A trestle burned down on the International Railroad. The south-bound
from San Antonio was cut off for the next forty-eight hours. On that
train was Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat.
Espirition, the Mexican, who had been sent forty miles in a buckboard
from the Espinosa Ranch to fetch it, returned with a shrugging shoulder
and hands empty except for a cigarette. At the small station, Nopal, he
had learned of the delayed train and, having no commands to wait,
turned his ponies toward the ranch again.
Now, if one supposes that Easter, the Goddess of Spring, cares any more
for the after-church parade on Fifth Avenue than she does for her loyal
outfit of subjects that assemble at the meeting-house at Cactus, Tex.,
a mistake has been made. The wives and daughters of the ranchmen of the
Frio country put forth Easter blossoms of new hats and gowns as
faithfully as is done anywhere, and the Southwest is, for one day, a
mingling of prickly pear, Paris, and paradise. And now it was Good
Friday, and Tonia Weaver’s Easter hat blushed unseen in the desert air
of an impotent express car, beyond the burned trestle. On Saturday noon
the Rogers girls, from the Shoestring Ranch, and Ella Reeves, from the
Anchor-O, and Mrs. Bennet and Ida, from Green Valley, would convene at
the Espinosa and pick up Tonia. With their Easter hats and frocks
carefully wrapped and bundled against the dust, the fair aggregation
would then merrily jog the ten miles to Cactus, where on the morrow
they would array themselves, subjugate man, do homage to Easter, and
cause jealous agitation among the lilies of the field.
Tonia sat on the steps of the Espinosa ranch house flicking gloomily
with a quirt at a tuft of curly mesquite. She displayed a frown and a
contumelious lip, and endeavored to radiate an aura of disagreeableness
and tragedy.
“I hate railroads,” she announced positively. “And men. Men pretend to
run them. Can you give any excuse why a trestle should burn? Ida
Bennet’s hat is to be trimmed with violets. I shall not go one step
toward Cactus without a new hat. If I were a man I would get one.”
Two men listened uneasily to this disparagement of their kind. One was
Wells Pearson, foreman of the Mucho Calor cattle ranch. The other was
Thompson Burrows, the prosperous sheepman from the Quintana Valley.
Both thought Tonia Weaver adorable, especially when she railed at
railroads and menaced men. Either would have given up his epidermis to
make for her an Easter hat more cheerfully than the ostrich gives up
his tip or the aigrette lays down its life. Neither possessed the
ingenuity to conceive a means of supplying the sad deficiency against
the coming Sabbath. Pearson’s deep brown face and sunburned light hair
gave him the appearance of a schoolboy seized by one of youth’s
profound and insolvable melancholies. Tonia’s plight grieved him
through and through. Thompson Burrows was the more skilled and pliable.
He hailed from somewhere in the East originally; and he wore neckties
and shoes, and was made dumb by woman’s presence.
“The big water-hole on Sandy Creek,” said Pearson, scarcely hoping to
make a hit, “was filled up by that last rain.”
“Oh! Was it?” said Tonia sharply. “Thank you for the information. I
suppose a new hat is nothing to you, Mr. Pearson. I suppose you think a
woman ought to wear an old Stetson five years without a change, as you
do. If your old water-hole could have put out the fire on that trestle
you might have some reason to talk about it.”
“I am deeply sorry,” said Burrows, warned by Pearson’s fate, “that you
failed to receive your hat, Miss Weaver—deeply sorry, indeed. If there
was anything I could do—”
“Don’t bother,” interrupted Tonia, with sweet sarcasm. “If there was
anything you could do, you’d be doing it, of course. There isn’t.”
Tonia paused. A sudden sparkle of hope had come into her eye. Her frown
smoothed away. She had an inspiration.
“There’s a store over at Lone Elm Crossing on the Nueces,” she said,
“that keeps hats. Eva Rogers got hers there. She said it was the latest
style. It might have some left. But it’s twenty-eight miles to Lone
Elm.”
The spurs of two men who hastily arose jingled; and Tonia almost
smiled. The Knights, then, were not all turned to dust; nor were their
rowels rust.
“Of course,” said Tonia, looking thoughtfully at a white gulf cloud
sailing across the cerulean dome, “nobody could ride to Lone Elm and
back by the time the girls call by for me to-morrow. So, I reckon I’ll
have to stay at home this Easter Sunday.”
And then she smiled.
“Well, Miss Tonia,” said Pearson, reaching for his hat, as guileful as
a sleeping babe. “I reckon I’ll be trotting along back to Mucho Calor.
There’s some cutting out to be done on Dry Branch first thing in the
morning; and me and Road Runner has got to be on hand. It’s too bad
your hat got sidetracked. Maybe they’ll get that trestle mended yet in
time for Easter.”
“I must be riding, too, Miss Tonia,” announced Burrows, looking at his
watch. “I declare, it’s nearly five o’clock! I must be out at my
lambing camp in time to help pen those crazy ewes.”
Tonia’s suitors seemed to have been smitten with a need for haste. They
bade her a ceremonious farewell, and then shook each other’s hands with
the elaborate and solemn courtesy of the Southwesterner.
“Hope I’ll see you again soon, Mr. Pearson,” said Burrows.
“Same here,” said the cowman, with the serious face of one whose friend
goes upon a whaling voyage. “Be gratified to see you ride over to Mucho
Calor any time you strike that section of the range.”
Pearson mounted Road Runner, the soundest cow-pony on the Frio, and let
him pitch for a minute, as he always did on being mounted, even at the
end of a day’s travel.
“What kind of a hat was that, Miss Tonia,” he called, “that you ordered
from San Antone? I can’t help but be sorry about that hat.”
“A straw,” said Tonia; “the latest shape, of course; trimmed with red
roses. That’s what I like—red roses.”
“There’s no color more becoming to your complexion and hair,” said
Burrows, admiringly.
“It’s what I like,” said Tonia. “And of all the flowers, give me red
roses. Keep all the pinks and blues for yourself. But what’s the use,
when trestles burn and leave you without anything? It’ll be a dry old
Easter for me!”
Pearson took off his hat and drove Road Runner at a gallop into the
chaparral east of the Espinosa ranch house.
As his stirrups rattled against the brush Burrows’s long-legged sorrel
struck out down the narrow stretch of open prairie to the southwest.
Tonia hung up her quirt and went into the sitting-room.
“I’m mighty sorry, daughter, that you didn’t get your hat,” said her
mother.
“Oh, don’t worry, mother,” said Tonia, coolly. “I’ll have a new hat,
all right, in time to-morrow.”
When Burrows reached the end of the strip of prairie he pulled his
sorrel to the right and let him pick his way daintily across a sacuista
flat through which ran the ragged, dry bed of an arroyo. Then up a
gravelly hill, matted with bush, the horse scrambled, and at length
emerged, with a snort of satisfaction into a stretch of high, level
prairie, grassy and dotted with the lighter green of mesquites in their
fresh spring foliage. Always to the right Burrows bore, until in a
little while he struck the old Indian trail that followed the Nueces
southward, and that passed, twenty-eight miles to the southeast,
through Lone Elm.
Here Burrows urged the sorrel into a steady lope. As he settled himself
in the saddle for a long ride he heard the drumming of hoofs, the
hollow “thwack” of chaparral against wooden stirrups, the whoop of a
Comanche; and Wells Pearson burst out of the brush at the right of the
trail like a precocious yellow chick from a dark green Easter egg.
Except in the presence of awing femininity melancholy found no place in
Pearson’s bosom. In Tonia’s presence his voice was as soft as a summer
bullfrog’s in his reedy nest. Now, at his gleesome yawp, rabbits, a
mile away, ducked their ears, and sensitive plants closed their fearful
fronds.
“Moved your lambing camp pretty far from the ranch, haven’t you,
neighbor?” asked Pearson, as Road Runner fell in at the sorrel’s side.
“Twenty-eight miles,” said Burrows, looking a little grim. Pearson’s
laugh woke an owl one hour too early in his water-elm on the river
bank, half a mile away.
“All right for you, sheepman. I like an open game, myself. We’re two
locoed he-milliners hat-hunting in the wilderness. I notify you. Burr,
to mind your corrals. We’ve got an even start, and the one that gets
the headgear will stand some higher at the Espinosa.”
“You’ve got a good pony,” said Burrows, eyeing Road Runner’s
barrel-like body and tapering legs that moved as regularly as the
pistonrod of an engine. “It’s a race, of course; but you’re too much of
a horseman to whoop it up this soon. Say we travel together till we get
to the home stretch.”
“I’m your company,” agreed Pearson, “and I admire your sense. If
there’s hats at Lone Elm, one of ’em shall set on Miss Tonia’s brow
to-morrow, and you won’t be at the crowning. I ain’t bragging, Burr,
but that sorrel of yours is weak in the fore-legs.”
“My horse against yours,” offered Burrows, “that Miss Tonia wears the
hat I take her to Cactus to-morrow.”
“I’ll take you up,” shouted Pearson. “But oh, it’s just like
horse-stealing for me! I can use that sorrel for a lady’s animal
when—when somebody comes over to Mucho Calor, and—”
Burrows’ dark face glowered so suddenly that the cowman broke off his
sentence. But Pearson could never feel any pressure for long.
“What’s all this Easter business about, Burr?” he asked, cheerfully.
“Why do the women folks have to have new hats by the almanac or bust
all cinches trying to get ’em?”
“It’s a seasonable statute out of the testaments,” explained Burrows.
“It’s ordered by the Pope or somebody. And it has something to do with
the Zodiac I don’t know exactly, but I think it was invented by the
Egyptians.”
“It’s an all-right jubilee if the heathens did put their brand on it,”
said Pearson; “or else Tonia wouldn’t have anything to do with it. And
they pull it off at church, too. Suppose there ain’t but one hat in the
Lone Elm store, Burr!”
“Then,” said Burrows, darkly, “the best man of us’ll take it back to
the Espinosa.”
“Oh, man!” cried Pearson, throwing his hat high and catching it again,
“there’s nothing like you come off the sheep ranges before. You talk
good and collateral to the occasion. And if there’s more than one?”
“Then,” said Burrows, “we’ll pick our choice and one of us’ll get back
first with his and the other won’t.”
“There never was two souls,” proclaimed Pearson to the stars, “that
beat more like one heart than yourn and mine. Me and you might be
riding on a unicorn and thinking out of the same piece of mind.”
At a little past midnight the riders loped into Lone Elm. The half a
hundred houses of the big village were dark. On its only street the big
wooden store stood barred and shuttered.
In a few moments the horses were fastened and Pearson was pounding
cheerfully on the door of old Sutton, the storekeeper.
The barrel of a Winchester came through a cranny of a solid window
shutter followed by a short inquiry.
“Wells Pearson, of the Mucho Calor, and Burrows, of Green Valley,” was
the response. “We want to buy some goods in the store. Sorry to wake
you up but we must have ’em. Come on out, Uncle Tommy, and get a move
on you.”
Uncle Tommy was slow, but at length they got him behind his counter
with a kerosene lamp lit, and told him of their dire need.
“Easter hats?” said Uncle Tommy, sleepily. “Why, yes, I believe I have
got just a couple left. I only ordered a dozen this spring. I’ll show
’em to you.”
Now, Uncle Tommy Sutton was a merchant, half asleep or awake. In dusty
pasteboard boxes under the counter he had two left-over spring hats.
But, alas! for his commercial probity on that early Saturday morn—they
were hats of two springs ago, and a woman’s eye would have detected the
fraud at half a glance. But to the unintelligent gaze of the cowpuncher
and the sheepman they seemed fresh from the mint of contemporaneous
April.
The hats were of a variety once known as “cart-wheels.” They were of
stiff straw, colored red, and flat brimmed. Both were exactly alike,
and trimmed lavishly around their crowns with full blown, immaculate,
artificial white roses.
“That all you got, Uncle Tommy?” said Pearson. “All right. Not much
choice here, Burr. Take your pick.”
“They’re the latest styles” lied Uncle Tommy. “You’d see ’em on Fifth
Avenue, if you was in New York.”
Uncle Tommy wrapped and tied each hat in two yards of dark calico for a
protection. One Pearson tied carefully to his calfskin saddle-thongs;
and the other became part of Road Runner’s burden. They shouted thanks
and farewells to Uncle Tommy, and cantered back into the night on the
home stretch.
The horsemen jockeyed with all their skill. They rode more slowly on
their way back. The few words they spoke were not unfriendly. Burrows
had a Winchester under his left leg slung over his saddle horn. Pearson
had a six shooter belted around him. Thus men rode in the Frio country.
At half-past seven in the morning they rode to the top of a hill and
saw the Espinosa Ranch, a white spot under a dark patch of live-oaks,
five miles away.
The sight roused Pearson from his drooping pose in the saddle. He knew
what Road Runner could do. The sorrel was lathered, and stumbling
frequently; Road Runner was pegging away like a donkey engine.
Pearson turned toward the sheepman and laughed. “Good-bye, Burr,” he
cried, with a wave of his hand. “It’s a race now. We’re on the home
stretch.”
He pressed Road Runner with his knees and leaned toward the Espinosa.
Road Runner struck into a gallop, with tossing head and snorting
nostrils, as if he were fresh from a month in pasture.
Pearson rode twenty yards and heard the unmistakable sound of a
Winchester lever throwing a cartridge into the barrel. He dropped flat
along his horse’s back before the crack of the rifle reached his ears.
It is possible that Burrows intended only to disable the horse—he was a
good enough shot to do that without endangering his rider. But as
Pearson stooped the ball went through his shoulder and then through
Road Runner’s neck. The horse fell and the cowman pitched over his head
into the hard road, and neither of them tried to move.
Burrows rode on without stopping.
In two hours Pearson opened his eyes and took inventory. He managed to
get to his feet and staggered back to where Road Runner was lying.
Road Runner was lying there, but he appeared to be comfortable. Pearson
examined him and found that the bullet had “creased” him. He had been
knocked out temporarily, but not seriously hurt. But he was tired, and
he lay there on Miss Tonia’s hat and ate leaves from a mesquite branch
that obligingly hung over the road.
Pearson made the horse get up. The Easter hat, loosed from the
saddle-thongs, lay there in its calico wrappings, a shapeless thing
from its sojourn beneath the solid carcass of Road Runner. Then Pearson
fainted and fell head long upon the poor hat again, crumpling it under
his wounded shoulders.
It is hard to kill a cowpuncher. In half an hour he revived—long enough
for a woman to have fainted twice and tried ice-cream for a restorer.
He got up carefully and found Road Runner who was busy with the near-by
grass. He tied the unfortunate hat to the saddle again, and managed to
get himself there, too, after many failures.
At noon a gay and fluttering company waited in front of the Espinosa
Ranch. The Rogers girls were there in their new buckboard, and the
Anchor-O outfit and the Green Valley folks—mostly women. And each and
every one wore her new Easter hat, even upon the lonely prairies, for
they greatly desired to shine forth and do honor to the coming
festival.
At the gate stood Tonia, with undisguised tears upon her cheeks. In her
hand she held Burrow’s Lone Elm hat, and it was at its white roses,
hated by her, that she wept. For her friends were telling her, with the
ecstatic joy of true friends, that cart-wheels could not be worn, being
three seasons passed into oblivion.
“Put on your old hat and come, Tonia,” they urged.
“For Easter Sunday?” she answered. “I’ll die first.” And wept again.
The hats of the fortunate ones were curved and twisted into the style
of spring’s latest proclamation.
A strange being rode out of the brush among them, and there sat his
horse languidly. He was stained and disfigured with the green of the
grass and the limestone of rocky roads.
“Hallo, Pearson,” said Daddy Weaver. “Look like you’ve been breaking a
mustang. What’s that you’ve got tied to your saddle—a pig in a poke?”
“Oh, come on, Tonia, if you’re going,” said Betty Rogers. “We mustn’t
wait any longer. We’ve saved a seat in the buckboard for you. Never
mind the hat. That lovely muslin you’ve got on looks sweet enough with
any old hat.”
Pearson was slowly untying the queer thing on his saddle. Tonia looked
at him with a sudden hope. Pearson was a man who created hope. He got
the thing loose and handed it to her. Her quick fingers tore at the
strings.
“Best I could do,” said Pearson slowly. “What Road Runner and me done
to it will be about all it needs.”
“Oh, oh! it’s just the right shape,” shrieked Tonia. “And red roses!
Wait till I try it on!”
She flew in to the glass, and out again, beaming, radiating, blossomed.
“Oh, don’t red become her?” chanted the girls in recitative. “Hurry up,
Tonia!”
Tonia stopped for a moment by the side of Road Runner.
“Thank you, thank you, Wells,” she said, happily. “It’s just what I
wanted. Won’t you come over to Cactus to-morrow and go to church with
me?”
“If I can,” said Pearson. He was looking curiously at her hat, and then
he grinned weakly.
Tonia flew into the buckboard like a bird. The vehicles sped away for
Cactus.
“What have you been doing, Pearson?” asked Daddy Weaver. “You ain’t
looking so well as common.”
“Me?” said Pearson. “I’ve been painting flowers. Them roses was white
when I left Lone Elm. Help me down, Daddy Weaver, for I haven’t got any
more paint to spare.”