+mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the
+aristocrat of fruits. We still say ‘the apple of the eye’ when we wish
+to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the
+comparison to ‘apples of silver.’ No other product of tree or vine has
+been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of and longed
+for the ‘apples of the Hesperides’? I need not call your attention to
+the most tremendous and significant instance of the apple’s ancient
+prestige when its consumption by our first parents occasioned the fall
+of man from his state of goodness and perfection.”
+
+“Apples like them,” said the windmill man, lingering with the objective
+article, “are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market.”
+
+“Now, what I have to propose,” said Judge Menefee, conceding an
+indulgent smile to his interrupter, “is this: We must remain here,
+perforce, until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our
+next need is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the
+time shall not pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in
+the hands of Miss Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said, a
+prize, in award, representing a great human idea. Miss Garland,
+herself, shall cease to be an individual—but only temporarily, I am
+happy to add”—(a low bow, full of the old-time grace). “She shall
+represent her sex; she shall be the embodiment, the epitome of
+womankind—the heart and brain, I may say, of God’s masterpiece of
+creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide the question which
+follows:
+
+“But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an
+entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the
+former professor of this habitation. The few facts that we have learned
+seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for the study
+of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination—in short, for
+story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each one of us
+relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit, and his
+lady-love, beginning where Mr. Rose’s narrative ends—at the parting of
+the lovers at the gate. This much should be assumed and conceded—that
+the young lady was not necessarily to blame for Redruth’s becoming a
+crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have done, Miss Garland shall
+render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit of her Sex she shall
+decide which version of the story best and most truly depicts human and
+love interest, and most faithfully estimates the character and acts of
+Redruth’s betrothed according to the feminine view. The apple shall be
+bestowed upon him who is awarded the decision. If you are all agreed,
+we shall be pleased to hear the first story from Mr. Dinwiddie.”
+
+The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger
+in the dumps.
+
+“That’s a first-rate scheme, Judge,” he said, heartily. “Be a regular
+short-story vaudeville, won’t it? I used to be correspondent for a
+paper in Springfield, and when there wasn’t any news I faked it. Guess
+I can do my turn all right.”
+
+“I think the idea is charming,” said the lady passenger, brightly. “It
+will be almost like a game.”
+
+Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand
+impressively.
+
+“In olden days,” he said, orotundly, “Paris awarded the golden apple to
+the most beautiful.”
+
+“I was at the Exposition,” remarked the windmill man, now cheerful
+again, “but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the
+time I wasn’t at the machinery exhibit.”
+
+“But now,” continued the Judge, “the fruit shall translate to us the
+mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland.
+Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as you may
+deem it just.”
+
+The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath her
+robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark, brightly
+and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might have
+listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon the
+fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. “Will you oblige us with the
+initial story?” he asked.
+
+The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his head
+on account of the draughts.
+
+“Well,” he began, without any embarrassment, “this is about the way I
+size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by
+this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of
+his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is
+still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold
+bonds when he’s got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see
+her. Well, maybe he’s hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets
+that an engagement ain’t always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that
+makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. Well, she answers back sharp.
+Well, he—”
+
+“Say!” interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, “if you
+could put up a windmill on every one of them ‘wells’ you’re using,
+you’d be able to retire from business, wouldn’t you?”
+
+The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.
+
+“Oh, I ain’t no _Guy de Mopassong_,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m giving
+it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this:
+‘Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,’ says she; ‘but he takes me riding
+and buys me theatre tickets, and that’s what you never do. Ain’t I to
+never have any pleasure in life while I can?’ ‘Pass this
+chatfield-chatfield thing along,’ says Redruth;—‘hand out the mitt to
+the Willie with creases in it or you don’t put your slippers under my
+wardrobe.’
+
+“Now that kind of train orders don’t go with a girl that’s got any
+spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only
+wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and
+caramels before she settled down to patch George’s other pair, and be a
+good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won’t come down.
+Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away
+and hits the booze. Yep. That’s what done it. I bet that girl fired the
+cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left. George
+boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts unknown. He
+sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the aniline and
+aquafortis gets the decision. ‘Me for the hermit’s hut,’ says George,
+‘and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that isn’t there.’
+
+“But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but
+took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a
+cat that came when you said ‘weeny—weeny—weeny!’ I got too much faith
+in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they’re stuck on
+every time for the dough.” The windmill man ceased.
+
+“I think,” said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly
+throne, “that that is a char—”
+
+“Oh, Miss Garland!” interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, “I
+beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other contestants.
+Mr.—er—will you take the next turn?” The Judge addressed the young man
+who had the Agency.
+
+“My version of the romance,” began the young man, diffidently clasping
+his hands, “would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted. Mr.
+Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his
+fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the
+thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond
+and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky
+Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates landed
+and captured him while at work, and—”
+
+“Hey! what’s that?” sharply called the passenger who was nobody in
+particular—“a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you
+tell us how they sailed—”
+
+“Landed from a train,” said the narrator, quietly and not without some
+readiness. “They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they
+took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a
+beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to
+Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with
+the diamonds—”
+
+“What diamonds?” asked the unimportant passenger, almost with acerbity.
+
+“The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple,” said the
+other, somewhat obscurely. “When he reached home, Alice’s mother led
+him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. ‘Her heart was
+broken when you left,’ said her mother. ‘And what of my rival—of
+Chester McIntosh?’ asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice’s
+grave. ‘When he found out,’ she answered, ‘that her heart was yours, he
+pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in
+Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an
+infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to
+forget scenes of civilisation.’ With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the
+face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
+
+“My story,” concluded the young man with an Agency, “may lack the
+literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady
+remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true
+affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think
+otherwise.”
+
+The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where
+reclined the lady passenger.
+
+Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story
+in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver’s essay was
+brief.
+
+“I’m not one of them lobo wolves,” he said, “who are always blaming on
+women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction
+story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth
+was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey that
+tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in the
+grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been well.
+The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for.
+
+“‘Send for me if you want me again,’ says Redruth, and hoists his
+Stetson, and walks off. He’d have called it pride, but the
+nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don’t like to run
+after a man. ‘Let him come back, hisself,’ says the girl; and I’ll be
+bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her
+time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book and
+the tickly moustache.
+
+“I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a
+note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don’t. ‘This game
+won’t work,’ says Redruth; ‘then so won’t I.’ And he goes in the hermit
+business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was what done
+the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with long
+whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of
+Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got ’em?
+
+“Now, this Alice didn’t never marry, I’ll bet a hoss. If Redruth had
+married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns
+up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock
+of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of
+articles is as good as a husband to some women. I’d say she played out
+a lone hand. I don’t blame no woman for old man Redruth’s abandonment
+of barber shops and clean shirts.”
+
+Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular. Nameless
+to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
+
+But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds
+to the Judge’s call.
+
+A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms
+wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth,
+oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr’s, with upturned,
+tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish’s; a red necktie with a
+horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed
+itself into words.
+
+“Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms!
+Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified
+checks in his trouserings.
+
+“Take ’em as they parted at the gate? All right. ‘You never loved me,’
+says Redruth, wildly, ‘or you wouldn’t speak to a man who can buy you
+the ice-cream.’ ‘I hate him,’ says she. ‘I loathe his side-bar buggy; I
+despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered
+with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he
+presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls
+running in a vine around the border. Away with him! ’Tis only you I
+love.’ ‘Back to the cosy corner!’ says Redruth. ‘Was I bound and
+lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jack-pots for
+mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on
+Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.’
+
+“Around that night comes John W. Croesus. ‘What! tears?’ says he,
+arranging his pearl pin. ‘You have driven my lover away,’ says little
+Alice, sobbing: ‘I hate the sight of you.’ ‘Marry me, then,’ says John
+W., lighting a Henry Clay. ‘What!’ she cries indignantly, ‘marry you!
+Never,’ she says, ‘until this blows over, and I can do some shopping,
+and you see about the licence. There’s a telephone next door if you
+want to call up the county clerk.’”
+
+The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.
+
+“Did they marry?” he continued. “Did the duck swallow the June-bug? And
+then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There’s where you are all
+wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a hermit? One
+says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say women did it.
+How old is the old man now?” asked the speaker, turning to Bildad Rose.
+
+“I should say about sixty-five.”
+
+“All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say he
+was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves
+twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he
+spend that ten and two fives? I’ll give you my idea. Up for bigamy. Say
+there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at
+Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets
+his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they
+are through with him, and says: ‘Any line for me except the crinoline.
+The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to
+’em for work. The jolly hermit’s life for me. No more long hairs in the
+comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.’ You tell me they
+pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he was
+King Solomon? Figs! He _was_ Solomon. That’s all of mine. I guess it
+don’t call for any apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don’t sound much
+like a prize winner.”
+
+Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon
+the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in
+particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the
+contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize.
+Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in
+vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now diminishing
+firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly chiselled as a Roman
+emperor’s on some old coin, and upon the thick waves of his honourable
+grey hair.
+
+“A woman’s heart!” he began, in even but thrilling tones—“who can hope
+to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think that the
+hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the same old tune
+of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be worthy of the
+name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion.
+
+“Gentlemen of the—er—I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth
+_versus_ love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not
+Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that
+clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us
+here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness
+inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of
+its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically
+insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of
+approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and
+taste.
+
+“In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to
+whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice
+against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or
+love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not
+found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere,
+among man’s baser nature and lower motives for the cause.
+
+“There was, in all probability, a lover’s quarrel as they stood at the
+gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth
+vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There
+is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than
+evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman’s goodness, in
+her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face
+of proffered riches.
+
+“I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about
+the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete
+despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life
+had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the
+subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
+
+“But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as the
+years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form
+and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now. Her
+hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door and
+gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at
+the gate, just as he left her—his forever, but not here below. Yes; my
+belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on
+earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in
+the Slough of Despond.”
+
+“I thought he was in the bughouse,” said the passenger who was nobody
+in particular.
+
+Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in
+grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in
+fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals
+which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her
+cosy nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of
+coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead
+above her clinging boa.
+
+Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.
+
+“And now, Miss Garland,” he announced, “we have concluded. It is for
+you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument—especially, I
+may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood—approaches nearest
+to your own conception.”
+
+No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over
+solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low
+and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take
+her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round,
+irregular something in her lap.
+
+“She has eaten the apple,” announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as
+he held up the core for them to see.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+THE MISSING CHORD
+
+
+I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy
+Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time
+when I called “Hallo!” at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until
+my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code,
+undeniable friends.
+
+After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room
+house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista
+grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the
+hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the
+structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably
+concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.
+
+As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that
+prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who
+will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring. An
+inventory must suffice.
+
+The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient
+prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear,
+lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as
+dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous
+air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild
+flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great,
+round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark
+lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In
+the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic
+would send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For
+other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the shearing-pen,
+and whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these
+dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds’
+notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would
+not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the
+stars, they hung so bright and imminent.
+
+Mr. Kinney’s wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the house.
+She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties, in
+which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and contented
+pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney
+and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music.
+If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of
+that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the
+keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an
+unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch-house. I must
+have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft,
+Southern way, and nodded at me through the moonlit haze of our
+cigarettes.
+
+“You don’t often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch,”
+he remarked; “but I never see any reason for not playing up to the arts
+and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It’s a
+lonesome life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any
+better, why not have it? That’s the way I look at it.”
+
+“A wise and generous theory,” I assented. “And Mrs. Kinney plays well.
+I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an
+uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary
+power.”
+
+The moon was very bright, you will understand, and I saw upon Kinney’s
+face a sort of amused and pregnant expression, as though there were
+things behind it that might be expounded.
+
+“You came up the trail from the Double-Elm Fork,” he said promisingly.
+“As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted _jacal_ to your
+left under a comma mott.”
+
+“I did,” said I. “There was a drove of _javalis_ rooting around it. I
+could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there.”
+
+“That’s where this music proposition started,” said Kinney. “I don’t
+mind telling you about it while we smoke. That’s where old Cal Adams
+lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that
+was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar
+pony. And I don’t mind telling you that I was guilty in the second
+degree of hanging around old Cal’s ranch all the time I could spare
+away from lambing and shearing. Miss Marilla was her name; and I had
+figured it out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the
+chatelaine and lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney,
+Esq., where you are now a welcome and honoured guest.
+
+“I will say that old Cal wasn’t distinguished as a sheepman. He was a
+little, old stoop-shouldered _hombre_ about as big as a gun scabbard,
+with scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of
+language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he
+wasn’t even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don’t get eminent
+enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to
+die unwept and considerably unsung.
+
+“But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most
+elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used
+to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a
+week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new
+sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got
+to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I
+was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the
+Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments
+toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious
+matters.
+
+“You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and
+had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of
+information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments
+of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn’t advance him any ideas on
+any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought
+he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and
+natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought
+up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek
+root up to the time it was sacked and on the market.
+
+“One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm
+with a lady’s magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific
+paper for old Cal.
+
+“While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, ‘tickled to
+death’ with some news that couldn’t wait.
+
+“‘Oh, Rush,’ she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification,
+‘what do you think! Dad’s going to buy me a piano. Ain’t it grand? I
+never dreamed I’d ever have one.”
+
+“‘It’s sure joyful,’ says I. ‘I always admired the agreeable uproar of
+a piano. It’ll be lots of company for you. That’s mighty good of Uncle
+Cal to do that.’
+
+“‘I’m all undecided,’ says Marilla, ‘between a piano and an organ. A
+parlour organ is nice.’
+
+“‘Either of ’em,’ says I, ‘is first-class for mitigating the lack of
+noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,’ I says, ‘I shouldn’t like
+anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few
+waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the
+piano-stool and rounding up the notes.’
+
+“‘Oh, hush about that,’ says Marilla, ‘and go on in the house. Dad
+hasn’t rode out to-day. He’s not feeling well.’
+
+“Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and
+cough. I stayed to supper.
+
+“‘Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,’ says I to him.
+
+“‘Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,’ says he. ‘She’s been
+hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with
+something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all
+round this fall; and I’m going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes
+the price of the whole clip to do it.’
+
+“‘_Star wayno_,’ says I. ‘The little girl deserves it.’
+
+“‘I’m going to San Antone on the last load of wool,’ says Uncle Cal,
+‘and select an instrument for her myself.’
+
+“‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ I suggests, ‘to take Marilla along and let
+her pick out one that she likes?’
+
+“I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going. Of course, a man
+like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as
+a reflection on his attainments.
+
+“‘No, sir, it wouldn’t,’ says he, pulling at his white whiskers. ‘There
+ain’t a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than
+what I am. I had an uncle,’ says he, ‘that was a partner in a
+piano-factory, and I’ve seen thousands of ’em put together. I know all
+about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle.
+There ain’t a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any
+instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or
+wound with a key.’
+
+“‘You get me what you like, dad,’ says Marilla, who couldn’t keep her
+feet on the floor from joy. ‘Of course you know what to select. I’d
+just as lief it was a piano or a organ or what.’
+
+“‘I see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,’ says Uncle
+Cal, ‘that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music ever
+invented. But there ain’t room in this house for one. Anyway, I imagine
+they’d cost a thousand dollars. I reckon something in the piano line
+would suit Marilla the best. She took lessons in that respect for two
+years over at Birdstail. I wouldn’t trust the buying of an instrument
+to anybody else but myself. I reckon if I hadn’t took up sheep-raising
+I’d have been one of the finest composers or piano-and-organ
+manufacturers in the world.’
+
+“That was Uncle Cal’s style. But I never lost any patience with him, on
+account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as
+much of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two years
+when it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses.
+
+“Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last
+wagonload of wool. Marilla’s uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come
+over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone.
+
+“It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest
+railroad-station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at
+the Double-Elm when he came rolling back one evening about sundown. And
+up there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ—we couldn’t
+tell which—all wrapped up in woolsacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over it
+in case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, ‘Oh, oh!’ with her
+eyes shining and her hair a-flying. ‘Dad—dad,’ she sings out, ‘have you
+brought it—have you brought it?’—and it right there before her eyes, as
+women will do.
+
+“‘Finest piano in San Antone,’ says Uncle Cal, waving his hand, proud.
+‘Genuine rosewood, and the finest, loudest tone you ever listened to. I
+heard the storekeeper play it, and I took it on the spot and paid cash
+down.’
+
+“Me and Ben and Uncle Cal and a Mexican lifted it out of the wagon and
+carried it in the house and set it in a corner. It was one of them
+upright instruments, and not very heavy or very big.
+
+“And then all of a sudden Uncle Cal flops over and says he’s mighty
+sick. He’s got a high fever, and he complains of his lungs. He gets
+into bed, while me and Ben goes out to unhitch and put the horses in
+the pasture, and Marilla flies around to get Uncle Cal something hot to
+drink. But first she puts both arms on that piano and hugs it with a
+soft kind of a smile, like you see kids doing with their Christmas
+toys.
+
+“When I came in from the pasture, Marilla was in the room where the
+piano was. I could see by the strings and woolsacks on the floor that
+she had had it unwrapped. But now she was tying the wagon-sheet over it
+again, and there was a kind of solemn, whitish look on her face.
+
+“‘Ain’t wrapping up the music again, are you, Marilla?’ I asks. ‘What’s
+the matter with just a couple of tunes for to see how she goes under
+the saddle?’
+
+“‘Not to-night, Rush,’ says she. ‘I don’t want to play any to-night.
+Dad’s too sick. Just think, Rush, he paid three hundred dollars for it
+—nearly a third of what the wool-clip brought!’
+
+“‘Well, it ain’t anyways in the neighbourhood of a third of what you
+are worth,’ I told her. ‘And I don’t think Uncle Cal is too sick to
+hear a little agitation of the piano-keys just to christen the machine.
+
+“‘Not to-night, Rush,’ says Marilla, in a way that she had when she
+wanted to settle things.
+
+“But it seems that Uncle Cal was plenty sick, after all. He got so bad
+that Ben saddled up and rode over to Birdstail for Doc Simpson. I
+stayed around to see if I’d be needed for anything.
+
+“When Uncle Cal’s pain let up on him a little he called Marilla and
+says to her: ‘Did you look at your instrument, honey? And do you like
+it?’
+
+“‘It’s lovely, dad,’ says she, leaning down by his pillow; ‘I never saw
+one so pretty. How dear and good it was of you to buy it for me!’
+
+“‘I haven’t heard you play on it any yet,’ says Uncle Cal; ‘and I’ve
+been listening. My side don’t hurt quite so bad now—won’t you play a
+piece, Marilla?’
+
+“But no; she puts Uncle Cal off and soothes him down like you’ve seen
+women do with a kid. It seems she’s made up her mind not to touch that
+piano at present.
+
+“When Doc Simpson comes over he tells us that Uncle Cal has pneumonia
+the worst kind; and as the old man was past sixty and nearly on the
+lift anyhow, the odds was against his walking on grass any more.
+
+“On the fourth day of his sickness he calls for Marilla again and wants
+to talk piano. Doc Simpson was there, and so was Ben and Mrs. Ben,
+trying to do all they could.
+
+“‘I’d have made a wonderful success in anything connected with music,’
+says Uncle Cal. ‘I got the finest instrument for the money in San
+Antone. Ain’t that piano all right in every respect, Marilla?’
+
+“‘It’s just perfect, dad,’ says she. ‘It’s got the finest tone I ever
+heard. But don’t you think you could sleep a little while now, dad?’
+
+“‘No, I don’t,’ says Uncle Cal. ‘I want to hear that piano. I don’t
+believe you’ve even tried it yet. I went all the way to San Antone and
+picked it out for you myself. It took a third of the fall clip to buy
+it; but I don’t mind that if it makes my good girl happier. Won’t you
+play a little bit for dad, Marilla?’
+
+“Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to do
+what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her uncle Ben
+and his wife asked her, too.
+
+“‘Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?’ I asks
+Marilla. ‘Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good
+deal to hear you touch up the piano he’s bought for you. Don’t you
+think you might?’
+
+“But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes and
+says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle
+Cal’s neck and hugs him tight.
+
+“‘Why, last night, dad,’ we heard her say, ‘I played it ever so much.
+Honest—I have been playing it. And it’s such a splendid instrument, you
+don’t know how I love it. Last night I played “Bonnie Dundee” and the
+“Anvil Polka” and the “Blue Danube”—and lots of pieces. You must surely
+have heard me playing a little, didn’t you, dad? I didn’t like to play
+loud when you was so sick.’
+
+“‘Well, well,’ says Uncle Cal, ‘maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot
+about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the
+store play it fine. I’m mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I
+believe I could go to sleep a while if you’ll stay right beside me till
+I do.’
+
+“There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of that
+old man, she wouldn’t strike a note on that piano that he’d bought her.
+I couldn’t imagine why she told him she’d been playing it, for the
+wagon-sheet hadn’t ever been off of it since she put it back on the
+same day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I’d once
+heard her snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano at
+the Charco Largo Ranch.
+
+“Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They
+had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought
+Marilla back home in my buckboard. Her uncle Ben and his wife were
+going to stay there a few days with her.
+
+“That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while the
+others were out on the gallery.
+
+“‘Come here, Rush,’ says she; ‘I want you to see this now.’
+
+“She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet.
+
+“If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that
+wasn’t loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you
+might have been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument
+Uncle Cal had bought.
+
+“Instead of a piano, it was one of the machines they’ve invented to
+play the piano with. By itself it was about as musical as the holes of
+a flute without the flute.
+
+“And that was the piano that Uncle Cal had selected; and standing by it
+was the good, fine, all-wool girl that never let him know it.
+
+“And what you heard playing a while ago,” concluded Mr. Kinney, “was
+that same deputy-piano machine; only just at present it’s shoved up
+against a six-hundred-dollar piano that I bought for Marilla as soon as
+we was married.”
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+A CALL LOAN
+
+
+In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees
+of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and
+bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so
+inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed
+to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a
+watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his
+ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin
+_suaderos_, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky—what else
+was there for him to spend money for?
+
+Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth
+were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the
+breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber
+through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become
+extinct.
+
+So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle
+Branch on the Frio—a wife-driven man—to taste the urban joys of
+success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income
+steadily increasing.
+
+Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a cool
+head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from cowboy to
+be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune, stepping
+gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her cornucopia at
+the doorstep of the ranch.
+
+In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly
+residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social
+existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for
+a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his
+quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the First
+National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president.
+
+One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted an
+official-looking card between the bars of the cashier’s window of the
+First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing at
+the beck and call of a national bank examiner.
+
+This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.
+
+At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the
+president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.
+
+“Well, how do you find things?” asked Longley, in his slow, deep tones.
+“Any brands in the round-up you didn’t like the looks of?”
+
+“The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley,” said Todd; “and I find
+your loans in very good shape—with one exception. You are carrying one
+very bad bit of paper—one that is so bad that I have been thinking that
+you surely do not realise the serious position it places you in. I
+refer to a call loan of $10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not only is the
+amount in excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any individual
+legally, but it is absolutely without endorsement or security. Thus you
+have doubly violated the national banking laws, and have laid yourself
+open to criminal prosecution by the Government. A report of the matter
+to the Comptroller of the Currency—which I am bound to make—would, I am
+sure, result in the matter being turned over to the Department of
+Justice for action. You see what a serious thing it is.”
+
+Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his
+swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a
+little to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to
+see a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly
+twinkle in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the
+affair, it did not show in his countenance.
+
+“Of course, you don’t know Tom Merwin,” said Longley, almost genially.
+“Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn’t any security except Tom
+Merwin’s word. Somehow, I’ve always found that when a man’s word is
+good it’s the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government
+doesn’t think so. I guess I’ll see Tom about that note.”
+
+Mr. Todd’s dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the
+chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement.
+
+“You see,” said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, “Tom heard
+of 2000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande
+that could be had for $8 a head. I reckon ’twas one of old Leandro
+Garcia’s outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a
+quick turn on ’em. Those cattle are worth $15 on the hoof in Kansas
+City. Tom knew it and I knew it. He had $6,000, and I let him have the
+$10,000 to make the deal with. His brother Ed took ’em on to market
+three weeks ago. He ought to be back ’most any day now with the money.
+When he comes Tom’ll pay that note.”
+
+The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out to
+the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But he
+did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three
+minutes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood
+upon the border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny loophole
+of escape.
+
+“I am going to Hilldale’s to-night,” he told Longley, “to examine a
+bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve
+o’clock to-morrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been
+cleared out of the way by that time it will not be mentioned in my
+report. If not—I will have to do my duty.”
+
+With that the examiner bowed and departed.
+
+The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour
+longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin’s
+house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat
+with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt.
+
+“Tom,” said Longley, leaning against the table, “you heard anything
+from Ed yet?”
+
+“Not yet,” said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. “I guess Ed’ll be
+along back now in a few days.”
+
+“There was a bank examiner,” said Longley, “nosing around our place
+to-day, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I know
+it’s all right, but the thing _is_ against the banking laws. I was
+pretty sure you’d have paid it off before the bank was examined again,
+but the son-of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I’m short of cash
+myself just now, or I’d let you have the money to take it up with. I’ve
+got till twelve o’clock to-morrow, and then I’ve got to show the cash
+in place of that note or—”
+
+“Or what, Bill?” asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated.
+
+“Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam’s feet.”
+
+“I’ll try to raise the money for you on time,” said Merwin, interested
+in his plaiting.
+
+“All right, Tom,” concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; “I
+knew you would if you could.”
+
+Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a
+private one, run by Cooper & Craig.
+
+“Cooper,” he said, to the partner by that name, “I’ve got to have
+$10,000 to-day or to-morrow. I’ve got a house and lot there that’s
+worth about $6,000 and that’s all the actual collateral. But I’ve got a
+cattle deal on that’s sure to bring me in more than that much profit
+within a few days.”
+
+Cooper began to cough.
+
+“Now, for God’s sake don’t say no,” said Merwin. “I owe that much money
+on a call loan. It’s been called, and the man that called it is a man
+I’ve laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for
+ten years. He can call anything I’ve got. He can call the blood out of
+my veins and it’ll come. He’s got to have the money. He’s in a devil of
+a—Well, he needs the money, and I’ve got to get it for him. You know my
+word’s good, Cooper.”
+
+“No doubt of it,” assented Cooper, urbanely, “but I’ve a partner, you
+know. I’m not free in making loans. And even if you had the best
+security in your hands, Merwin, we couldn’t accommodate you in less
+than a week. We’re just making a shipment of $15,000 to Myer Brothers
+in Rockdell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow-gauge
+to-night. That leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can’t
+arrange it for you.”
+
+Merwin went back to his little bare office and plaited at his quirt
+again. About four o’clock in the afternoon he went to the First
+National Bank and leaned over the railing of Longley’s desk.
+
+“I’ll try to get that money for you to-night—I mean to-morrow, Bill.”
+
+“All right, Tom,” said Longley quietly.
+
+At nine o’clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the
+small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the little
+town, and few citizens were in the neighbourhood at that hour. Merwin
+wore two six-shooters in a belt, and a slouch hat. He moved swiftly
+down a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that ran
+parallel to the narrow-gauge track until he reached the water-tank, two
+miles below the town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black silk
+handkerchief about the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat down
+low.
+
+In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank,
+having come from Chaparosa.
+
+With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump of
+chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three
+steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was lifted
+from his feet and thrown, face downward upon the grass. There was a
+heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping each of
+his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine had taken
+water, and until the train had moved, with accelerating speed, out of
+sight. Then he was released, and rose to his feet to face Bill Longley.
+
+“The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom,” said Longley. “I
+saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked about.
+Then I went down to your house to-night and saw you come out with your
+guns on, and I followed you. Let’s go back, Tom.”
+
+They walked away together, side by side.
+
+“’Twas the only chance I saw,” said Merwin presently. “You called your
+loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what’ll you do, Bill, if they
+sock it to you?”
+
+“What would you have done if they’d socked it to you?” was the answer
+Longley made.
+
+“I never thought I’d lay in a bush to stick up a train,” remarked
+Merwin; “but a call loan’s different. A call’s a call with me. We’ve
+got twelve hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We’ve got
+to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can—Great Sam Houston! do
+you hear that?”
+
+Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a
+rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious
+air of “The Cowboy’s Lament.”
+
+“It’s the only tune he knows,” shouted Merwin, as he ran. “I’ll bet—”
+
+They were at the door of Merwin’s house. He kicked it open and fell
+over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned,
+firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a
+brown cigarette.
+
+“What’s the word, Ed?” gasped Merwin.
+
+“So, so,” drawled that capable youngster. “Just got in on the 9:30.
+Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit
+kickin’ a valise around that’s got $29,000 in greenbacks in its
+in’ards.”
+
+
+
+
+XV
+THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA
+
+
+There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible
+old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a
+tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their
+holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they
+called the man “Whispering Ben.” When he came to own 50,000 acres of
+land and more cattle than he could count, they called him O’Donnell
+“the Cattle King.”
+
+The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good, mild,
+Colorado-claro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his
+voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being
+broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of
+Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible
+and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought
+down from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head,
+and shared the fate of the Danae.
+
+To avoid _lèse-majesté_ you have been presented first to the king and
+queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called “The
+Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled
+his Job.”
+
+Josefa O’Donnell was the surviving daughter, the princess. From her
+mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky, semi-tropic beauty.
+From Ben O’Donnell the royal she acquired a store of intrepidity,
+common sense, and the faculty of ruling. The combination was one worth
+going miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put
+five out of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a
+string. She could play for hours with a white kitten she owned,
+dressing it in all manner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil, she
+could tell you out of her head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on
+the hoof, at $8.50 per head. Roughly speaking, the Espinosa Ranch is
+forty miles long and thirty broad—but mostly leased land. Josefa, on
+her pony, had prospected over every mile of it. Every cow-puncher on
+the range knew her by sight and was a loyal vassal. Ripley Givens,
+foreman of one of the Espinosa outfits, saw her one day, and made up
+his mind to form a royal matrimonial alliance. Presumptuous? No. In
+those days in the Nueces country a man was a man. And, after all, the
+title of cattle king does not presuppose blood royalty. Often it only
+signifies that its owner wears the crown in token of his magnificent
+qualities in the art of cattle stealing.
+
+One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire
+about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his
+return trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse Crossing
+of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen miles. To the
+Espinosa ranch it was twelve. Givens was tired. He decided to pass the
+night at the Crossing.
+
+There was a fine water hole in the river-bed. The banks were thickly
+covered with great trees, undergrown with brush. Back from the water
+hole fifty yards was a stretch of curly mesquite grass—supper for his
+horse and bed for himself. Givens staked his horse, and spread out his
+saddle blankets to dry. He sat down with his back against a tree and
+rolled a cigarette. From somewhere in the dense timber along the river
+came a sudden, rageful, shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of
+his rope and blew a whistling snort of comprehending fear. Givens
+puffed at his cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-belt,
+which lay on the grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon
+tentatively. A great gar plunged with a loud splash into the water
+hole. A little brown rabbit skipped around a bunch of catclaw and sat
+twitching his whiskers and looking humorously at Givens. The pony went
+on eating grass.
+
+It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano
+along the arroyos at sundown. The burden of his song may be that young
+calves and fat lambs are scarce, and that he has a carnivorous desire
+for your acquaintance.
+
+In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former
+sojourner. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In
+his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground
+coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?
+
+In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his
+can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw,
+between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins
+cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her
+hands and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O’Donnell.
+She had been drinking water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of
+her hands. Ten yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump of
+sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His amber
+eyeballs glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail
+stretched straight, like a pointer’s. His hind-quarters rocked with the
+motion of the cat tribe preliminary to leaping.
+
+Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away
+lying on the grass. He gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion
+and the princess.
+
+The “rucus,” as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat
+confused. When he arrived on the line of attack he saw a dim streak in
+the air, and heard a couple of faint cracks. Then a hundred pounds of
+Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened him, with a heavy
+jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: “Let up, now—no fair
+gouging!” and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm, with his
+mouth full of grass and dirt, and a big lump on the back of his head
+where it had struck the root of a water-elm. The lion lay motionless.
+Givens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook his fist at
+the lion, and shouted: “I’ll rastle you again for twenty—” and then he
+got back to himself.
+
+Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver-mounted
+.38. It had not been a difficult shot. The lion’s head made an easier
+mark than a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. There was a
+provoking, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her dark
+eyes. The would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco burn
+down to his soul. Here had been his chance, the chance that he had
+dreamed of; and Momus, and not Cupid, had presided over it. The satyrs
+in the wood were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious, silent
+laughter. There had been something like vaudeville—say Signor Givens
+and his funny knockabout act with the stuffed lion.
+
+“Is that you, Mr. Givens?” said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine
+contralto. “You nearly spoilt my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt
+your head when you fell?”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Givens, quietly; “that didn’t hurt.” He stooped
+ignominiously and dragged his best Stetson hat from under the beast. It
+was crushed and wrinkled to a fine comedy effect. Then he knelt down
+and softly stroked the fierce, open-jawed head of the dead lion.
+
+“Poor old Bill!” he exclaimed mournfully.
+
+“What’s that?” asked Josefa, sharply.
+
+“Of course you didn’t know, Miss Josefa,” said Givens, with an air of
+one allowing magnanimity to triumph over grief. “Nobody can blame you.
+I tried to save him, but I couldn’t let you know in time.”
+
+“Save who?”
+
+“Why, Bill. I’ve been looking for him all day. You see, he’s been our
+camp pet for two years. Poor old fellow, he wouldn’t have hurt a
+cottontail rabbit. It’ll break the boys all up when they hear about it.
+But you couldn’t tell, of course, that Bill was just trying to play
+with you.”
+
+Josefa’s black eyes burned steadily upon him. Ripley Givens met the
+test successfully. He stood rumpling the yellow-brown curls on his head
+pensively. In his eye was regret, not unmingled with a gentle reproach.
+His smooth features were set to a pattern of indisputable sorrow.
+Josefa wavered.
+
+“What was your pet doing here?” she asked, making a last stand.
+“There’s no camp near the White Horse Crossing.”
+
+“The old rascal ran away from camp yesterday,” answered Givens readily.
+“It’s a wonder the coyotes didn’t scare him to death. You see, Jim
+Webster, our horse wrangler, brought a little terrier pup into camp
+last week. The pup made life miserable for Bill—he used to chase him
+around and chew his hind legs for hours at a time. Every night when
+bedtime came Bill would sneak under one of the boy’s blankets and sleep
+to keep the pup from finding him. I reckon he must have been worried
+pretty desperate or he wouldn’t have run away. He was always afraid to
+get out of sight of camp.”
+
+Josefa looked at the body of the fierce animal. Givens gently patted
+one of the formidable paws that could have killed a yearling calf with
+one blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the
+girl. Was it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought
+down ignoble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove
+away all their bright mockery.
+
+“I’m very sorry,” she said humbly; “but he looked so big, and jumped so
+high that—”
+
+“Poor old Bill was hungry,” interrupted Givens, in quick defence of the
+deceased. “We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He would lie
+down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he thought he
+was going to get something to eat from you.”
+
+Suddenly Josefa’s eyes opened wide.
+
+“I might have shot you!” she exclaimed. “You ran right in between. You
+risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, Mr. Givens. I like a
+man who is kind to animals.”
+
+Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a
+hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax. The look on Givens’s
+face would have secured him a high position in the S.P.C.A.
+
+“I always loved ’em,” said he; “horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows,
+alligators—”
+
+“I hate alligators,” instantly demurred Josefa; “crawly, muddy things!”
+
+“Did I say alligators?” said Givens. “I meant antelopes, of course.”
+
+Josefa’s conscience drove her to make further amends. She held out her
+hand penitently. There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes.
+
+“Please forgive me, Mr. Givens, won’t you? I’m only a girl, you know,
+and I was frightened at first. I’m very, very sorry I shot Bill. You
+don’t know how ashamed I feel. I wouldn’t have done it for anything.”
+
+Givens took the proffered hand. He held it for a time while he allowed
+the generosity of his nature to overcome his grief at the loss of Bill.
+At last it was clear that he had forgiven her.
+
+“Please don’t speak of it any more, Miss Josefa. ’Twas enough to
+frighten any young lady the way Bill looked. I’ll explain it all right
+to the boys.”
+
+“Are you really sure you don’t hate me?” Josefa came closer to him
+impulsively. Her eyes were sweet—oh, sweet and pleading with gracious
+penitence. “I would hate anyone who would kill my kitten. And how
+daring and kind of you to risk being shot when you tried to save him!
+How very few men would have done that!” Victory wrested from defeat!
+Vaudeville turned into drama! Bravo, Ripley Givens!
+
+It was now twilight. Of course Miss Josefa could not be allowed to ride
+on to the ranch-house alone. Givens resaddled his pony in spite of that
+animal’s reproachful glances, and rode with her. Side by side they
+galloped across the smooth grass, the princess and the man who was kind
+to animals. The prairie odours of fruitful earth and delicate bloom
+were thick and sweet around them. Coyotes yelping over there on the
+hill! No fear. And yet—
+
+Josefa rode closer. A little hand seemed to grope. Givens found it with
+his own. The ponies kept an even gait. The hands lingered together, and
+the owner of one explained:
+
+“I never was frightened before, but just think! How terrible it would
+be to meet a really wild lion! Poor Bill! I’m so glad you came with
+me!”
+
+O’Donnell was sitting on the ranch gallery.
+
+“Hello, Rip!” he shouted—“that you?”
+
+“He rode in with me,” said Josefa. “I lost my way and was late.”
+
+“Much obliged,” called the cattle king. “Stop over, Rip, and ride to
+camp in the morning.”
+
+But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch of
+steers to start off on the trail at daybreak. He said good-night, and
+trotted away.
+
+An hour later, when the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe,
+came to her door and called to the king in his own room across the
+brick-paved hallway:
+
+“Say, pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the ‘Gotch-eared
+Devil’—the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin’s sheep herder, and
+about fifty calves on the Salado range? Well, I settled his hash this
+afternoon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head
+with my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone from
+his left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You couldn’t
+have made a better shot yourself, daddy.”
+
+“Bully for you!” thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the
+royal chamber.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON
+
+
+Dry Valley Johnson shook the bottle. You have to shake the bottle
+before using; for sulphur will not dissolve. Then Dry Valley saturated
+a small sponge with the liquid and rubbed it carefully into the roots
+of his hair. Besides sulphur there was sugar of lead in it and tincture
+of nux vomica and bay rum. Dry Valley found the recipe in a Sunday
+newspaper. You must next be told why a strong man came to fall a victim
+to a Beauty Hint.
+
+Dry Valley had been a sheepman. His real name was Hector, but he had
+been rechristened after his range to distinguish him from “Elm Creek”
+Johnson, who ran sheep further down the Frio.
+
+Many years of living face to face with sheep on their own terms wearied
+Dry Valley Johnson. So, he sold his ranch for eighteen thousand dollars
+and moved to Santa Rosa to live a life of gentlemanly ease. Being a
+silent and melancholy person of thirty-five—or perhaps thirty-eight—he
+soon became that cursed and earth-cumbering thing—an elderlyish
+bachelor with a hobby. Some one gave him his first strawberry to eat,
+and he was done for.
+
+Dry Valley bought a four-room cottage in the village, and a library on
+strawberry culture. Behind the cottage was a garden of which he made a
+strawberry patch. In his old grey woolen shirt, his brown duck
+trousers, and high-heeled boots he sprawled all day on a canvas cot
+under a live-oak tree at his back door studying the history of the
+seductive, scarlet berry.
+
+The school teacher, Miss De Witt, spoke of him as “a fine, presentable
+man, for all his middle age.” But, the focus of Dry Valley’s eyes
+embraced no women. They were merely beings who flew skirts as a signal
+for him to lift awkwardly his heavy, round-crowned, broad-brimmed felt
+Stetson whenever he met them, and then hurry past to get back to his
+beloved berries.
+
+And all this recitative by the chorus is only to bring us to the point
+where you may be told why Dry Valley shook up the insoluble sulphur in
+the bottle. So long-drawn and inconsequential a thing is history—the
+anamorphous shadow of a milestone reaching down the road between us and
+the setting sun.
+
+When his strawberries were beginning to ripen Dry Valley bought the
+heaviest buggy whip in the Santa Rosa store. He sat for many hours
+under the live oak tree plaiting and weaving in an extension to its
+lash. When it was done he could snip a leaf from a bush twenty feet
+away with the cracker. For the bright, predatory eyes of Santa Rosa
+youth were watching the ripening berries, and Dry Valley was arming
+himself against their expected raids. No greater care had he taken of
+his tender lambs during his ranching days than he did of his cherished
+fruit, warding it from the hungry wolves that whistled and howled and
+shot their marbles and peered through the fence that surrounded his
+property.
+
+In the house next to Dry Valley’s lived a widow with a pack of children
+that gave the husbandman frequent anxious misgivings. In the woman
+there was a strain of the Spanish. She had wedded one of the name of
+O’Brien. Dry Valley was a connoisseur in cross strains; and he foresaw
+trouble in the offspring of this union.
+
+Between the two homesteads ran a crazy picket fence overgrown with
+morning glory and wild gourd vines. Often he could see little heads
+with mops of black hair and flashing dark eyes dodging in and out
+between the pickets, keeping tabs on the reddening berries.
+
+Late one afternoon Dry Valley went to the post office. When he came
+back, like Mother Hubbard he found the deuce to pay. The descendants of
+Iberian bandits and Hibernian cattle raiders had swooped down upon his
+strawberry patch. To the outraged vision of Dry Valley there seemed to
+be a sheep corral full of them; perhaps they numbered five or six.
+Between the rows of green plants they were stooped, hopping about like
+toads, gobbling silently and voraciously his finest fruit.
+
+Dry Valley slipped into the house, got his whip, and charged the
+marauders. The lash curled about the legs of the nearest—a greedy
+ten-year-old—before they knew they were discovered. His screech gave
+warning; and the flock scampered for the fence like a drove of
+_javelis_ flushed in the chaparral. Dry Valley’s whip drew a toll of
+two more elfin shrieks before they dived through the vine-clad fence
+and disappeared.
+
+Dry Valley, less fleet, followed them nearly to the pickets. Checking
+his useless pursuit, he rounded a bush, dropped his whip and stood,
+voiceless, motionless, the capacity of his powers consumed by the act
+of breathing and preserving the perpendicular.
+
+Behind the bush stood Panchita O’Brien, scorning to fly. She was
+nineteen, the oldest of the raiders. Her night-black hair was gathered
+back in a wild mass and tied with a scarlet ribbon. She stood, with
+reluctant feet, yet nearer the brook than to the river; for childhood
+had environed and detained her.
+
+She looked at Dry Valley Johnson for a moment with magnificent
+insolence, and before his eyes slowly crunched a luscious berry between
+her white teeth. Then she turned and walked slowly to the fence with a
+swaying, conscious motion, such as a duchess might make use of in
+leading a promenade. There she turned again and grilled Dry Valley
+Johnson once more in the dark flame of her audacious eyes, laughed a
+trifle school-girlishly, and twisted herself with pantherish quickness
+between the pickets to the O’Brien side of the wild gourd vine.
+
+Dry Valley picked up his whip and went into his house. He stumbled as
+he went up the two wooden steps. The old Mexican woman who cooked his
+meals and swept his house called him to supper as he went through the
+rooms. Dry Valley went on, stumbled down the front steps, out the gate
+and down the road into a mesquite thicket at the edge of town. He sat
+down in the grass and laboriously plucked the spines from a prickly
+pear, one by one. This was his attitude of thought, acquired in the
+days when his problems were only those of wind and wool and water.
+
+A thing had happened to the man—a thing that, if you are eligible, you
+must pray may pass you by. He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer
+of the Soul.
+
+Dry Valley had had no youth. Even his childhood had been one of dignity
+and seriousness. At six he had viewed the frivolous gambols of the
+lambs on his father’s ranch with silent disapproval. His life as a
+young man had been wasted. The divine fires and impulses, the glorious
+exaltations and despairs, the glow and enchantment of youth had passed
+above his head. Never a thrill of Romeo had he known; he was but a
+melancholy Jaques of the forest with a ruder philosophy, lacking the
+bitter-sweet flavour of experience that tempered the veteran years of
+the rugged ranger of Arden. And now in his sere and yellow leaf one
+scornful look from the eyes of Panchita O’Brien had flooded the
+autumnal landscape with a tardy and delusive summer heat.
+
+But a sheepman is a hardy animal. Dry Valley Johnson had weathered too
+many northers to turn his back on a late summer, spiritual or real.
+Old? He would show them.
+
+By the next mail went an order to San Antonio for an outfit of the
+latest clothes, colours and styles and prices no object. The next day
+went the recipe for the hair restorer clipped from a newspaper; for Dry
+Valley’s sunburned auburn hair was beginning to turn silvery above his
+ears.
+
+Dry Valley kept indoors closely for a week except for frequent sallies
+after youthful strawberry snatchers. Then, a few days later, he
+suddenly emerged brilliantly radiant in the hectic glow of his belated
+midsummer madness.
+
+A jay-bird-blue tennis suit covered him outwardly, almost as far as his
+wrists and ankles. His shirt was ox-blood; his collar winged and tall;
+his necktie a floating oriflamme; his shoes a venomous bright tan,
+pointed and shaped on penitential lasts. A little flat straw hat with a
+striped band desecrated his weather-beaten head. Lemon-coloured kid
+gloves protected his oak-tough hands from the benignant May sunshine.
+This sad and optic-smiting creature teetered out of its den, smiling
+foolishly and smoothing its gloves for men and angels to see. To such a
+pass had Dry Valley Johnson been brought by Cupid, who always shoots
+game that is out of season with an arrow from the quiver of Momus.
+Reconstructing mythology, he had risen, a prismatic macaw, from the
+ashes of the grey-brown phoenix that had folded its tired wings to
+roost under the trees of Santa Rosa.
+
+Dry Valley paused in the street to allow Santa Rosans within sight of
+him to be stunned; and then deliberately and slowly, as his shoes
+required, entered Mrs. O’Brien’s gate.
+
+Not until the eleven months’ drought did Santa Rosa cease talking about
+Dry Valley Johnson’s courtship of Panchita O’Brien. It was an
+unclassifiable procedure; something like a combination of cake-walking,
+deaf-and-dumb oratory, postage stamp flirtation and parlour charades.
+It lasted two weeks and then came to a sudden end.
+
+Of course Mrs. O’Brien favoured the match as soon as Dry Valley’s
+intentions were disclosed. Being the mother of a woman child, and
+therefore a charter member of the Ancient Order of the Rat-trap, she
+joyfully decked out Panchita for the sacrifice. The girl was
+temporarily dazzled by having her dresses lengthened and her hair piled
+up on her head, and came near forgetting that she was only a slice of
+cheese. It was nice, too, to have as good a match as Mr. Johnson paying
+you attentions and to see the other girls fluttering the curtains at
+their windows to see you go by with him.
+
+Dry Valley bought a buggy with yellow wheels and a fine trotter in San
+Antonio. Every day he drove out with Panchita. He was never seen to
+speak to her when they were walking or driving. The consciousness of
+his clothes kept his mind busy; the knowledge that he could say nothing
+of interest kept him dumb; the feeling that Panchita was there kept him
+happy.
+
+He took her to parties and dances, and to church. He tried—oh, no man
+ever tried so hard to be young as Dry Valley did. He could not dance;
+but he invented a smile which he wore on these joyous occasions, a
+smile that, in him, was as great a concession to mirth and gaiety as
+turning hand-springs would be in another. He began to seek the company
+of the young men in the town—even of the boys. They accepted him as a
+decided damper, for his attempts at sportiveness were so forced that
+they might as well have essayed their games in a cathedral. Neither he
+nor any other could estimate what progress he had made with Panchita.
+
+The end came suddenly in one day, as often disappears the false
+afterglow before a November sky and wind.
+
+Dry Valley was to call for the girl one afternoon at six for a walk. An
+afternoon walk in Santa Rosa was a feature of social life that called
+for the pink of one’s wardrobe. So Dry Valley began gorgeously to array
+himself; and so early that he finished early, and went over to the
+O’Brien cottage. As he neared the porch on the crooked walk from the
+gate he heard sounds of revelry within. He stopped and looked through
+the honeysuckle vines in the open door.
+
+Panchita was amusing her younger brothers and sisters. She wore a man’s
+clothes—no doubt those of the late Mr. O’Brien. On her head was the
+smallest brother’s straw hat decorated with an ink-striped paper band.
+On her hands were flapping yellow cloth gloves, roughly cut out and
+sewn for the masquerade. The same material covered her shoes, giving
+them the semblance of tan leather. High collar and flowing necktie were
+not omitted.
+
+Panchita was an actress. Dry Valley saw his affectedly youthful gait,
+his limp where the right shoe hurt him, his forced smile, his awkward
+simulation of a gallant air, all reproduced with startling fidelity.
+For the first time a mirror had been held up to him. The corroboration
+of one of the youngsters calling, “Mamma, come and see Pancha do like
+Mr. Johnson,” was not needed.
+
+As softly as the caricatured tans would permit, Dry Valley tiptoed back
+to the gate and home again.
+
+Twenty minutes after the time appointed for the walk Panchita tripped
+demurely out of her gate in a thin, trim white lawn and sailor hat. She
+strolled up the sidewalk and slowed her steps at Dry Valley’s gate, her
+manner expressing wonder at his unusual delinquency.
+
+Then out of his door and down the walk strode—not the polychromatic
+victim of a lost summertime, but the sheepman, rehabilitated. He wore
+his old grey woolen shirt, open at the throat, his brown duck trousers
+stuffed into his run-over boots, and his white felt sombrero on the
+back of his head. Twenty years or fifty he might look; Dry Valley cared
+not. His light blue eyes met Panchita’s dark ones with a cold flash in
+them. He came as far as the gate. He pointed with his long arm to her
+house.
+
+“Go home,” said Dry Valley. “Go home to your mother. I wonder lightnin’
+don’t strike a fool like me. Go home and play in the sand. What
+business have you got cavortin’ around with grown men? I reckon I was
+locoed to be makin’ a he poll-parrot out of myself for a kid like you.
+Go home and don’t let me see you no more. Why I done it, will somebody
+tell me? Go home, and let me try and forget it.”
+
+Panchita obeyed and walked slowly toward her home, saying nothing. For
+some distance she kept her head turned and her large eyes fixed
+intrepidly upon Dry Valley’s. At her gate she stood for a moment
+looking back at him, then ran suddenly and swiftly into the house.
+
+Old Antonia was building a fire in the kitchen stove. Dry Valley
+stopped at the door and laughed harshly.
+
+“I’m a pretty looking old rhinoceros to be gettin’ stuck on a kid,
+ain’t I, ’Tonia?” said he.
+
+“Not verree good thing,” agreed Antonia, sagely, “for too much old man
+to likee _muchacha_.”
+
+“You bet it ain’t,” said Dry Valley, grimly. “It’s dum foolishness;
+and, besides, it hurts.”
+
+He brought at one armful the regalia of his aberration—the blue tennis
+suit, shoes, hat, gloves and all, and threw them in a pile at Antonia’s
+feet.
+
+“Give them to your old man,” said he, “to hunt antelope in.”
+
+Just as the first star presided palely over the twilight Dry Valley got
+his biggest strawberry book and sat on the back steps to catch the last
+of the reading light. He thought he saw the figure of someone in his
+strawberry patch. He laid aside the book, got his whip and hurried
+forth to see.
+
+It was Panchita. She had slipped through the picket fence and was
+half-way across the patch. She stopped when she saw him and looked at
+him without wavering.
+
+A sudden rage—a humiliating flush of unreasoning wrath—came over Dry
+Valley. For this child he had made himself a motley to the view. He had
+tried to bribe Time to turn backward for himself; he had—been made a
+fool of. At last he had seen his folly. There was a gulf between him
+and youth over which he could not build a bridge even with yellow
+gloves to protect his hands. And the sight of his torment coming to
+pester him with her elfin pranks—coming to plunder his strawberry vines
+like a mischievous schoolboy—roused all his anger.
+
+“I told you to keep away from here,” said Dry Valley. “Go back to your
+home.”
+
+Panchita moved slowly toward him.
+
+Dry Valley cracked his whip.
+
+“Go back home,” said Dry Valley, savagely, “and play theatricals some
+more. You’d make a fine man. You’ve made a fine one of me.”
+
+She came a step nearer, silent, and with that strange, defiant, steady
+shine in her eyes that had always puzzled him. Now it stirred his
+wrath.
+
+His whiplash whistled through the air. He saw a red streak suddenly
+come out through her white dress above her knee where it had struck.
+
+Without flinching and with the same unchanging dark glow in her eyes,
+Panchita came steadily toward him through the strawberry vines. Dry
+Valley’s trembling hand released his whip handle. When within a yard of
+him Panchita stretched out her arms.
+
+“God, kid!” stammered Dry Valley, “do you mean—?”
+
+But the seasons are versatile; and it may have been Springtime, after
+all, instead of Indian Summer, that struck Dry Valley Johnson.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+CHRISTMAS BY INJUNCTION
+
+
+Cherokee was the civic father of Yellowhammer. Yellowhammer was a new
+mining town constructed mainly of canvas and undressed pine. Cherokee
+was a prospector. One day while his burro was eating quartz and pine
+burrs Cherokee turned up with his pick a nugget, weighing thirty
+ounces. He staked his claim and then, being a man of breadth and
+hospitality, sent out invitations to his friends in three States to
+drop in and share his luck.
+
+Not one of the invited guests sent regrets. They rolled in from the
+Gila country, from Salt River, from the Pecos, from Albuquerque and
+Phoenix and Santa Fe, and from the camps intervening.
+
+When a thousand citizens had arrived and taken up claims they named the
+town Yellowhammer, appointed a vigilance committee, and presented
+Cherokee with a watch-chain made of nuggets.
+
+Three hours after the presentation ceremonies Cherokee’s claim played
+out. He had located a pocket instead of a vein. He abandoned it and
+staked others one by one. Luck had kissed her hand to him. Never
+afterward did he turn up enough dust in Yellowhammer to pay his bar
+bill. But his thousand invited guests were mostly prospering, and
+Cherokee smiled and congratulated them.
+
+Yellowhammer was made up of men who took off their hats to a smiling
+loser; so they invited Cherokee to say what he wanted.
+
+“Me?” said Cherokee, “oh, grubstakes will be about the thing. I reckon
+I’ll prospect along up in the Mariposas. If I strike it up there I will
+most certainly let you all know about the facts. I never was any hand
+to hold out cards on my friends.”
+
+In May Cherokee packed his burro and turned its thoughtful,
+mouse-coloured forehead to the north. Many citizens escorted him to the
+undefined limits of Yellowhammer and bestowed upon him shouts of
+commendation and farewells. Five pocket flasks without an air bubble
+between contents and cork were forced upon him; and he was bidden to
+consider Yellowhammer in perpetual commission for his bed, bacon and
+eggs, and hot water for shaving in the event that luck did not see fit
+to warm her hands by his campfire in the Mariposas.
+
+The name of the father of Yellowhammer was given him by the gold
+hunters in accordance with their popular system of nomenclature. It was
+not necessary for a citizen to exhibit his baptismal certificate in
+order to acquire a cognomen. A man’s name was his personal property.
+For convenience in calling him up to the bar and in designating him
+among other blue-shirted bipeds, a temporary appellation, title, or
+epithet was conferred upon him by the public. Personal peculiarities
+formed the source of the majority of such informal baptisms. Many were
+easily dubbed geographically from the regions from which they confessed
+to have hailed. Some announced themselves to be “Thompsons,” and
+“Adamses,” and the like, with a brazenness and loudness that cast a
+cloud upon their titles. A few vaingloriously and shamelessly uncovered
+their proper and indisputable names. This was held to be unduly
+arrogant, and did not win popularity. One man who said he was
+Chesterton L. C. Belmont, and proved it by letters, was given till
+sundown to leave the town. Such names as “Shorty,” “Bow-legs,” “Texas,”
+“Lazy Bill,” “Thirsty Rogers,” “Limping Riley,” “The Judge,” and
+“California Ed” were in favour. Cherokee derived his title from the
+fact that he claimed to have lived for a time with that tribe in the
+Indian Nation.
+
+On the twentieth day of December Baldy, the mail rider, brought
+Yellowhammer a piece of news.
+
+“What do I see in Albuquerque,” said Baldy, to the patrons of the bar,
+“but Cherokee all embellished and festooned up like the Czar of Turkey,
+and lavishin’ money in bulk. Him and me seen the elephant and the owl,
+and we had specimens of this seidlitz powder wine; and Cherokee he
+audits all the bills, C.O.D. His pockets looked like a pool table’s
+after a fifteen-ball run.
+
+“Cherokee must have struck pay ore,” remarked California Ed. “Well,
+he’s white. I’m much obliged to him for his success.”
+
+“Seems like Cherokee would ramble down to Yellowhammer and see his
+friends,” said another, slightly aggrieved. “But that’s the way.
+Prosperity is the finest cure there is for lost forgetfulness.”
+
+“You wait,” said Baldy; “I’m comin’ to that. Cherokee strikes a
+three-foot vein up in the Mariposas that assays a trip to Europe to the
+ton, and he closes it out to a syndicate outfit for a hundred thousand
+hasty dollars in cash. Then he buys himself a baby sealskin overcoat
+and a red sleigh, and what do you think he takes it in his head to do
+next?”
+
+“Chuck-a-luck,” said Texas, whose ideas of recreation were the
+gamester’s.
+
+“Come and Kiss Me, Ma Honey,” sang Shorty, who carried tintypes in his
+pocket and wore a red necktie while working on his claim.
+
+“Bought a saloon?” suggested Thirsty Rogers.
+
+“Cherokee took me to a room,” continued Baldy, “and showed me. He’s got
+that room full of drums and dolls and skates and bags of candy and
+jumping-jacks and toy lambs and whistles and such infantile truck. And
+what do you think he’s goin’ to do with them inefficacious
+knick-knacks? Don’t surmise none—Cherokee told me. He’s goin’ to lead
+’em up in his red sleigh and—wait a minute, don’t order no drinks yet—
+he’s goin’ to drive down here to Yellowhammer and give the kids—the
+kids of this here town—the biggest Christmas tree and the biggest
+cryin’ doll and Little Giant Boys’ Tool Chest blowout that was ever
+seen west of the Cape Hatteras.”
+
+Two minutes of absolute silence ticked away in the wake of Baldy’s
+words. It was broken by the House, who, happily conceiving the moment
+to be ripe for extending hospitality, sent a dozen whisky glasses
+spinning down the bar, with the slower travelling bottle bringing up
+the rear.
+
+“Didn’t you tell him?” asked the miner called Trinidad.
+
+“Well, no,” answered Baldy, pensively; “I never exactly seen my way to.
+
+“You see, Cherokee had this Christmas mess already bought and paid for;
+and he was all flattered up with self-esteem over his idea; and we had
+in a way flew the flume with that fizzy wine I speak of; so I never let
+on.”
+
+“I cannot refrain from a certain amount of surprise,” said the Judge,
+as he hung his ivory-handled cane on the bar, “that our friend Cherokee
+should possess such an erroneous conception of—ah—his, as it were, own
+town.”
+
+“Oh, it ain’t the eighth wonder of the terrestrial world,” said Baldy.
+“Cherokee’s been gone from Yellowhammer over seven months. Lots of
+things could happen in that time. How’s he to know that there ain’t a
+single kid in this town, and so far as emigration is concerned, none
+expected?”
+
+“Come to think of it,” remarked California Ed, “it’s funny some ain’t
+drifted in. Town ain’t settled enough yet for to bring in the
+rubber-ring brigade, I reckon.”
+
+“To top off this Christmas-tree splurge of Cherokee’s,” went on Baldy,
+“he’s goin’ to give an imitation of Santa Claus. He’s got a white wig
+and whiskers that disfigure him up exactly like the pictures of this
+William Cullen Longfellow in the books, and a red suit of fur-trimmed
+outside underwear, and eight-ounce gloves, and a stand-up, lay-down
+croshayed red cap. Ain’t it a shame that a outfit like that can’t get a
+chance to connect with a Annie and Willie’s prayer layout?”
+
+“When does Cherokee allow to come over with his truck?” inquired
+Trinidad.
+
+“Mornin’ before Christmas,” said Baldy. “And he wants you folks to have
+a room fixed up and a tree hauled and ready. And such ladies to assist
+as can stop breathin’ long enough to let it be a surprise for the
+kids.”
+
+The unblessed condition of Yellowhammer had been truly described. The
+voice of childhood had never gladdened its flimsy structures; the
+patter of restless little feet had never consecrated the one rugged
+highway between the two rows of tents and rough buildings. Later they
+would come. But now Yellowhammer was but a mountain camp, and nowhere
+in it were the roguish, expectant eyes, opening wide at dawn of the
+enchanting day; the eager, small hands to reach for Santa’s bewildering
+hoard; the elated, childish voicings of the season’s joy, such as the
+coming good things of the warm-hearted Cherokee deserved.
+
+Of women there were five in Yellowhammer. The assayer’s wife, the
+proprietress of the Lucky Strike Hotel, and a laundress whose washtub
+panned out an ounce of dust a day. These were the permanent feminines;
+the remaining two were the Spangler Sisters, Misses Fanchon and Erma,
+of the Transcontinental Comedy Company, then playing in repertoire at
+the (improvised) Empire Theatre. But of children there were none.
+Sometimes Miss Fanchon enacted with spirit and address the part of
+robustious childhood; but between her delineation and the visions of
+adolescence that the fancy offered as eligible recipients of Cherokee’s
+holiday stores there seemed to be fixed a gulf.
+
+Christmas would come on Thursday. On Tuesday morning Trinidad, instead
+of going to work, sought the Judge at the Lucky Strike Hotel.
+
+“It’ll be a disgrace to Yellowhammer,” said Trinidad, “if it throws
+Cherokee down on his Christmas tree blowout. You might say that that
+man made this town. For one, I’m goin’ to see what can be done to give
+Santa Claus a square deal.”
+
+“My co-operation,” said the Judge, “would be gladly forthcoming. I am
+indebted to Cherokee for past favours. But, I do not see—I have
+heretofore regarded the absence of children rather as a luxury—but in
+this instance—still, I do not see—”
+
+“Look at me,” said Trinidad, “and you’ll see old Ways and Means with
+the fur on. I’m goin’ to hitch up a team and rustle a load of kids for
+Cherokee’s Santa Claus act, if I have to rob an orphan asylum.”
+
+“Eureka!” cried the Judge, enthusiastically.
+
+“No, you didn’t,” said Trinidad, decidedly. “I found it myself. I
+learned about that Latin word at school.”
+
+“I will accompany you,” declared the Judge, waving his cane. “Perhaps
+such eloquence and gift of language as I possess will be of benefit in
+persuading our young friends to lend themselves to our project.”
+
+Within an hour Yellowhammer was acquainted with the scheme of Trinidad
+and the Judge, and approved it. Citizens who knew of families with
+offspring within a forty-mile radius of Yellowhammer came forward and
+contributed their information. Trinidad made careful notes of all such,
+and then hastened to secure a vehicle and team.
+
+The first stop scheduled was at a double log-house fifteen miles out
+from Yellowhammer. A man opened the door at Trinidad’s hail, and then
+came down and leaned upon the rickety gate. The doorway was filled with
+a close mass of youngsters, some ragged, all full of curiosity and
+health.
+
+“It’s this way,” explained Trinidad. “We’re from Yellowhammer, and we
+come kidnappin’ in a gentle kind of a way. One of our leading citizens
+is stung with the Santa Claus affliction, and he’s due in town
+to-morrow with half the folderols that’s painted red and made in
+Germany. The youngest kid we got in Yellowhammer packs a forty-five and
+a safety razor. Consequently we’re mighty shy on anybody to say ‘Oh’
+and ‘Ah’ when we light the candles on the Christmas tree. Now, partner,
+if you’ll loan us a few kids we guarantee to return ’em safe and sound
+on Christmas Day. And they’ll come back loaded down with a good time
+and Swiss Family Robinsons and cornucopias and red drums and similar
+testimonials. What do you say?”
+
+“In other words,” said the Judge, “we have discovered for the first
+time in our embryonic but progressive little city the inconveniences of
+the absence of adolescence. The season of the year having approximately
+arrived during which it is a custom to bestow frivolous but often
+appreciated gifts upon the young and tender—”
+
+“I understand,” said the parent, packing his pipe with a forefinger. “I
+guess I needn’t detain you gentlemen. Me and the old woman have got
+seven kids, so to speak; and, runnin’ my mind over the bunch, I don’t
+appear to hit upon none that we could spare for you to take over to
+your doin’s. The old woman has got some popcorn candy and rag dolls hid
+in the clothes chest, and we allow to give Christmas a little whirl of
+our own in a insignificant sort of style. No, I couldn’t, with any
+degree of avidity, seem to fall in with the idea of lettin’ none of ’em
+go. Thank you kindly, gentlemen.”
+
+Down the slope they drove and up another foothill to the ranch-house of
+Wiley Wilson. Trinidad recited his appeal and the Judge boomed out his
+ponderous antiphony. Mrs. Wiley gathered her two rosy-cheeked
+youngsters close to her skirts and did not smile until she had seen
+Wiley laugh and shake his head. Again a refusal.
+
+Trinidad and the Judge vainly exhausted more than half their list
+before twilight set in among the hills. They spent the night at a stage
+road hostelry, and set out again early the next morning. The wagon had
+not acquired a single passenger.
+
+“It’s creepin’ upon my faculties,” remarked Trinidad, “that borrowin’
+kids at Christmas is somethin’ like tryin’ to steal butter from a man
+that’s got hot pancakes a-comin’.”
+
+“It is undoubtedly an indisputable fact,” said the Judge, “that the—
+ah—family ties seem to be more coherent and assertive at that period of
+the year.”
+
+On the day before Christmas they drove thirty miles, making four
+fruitless halts and appeals. Everywhere they found “kids” at a premium.
+
+The sun was low when the wife of a section boss on a lonely railroad
+huddled her unavailable progeny behind her and said:
+
+“There’s a woman that’s just took charge of the railroad eatin’ house
+down at Granite Junction. I hear she’s got a little boy. Maybe she
+might let him go.”
+
+Trinidad pulled up his mules at Granite Junction at five o’clock in the
+afternoon. The train had just departed with its load of fed and
+appeased passengers.
+
+On the steps of the eating house they found a thin and glowering boy of
+ten smoking a cigarette. The dining-room had been left in chaos by the
+peripatetic appetites. A youngish woman reclined, exhausted, in a
+chair. Her face wore sharp lines of worry. She had once possessed a
+certain style of beauty that would never wholly leave her and would
+never wholly return. Trinidad set forth his mission.
+
+“I’d count it a mercy if you’d take Bobby for a while,” she said,
+wearily. “I’m on the go from morning till night, and I don’t have time
+to ’tend to him. He’s learning bad habits from the men. It’ll be the
+only chance he’ll have to get any Christmas.”
+
+The men went outside and conferred with Bobby. Trinidad pictured the
+glories of the Christmas tree and presents in lively colours.
+
+“And, moreover, my young friend,” added the Judge, “Santa Claus himself
+will personally distribute the offerings that will typify the gifts
+conveyed by the shepherds of Bethlehem to—”
+
+“Aw, come off,” said the boy, squinting his small eyes. “I ain’t no
+kid. There ain’t any Santa Claus. It’s your folks that buys toys and
+sneaks ’em in when you’re asleep. And they make marks in the soot in
+the chimney with the tongs to look like Santa’s sleigh tracks.”
+
+“That might be so,” argued Trinidad, “but Christmas trees ain’t no
+fairy tale. This one’s goin’ to look like the ten-cent store in
+Albuquerque, all strung up in a redwood. There’s tops and drums and
+Noah’s arks and—”
+
+“Oh, rats!” said Bobby, wearily. “I cut them out long ago. I’d like to
+have a rifle—not a target one—a real one, to shoot wildcats with; but I
+guess you won’t have any of them on your old tree.”
+
+“Well, I can’t say for sure,” said Trinidad diplomatically; “it might
+be. You go along with us and see.”
+
+The hope thus held out, though faint, won the boy’s hesitating consent
+to go. With this solitary beneficiary for Cherokee’s holiday bounty,
+the canvassers spun along the homeward road.
+
+In Yellowhammer the empty storeroom had been transformed into what
+might have passed as the bower of an Arizona fairy. The ladies had done
+their work well. A tall Christmas tree, covered to the topmost branch
+with candles, spangles, and toys sufficient for more than a score of
+children, stood in the centre of the floor. Near sunset anxious eyes
+had begun to scan the street for the returning team of the
+child-providers. At noon that day Cherokee had dashed into town with
+his new sleigh piled high with bundles and boxes and bales of all sizes
+and shapes. So intent was he upon the arrangements for his altruistic
+plans that the dearth of children did not receive his notice. No one
+gave away the humiliating state of Yellowhammer, for the efforts of
+Trinidad and the Judge were expected to supply the deficiency.
+
+When the sun went down Cherokee, with many wings and arch grins on his
+seasoned face, went into retirement with the bundle containing the
+Santa Claus raiment and a pack containing special and undisclosed
+gifts.
+
+“When the kids are rounded up,” he instructed the volunteer arrangement
+committee, “light up the candles on the tree and set ’em to playin’
+‘Pussy Wants a Corner’ and ‘King William.’ When they get good and at
+it, why—old Santa’ll slide in the door. I reckon there’ll be plenty of
+gifts to go ’round.”
+
+The ladies were flitting about the tree, giving it final touches that
+were never final. The Spangled Sisters were there in costume as Lady
+Violet de Vere and Marie, the maid, in their new drama, “The Miner’s
+Bride.” The theatre did not open until nine, and they were welcome
+assistants of the Christmas tree committee. Every minute heads would
+pop out the door to look and listen for the approach of Trinidad’s
+team. And now this became an anxious function, for night had fallen and
+it would soon be necessary to light the candles on the tree, and
+Cherokee was apt to make an irruption at any time in his Kriss Kringle
+garb.
+
+At length the wagon of the child “rustlers” rattled down the street to
+the door. The ladies, with little screams of excitement, flew to the
+lighting of the candles. The men of Yellowhammer passed in and out
+restlessly or stood about the room in embarrassed groups.
+
+Trinidad and the Judge, bearing the marks of protracted travel,
+entered, conducting between them a single impish boy, who stared with
+sullen, pessimistic eyes at the gaudy tree.
+
+“Where are the other children?” asked the assayer’s wife, the
+acknowledged leader of all social functions.
+
+“Ma’am,” said Trinidad with a sigh, “prospectin’ for kids at Christmas
+time is like huntin’ in a limestone for silver. This parental business
+is one that I haven’t no chance to comprehend. It seems that fathers
+and mothers are willin’ for their offsprings to be drownded, stole, fed
+on poison oak, and et by catamounts 364 days in the year; but on
+Christmas Day they insists on enjoyin’ the exclusive mortification of
+their company. This here young biped, ma’am, is all that washes out of
+our two days’ manoeuvres.”
+
+“Oh, the sweet little boy!” cooed Miss Erma, trailing her De Vere robes
+to centre of stage.
+
+“Aw, shut up,” said Bobby, with a scowl. “Who’s a kid? You ain’t, you
+bet.”
+
+“Fresh brat!” breathed Miss Erma, beneath her enamelled smile.
+
+“We done the best we could,” said Trinidad. “It’s tough on Cherokee,
+but it can’t be helped.”
+
+Then the door opened and Cherokee entered in the conventional dress of
+Saint Nick. A white rippling beard and flowing hair covered his face
+almost to his dark and shining eyes. Over his shoulder he carried a
+pack.
+
+No one stirred as he came in. Even the Spangler Sisters ceased their
+coquettish poses and stared curiously at the tall figure. Bobby stood
+with his hands in his pockets gazing gloomily at the effeminate and
+childish tree. Cherokee put down his pack and looked wonderingly about
+the room. Perhaps he fancied that a bevy of eager children were being
+herded somewhere, to be loosed upon his entrance. He went up to Bobby
+and extended his red-mittened hand.
+
+“Merry Christmas, little boy,” said Cherokee. “Anything on the tree you
+want they’ll get it down for you. Won’t you shake hands with Santa
+Claus?”
+
+“There ain’t any Santa Claus,” whined the boy. “You’ve got old false
+billy goat’s whiskers on your face. I ain’t no kid. What do I want with
+dolls and tin horses? The driver said you’d have a rifle, and you
+haven’t. I want to go home.”
+
+Trinidad stepped into the breach. He shook Cherokee’s hand in warm
+greeting.
+
+“I’m sorry, Cherokee,” he explained. “There never was a kid in
+Yellowhammer. We tried to rustle a bunch of ’em for your swaree, but
+this sardine was all we could catch. He’s a atheist, and he don’t
+believe in Santa Claus. It’s a shame for you to be out all this truck.
+But me and the Judge was sure we could round up a wagonful of
+candidates for your gimcracks.”
+
+“That’s all right,” said Cherokee gravely. “The expense don’t amount to
+nothin’ worth mentionin’. We can dump the stuff down a shaft or throw
+it away. I don’t know what I was thinkin’ about; but it never occurred
+to my cogitations that there wasn’t any kids in Yellowhammer.”
+
+Meanwhile the company had relaxed into a hollow but praiseworthy
+imitation of a pleasure gathering.
+
+Bobby had retreated to a distant chair, and was coldly regarding the
+scene with ennui plastered thick upon him. Cherokee, lingering with his
+original idea, went over and sat beside him.
+
+“Where do you live, little boy?” he asked respectfully.
+
+“Granite Junction,” said Bobby without emphasis.
+
+The room was warm. Cherokee took off his cap, and then removed his
+beard and wig.
+
+“Say!” exclaimed Bobby, with a show of interest, “I know your mug, all
+right.”
+
+“Did you ever see me before?” asked Cherokee.
+
+“I don’t know; but I’ve seen your picture lots of times.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+The boy hesitated. “On the bureau at home,” he answered.
+
+“Let’s have your name, if you please, buddy.”
+
+“Robert Lumsden. The picture belongs to my mother. She puts it under
+her pillow of nights. And once I saw her kiss it. I wouldn’t. But women
+are that way.”
+
+Cherokee rose and beckoned to Trinidad.
+
+“Keep this boy by you till I come back,” he said. “I’m goin’ to shed
+these Christmas duds, and hitch up my sleigh. I’m goin’ to take this
+kid home.”
+
+“Well, infidel,” said Trinidad, taking Cherokee’s vacant chair, “and so
+you are too superannuated and effete to yearn for such mockeries as
+candy and toys, it seems.”
+
+“I don’t like you,” said Bobby, with acrimony. “You said there would be
+a rifle. A fellow can’t even smoke. I wish I was at home.”
+
+Cherokee drove his sleigh to the door, and they lifted Bobby in beside
+him. The team of fine horses sprang away prancingly over the hard snow.
+Cherokee had on his $500 overcoat of baby sealskin. The laprobe that he
+drew about them was as warm as velvet.
+
+Bobby slipped a cigarette from his pocket and was trying to snap a
+match.
+
+“Throw that cigarette away,” said Cherokee, in a quiet but new voice.
+
+Bobby hesitated, and then dropped the cylinder overboard.
+
+“Throw the box, too,” commanded the new voice.
+
+More reluctantly the boy obeyed.
+
+“Say,” said Bobby, presently, “I like you. I don’t know why. Nobody
+never made me do anything I didn’t want to do before.”
+
+“Tell me, kid,” said Cherokee, not using his new voice, “are you sure
+your mother kissed that picture that looks like me?”
+
+“Dead sure. I seen her do it.”
+
+“Didn’t you remark somethin’ a while ago about wanting a rifle?”
+
+“You bet I did. Will you get me one?”
+
+“To-morrow—silver-mounted.”
+
+Cherokee took out his watch.
+
+“Half-past nine. We’ll hit the Junction plumb on time with Christmas
+Day. Are you cold? Sit closer, son.”
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+A CHAPARRAL PRINCE
+
+
+Nine o’clock at last, and the drudging toil of the day was ended. Lena
+climbed to her room in the third half-story of the Quarrymen’s Hotel.
+Since daylight she had slaved, doing the work of a full-grown woman,
+scrubbing the floors, washing the heavy ironstone plates and cups,
+making the beds, and supplying the insatiate demands for wood and water
+in that turbulent and depressing hostelry.
+
+The din of the day’s quarrying was over—the blasting and drilling, the
+creaking of the great cranes, the shouts of the foremen, the backing
+and shifting of the flat-cars hauling the heavy blocks of limestone.
+Down in the hotel office three or four of the labourers were growling
+and swearing over a belated game of checkers. Heavy odours of stewed
+meat, hot grease, and cheap coffee hung like a depressing fog about the
+house.
+
+Lena lit the stump of a candle and sat limply upon her wooden chair.
+She was eleven years old, thin and ill-nourished. Her back and limbs
+were sore and aching. But the ache in her heart made the biggest
+trouble. The last straw had been added to the burden upon her small
+shoulders. They had taken away Grimm. Always at night, however tired
+she might be, she had turned to Grimm for comfort and hope. Each time
+had Grimm whispered to her that the prince or the fairy would come and
+deliver her out of the wicked enchantment. Every night she had taken
+fresh courage and strength from Grimm.
+
+To whatever tale she read she found an analogy in her own condition.
+The woodcutter’s lost child, the unhappy goose girl, the persecuted
+stepdaughter, the little maiden imprisoned in the witch’s hut—all these
+were but transparent disguises for Lena, the overworked kitchenmaid in
+the Quarrymen’s Hotel. And always when the extremity was direst came
+the good fairy or the gallant prince to the rescue.
+
+So, here in the ogre’s castle, enslaved by a wicked spell, Lena had
+leaned upon Grimm and waited, longing for the powers of goodness to
+prevail. But on the day before Mrs. Maloney had found the book in her
+room and had carried it away, declaring sharply that it would not do
+for servants to read at night; they lost sleep and did not work briskly
+the next day. Can one only eleven years old, living away from one’s
+mamma, and never having any time to play, live entirely deprived of
+Grimm? Just try it once and you will see what a difficult thing it is.
+
+Lena’s home was in Texas, away up among the little mountains on the
+Pedernales River, in a little town called Fredericksburg. They are all
+German people who live in Fredericksburg. Of evenings they sit at
+little tables along the sidewalk and drink beer and play pinochle and
+scat. They are very thrifty people.
+
+Thriftiest among them was Peter Hildesmuller, Lena’s father. And that
+is why Lena was sent to work in the hotel at the quarries, thirty miles
+away. She earned three dollars every week there, and Peter added her
+wages to his well-guarded store. Peter had an ambition to become as
+rich as his neighbour, Hugo Heffelbauer, who smoked a meerschaum pipe
+three feet long and had wiener schnitzel and hassenpfeffer for dinner
+every day in the week. And now Lena was quite old enough to work and
+assist in the accumulation of riches. But conjecture, if you can, what
+it means to be sentenced at eleven years of age from a home in the
+pleasant little Rhine village to hard labour in the ogre’s castle,
+where you must fly to serve the ogres, while they devour cattle and
+sheep, growling fiercely as they stamp white limestone dust from their
+great shoes for you to sweep and scour with your weak, aching fingers.
+And then—to have Grimm taken away from you!
+
+Lena raised the lid of an old empty case that had once contained canned
+corn and got out a sheet of paper and a piece of pencil. She was going
+to write a letter to her mamma. Tommy Ryan was going to post it for her
+at Ballinger’s. Tommy was seventeen, worked in the quarries, went home
+to Ballinger’s every night, and was now waiting in the shadows under
+Lena’s window for her to throw the letter out to him. That was the only
+way she could send a letter to Fredericksburg. Mrs. Maloney did not
+like for her to write letters.
+
+The stump of the candle was burning low, so Lena hastily bit the wood
+from around the lead of her pencil and began. This is the letter she
+wrote:
+
+DEAREST MAMMA:—I want so much to see you. And Gretel and Claus and
+Heinrich and little Adolf. I am so tired. I want to see you. To-day I
+was slapped by Mrs. Maloney and had no supper. I could not bring in
+enough wood, for my hand hurt. She took my book yesterday. I mean
+“Grimm’s Fairy Tales,” which Uncle Leo gave me. It did not hurt any one
+for me to read the book. I try to work as well as I can, but there is
+so much to do. I read only a little bit every night. Dear mamma, I
+shall tell you what I am going to do. Unless you send for me to-morrow
+to bring me home I shall go to a deep place I know in the river and
+drown. It is wicked to drown, I suppose, but I wanted to see you, and
+there is no one else. I am very tired, and Tommy is waiting for the
+letter. You will excuse me, mamma, if I do it.
+
+
+Your respectful and loving daughter,
+LENA.
+
+
+Tommy was still waiting faithfully when the letter was concluded, and
+when Lena dropped it out she saw him pick it up and start up the steep
+hillside. Without undressing she blew out the candle and curled herself
+upon the mattress on the floor.
+
+At 10:30 o’clock old man Ballinger came out of his house in his
+stocking feet and leaned over the gate, smoking his pipe. He looked
+down the big road, white in the moonshine, and rubbed one ankle with
+the toe of his other foot. It was time for the Fredericksburg mail to
+come pattering up the road.
+
+Old man Ballinger had waited only a few minutes when he heard the
+lively hoofbeats of Fritz’s team of little black mules, and very soon
+afterward his covered spring wagon stood in front of the gate. Fritz’s
+big spectacles flashed in the moonlight and his tremendous voice
+shouted a greeting to the postmaster of Ballinger’s. The mail-carrier
+jumped out and took the bridles from the mules, for he always fed them
+oats at Ballinger’s.
+
+While the mules were eating from their feed bags old man Ballinger
+brought out the mail sack and threw it into the wagon.
+
+Fritz Bergmann was a man of three sentiments—or to be more accurate—
+four, the pair of mules deserving to be reckoned individually. Those
+mules were the chief interest and joy of his existence. Next came the
+Emperor of Germany and Lena Hildesmuller.
+
+“Tell me,” said Fritz, when he was ready to start, “contains the sack a
+letter to Frau Hildesmuller from the little Lena at the quarries? One
+came in the last mail to say that she is a little sick, already. Her
+mamma is very anxious to hear again.”
+
+“Yes,” said old man Ballinger, “thar’s a letter for Mrs. Helterskelter,
+or some sich name. Tommy Ryan brung it over when he come. Her little
+gal workin’ over thar, you say?”
+
+“In the hotel,” shouted Fritz, as he gathered up the lines; “eleven
+years old and not bigger as a frankfurter. The close-fist of a Peter
+Hildesmuller!—some day I shall with a big club pound that man’s
+dummkopf—all in and out the town. Perhaps in this letter Lena will say
+that she is yet feeling better. So, her mamma will be glad. _Auf
+wiedersehen_, Herr Ballinger—your feets will take cold out in the night
+air.”
+
+“So long, Fritzy,” said old man Ballinger. “You got a nice cool night
+for your drive.”
+
+Up the road went the little black mules at their steady trot, while
+Fritz thundered at them occasional words of endearment and cheer.
+
+These fancies occupied the mind of the mail-carrier until he reached
+the big post oak forest, eight miles from Ballinger’s. Here his
+ruminations were scattered by the sudden flash and report of pistols
+and a whooping as if from a whole tribe of Indians. A band of galloping
+centaurs closed in around the mail wagon. One of them leaned over the
+front wheel, covered the driver with his revolver, and ordered him to
+stop. Others caught at the bridles of Donder and Blitzen.
+
+“Donnerwetter!” shouted Fritz, with all his tremendous voice—“wass ist?
+Release your hands from dose mules. Ve vas der United States mail!”
+
+“Hurry up, Dutch!” drawled a melancholy voice. “Don’t you know when
+you’re in a stick-up? Reverse your mules and climb out of the cart.”
+
+It is due to the breadth of Hondo Bill’s demerit and the largeness of
+his achievements to state that the holding up of the Fredericksburg
+mail was not perpetrated by way of an exploit. As the lion while in the
+pursuit of prey commensurate to his prowess might set a frivolous foot
+upon a casual rabbit in his path, so Hondo Bill and his gang had
+swooped sportively upon the pacific transport of Meinherr Fritz.
+
+The real work of their sinister night ride was over. Fritz and his mail
+bag and his mules came as gentle relaxation, grateful after the arduous
+duties of their profession. Twenty miles to the southeast stood a train
+with a killed engine, hysterical passengers and a looted express and
+mail car. That represented the serious occupation of Hondo Bill and his
+gang. With a fairly rich prize of currency and silver the robbers were
+making a wide detour to the west through the less populous country,
+intending to seek safety in Mexico by means of some fordable spot on
+the Rio Grande. The booty from the train had melted the desperate
+bushrangers to jovial and happy skylarkers.
+
+Trembling with outraged dignity and no little personal apprehension,
+Fritz climbed out to the road after replacing his suddenly removed
+spectacles. The band had dismounted and were singing, capering, and
+whooping, thus expressing their satisfied delight in the life of a
+jolly outlaw. Rattlesnake Rogers, who stood at the heads of the mules,
+jerked a little too vigorously at the rein of the tender-mouthed
+Donder, who reared and emitted a loud, protesting snort of pain.
+Instantly Fritz, with a scream of anger, flew at the bulky Rogers and
+began to assiduously pummel that surprised freebooter with his fists.
+
+“Villain!” shouted Fritz, “dog, bigstiff! Dot mule he has a soreness by
+his mouth. I vill knock off your shoulders mit your head— robbermans!”
+
+“Yi-yi!” howled Rattlesnake, roaring with laughter and ducking his
+head, “somebody git this here sour-krout off’n me!”
+
+One of the band yanked Fritz back by the coat-tail, and the woods rang
+with Rattlesnake’s vociferous comments.
+
+“The dog-goned little wienerwurst,” he yelled, amiably. “He’s not so
+much of a skunk, for a Dutchman. Took up for his animile plum quick,
+didn’t he? I like to see a man like his hoss, even if it is a mule. The
+dad-blamed little Limburger he went for me, didn’t he! Whoa, now,
+muley—I ain’t a-goin’ to hurt your mouth agin any more.”
+
+Perhaps the mail would not have been tampered with had not Ben Moody,
+the lieutenant, possessed certain wisdom that seemed to promise more
+spoils.
+
+“Say, Cap,” he said, addressing Hondo Bill, “there’s likely to be good
+pickings in these mail sacks. I’ve done some hoss tradin’ with these
+Dutchmen around Fredericksburg, and I know the style of the varmints.
+There’s big money goes through the mails to that town. Them Dutch risk
+a thousand dollars sent wrapped in a piece of paper before they’d pay
+the banks to handle the money.”
+
+Hondo Bill, six feet two, gentle of voice and impulsive in action, was
+dragging the sacks from the rear of the wagon before Moody had finished
+his speech. A knife shone in his hand, and they heard the ripping sound
+as it bit through the tough canvas. The outlaws crowded around and
+began tearing open letters and packages, enlivening their labours by
+swearing affably at the writers, who seemed to have conspired to
+confute the prediction of Ben Moody. Not a dollar was found in the
+Fredericksburg mail.
+
+“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Hondo Bill to the
+mail-carrier in solemn tones, “to be packing around such a lot of old,
+trashy paper as this. What d’you mean by it, anyhow? Where do you
+Dutchers keep your money at?”
+
+The Ballinger mail sack opened like a cocoon under Hondo’s knife. It
+contained but a handful of mail. Fritz had been fuming with terror and
+excitement until this sack was reached. He now remembered Lena’s
+letter. He addressed the leader of the band, asking that that
+particular missive be spared.
+
+“Much obliged, Dutch,” he said to the disturbed carrier. “I guess
+that’s the letter we want. Got spondulicks in it, ain’t it? Here she
+is. Make a light, boys.”
+
+Hondo found and tore open the letter to Mrs. Hildesmuller. The others
+stood about, lighting twisted up letters one from another. Hondo gazed
+with mute disapproval at the single sheet of paper covered with the
+angular German script.
+
+“Whatever is this you’ve humbugged us with, Dutchy? You call this here
+a valuable letter? That’s a mighty low-down trick to play on your
+friends what come along to help you distribute your mail.”
+
+“That’s Chiny writin’,” said Sandy Grundy, peering over Hondo’s
+shoulder.
+
+“You’re off your kazip,” declared another of the gang, an effective
+youth, covered with silk handkerchiefs and nickel plating. “That’s
+shorthand. I see ’em do it once in court.”
+
+“Ach, no, no, no—dot is German,” said Fritz. “It is no more as a little
+girl writing a letter to her mamma. One poor little girl, sick and
+vorking hard avay from home. Ach! it is a shame. Good Mr. Robberman,
+you vill please let me have dot letter?”
+
+“What the devil do you take us for, old Pretzels?” said Hondo with
+sudden and surprising severity. “You ain’t presumin’ to insinuate that
+we gents ain’t possessed of sufficient politeness for to take an
+interest in the miss’s health, are you? Now, you go on, and you read
+that scratchin’ out loud and in plain United States language to this
+here company of educated society.”
+
+Hondo twirled his six-shooter by its trigger guard and stood towering
+above the little German, who at once began to read the letter,
+translating the simple words into English. The gang of rovers stood in
+absolute silence, listening intently.
+
+“How old is that kid?” asked Hondo when the letter was done.
+
+“Eleven,” said Fritz.
+
+“And where is she at?”
+
+“At dose rock quarries—working. Ach, mein Gott—little Lena, she speak
+of drowning. I do not know if she vill do it, but if she shall I
+schwear I vill dot Peter Hildesmuller shoot mit a gun.”
+
+“You Dutchers,” said Hondo Bill, his voice swelling with fine contempt,
+“make me plenty tired. Hirin’ out your kids to work when they ought to
+be playin’ dolls in the sand. You’re a hell of a sect of people. I
+reckon we’ll fix your clock for a while just to show what we think of
+your old cheesy nation. Here, boys!”
+
+Hondo Bill parleyed aside briefly with his band, and then they seized
+Fritz and conveyed him off the road to one side. Here they bound him
+fast to a tree with a couple of lariats. His team they tied to another
+tree near by.
+
+“We ain’t going to hurt you bad,” said Hondo reassuringly. “’Twon’t
+hurt you to be tied up for a while. We will now pass you the time of
+day, as it is up to us to depart. Ausgespielt—nixcumrous, Dutchy. Don’t
+get any more impatience.”
+
+Fritz heard a great squeaking of saddles as the men mounted their
+horses. Then a loud yell and a great clatter of hoofs as they galloped
+pell-mell back along the Fredericksburg road.
+
+For more than two hours Fritz sat against his tree, tightly but not
+painfully bound. Then from the reaction after his exciting adventure he
+sank into slumber. How long he slept he knew not, but he was at last
+awakened by a rough shake. Hands were untying his ropes. He was lifted
+to his feet, dazed, confused in mind, and weary of body. Rubbing his
+eyes, he looked and saw that he was again in the midst of the same band
+of terrible bandits. They shoved him up to the seat of his wagon and
+placed the lines in his hands.
+
+“Hit it out for home, Dutch,” said Hondo Bill’s voice commandingly.
+“You’ve given us lots of trouble and we’re pleased to see the back of
+your neck. Spiel! Zwei bier! Vamoose!”
+
+Hondo reached out and gave Blitzen a smart cut with his quirt.
+
+The little mules sprang ahead, glad to be moving again. Fritz urged
+them along, himself dizzy and muddled over his fearful adventure.
+
+According to schedule time, he should have reached Fredericksburg at
+daylight. As it was, he drove down the long street of the town at
+eleven o’clock A.M. He had to pass Peter Hildesmuller’s house on his
+way to the post-office. He stopped his team at the gate and called. But
+Frau Hildesmuller was watching for him. Out rushed the whole family of
+Hildesmullers.
+
+Frau Hildesmuller, fat and flushed, inquired if he had a letter from
+Lena, and then Fritz raised his voice and told the tale of his
+adventure. He told the contents of that letter that the robber had made
+him read, and then Frau Hildesmuller broke into wild weeping. Her
+little Lena drown herself! Why had they sent her from home? What could
+be done? Perhaps it would be too late by the time they could send for
+her now. Peter Hildesmuller dropped his meerschaum on the walk and it
+shivered into pieces.
+
+“Woman!” he roared at his wife, “why did you let that child go away? It
+is your fault if she comes home to us no more.”
+
+Every one knew that it was Peter Hildesmuller’s fault, so they paid no
+attention to his words.
+
+A moment afterward a strange, faint voice was heard to call: “Mamma!”
+Frau Hildesmuller at first thought it was Lena’s spirit calling, and
+then she rushed to the rear of Fritz’s covered wagon, and, with a loud
+shriek of joy, caught up Lena herself, covering her pale little face
+with kisses and smothering her with hugs. Lena’s eyes were heavy with
+the deep slumber of exhaustion, but she smiled and lay close to the one
+she had longed to see. There among the mail sacks, covered in a nest of
+strange blankets and comforters, she had lain asleep until wakened by
+the voices around her.
+
+Fritz stared at her with eyes that bulged behind his spectacles.
+
+“Gott in Himmel!” he shouted. “How did you get in that wagon? Am I
+going crazy as well as to be murdered and hanged by robbers this day?”
+
+“You brought her to us, Fritz,” cried Frau Hildesmuller. “How can we
+ever thank you enough?”
+
+“Tell mamma how you came in Fritz’s wagon,” said Frau Hildesmuller.
+
+“I don’t know,” said Lena. “But I know how I got away from the hotel.
+The Prince brought me.”
+
+“By the Emperor’s crown!” shouted Fritz, “we are all going crazy.”
+
+“I always knew he would come,” said Lena, sitting down on her bundle of
+bedclothes on the sidewalk. “Last night he came with his armed knights
+and captured the ogre’s castle. They broke the dishes and kicked down
+the doors. They pitched Mr. Maloney into a barrel of rain water and
+threw flour all over Mrs. Maloney. The workmen in the hotel jumped out
+of the windows and ran into the woods when the knights began firing
+their guns. They wakened me up and I peeped down the stair. And then
+the Prince came up and wrapped me in the bedclothes and carried me out.
+He was so tall and strong and fine. His face was as rough as a
+scrubbing brush, and he talked soft and kind and smelled of schnapps.
+He took me on his horse before him and we rode away among the knights.
+He held me close and I went to sleep that way, and didn’t wake up till
+I got home.”
+
+“Rubbish!” cried Fritz Bergmann. “Fairy tales! How did you come from
+the quarries to my wagon?”
+
+“The Prince brought me,” said Lena, confidently.
+
+And to this day the good people of Fredericksburg haven’t been able to
+make her give any other explanation.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+THE REFORMATION OF CALLIOPE
+
+
+Calliope Catesby was in his humours again. Ennui was upon him. This
+goodly promontory, the earth—particularly that portion of it known as
+Quicksand—was to him no more than a pestilent congregation of vapours.
+Overtaken by the megrims, the philosopher may seek relief in soliloquy;
+my lady find solace in tears; the flaccid Easterner scold at the
+millinery bills of his women folk. Such recourse was insufficient to
+the denizens of Quicksand. Calliope, especially, was wont to express
+his ennui according to his lights.
+
+Over night Calliope had hung out signals of approaching low spirits. He
+had kicked his own dog on the porch of the Occidental Hotel, and
+refused to apologise. He had become capricious and fault-finding in
+conversation. While strolling about he reached often for twigs of
+mesquite and chewed the leaves fiercely. That was always an ominous
+act. Another symptom alarming to those who were familiar with the
+different stages of his doldrums was his increasing politeness and a
+tendency to use formal phrases. A husky softness succeeded the usual
+penetrating drawl in his tones. A dangerous courtesy marked his
+manners. Later, his smile became crooked, the left side of his mouth
+slanting upward, and Quicksand got ready to stand from under.
+
+At this stage Calliope generally began to drink. Finally, about
+midnight, he was seen going homeward, saluting those whom he met with
+exaggerated but inoffensive courtesy. Not yet was Calliope’s melancholy
+at the danger point. He would seat himself at the window of the room he
+occupied over Silvester’s tonsorial parlours and there chant lugubrious
+and tuneless ballads until morning, accompanying the noises by
+appropriate maltreatment of a jangling guitar. More magnanimous than
+Nero, he would thus give musical warning of the forthcoming municipal
+upheaval that Quicksand was scheduled to endure.
+
+A quiet, amiable man was Calliope Catesby at other times—quiet to
+indolence, and amiable to worthlessness. At best he was a loafer and a
+nuisance; at worst he was the Terror of Quicksand. His ostensible
+occupation was something subordinate in the real estate line; he drove
+the beguiled Easterner in buckboards out to look over lots and ranch
+property. Originally he came from one of the Gulf States, his lank six
+feet, slurring rhythm of speech, and sectional idioms giving evidence
+of his birthplace.
+
+And yet, after taking on Western adjustments, this languid pine-box
+whittler, cracker barrel hugger, shady corner lounger of the cotton
+fields and sumac hills of the South became famed as a bad man among men
+who had made a life-long study of the art of truculence.
+
+At nine the next morning Calliope was fit. Inspired by his own
+barbarous melodies and the contents of his jug, he was ready primed to
+gather fresh laurels from the diffident brow of Quicksand. Encircled
+and criss-crossed with cartridge belts, abundantly garnished with
+revolvers, and copiously drunk, he poured forth into Quicksand’s main
+street. Too chivalrous to surprise and capture a town by silent sortie,
+he paused at the nearest corner and emitted his slogan—that fearful,
+brassy yell, so reminiscent of the steam piano, that had gained for him
+the classic appellation that had superseded his own baptismal name.
+Following close upon his vociferation came three shots from his
+forty-five by way of limbering up the guns and testing his aim. A
+yellow dog, the personal property of Colonel Swazey, the proprietor of
+the Occidental, fell feet upward in the dust with one farewell yelp. A
+Mexican who was crossing the street from the Blue Front grocery
+carrying in his hand a bottle of kerosene, was stimulated to a sudden
+and admirable burst of speed, still grasping the neck of the shattered
+bottle. The new gilt weather-cock on Judge Riley’s lemon and
+ultramarine two-story residence shivered, flapped, and hung by a
+splinter, the sport of the wanton breezes.
+
+The artillery was in trim. Calliope’s hand was steady. The high, calm
+ecstasy of habitual battle was upon him, though slightly embittered by
+the sadness of Alexander in that his conquests were limited to the
+small world of Quicksand.
+
+Down the street went Calliope, shooting right and left. Glass fell like
+hail; dogs vamosed; chickens flew, squawking; feminine voices shrieked
+concernedly to youngsters at large. The din was perforated at intervals
+by the _staccato_ of the Terror’s guns, and was drowned periodically by
+the brazen screech that Quicksand knew so well. The occasions of
+Calliope’s low spirits were legal holidays in Quicksand. All along the
+main street in advance of his coming clerks were putting up shutters
+and closing doors. Business would languish for a space. The right of
+way was Calliope’s, and as he advanced, observing the dearth of
+opposition and the few opportunities for distraction, his ennui
+perceptibly increased.
+
+But some four squares farther down lively preparations were being made
+to minister to Mr. Catesby’s love for interchange of compliments and
+repartee. On the previous night numerous messengers had hastened to
+advise Buck Patterson, the city marshal, of Calliope’s impending
+eruption. The patience of that official, often strained in extending
+leniency toward the disturber’s misdeeds, had been overtaxed. In
+Quicksand some indulgence was accorded the natural ebullition of human
+nature. Providing that the lives of the more useful citizens were not
+recklessly squandered, or too much property needlessly laid waste, the
+community sentiment was against a too strict enforcement of the law.
+But Calliope had raised the limit. His outbursts had been too frequent
+and too violent to come within the classification of a normal and
+sanitary relaxation of spirit.
+
+Buck Patterson had been expecting and awaiting in his little
+ten-by-twelve frame office that preliminary yell announcing that
+Calliope was feeling blue. When the signal came the city marshal rose
+to his feet and buckled on his guns. Two deputy sheriffs and three
+citizens who had proven the edible qualities of fire also stood up,
+ready to bandy with Calliope’s leaden jocularities.
+
+“Gather that fellow in,” said Buck Patterson, setting forth the lines
+of the campaign. “Don’t have no talk, but shoot as soon as you can get
+a show. Keep behind cover and bring him down. He’s a nogood ’un. It’s
+up to Calliope to turn up his toes this time, I reckon. Go to him all
+spraddled out, boys. And don’t git too reckless, for what Calliope
+shoots at he hits.”
+
+Buck Patterson, tall, muscular, and solemn-faced, with his bright “City
+Marshal” badge shining on the breast of his blue flannel shirt, gave
+his posse directions for the onslaught upon Calliope. The plan was to
+accomplish the downfall of the Quicksand Terror without loss to the
+attacking party, if possible.
+
+The splenetic Calliope, unconscious of retributive plots, was steaming
+down the channel, cannonading on either side, when he suddenly became
+aware of breakers ahead. The city marshal and one of the deputies rose
+up behind some dry-goods boxes half a square to the front and opened
+fire. At the same time the rest of the posse, divided, shelled him from
+two side streets up which they were cautiously manoeuvring from a
+well-executed detour.
+
+The first volley broke the lock of one of Calliope’s guns, cut a neat
+underbit in his right ear, and exploded a cartridge in his crossbelt,
+scorching his ribs as it burst. Feeling braced up by this unexpected
+tonic to his spiritual depression, Calliope executed a fortissimo note
+from his upper register, and returned the fire like an echo. The
+upholders of the law dodged at his flash, but a trifle too late to save
+one of the deputies a bullet just above the elbow, and the marshal a
+bleeding cheek from a splinter that a ball tore from the box he had
+ducked behind.
+
+And now Calliope met the enemy’s tactics in kind. Choosing with a rapid
+eye the street from which the weakest and least accurate fire had come,
+he invaded it at a double-quick, abandoning the unprotected middle of
+the street. With rare cunning the opposing force in that direction—one
+of the deputies and two of the valorous volunteers— waited, concealed
+by beer barrels, until Calliope had passed their retreat, and then
+peppered him from the rear. In another moment they were reinforced by
+the marshal and his other men, and then Calliope felt that in order to
+successfully prolong the delights of the controversy he must find some
+means of reducing the great odds against him. His eye fell upon a
+structure that seemed to hold out this promise, providing he could
+reach it.
+
+Not far away was the little railroad station, its building a strong box
+house, ten by twenty feet, resting upon a platform four feet above
+ground. Windows were in each of its walls. Something like a fort it
+might become to a man thus sorely pressed by superior numbers.
+
+Calliope made a bold and rapid spurt for it, the marshal’s crowd
+“smoking” him as he ran. He reached the haven in safety, the station
+agent leaving the building by a window, like a flying squirrel, as the
+garrison entered the door.
+
+Patterson and his supporters halted under protection of a pile of
+lumber and held consultations. In the station was an unterrified
+desperado who was an excellent shot and carried an abundance of
+ammunition. For thirty yards on either side of the besieged was a
+stretch of bare, open ground. It was a sure thing that the man who
+attempted to enter that unprotected area would be stopped by one of
+Calliope’s bullets.
+
+The city marshal was resolved. He had decided that Calliope Catesby
+should no more wake the echoes of Quicksand with his strident whoop. He
+had so announced. Officially and personally he felt imperatively bound
+to put the soft pedal on that instrument of discord. It played bad
+tunes.
+
+Standing near was a hand truck used in the manipulation of small
+freight. It stood by a shed full of sacked wool, a consignment from one
+of the sheep ranches. On this truck the marshal and his men piled three
+heavy sacks of wool. Stooping low, Buck Patterson started for
+Calliope’s fort, slowly pushing this loaded truck before him for
+protection. The posse, scattering broadly, stood ready to nip the
+besieged in case he should show himself in an effort to repel the
+juggernaut of justice that was creeping upon him. Only once did
+Calliope make demonstration. He fired from a window, and some tufts of
+wool spurted from the marshal’s trustworthy bulwark. The return shots
+from the posse pattered against the window frame of the fort. No loss
+resulted on either side.
+
+The marshal was too deeply engrossed in steering his protected
+battleship to be aware of the approach of the morning train until he
+was within a few feet of the platform. The train was coming up on the
+other side of it. It stopped only one minute at Quicksand. What an
+opportunity it would offer to Calliope! He had only to step out the
+other door, mount the train, and away.
+
+Abandoning his breastwork, Buck, with his gun ready, dashed up the
+steps and into the room, driving upon the closed door with one heave of
+his weighty shoulder. The members of the posse heard one shot fired
+inside, and then there was silence.
+
+At length the wounded man opened his eyes. After a blank space he again
+could see and hear and feel and think. Turning his eyes about, he found
+himself lying on a wooden bench. A tall man with a perplexed
+countenance, wearing a big badge with “City Marshal” engraved upon it,
+stood over him. A little old woman in black, with a wrinkled face and
+sparkling black eyes, was holding a wet handkerchief against one of his
+temples. He was trying to get these facts fixed in his mind and
+connected with past events, when the old woman began to talk.
+
+“There now, great, big, strong man! That bullet never tetched ye! Jest
+skeeted along the side of your head and sort of paralysed ye for a
+spell. I’ve heerd of sech things afore; cun-cussion is what they names
+it. Abel Wadkins used to kill squirrels that way—barkin’ ’em, Abe
+called it. You jest been barked, sir, and you’ll be all right in a
+little bit. Feel lots better already, don’t ye! You just lay still a
+while longer and let me bathe your head. You don’t know me, I reckon,
+and ’tain’t surprisin’ that you shouldn’t. I come in on that train from
+Alabama to see my son. Big son, ain’t he? Lands! you wouldn’t hardly
+think he’d ever been a baby, would ye? This is my son, sir.”
+
+Half turning, the old woman looked up at the standing man, her worn
+face lighting with a proud and wonderful smile. She reached out one
+veined and calloused hand and took one of her son’s. Then smiling
+cheerily down at the prostrate man, she continued to dip the
+handkerchief, in the waiting-room tin washbasin and gently apply it to
+his temple. She had the benevolent garrulity of old age.
+
+“I ain’t seen my son before,” she continued, “in eight years. One of my
+nephews, Elkanah Price, he’s a conductor on one of them railroads and
+he got me a pass to come out here. I can stay a whole week on it, and
+then it’ll take me back again. Jest think, now, that little boy of mine
+has got to be a officer—a city marshal of a whole town! That’s
+somethin’ like a constable, ain’t it? I never knowed he was a officer;
+he didn’t say nothin’ about it in his letters. I reckon he thought his
+old mother’d be skeered about the danger he was in. But, laws! I never
+was much of a hand to git skeered. ’Tain’t no use. I heard them guns
+a-shootin’ while I was gettin’ off them cars, and I see smoke a-comin’
+out of the depot, but I jest walked right along. Then I see son’s face
+lookin’ out through the window. I knowed him at oncet. He met me at the
+door, and squeezes me ’most to death. And there you was, sir, a-lyin’
+there jest like you was dead, and I ’lowed we’d see what might be done
+to help sot you up.”
+
+“I think I’ll sit up now,” said the concussion patient. “I’m feeling
+pretty fair by this time.”
+
+He sat, somewhat weakly yet, leaning against the wall. He was a rugged
+man, big-boned and straight. His eyes, steady and keen, seemed to
+linger upon the face of the man standing so still above him. His look
+wandered often from the face he studied to the marshal’s badge upon the
+other’s breast.
+
+“Yes, yes, you’ll be all right,” said the old woman, patting his arm,
+“if you don’t get to cuttin’ up agin, and havin’ folks shooting at you.
+Son told me about you, sir, while you was layin’ senseless on the
+floor. Don’t you take it as meddlesome fer an old woman with a son as
+big as you to talk about it. And you mustn’t hold no grudge ag’in’ my
+son for havin’ to shoot at ye. A officer has got to take up for the
+law—it’s his duty—and them that acts bad and lives wrong has to suffer.
+Don’t blame my son any, sir—’tain’t his fault. He’s always been a good
+boy—good when he was growin’ up, and kind and ’bedient and
+well-behaved. Won’t you let me advise you, sir, not to do so no more?
+Be a good man, and leave liquor alone and live peaceably and goodly.
+Keep away from bad company and work honest and sleep sweet.”
+
+The black-mitted hand of the old pleader gently touched the breast of
+the man she addressed. Very earnest and candid her old, worn face
+looked. In her rusty black dress and antique bonnet she sat, near the
+close of a long life, and epitomised the experience of the world. Still
+the man to whom she spoke gazed above her head, contemplating the
+silent son of the old mother.
+
+“What does the marshal say?” he asked. “Does he believe the advice is
+good? Suppose the marshal speaks up and says if the talk’s all right?”
+
+The tall man moved uneasily. He fingered the badge on his breast for a
+moment, and then he put an arm around the old woman and drew her close
+to him. She smiled the unchanging mother smile of three-score years,
+and patted his big brown hand with her crooked, mittened fingers while
+her son spake.
+
+“I says this,” he said, looking squarely into the eyes of the other
+man, “that if I was in your place I’d follow it. If I was a drunken,
+desp’rate character, without shame or hope, I’d follow it. If I was in
+your place and you was in mine I’d say: ‘Marshal, I’m willin’ to swear
+if you’ll give me the chance I’ll quit the racket. I’ll drop the
+tanglefoot and the gun play, and won’t play hoss no more. I’ll be a
+good citizen and go to work and quit my foolishness. So help me God!’
+That’s what I’d say to you if you was marshal and I was in your place.”
+
+“Hear my son talkin’,” said the old woman softly. “Hear him, sir. You
+promise to be good and he won’t do you no harm. Forty-one year ago his
+heart first beat ag’in’ mine, and it’s beat true ever since.”
+
+The other man rose to his feet, trying his limbs and stretching his
+muscles.
+
+“Then,” said he, “if you was in my place and said that, and I was
+marshal, I’d say: ‘Go free, and do your best to keep your promise.’”
+
+“Lawsy!” exclaimed the old woman, in a sudden flutter, “ef I didn’t
+clear forget that trunk of mine! I see a man settin’ it on the platform
+jest as I seen son’s face in the window, and it went plum out of my
+head. There’s eight jars of home-made quince jam in that trunk that I
+made myself. I wouldn’t have nothin’ happen to them jars for a red
+apple.”
+
+Away to the door she trotted, spry and anxious, and then Calliope
+Catesby spoke out to Buck Patterson:
+
+“I just couldn’t help it, Buck. I seen her through the window a-comin’
+in. She never had heard a word ’bout my tough ways. I didn’t have the
+nerve to let her know I was a worthless cuss bein’ hunted down by the
+community. There you was lyin’ where my shot laid you, like you was
+dead. The idea struck me sudden, and I just took your badge off and
+fastened it onto myself, and I fastened my reputation onto you. I told
+her I was the marshal and you was a holy terror. You can take your
+badge back now, Buck.”
+
+With shaking fingers Calliope began to unfasten the disc of metal from
+his shirt.
+
+“Easy there!” said Buck Patterson. “You keep that badge right where it
+is, Calliope Catesby. Don’t you dare to take it off till the day your
+mother leaves this town. You’ll be city marshal of Quicksand as long as
+she’s here to know it. After I stir around town a bit and put ’em on
+I’ll guarantee that nobody won’t give the thing away to her. And say,
+you leather-headed, rip-roarin’, low-down son of a locoed cyclone, you
+follow that advice she give me! I’m goin’ to take some of it myself,
+too.”
+
+“Buck,” said Calliope feelingly, “ef I don’t I hope I may—”
+
+“Shut up,” said Buck. “She’s a-comin’ back.”
+
+
+
+
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