Six or eight years earlier, four young men had left New York on a
Galveston steamer, their departure being attended by such an assemblage
of young women that on the second day out their companions of the voyage
confided the supposition that it had been a "bridal party." That little
Spanish-American word ravaging our coasts and carrying off the pride of
the youth has to answer for many such bridal parties, whose tours have
been followed with pins and colored pencils and eyes more eager than
those of mothers-in-law. In a month or so the young men had pitched a
wall-tent within a day's ride of the Rio Grande, and were seriously
occupied in sacrificing each other's feelings on the altar of
experimental cookery, in herding sheep with the assistance of paper
novels, and in writing exceedingly long letters to the North. This
wall-tent was the larva of the ranch. But the arid southern country
proved inconvenient, and collecting their effects in a prairie-schooner
and driving their flocks before them, they effected a masterly change of
base, which brought them two hundred miles to the northward and set them
down in a delightful pasture-land, watered by three pretty creeks, near
one of which they erected an adobe hut. This solitary house on a broad
flat, an object of amazement to wandering hordes of cattle, was the
ranch during a most interesting period, and its thatched roof and
somewhat fetid walls became for the occupants overgrown with fine
clusters of association. Within a few miles of its site the present
village took shape.
The country was a frankly monotonous conformation of alternating hills
and valleys,--"divides" and "draws,"--with wide flats near the creeks.
Gulches, more or less deep, down the valley-lines of the draws, and
traversing the flats to the creeks,--the so-called _arroyos_,--were a
common physical feature. In the wet season they were running streams,
but for most of the year they were dry, with here and there a waterhole,
flowers and chaparral growing in them, and, at intervals, pecans. The
pecan-trees grew thickly along the borders of the creeks, while the
mesquites cloaked with gossamer wide portions of the flats; and here and
there in the valleys and on the sides of the hills the sombre,
self-enwrapped live-oaks stood about, like philosophers musing amid the
general lightness. Spanish-dagger, bear-grass, and persimmon-bushes
freckled the sides of the rocky divides with dark spots, and mistletoe
hung its fine green globes like unillumined lanterns in the branches of
the mesquites. Over the plains and slopes a sparse turf of various
grasses, differing in color and changing with the season, gave the airy
landscape its brilliant and versatile complexion. A dozen varieties of
cactus, portulaccas, geraniums, petunias, verbenas, scattered over the
prairie, morning-glories and sunflowers in the arroyos and along the
creeks, and many a flower nameless to the general, abounded. So, it
should be added, did in their season plover, snipe, ducks, and geese.
The business of the ranch was the antediluvian occupation of rearing and
shearing sheep, and to that end the village included a shearing-shed and
a large wool-house. Besides these there were three cottages and several
other buildings, among which one called the "ranch-house" was the focus
of the activity of the place, and, being also a survival from a
comparatively early day, was a somewhat characteristic affair. It was a
box-house, painted red, with a broad porch thatched with bear-grass, and
a saddle-shed butting up against it. The interior, barring a little
store at one end, was a single large room, bedroom, sitting-room,
office, furnished with home-made tables with blankets for cloths,
knocked-up chairs with cowhide seats and coyote-skin backs, deers'
antlers draped with "slickers" (Texan for the 'longshoreman's yellow
water-proof) and wide-brimmed "ten-dollar" hats, and at one end two
tiers of bunks, with leather cases for six-shooters nailed to their
sides. This room served for the abode of the storekeeper, for the
transaction of business, and for the accommodation of the perennial
casual guest. It was rude, but, especially of evenings about the lamp,
it had a marked air of pipe-and-tobacco comfort.
The little store was patronized by the cow-boy, so much abused with
sensational or picturesque intentions, and by the small farmers with
irrigation patches in the vicinity. It was likewise the resort of
Encarnacion and Tomas, and others their brethren, from the Mexican
village a few miles up the creek, or from isolated abiding-places round
about. Here they would come, and, rolling cigarettes of the brown paper
they affect and the eleemosynary tobacco open on the counter, to which
all were welcome (such were the amenities of shopping on the ranch),
they would lounge about, ever smiling and chattering in soft voices,
finally to say '_uenos dias_ with two bits' worth of bacon, or
corn-meal, or pink candy for the _chiquitas_. Here, too, would come
Tomasa, and, with even more than usual feminine zeal in matters of
dress, at once try on the ready-made calico gown she purchased, while
the store-keeper smoked his pipe and stroked his beard.
Excepting the cow-boys, the people composing the clientage of the store
were for the most part resident in one of two farm-settlements located
on the creek, about ten miles apart, one exclusively Mexican, the other
almost entirely "white." Besides these, the families of many of the
Mexican hands lived close by. These last were constantly assisting
conversation at the cottages with such incidents as the following:
The cook--a tall, gaunt negro of a mediaevally "intense" nature--came
in with an excited manner, followed by Madame Alguin, very much
troubled, wringing her hands, and dissolved in tears.
"Panchot's little boy," said the cook, "is killed."
We were naturally aghast. Little Panchot had been _colero_ at the recent
shearing.
"Is he dead?" we queried hoarsely.
"He was dead," replied the cook, with seriousness: "he is not dead now."
With this light and delicate touch the cook swept the gamut of our
emotions from awe at little Panchot's sudden taking off to pleasure at
his speedy resurrection. We repaired at once to Madame Alguin's
residence to view the subject of this miracle: lest the miracle should
not be so complete as one might wish, we carried with us a little
hartshorn and Pond's extract. Madame Alguin's villa was a fine
wide-spreading live-oak, with a tent as a sort of annex, about two
minutes from the ranch. On our arrival we found four Mexican women,
seven children, one man, three dogs, four goats, and several roosters,
gathered round the form of little Panchot stretched beneath the
live-oak. A fire smouldered a little way off, and a cradle hung from the
branch of the fatherly tree. Little Panchot had a nasty cut about an
inch long through his cheek. He had been herding his goats on the bank
of the creek when he was knocked over by a stone from the other side. He
swooned,--then he was dead; he came to,--and, _presto_, he was alive
again. He was soon running about with his wonted friskiness, and making
himself useful in chasing wild tennis-balls. This little boy's mother
was, poor woman, very much of a sloven, but he had a string of little
sisters who were as nice as could be. They went about in white cotton
gowns--amazingly clean, considering that they lived under a tree--tied
at the waist with red scarfs; their black hair was smoothly gathered at
the backs of their pretty heads, and they had a demure and quaintly
maternal air; they looked at you with a tranquil, moon-like gaze, which
seemed to say that their ideas, which were on the way, had tarried for
the moment in some boon southern country.