THE QUEEN AT HOME
The Bat Wing ranch, with its big white house on the hill, its whirling
windmill, its tank that spread out like a lake and gleamed like liquid
silver, its pole corrals, its adobe houses half shaded by wind-tossed
cottonwoods, was one of the most sightly in Arizona. The yellow-white
sheen of the bunch grass made the distance seem fair and inviting; at
sunset the saw-toothed summits of the Tortugas changed to blues and
purples and mysterious, canon-deep black; the heavy bunches of sacaton
out in the horse pasture gleamed white in the evening glow. Many riders
passed by that way, rigged out in the finery of their kind, and most of
them took it all in--and yet, at times, the place looked kind of bare
and tame.
Bowles was a stranger to those parts and he admired the landscape
mightily; but to him too it seemed a little bare. It needed a dash of
color, a vigorous girlish figure in the foreground, to give it the last
vivid touch. But the queen, of course, must be humored--let the picture
wait! So Bowles waited, along with the rest of the bunch, and in the
evening while they were at their supper the Queen of the Bat Wing came.
At the Wordsworth Society she had been stunningly gowned in a creation
which Bowles would not soon forget; on the train she had worn a tailored
traveling dress, very severe and becoming, the only note of defiance
being in the hat, which was her Western sombrero with a veil to take off
the curse. But now the trimming was gone, and a silver-buckled,
horsehair band took its place. Dixie May was back on her own range and
she wore what clothes she pleased!
First there was the hat, a trim, fifteen-dollar Stetson held on by a
strap that lapped behind; then a white shirt-waist to supply the touch
of color; a divided skirt of golden-brown corduroy; and high-heeled
cowboy boots, very tiny, and supplied with silver-mounted spurs, ornate
with Mexican conchos. She wore a quirt on her wrist, and her hair in
Indian braids, and a fine coat of newly acquired tan on her cheeks.
A silence fell on the squatting punchers as she ran lightly down from
the house; one or two of them ducked out of sight as she passed through
the gate, but the rest sat motionless, stoically feeding themselves with
their knives, and waiting for the queen to pass. Only Bowles, the man
from the East, rose up and took off his hat; but Dixie Lee remembered
her promise, and never so much as looked at him.
[Illustration: "ONLY BOWLES, THE MAN FROM THE EAST, ROSE AND TOOK OFF
HIS HAT"]
"Hello, Brig," she said, singling out the blushing Brigham for a teasing
grin. "'Evening, Mr. Mosby. Say, Maw sent me down to look for some
eggs--she wants to make a cake for these worthless punchers before she
invites 'em up to hear the phonograph."
"Well, well, Miss Dix," responded the cook, shuffling and ill at ease.
"I'm afraid yore maw is goin' to be disapp'inted. If you can find any
eggs around here, you're welcome to 'em. _I_ ain't got none hid
out--that's all I'll say."
"Oh, I know where they go to, Mr. Mosby," replied Dixie Lee, showing her
white teeth in a knowing smile. "If a man will suck eggs, he'll
steal--you know that saying yourself--and I can tell by the shells
around the fire here what's going on o' nights."
"Oh, that's that big fat Brigham Clark!" spoke up Hardy Atkins. "You
don't want to judge the whole outfit by _him_!"
At this bare-faced libel Bowles cleared his throat to speak. He had
noticed particularly on the evening before that the eggs were brought in
by Happy Jack and Hardy Atkins himself; but before he could enter a
protest a general rumble of laughter set him back to a thinking part.
"Yes, sir!" observed Buck Buchanan, speaking to the world at large.
"That feller sucks aigs worse'n a setter pup."
"An' he don't deny it none, neither," commented Happy Jack, as poor
Brigham blushed deeper and hung his head.
"Jest born that way, I reckon," remarked Poker-face in a tone of pity;
and then the whole outfit broke into a whoop of laughter. It was a new
form of jesting to Bowles, and he retired to the shelter of the
wood-pile. A sudden gloom had come over his soul, and it even affected
his appetite, whetted keen by the cold, thin air. Of course, Dixie Lee
had told him she would do so, but it seemed rather heartless not to look
at him. He sat down with his back against the jagged juniper stubs and
listened sullenly, while the punchers chuckled in front of him and
continued to eat with their knives.
"Aw, Brig's jest bashful, that's all," explained some simple-minded
joker, after every one else had had his say; and as his hollow laughter
rose up, Bowles wondered dimly why Brigham did not retort. The evening
before, when he was telling stories around the fire, he had returned a
Roland for an Oliver until even Hardy Atkins had been content to quit;
but now he confined himself to self-conscious mutterings and
exhortations to shut up. Perhaps the simple-minded joker was right--poor
Brigham was bashful.
But Dixie Lee had come down to get some eggs and she did not allow camp
persiflage to divert her from her purpose.
"Well, say," she said, getting up from the cook's private seat, "I came
down to hunt for eggs--who wants to help me?"
"That's where I shine!" cried Hardy Atkins, throwing his tin plate into
the washtub with a great clatter. "They's a nest around hyer in the
wood-pile!"
He capered around the end of the wood-pile, and soon Bowles could hear
him panting as he forced his way in between the crooked sticks.
"Hyer they are!" he shouted at last. "I got a whole hatful--somebody
pull me out by the laig!"
There was a ripple of high-pitched laughter from Dixie Lee, an interval
in which Bowles cursed his fate most heartily, and then a frantic outcry
from Hardy:
"Hey, there, don't pull so fast! You Dix, you'll break my aigs! Well,
laugh, then, doggone it! Now see what you went and done!"
A general shout of laughter followed, and Hardy Atkins, his lips pouted
out to play the fool, and his eyes rolling to catch their laughter, came
ambling around the wood-pile with a hat that looked like an amateur
conjurer's after the celebrated egg trick. But there were enough whole
ones left to make a cake, and Happy Jack came galloping in with a hatful
from his own private cache; so everybody laughed, though Brigham looked
on sourly enough. A rapid fire of barbed jests followed; then, with her
two admirers behind her and the others gazing dumbly on, Dixie Lee ran
lightly back to the house, and Bowles had had his first lookin on ranch
society. It did not look so good to him, either, and yet--well, just as
Dixie May turned away she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
To be sure, it was one of Hardy Atkins' raw jokes at which she was
laughing, but somehow a golden glow crept into the sunset, and ranch
society did not seem so bad.
Five minutes later Dixie Lee was down at the corral bridling a
white-faced roan, and soon, with Happy Jack for an escort, she was
galloping away to the east where, like glowworms in the dusk, the
scattered lights of settlers' houses showed the first beginnings of a
neighborhood. The phonograph was going to play in the big house that
evening, and all the "nesters" were invited.
No one had been more outraged than Henry Lee when the first nesters came
in on his range; but latterly he had come to regard them tolerantly as
poor, misguided creatures, slightly touched in the head on the subject
of high-and-dry farming. Having seen a few hundred of them starve out
and move on, he had accepted them as a necessary evil, and deemed it no
more than right, if the women-folks wanted to invite them, to ask the
few nearest ones to the house and help them forget their misery. So the
whole-souled Dixie May was off to call in the company while the cowboys
were scraping their beards off and dolling up for the dance.
It was Saturday night, as a matter of fact, and though all days are
alike to a puncher his evenings are his own around the ranch. One by one
the socially backward and inept caught the fever and began to search
their war-bags for silk handkerchiefs and clean shirts. Only Brigham
remained recalcitrant, and no argument could induce him to shave.
"I was on the wrangle last night," he complained, as the forehanded ones
came back to argue the matter, "and I'm short on my sleep. Say, lemme
be, can't ye--what difference does it make to you fellers, anyway? They
won't be girls enough to go around, nohow!"
"Well, come up and hear the music," urged the Bar Seven stray man, who
wanted him for company.
"Mrs. Lee invited you, Brig," reminded Gloomy Gus, who believed that
every man should do his duty.
"Aw, it's too late to do anything now," grumbled Brigham, beginning at
last to weaken. "And my beard is a fright, too!"
"Soak it in hot water, then!" cried Bar Seven enthusiastically. "Come
on, fellers; let's make 'im do it! It ain't right--a nice lady like Mrs.
Lee! She'll think you're 'shamed because you done stole them aigs!"
"I did not!" denied Brigham hotly.
"Well, come along, then!" countered Bar Seven triumphantly, "or the boys
will be tellin' everybody!"
So the last unwilling victim was cajoled into going, and at a cheery
summons from Dixie May they marched up the hill in a body. It was too
early yet for the nester girls to appear, and while they were waiting
for the dance to begin the twenty or more punchers wedged into the big
front room and settled down to hear the phonograph. A cattle ranch
without a phonograph nowadays is as rare as a cow outfit without a
mouth-organ; but the Lees had a fine one, that would play for dances on
a scratch, and a rack piled high with classic records. Mrs. Lee sat
beside it, and after welcoming the self-conscious cowboys she asked them
what they would have.
"The barnyard one!" somebody called; and as the cow mooed, the pig
squealed, and the hired girl called the chickens, the cowboys laughed
and forgot their feet. Then Caruso sang a high one, caught his breath
and expired, and the company shifted in their seats. That was not
exactly their style.
"What's the matter with the dog fight?" cried a voice from the corner;
and Mrs. Lee, who had dreams of elevating their taste, sat undecided,
with the sextet from _Lucia_ in her hand.
"Perhaps you would like the _Anvil Chorus_," she suggested by way of a
concession.
"No, the dog fight!" clamored Hardy Atkins from the same corner. Then,
quoting from the well-known favorite, he inquired in up-stage Irish:
"'Will some sport kindly let Mr. Ho-ogan, the time-keeper, hold his
watch?'"
"'Faith,'" broke in Happy Jack, continuing the selection, "'an' who will
hold Ho-ogan, then--har, har, har, har, har!'"
So contagious was the spell of this laughter that there was nothing for
it but to put on the record, which gave a dog fight in Harlem from the
time the bets were made till the spotted dog licked and the place was
raided by the police. Not very elevating, to be sure, but awfully
popular, and calling for more of the same. Mrs. Lee sighed wearily and
laid the sextet aside; then, with quick decision, she resigned her place
to Dixie May and retired to a seat by the door--and, as luck would have
it, she sat down next to Bowles.
"Won't you take my chair?" he said, rising with all the gallantry of his
kind. "I enjoyed that _Donna e Mobile_ of Caruso's so much!"
"Oh," said Mrs. Lee, beaming with pleasure, "you know it, then! And do
you care for it, too?"
"Very much!" replied Bowles, falling back into the familiar formula of
polite conversation; and by the time the phonograph had started up on
"Casey Jones" they were deep in a discussion of classic music. As often
happens in good society, they discovered a wonderful similarity in their
likes and dislikes; and by the time the nester girls began to arrive and
the dance started up on the gallery, Bowles was very popular in the big
house--that is, as far as the hostess was concerned.
But the climax of the evening came at the close of the dance, just as
Mr. Bowles was taking his leave.
"Well, good-night, Mrs. Lee," he murmured as he stood in the half light
of the porch. "It was so kind of you to invite us up."
He paused then with the rest of his politenesses unsaid, for Dixie Lee
was coming down the hall.
"I can't say how much I have enjoyed talking with you, Mr. Bowles,"
returned the lady, offering him her hand. "It takes me back to my
girlhood days, when music was the breath of my life. Perhaps----Oh,
Dixie, have you met Mr. Bowles?"
There was silence for a moment as their eyes met across the abyss, hers
stern and forbidding, his smiling and conciliatory; and then Dixie bowed
very stiffly.
"Why, not that I remember," she replied, with a militant toss of the
head.
"How do you do, Miss Lee," observed Mr. Bowles, bowing formally as he
received his conge. "So glad to make your acquaintance!" And, murmuring
other maddening phrases, he bowed himself out the door, leaving Dixie
Lee to explain the feud in any way she chose.