[This story is especially interesting as an early treatment (1902) of
the theme afterward developed with a surer hand in The Pendulum.]
“Find yo’ shirt all right, Sam?” asked Mrs. Webber, from her chair
under the live-oak, where she was comfortably seated with a paper-back
volume for company.
“It balances perfeckly, Marthy,” answered Sam, with a suspicious
pleasantness in his tone. “At first I was about ter be a little
reckless and kick ’cause ther buttons was all off, but since I diskiver
that the button holes is all busted out, why, I wouldn’t go so fur as
to say the buttons is any loss to speak of.”
“Oh, well,” said his wife, carelessly, “put on your necktie—that’ll
keep it together.”
Sam Webber’s sheep ranch was situated in the loneliest part of the
country between the Nueces and the Frio. The ranch house—a two-room box
structure—was on the rise of a gently swelling hill in the midst of a
wilderness of high chaparral. In front of it was a small clearing where
stood the sheep pens, shearing shed, and wool house. Only a few feet
back of it began the thorny jungle.
Sam was going to ride over to the Chapman ranch to see about buying
some more improved merino rams. At length he came out, ready for his
ride. This being a business trip of some importance, and the Chapman
ranch being almost a small town in population and size, Sam had decided
to “dress up” accordingly. The result was that he had transformed
himself from a graceful, picturesque frontiersman into something much
less pleasing to the sight. The tight white collar awkwardly
constricted his muscular, mahogany-colored neck. The buttonless shirt
bulged in stiff waves beneath his unbuttoned vest. The suit of
“ready-made” effectually concealed the fine lines of his straight,
athletic figure. His berry-brown face was set to the melancholy dignity
befitting a prisoner of state. He gave Randy, his three-year-old son, a
pat on the head, and hurried out to where Mexico, his favorite saddle
horse, was standing.
Marthy, leisurely rocking in her chair, fixed her place in the book
with her finger, and turned her head, smiling mischievously as she
noted the havoc Sam had wrought with his appearance in trying to “fix
up.”
“Well, ef I must say it, Sam,” she drawled, “you look jest like one of
them hayseeds in the picture papers, ’stead of a free and independent
sheepman of the State o’ Texas.”
Sam climbed awkwardly into the saddle.
“You’re the one ought to be ’shamed to say so,” he replied hotly.
“’Stead of ’tendin’ to a man’s clothes you’re al’ays setting around
a-readin’ them billy-by-dam yaller-back novils.”
“Oh, shet up and ride along,” said Mrs. Webber, with a little jerk at
the handles of her chair; “you always fussin’ ’bout my readin’. I do
a-plenty; and I’ll read when I wanter. I live in the bresh here like a
varmint, never seein’ nor hearin’ nothin’, and what other ’musement kin
I have? Not in listenin’ to you talk, for it’s complain, complain, one
day after another. Oh, go on, Sam, and leave me in peace.”
Sam gave his pony a squeeze with his knees and “shoved” down the wagon
trail that connected his ranch with the old, open Government road. It
was eight o’clock, and already beginning to be very warm. He should
have started three hours earlier. Chapman ranch was only eighteen miles
away, but there was a road for only three miles of the distance. He had
ridden over there once with one of the Half-Moon cowpunchers, and he
had the direction well-defined in his mind.
Sam turned off the old Government road at the split mesquite, and
struck down the arroyo of the Quintanilla. Here was a narrow stretch of
smiling valley, upholstered with a rich mat of green, curly mesquite
grass; and Mexico consumed those few miles quickly with his long, easy
lope. Again, upon reaching Wild Duck Waterhole, must he abandon
well-defined ways. He turned now to his right up a little hill,
pebble-covered, upon which grew only the tenacious and thorny prickly
pear and chaparral. At the summit of this he paused to take his last
general view of the landscape for, from now on, he must wind through
brakes and thickets of chaparral, pear, and mesquite, for the most part
seeing scarcely farther than twenty yards in any direction, choosing
his way by the prairie-dweller’s instinct, guided only by an occasional
glimpse of a far distant hilltop, a peculiarly shaped knot of trees, or
the position of the sun.
Sam rode down the sloping hill and plunged into the great pear flat
that lies between the Quintanilla and the Piedra.
In about two hours he discovered that he was lost. Then came the usual
confusion of mind and the hurry to get somewhere. Mexico was anxious to
redeem the situation, twisting with alacrity along the tortuous
labyrinths of the jungle. At the moment his master’s sureness of the
route had failed his horse had divined the fact. There were no hills
now that they could climb to obtain a view of the country. They came
upon a few, but so dense and interlaced was the brush that scarcely
could a rabbit penetrate the mass. They were in the great, lonely
thicket of the Frio bottoms.
It was a mere nothing for a cattleman or a sheepman to be lost for a
day or a night. The thing often happened. It was merely a matter of
missing a meal or two and sleeping comfortably on your saddle blankets
on a soft mattress of mesquite grass. But in Sam’s case it was
different. He had never been away from his ranch at night. Marthy was
afraid of the country—afraid of Mexicans, of snakes, of panthers, even
of sheep. So he had never left her alone.
It must have been about four in the afternoon when Sam’s conscience
awoke. He was limp and drenched, rather from anxiety than the heat or
fatigue. Until now he had been hoping to strike the trail that led to
the Frio crossing and the Chapman ranch. He must have crossed it at
some dim part of it and ridden beyond. If so he was now something like
fifty miles from home. If he could strike a ranch—a camp—any place
where he could get a fresh horse and inquire the road, he would ride
all night to get back to Marthy and the kid.
So, I have hinted, Sam was seized by remorse. There was a big lump in
his throat as he thought of the cross words he had spoken to his wife.
Surely it was hard enough for her to live in that horrible country
without having to bear the burden of his abuse. He cursed himself
grimly, and felt a sudden flush of shame that over-glowed the summer
heat as he remembered the many times he had flouted and railed at her
because she had a liking for reading fiction.
“Ther only so’ce ov amusement ther po’ gal’s got,” said Sam aloud, with
a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. “A-livin’
with a sore-headed kiote like me—a low-down skunk that ought to be
licked to death with a saddle cinch—a-cookin’ and a-washin’ and
a-livin’ on mutton and beans and me abusin’ her fur takin’ a squint or
two in a little book!”
He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in
Dogtown—smart, pretty, and saucy—before the sun had turned the roses in
her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her
ambitions.
“Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal,” muttered Sam,
“or fails in the love and affection that’s coming to her in the deal, I
hopes a wildcat’ll t’ar me to pieces.”
He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San
Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and
have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for Marthy.
Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a little piano
could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house without the
family having to move out of doors.
In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that
Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their
bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of the
country, and rest her head upon Sam’s strong arm with a sigh of
peaceful content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless? Sam
thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that
sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen
possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry,
and call for dada to come.
Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and
mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope—all exactly alike—all
familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he
could only arrive _somewhere_.
The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward
man is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in
the snow travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their
footprints have attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other
mental processes frequently wind up at their starting-point.
It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves that
Mexico, with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot into a
slow complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope covered with
brush ten or twelve feet high.
“I say now, Mex,” demurred Sam, “this here won’t do. I know you’re
plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain’t there no
mo’ houses in the world!” He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels.
Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: “What’s the use of that,
now we’re so near?” He quickened his gait into a languid trot. Rounding
a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam dropped the
bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own house, not
ten yards away.
Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the
door in the shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon
the steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground,
looked up for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels
and singing a little song. Marthy turned her head lazily against the
back of the chair and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes.
She held a book in her lap with her finger holding the place.
Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and slowly
dismounted. He moistened his dry lips.
“I see you are still a-settin’,” he said, “a-readin’ of them
billy-by-dam yaller-back novils.”
Sam had traveled round the circle and was himself again.