WHEN CAMP-FIRES BLINK
Down the valley they rode, gathering numbers to swell the cavalcade at
each ranch they passed. La Laguna Seca, San Vincente, Las Uvas sent
their quota of vaqueros, each headed by a majordomo and accompanied by
embaladors with the camp equipment and supplies packed upon steady-going
little mustangs. The bell-mares of the various herds jangled a chorus of
pleasant discords with their little, iron bells. The scent of the
mustard rose pungently under the trampling hoofs. At dusk, the
camp-fires blinked at one another through the purpling shadows; and the
vaqueros, stretched lazily upon their saddle blankets in the glow,
stilled the night noises beneath the pleasant murmur of their voices
while they talked. From the camp of the San Vincente riders rose a voice
beautifully clear and sweet, above the subdued clamor.
Dade was listening to the song and dreaming a little while he listened,
with his head lying cradled in his clasped hands and his face to the
stars, when the group around the next camp-fire tittered and broke into
an occasional laugh. Then a question was called to whoever might be
within hearing:
"Who's the best vaquero in California?"
"Jack Allen, the gringo!" shouted a dozen voices, so that every camp
must hear. Then came jeering laughter from every camp save one, the camp
of the Picardo vaqueros.
Valencia's dark head lifted from the red and green blanket beyond the
blaze; and Dade, watching, could see his profile sharply defined in the
yellow light of the fire, as he stared toward the offending camp. The
lips that smiled so often were drawn tight and thin; the nostrils flared
like a frightened horse. While the laughs were still cackling derision,
Valencia jumped up and ran; and Dade, even before he sat up to look,
knew where he was going.
At the fire where the question was put, a young fellow, whose heavy,
black mustache prudently hid lips coarse and sneering, came to his feet
like a dummy of a man and glared dazedly at his companions, as if their
faces should tell him whose hand it was that gripped the braided collar
of his jacket. He was not long in doubt, however. The voice of Valencia
grated vitriolic sentences in his ear, and the free hand of Valencia was
lifted to deal him a blow fair upon the blank face of him. The circle
of faces watched, motionless, above crouched bodies as quiet as the
stars overhead.
A hand grasped Valencia's wrist while his arm was lifted to strike, so
that the three men stood, taut-muscled and still, like a shadowy,
sculptured group that pictured some mythological conflict.
"Let go, Valencia. This is nothing to fight over. Let go."
Valencia's angry eyes questioned the unreadable ones of his majordomo;
but he did not let go, and so the three stood for a moment longer.
"But they insult the Señor Allen with their jeers," he protested. "Me, I
fight always for my friends who are not present to fight for themselves.
Would not the Señor Allen fight this fool who flouts him so?"
"No!" Dade's eyes flicked the circle of faces upon which the firelight
danced. "If the Señor Allen were here, there would be no jeering."
"And for that will I fight them all!" Valencia twisted his arm a little,
in the hope that Dade would let go his wrist. "Ah, Señor! Shall a man
not be true to his friends?"
"Sí, he shall be true, and he shall be sensible. Is the Señor Jack a
weakling, that he cannot fight for himself?"
"But he is not here! If he were--" The tone of him gloated over the
picture of what would happen in that case.
"There shall be no fighting." If Dade's voice was quiet, it did not
carry the impression of weakness, or indecision. "Come to your own fire,
Valencia. If it is necessary to fight for the Señor Allen--I am also his
friend."
"You are right. There shall be no fighting." Dade started and glanced at
José, standing beside him. "If the Señor Allen thinks himself the best,
surely it is I, who hold the medalla that calls me el vaquero supremo,
who have the right to question his boast; not you, amigos!"
"Who's the best vaquero, the bravest and the best in California?"
queried a voice--the voice of the singer, who had come up with others to
see what was going on here. And at his elbow another made answer boldly:
"Don José Pacheco!"
José smiled and lifted his shoulders deprecatingly at the tribute, while
fifty voices shouted loyally his name. Dade, pressing his hand upon
Valencia's shoulder, led him back into the dancing shadows that lay
between the fires.
"Let it go," he urged. "Don José holds the medal, and he's entitled to
the glory. We must keep peace, Valencia, or else I must leave the rodeo.
Personal quarrels must wait."
"Sí, Señor, personal quarrels must wait," assented José, again coming up
unexpectedly behind them. "I but wish to say that I regret the bad
manners of those caballeros, whose best excuse is that they are my
friends. I hope the señor does not accuse me of spreading the news of
the señor's boast. There are others, as the señor well knows, who heard
it before even it came to my ears."
"It doesn't matter," Dade repeated. "They'll have their joke, and I
don't blame them for putting the joke on a stranger, especially when
he's a gringo--and absent."
"The señor is wise as he is loyal," stated José and bowed himself into
the shadows. "Buenos noches, Señor."
"Good-night," answered Dade, speaking English to show he was not ashamed
of it; and rolled himself in his blankets as a deliberate hint to
Valencia that he did not want to discuss the incident, much to that
one's disappointment.
It is to be feared that Valencia did not share in Dade's determination
to keep the peace; for, before he slept, he promised himself that he
would yet tell that pig-faced vaquero from Las Uvas what he thought of
him. But outwardly the incident was closed, and closed permanently.
The sun was not risen above the mountains before they were hurriedly
drinking their black coffee, and making ready to break camp; the flurry
of emotions seemed to have died with the evening fire. If the men of the
other camps were cool in their manner towards Dade when they met him, at
least they were civil; except Manuel, who passed him by with lowered
brows, and of him Dade took no notice. If he were watched curiously, in
hope of detecting the awkwardness which would betray unfamiliarity with
his work, Dade took no notice of that, either, except to grin now and
then when he rode away. Altogether, he was well pleased with his
reception and inclined to laugh at the forebodings he had felt;
forebodings born of the knowledge that, unless these natives of
California were minded to tolerate the presence of a gringo majordomo,
it would be absolutely useless for him to attempt to work with them.
If he had only known it, his own men had done much towards lessening the
prejudice of those who joined the main outfit. Valencia was not the only
one of the Picardo vaqueros whose friendship might be counted upon. Like
Manuel before he became jealous, they forgot that Dade was not of
Spanish birth; for his eyes and his hair were dark as many of the
native-born Californians, and his speech was as their own; he was
good-humored, just in his judgments, reasonable in his demands. He could
tell a good story well if he liked, or he could keep silent and listen
with that sympathetic attention that never fails to flatter the teller
of a tale. To a man they liked him, and they were not slow to show their
liking after the manner of their kind.
By the time they reached Tres Pinos, which was the rendezvous of all the
vaqueros from the Picardo ranch on the north to San Miguel on the south,
Dade had quite lost the constraint that comes of feeling that one is
disliked and only tolerated for the moment. He whistled while he rode
along the creek bank looking for a comfortable camp site; and when
Valencia loped up to him, as he was hesitating over a broad, shaded
strip under a clump of willows, he turned and smiled upon his head
vaquero.
"See, Señor, how well we Californians work together!" cried Valencia,
pointing pridefully. "Here they come, the vaqueros from Agua Amargo,
Durasno, Corral de Terre, Salinas--not yet have our embaladors thrown
off the ropes from our packs, before they are here, these others whom we
came to meet! Not one hour late, even! And the word was given weeks ago
that we would meet this day."
From the mouth of the canyon trotted a band of saddle horses, kicking up
a dust cloud that filmed the picture made by the gay caballeros who
galloped behind. A gallant company were they; and when they met and
mingled with those who came down from the north, it was as though a
small army was giving itself a holiday in that vivid valley, with the
Tres Pinos gurgling at the fun.
Having had experience in these matters, Dade was able to do his part and
do it like a veteran, although he tactfully left to the other majordomos
all those little details that would make of the various camps one
orderly company. Two men he chose from his outfit and sent to the
captain, as the Picardo contribution to the detail told off to herd the
horses, but beyond that he confined himself chiefly to making himself as
unobtrusive as was consistent with dignity.
Six men were sent out after beef; and although Dade had many times in
Texas done exactly what they were doing, he watched interestedly these
Californians at their work.
Cattle were everywhere except in the immediate vicinity of the camp.
Half a mile or so the vaqueros galloped; then two of the leaders singled
out a fat, young steer and made after him with their riatas hissing as
the rawhide circled over their heads.
A loop dropped neatly over the wide horns, and a moment later the second
settled upon the first. The first man turned and headed towards camp
with the steer at his heels, ready at the slightest opportunity to make
use of those long, sharp-pointed horns which nature had given him for
just such need as this. The steer quite forgot the man behind, until he
made a vicious lunge and was checked by the rope that had hung slack and
unnoticed over his back. Furious, the steer turned and charged
resentfully at the caballero who was following him and shouting taunts.
But there again he was checked by the first.
So, charging this way and that; galloping wildly in pursuit of the man
who seemed to be fleeing for his life, or wheeling to do battle with the
rider who kept just so far in his rear, he was decoyed to the very
outskirts of the camp.
If he had been qualified to weigh motives, the heart that brindle-roan
steer would surely have burst at; the pure effrontery of the thing: not
only must he yield his life and give his body for meat, that those
yearning stomachs might be filled with his flesh; he must deliver that
meat at the most convenient spot, as a butcher brings our chops to the
kitchen door. For that purpose alone they were cunningly luring him
closer and closer, that they need not carry the meat far when they had
slaughtered him.
At least his last moments were lighted with hope. He made one grand,
final dash, tripped in a noose that had somehow dropped neatly in the
way of his front feet, and went down with a crash and a bellow of
dismay. Some one ran lightly in--he did not see that it was the vaquero
he had been pursuing all this time--and drove a dagger into the brain
just back of the horns. Thus that particular gust of rage was wiped out
of existence forever.
Later, when the camp-fires burned low, the pleasant odor of meat
broiling upon the forked ends of long, willow branches over the red
coals, proved how even a brindle steer may, at the last, in every savory
morsel have justified his existence.
Life in those days was painted upon a big canvas, with broad sweep of
brushes dipped in vivid colors. Although the branding of the season's
calves was a matter of pure business, the manner in which that work was
accomplished was a spectacle upon which we of the present generation
would give much to look.
When the sun parted the fog and looked down inquisitively, the whole
valley was pulsing with life, alight with color. The first real work of
the rodeo was beginning, like the ensemble of some vast, spectacular
play; and the stage was managed by Nature herself, creator of the
harmony of colors. The dark, glossy green of live oak, the tender green
of new willow leaves, the pale green of the mustard half buried in the
paler yellow of its blossoms, had here and there a splash of orange and
blue, where the poppies were refusing to give place to the lupines which
April wished to leave for May, when she came smiling to dwell for one
sweet month in the valley. The poppies had had their day. March had
brought them, and then had gone away and left them for the April showers
to pelt and play with; and now, when the redwoods on the mountainsides
were singing that May was almost here, a whole slope of poppies lingered
rebelliously to nod and peer and preen over the delights of the valley
just below. The lupines were shaking their blue heads distressfully at
the impertinence; and then here came the vaqueros galloping, and even
the lupines and poppies forgot their dispute in the excitement of
watching the fun.
As the roundups of our modern cattlemen "ride circle," so did those
velvet-jacketed, silver-braided horsemen gallop forth in pairs from a
common center that was the chosen rodeo ground. As if they were tracing
the invisible spokes of a huge wheel laid flat and filling the valley
from mountain range to mountain range, they rode out until they had
reached the approximate rim of the circle. Then, turning, they rode more
slowly back to the rodeo ground, driving before them the cattle they
found there.
Not cattle only; here and there an antelope herd was caught in the
circle and ran bewilderedly toward the common center; beautiful
creatures with great eyes beseeching the human things to be kind, even
while riatas were hissing over their trembling backs. Many a rider rode
into camp with an antelope haunch tied to his gorgeous red and black
saddle; and the wooden spits held delicious bits of antelope steak that
night, broiling over the coals while the vaqueros sang old Spanish
love-songs to lighten the time of waiting.
A gallant company, they. A care-free, laughter-loving, brave company,
with every man a rider to make his womenfolk prate of his skill to all
who would listen; with every man a lover of love and of life and the
primitive joys of life. They worked, that company, and they made of
their work a game that every man of them loved to play. And Dade, loving
the things they loved and living the life they lived, speedily forgot
that there was still an undercurrent of antagonism beneath that surface
of work and play and jokes and songs and impromptu riding and roping
contests (from which José Pacheco was laughingly barred because of his
skill and in which Dade himself was, somehow, never invited to join). He
forgot that the antagonism was there--except when he came face to face
with Manuel, perhaps, or when he chanced to see on the face of José a
brooding look of dissatisfaction, and guessed that he was thinking of
Jack and Teresita.