Blaze Jones rode up to his front gate and dismounted in the shade of
the big ebony-tree. He stepped back and ran an approving eye over
another animal tethered there. It was a thoroughbred bay mare he had
never seen, and as he scanned her good points he reflected that the
time had come when he would have to accustom himself to the sight of
strange horses along his fence and strange automobiles beside the road,
for Paloma was a woman now, and the young men of the neighborhood had
made the discovery. Yes, and Paloma was a pretty woman; therefore the
hole under the ebony-tree would probably be worn deep by impatient
hoofs. He was glad that most of the boys preferred saddles to soft
upholstery, for it argued that some vigor still remained in Texas
manhood, and that the country had not been entirely ruined by motors,
picture-shows, low shoes, and high collars. Of course the youths of
this day were nothing like the youths of his own, and yet--Blaze let
his gaze linger fondly on the high-bred mare and her equipment--here at
least was a person who knew a good horse, a good saddle, and a good gun.
As he came up the walk he heard Paloma laugh, and his own face
lightened, for Paloma's merriment was contagious. Then as he mounted
the steps and turned the corner of the "gallery" he uttered a hearty
greeting.
"Dave Law! Where in the world did you drop from?"
Law uncoiled himself and took the ranchman's hand. "Hello, Blaze! I
been ordered down here to keep you straight."
"Pshaw! Now who's giving you orders, Dave?"
"Why, I'm with the Rangers."
"Never knew a word of it. Last I heard you was filibustering around
with the Maderistas."
Blaze seated himself with a grateful sigh where the breeze played over
him. He was a big, bearlike, swarthy man with the square-hewn,
deep-lined face of a tragedian, and a head of long, curly hair which he
wore parted in a line over his left ear. Jones was a character, a local
landmark. This part of Texas had grown up with Blaze, and, inasmuch as
he had sprung from a free race of pioneers, he possessed a splendid
indifference to the artificial fads of dress and manners. It was only
since Paloma had attained her womanhood that he had been forced to
fight down his deep-seated distrust of neckwear and store clothes and
the like; but now that his daughter had definitely asserted her rights,
he had acquired numerous unwelcome graces, and no longer ventured among
strangers without the stamp of her approval upon his appearance. Only
at home did he maintain what he considered a manly independence of
speech and habit. To-day, therefore, found him in a favorite suit of
baggy, wrinkled linen and with a week's stubble of beard upon his chin.
He was so plainly an outdoor man that the air of erudition lent him by
the pair of gold-rimmed spectacles owlishly perched upon his sunburned
nose was strangely incongruous.
"So you're a Ranger, and got notches on your gun." Blaze rolled and lit
a tiny cigarette, scarcely larger than a wheat straw. "Well, you'd
ought to make a right able thief-catcher, Dave, only for your
size--you're too long for a man and you ain't long enough for a snake.
Still, I reckon a thief would have trouble getting out of your reach,
and once you got close to him--How many men have you killed?"
"Counting Mexicans?" Law inquired, with a smile.
"Hell! Nobody counts them."
"Not many."
"That's good." Blaze nodded and relit his cigarette, which he had
permitted promptly to smolder out. "The Force ain't what it was. Most
of the boys nowadays join so they can ride a horse cross-lots, pack a
pair of guns, and give rein to the predilections of a vicious ancestry.
They're bad rams, most of 'em."
"There aren't many," said Paloma. "Dave tells me the whole Force has
been cut down to sixteen."
"That's plenty," her father averred. "It's like when Cap'n Bill
McDonald was sent to stop a riot in Dallas. He came to town alone, and
when the citizens asked him where his men was, he said, 'Hell! 'Ain't I
enough? There's only one riot.' Are you workin' up a case, Dave?"
"Um-m--yes! People are missing a lot of stock hereabouts."
"It's these blamed refugees from the war! A Mexican has to steal
something or he gets run down and pore. If it ain't stock, it's
something else. Why, one morning I rode into Jonesville in time to see
four Greasers walkin' down the main street with feed-sacks over their
shoulders. Each one of those gunnie's had something long and flat and
heavy in it, and I growed curious. When I investigated, what d'you
suppose I found? Tombstones! That's right; four marble beauties fresh
from the cemetery. Well, it made me right sore, for I'd helped to start
Jonesville. I was its city father. I'd made the place fit to live in,
and I aimed to keep it safe to die in, and so, bein' a sort of
left-handed, self-appointed deppity-sheriff, I rounded up those ghouls
and drove 'em to the county-seat in my spring wagon. I had the evidence
propped up against the front of our real-estate office--'Sacred to the
Memory' of four of our leading citizens--so I jailed 'em. But that's
all the good it did."
"Couldn't convict, eh?"
Blaze lit his cigarette for the third time. "The prosecuting attorney
and I wasn't very good friends, seeing as how I'd had to kill his
daddy, so he turned 'em loose. I'm damned if those four Greasers didn't
beat me back to Jonesville." Blaze shook his head ruminatively. "This
was a hard country, those days. There wasn't but two honest men in this
whole valley--and the other one was a nigger."
Dave Law's duties as a Ranger rested lightly upon him; his instructions
were vague, and he had a leisurely method of "working up" his evidence.
Since he knew that Blaze possessed a thorough knowledge of this section
and its people, it was partly business which had brought him to the
Jones home this afternoon.
Strictly speaking, Blaze was not a rancher, although many of his acres
were under cultivation and he employed a sizable army of field-hands.
His disposition was too adventurous, his life had been too swift and
varied, for him to remain interested in slow agricultural pursuits;
therefore, he had speculated heavily in raw lands, and for several
years past he had devoted his energies to a gigantic colonization
scheme. Originally Blaze had come to the Rio Grande valley as a
stock-raiser, but the natural advantages of the country had appealed to
his gambling instinct, and he had "gone broke" buying land.
He had located, some fifteen miles below the borders of Las Palmas, and
there he had sunk a large fortune; then as a first step in his
colonization project he had founded the town of Jonesville. Next he had
caused the branch line of the Frisco railroad to be extended until it
linked his holdings with the main system, after which he had floated a
big irrigation company; and now the feat of paying interest on its
bonds and selling farms under the ditch to Northern people kept him
fully occupied. It was by no means a small operation in which he was
engaged. The venture had taken foresight, courage, infinite hard work;
and Blaze was burdened with responsibilities that would have broken
down a man of weaker fiber.
But his pet relaxation was reminiscence. His own experience had been
wide, he knew everybody in his part of the state, and although events
in his telling were sometimes colored by his rich imagination, the
information he could give was often of the greatest value--as Dave Law
knew.
After a time the latter said, casually, "Tell me something about Tad
Lewis."