SUNSET
Of my exile of over two years in Mexico, little need be said. By easy
stages, I reached the haciendas on the Rio San Juan where we had
received the cows in the summer of ’77. The reception extended me was
all one could ask, but cooled when it appeared that my errand was one
of refuge and not of business. I concealed my offense, and was given
employment as corporal _segundo_ over a squad of vaqueros. But while
the hacienda to which I was attached was larger than Las Palomas, with
greater holdings in live-stock, yet my life there was one of penal
servitude. I strove to blot out past memories in the innocent pleasures
of my associates, mingling in all the social festivities, dancing with
the dark-eyed señoritas and gambling at every _fiesta_. Yet in the
midst of the dissipation, there was ever present to my mind the thought
of a girl, likewise living a life of loneliness at the mouth of the San
Miguel.
During my banishment, but twice did any word or message reach me from
the Nueces valley. Within a few months after my locating on the Rio San
Juan, Enrique Lopez, a trusted vaquero from Las Palomas, came to the
hacienda, apparently seeking employment. Recognizing me at a glance, at
the first opportunity he slipped me a letter unsigned and in an unknown
hand. After reading it I breathed easier, for both Hunter and Oxenford
had recovered, the former having been shot through the upper lobe of a
lung, while the latter had sustained three wounds, one of which
resulted in the loss of an arm. The judge had reserved his decision
until the recovery of both men was assured, but before the final
adjournment of court, refused the decree. I had had misgivings that
this would be the result, and the message warned me to remain away, as
the stage company was still offering a reward for my arrest. Enrique
loitered around the camp several days, and on being refused employment,
made inquiry for a ranch in the south and rode away in the darkness of
evening. But we had had several little chats together, in which the
rascal delivered many oral messages, one of which he swore by all the
saints had been intrusted to him by my own sweetheart while visiting at
the ranch. But Enrique was capable of enriching any oral message, and I
was compelled to read between the lines; yet I hope the saints, to whom
he daily prayed, will blot out any untruthful embellishments.
The second message was given me by Frank Nancrede, early in January,
’81. As was his custom, he was buying saddle horses at Las Palomas
during the winter for trail purposes, when he learned of my whereabouts
in Mexico. Deweese had given him directions where I could be found, and
as the Rio San Juan country was noted for good horses, Nancrede and a
companion rode directly from the Nueces valley to the hacienda where I
was employed. They were on the lookout for a thousand saddle horses,
and after buying two hundred from the ranch where I was employed,
secured my services as interpreter in buying the remainder. We were
less than a month in securing the number wanted, and I accompanied the
herd to the Rio Grande on its way to Texas. Nancrede offered me every
encouragement to leave Mexico, assuring me that Bethel & Oxenford had
lost their mail contract between San Antonio and Brownsville, and were
now operating in other sections of the state. He was unable to give me
the particulars, but frauds had been discovered in Star Route lines,
and the government had revoked nearly all the mail contracts in
southern Texas. The trail boss promised me a job with any of their
herds, and assured me that a cow hand of my abilities would never want
a situation in the north. I was anxious to go with him, and would have
done so, but felt a compunction which I did not care to broach to him,
for I was satisfied he would not understand.
The summer passed, during which I made it a point to meet other drovers
from Texas who were buying horses and cattle. From several sources the
report of Nancrede, that the stage line south from San Antonio was now
in new hands, was confirmed. One drover assured me that a national
scandal had grown out of the Star Route contracts, and several
officials in high authority had been arraigned for conspiracy to
defraud. He further asserted that the new contractor was now carrying
the mail for ten per cent, of what was formerly allowed to Bethel &
Oxenford, and making money at the reduced rate. This news was
encouraging, and after an exile of over two years and a half, I
recrossed the Rio Grande on the same horse on which I had entered.
Carefully avoiding ranches where I was known, two short rides put me in
Las Palomas, reaching headquarters after nightfall, where, in
seclusion, I spent a restless day and night.
A few new faces were about the ranch, but the old friends bade me a
welcome and assured me that my fears were groundless. During the brief
time at my disposal, Miss Jean entertained me with numerous disclosures
regarding my old sweetheart. The one that both pleased and interested
me was that she was contented and happy, and that her resignation was
due to religious faith. According to my hostess’s story, a camp meeting
had been held at Shepherd’s during the fall after my banishment, by a
sect calling themselves Predestinarians. I have since learned that a
belief in a predetermined state is entertained by a great many good
people, and I admit it seems as if fate had ordained that Esther McLeod
and I should never wed. But it was a great satisfaction to know that
she felt resigned and could draw solace from a spiritual source, even
though the same was denied to me. During the last meeting between
Esther and Miss Jean, but a few weeks before, the former had confessed
that there was now no hope of our ever marrying.
As I had not seen my parents for several years, I continued my journey
to my old home on the San Antonio River. Leaving Las Palomas after
nightfall, I passed the McLeod ranch after midnight. Halting my horse
to rest, I reviewed the past, and the best reasoning at my command
showed nothing encouraging on the horizon. That Esther had sought
consolation from a spiritual source did not discourage me; for, under
my observation, where it had been put to the test, the love of man and
wife overrode it. But to expect this contented girl to renounce her
faith and become my wife, was expecting her to share with me nothing,
unless it was the chance of a felon’s cell, and I remounted my horse
and rode away under a starry sky, somewhat of a fatalist myself. But I
derived contentment from my decision, and on reaching home no one could
have told that I had loved and lost. My parents were delighted to see
me after my extended absence, my sisters were growing fast into
womanhood, and I was bidden the welcome of a prodigal son. During this
visit a new avenue in life opened before me, and through the influence
of my eldest brother I secured a situation with a drover and followed
the cattle trail until the occupation became a lost one. My last visit
to Las Palomas was during the winter of 1894-95. It lacked but a few
months of twenty years since my advent in the Nueces valley. After the
death of Oxenford by small-pox, I had been a frequent visitor at the
ranch, business of one nature and another calling me there. But in this
last visit, the wonderful changes which two decades had wrought in the
country visibly impressed me, and I detected a note of decay in the old
ranch. A railroad had been built, passing within ten miles of the
western boundary line of the Ganso grant. The Las Palomas range had
been fenced, several large tracts of land being added after my severing
active connections with the ranch. Even the cattle, in spite of all the
efforts made for their improvement, were not so good as in the old days
of the open range, or before there was a strand of wire between the
Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. But the alterations in the country were
nothing compared to the changes in my old master and mistress. Uncle
Lance was nearing his eighty-second birthday, physically feeble, but
mentally as active as the first morning of our long acquaintance. Miss
Jean, over twenty years the junior of the ranchero, had mellowed into a
ripeness consistent with her days, and in all my aimless wanderings I
never saw a brother and sister of their ages more devoted to, or
dependent on each other.
On the occasion of this past visit, I was in the employ of a live-stock
commission firm. A member of our house expected to attend the cattle
convention at Forth Worth in the near future, and I had been sent into
the range sections to note the conditions of stock and solicit for my
employers. The spring before, our firm had placed sixty thousand cattle
for customers. Demand continued, and the house had inquiry sufficient
to justify them in sending me out to secure, of all ages, not less than
a hundred thousand steer cattle. And thus once more I found myself a
guest of Las Palomos.
“Don’t talk cattle to me,” said Uncle Lance, when I mentioned my
business; “go to June—he’ll give you the ages and numbers. And whatever
you do, Tom, don’t oversell us, for wire fences have cut us off, until
it seems like old friends don’t want to neighbor any more. In the days
of the open range, I used to sell every hoof I had a chance to, but
since then things have changed. Why, only last year a jury indicted a
young man below here on the river for mavericking a yearling, and sent
him to Huntsville for five years. That’s a fair sample of these modern
days. There isn’t a cowman in Texas to-day who amounts to a pinch of
snuff, but got his start the same way, but if a poor fellow looks out
of the corner of his eye now at a critter, they imagine he wants to
steal it. Oh, I know them; and the bigger rustlers they were themselves
on the open range, the bitterer their persecution of the man who
follows their example.”
June Deweese was then the active manager of the ranch, and after
securing a classification of their salable stock, I made out a
memorandum and secured authority in writing, to sell their holdings at
prevailing prices for Nueces river cattle. The remainder of the day was
spent with my old friends in a social visit, and as we delved into the
musty past, the old man’s love of the land and his matchmaking
instincts constantly cropped out.
“Tom,” said he, in answer to a remark of mine, “I was an awful fool to
think my experience could be of any use to you boys. Every last rascal
of you went off on the trail and left me here with a big ranch to
handle. Gallup was no better than the rest, for he kept Jule Wilson
waiting until now she’s an old maid. Sis, here, always called Scales a
vagabond, but I still believe something could have been made of him
with a little encouragement. But when the exodus of the cattle to the
north was at its height, he went off with a trail herd just like the
rest of you. Then he followed the trail towns as a gambler, saved
money, and after the cattle driving ended, married an adventuress, and
that’s the end of him. The lack of a market was one of the great
drawbacks to ranching, but when the trail took every hoof we could
breed and every horse we could spare, it also took my boys. Tom, when
you get old, you’ll understand that all is vanity and vexation of
spirit. But I am perfectly resigned now. In my will, Las Palomas and
everything I have goes to Jean. She can dispose of it as she sees fit,
and if I knew she was going to leave it to Father Norquin or his
successor, my finger wouldn’t be raised to stop it. I spent a lifetime
of hard work acquiring this land, and now that there is no one to care
for the old ranch, I wash my hands of it.”
Knowing the lifetime of self-sacrifice in securing the land of Las
Palomas, I sympathized with the old ranchero in his despondency.
“I never blamed you much, Tom,” he resumed after a silence; “but
there’s something about cattle life which I can’t explain. It seems to
disqualify a man for ever making a good citizen afterward. He roams and
runs around, wasting his youth, and gets so foxy he never marries.”
“But June and the widow made the riffle finally,” I protested.
“Yes, they did, and that’s something to the good, but they never had
any children. Waited ten years after Annear was killed, and then got
married. That was one of Jean’s matches. Tom, you must go over and see
Juana before you go. There was a match that I made. Just think of it,
they have eight children, and Fidel is prouder over them than I ever
was of this ranch. The natives have never disappointed me, but the
Caucasian seems to be played out.”
I remained overnight at the ranch. After supper, sitting in his chair
before a cheerful fire, Uncle Lance dozed off to sleep, leaving his
sister and myself to entertain each other. I had little to say of my
past, and the future was not encouraging, except there was always work
to do. But Miss Jean unfolded like the pages of an absorbing chronicle,
and gave me the history of my old acquaintances in the valley. Only a
few of the girls had married. Frances Vaux, after flirting away her
youth, had taken the veil in one of the orders in her church. My old
sweetheart was contentedly living a life of seclusion on the ranch on
which she was born, apparently happy, but still interested in any word
of me in my wanderings. The young men of my acquaintance, except where
married, were scattered wide, the whereabouts of nearly all of them
unknown. Tony Hunter had held the McLeod estate together, and it had
prospered exceedingly under his management. My old friend, Red Earnest,
who outrode me in the relay race at the tournament in June, ’77, was
married and serving in the Customs Service on the Rio Grande as a
mounted river guard.
The next morning, I made the round of the Mexican quarters, greeting my
old friends, before taking my leave and starting for the railroad. The
cottage which had been built for Esther and me stood vacant and
windowless, being used only for a storehouse for _zacahuiste_. As I
rode away, the sight oppressed me; it brought back the June time of my
youth, even the hour and instant in which our paths separated. On
reaching the last swell of ground, several miles from the ranch, which
would give me a glimpse of headquarters, I halted my horse in a
farewell view. The sleepy old ranch cosily nestled among the encinal
oaks revived a hundred memories, some sad, some happy, many of which
have returned in retrospect during lonely hours since.