"Anything. Everything."
"Tad owns a right nice ranch between here and Las Palmas," Blaze said,
cautiously.
Paloma broke out, impatiently: "Why don't you say what you think?" Then
to Dave: "Tad Lewis is a bad neighbor, and always has been. There's a
ford on his place, and we think he knows more about 'wet' cattle than
he cares to tell."
"It's a good place to cross stock at low water," her father agreed,
"and Lewis's land runs back from the Rio Grande in its old Spanish
form. It's a natural outlet for those brush-country ranchos. But I
haven't anything against Tad except a natural dislike. He stands well
with some of our best people, so I'm probably wrong. I usually am."
"You can't call Ed Austin one of our best people," sharply objected
Paloma. "They claim that arms are being smuggled across to the Rebels,
Dave, and, if it's true, Ed Austin--"
"Now, Paloma," her father remonstrated mildly. "The Regulars and the
River Guards watched Lewis's ranch till the embargo was lifted, and
they never saw anything."
"I believe Austin is a strong Rebel sympathizer," Law ventured.
"Sure! And him and the Lewis outfit are amigos. If you go pirootin'
around Tad's place you're more'n apt to make yourself unpopular, Dave.
I'd grieve some to see you in a wooden kimono. Tad's too well fixed to
steal cattle, and if he runs arms it's because of his sympathy for
those noble, dark-skinned patriots we hear so much about in Washington.
Tad's a 'galvanized Gringo' himself--married a Mexican, you know."
"Nobody pays much attention to the embargo," Law agreed. "I ran arms
myself, before I joined the Force."
When meal-time drew near, both Jones and his daughter urged their guest
to stay and dine with them, and Dave was glad to accept.
"After supper I'm going to show you our town," Blaze declared. "It's
the finest city in South Texas, and growing like a weed. All we need is
good farmers. Those we've got are mostly back-to-nature students who
leaped a drug-counter expecting to 'light in the lap of luxury. In the
last outfit we sold there wasn't three men that knew which end of a
mule to put the collar on. But they'll learn. Nature's with 'em, and so
am I. God supplies 'em with all the fresh air and sunshine they need,
and when they want anything else they come to Old Blaze. Ain't that
right, Paloma?"
"Yes, father."
Paloma Jones had developed wonderfully since Dave Law had last seen
her. She had grown into a most wholesome and attractive young woman,
with an unusually capable manner, and an honest, humorous pair of brown
eyes. During dinner she did her part with a grace that made watching
her a pleasure, and the Ranger found it a great treat to sit at her
table after his strenuous scouting days in the mesquite.
"I'm glad to hear Jonesville is prosperous," he told his host. "And
they say you're in everything."
"That's right; and prosperity's no name for it. Every-body wants Blaze
to have a finger in the pie. I'm interested in the bank, the
sugar-mill, the hardware-store, the ice-plant--Say, that ice-plant's a
luxury for a town this size. D'you know what I made out of it last
year?"
"I've no idea."
"Twenty-seven thousand dollars!" The father of Jonesville spoke
proudly, impressively, and then through habit called upon his daughter
for verification. "Didn't I, Paloma?"
Miss Paloma's answer was unexpected, and came with equal emphasis: "No,
you didn't, father. The miserable thing lost money."
Blaze was only momentarily dismayed. Then he joined in his visitor's
laughter. "How can a man get along without the co-operation of his own
household?" he inquired, naively. "Maybe it was next year I was
thinking about." Thereafter he confined himself to statements which
required no corroboration.
Dave had long since learned that to hold Blaze Jones to a strict
accountability with fact was to rob his society of its greatest charm.
A slavish accuracy in figures, an arid lack of imagination, reduces
conversation to the insipidness of flat wine, and Blaze's talk was
never dull. He was a keen, shrewd, practical man, but somewhere in his
being there was concealed a tremendous, lop-sided sense of humor which
took the form of a bewildering imagery. An attentive audience was
enough for him, and, once his fancy was in full swing, there was no
limit to his outrageous exaggerations. A light of credulity in a
hearer's eye filled him with prodigious mirth, and it is doubtful if
his listeners ever derived a fraction of the amusement from his
fabrications that he himself enjoyed. Paloma's spirit of contradiction
was the only fly in his ointment; now that his daughter was old enough
to "keep books" on him, much of the story-teller's joy was denied him.
Of course his proclivities occasionally led to misapprehensions; chance
acquaintances who recognized him as an artful romancer were liable to
consider him generally untruthful. But even in this misconception Blaze
took a quiet delight, secure in the knowledge that all who knew him
well regarded him as a rock of integrity. As a matter of fact, his
genuine exploits were quite as sensational as those of his manufacture.
When, after supper, Blaze had hitched a pair of driving-mules to his
buckboard, preparatory to showing his guest the glories of Jonesville,
Dave said:
"Paloma's getting mighty pretty."
"She's as pretty as a blue-bonnet flower," her father agreed. "And she
runs me around something scandalous. I 'ain't got the freedom of a
peon." Blaze sighed and shook his shaggy head. "You know me, Dave; I
never used to be scared of nobody. Well, it's different now. She rides
me with a Spanish bit, and my soul ain't my own." With a sudden
lightening of his gloom, he added: "Say, you're going to stay right
here with us as long as you're in town; I want you to see how I
cringe." In spite of Blaze's plaintive tone it was patent that he was
inordinately proud of Paloma and well content with his serfdom.
Jonesville proved to be a typical Texas town of the modern variety, and
altogether different to the pictured frontier village. There were no
one-storied square fronts, no rows of saloons with well-gnawed
hitching-rails, no rioting cowboys. On the contrary, the larger
buildings were of artificial stone, the sidewalks of concrete, and the
store fronts of plate-glass. Arc-lights shed a bluish-white glare over
the wide street-crossings, and all in all the effect was much like that
of a prosperous, orderly Northern farming town.
Not that Jonesville would have filled an eye for beauty. It was too new
and crude and awkward for that. It fitted loosely into its clothes, for
its citizens had patterned it with regard for the future, and it
sprawled over twice its legitimate area. But to its happy founder it
seemed well-nigh perfect, and its destiny roused his maddest
enthusiasm. He showed Dave the little red frame railroad station,
distinguished in some mysterious way above the hundred thousand other
little red frame railroad stations of the identical size and style; he
pointed out the Odd Fellows Hall, the Palace Picture Theater, with its
glaring orange lights and discordant electric piano; he conducted Law
to the First National Bank, of which Blaze was a proud but somewhat
ornamental director; then to the sugar-mill, the ice-plant, and other
points of equally novel interest.
Everywhere he went, Jones was hailed by friends, for everybody seemed
to know him and to want to shake his hand.
"SOME town and SOME body of men, eh?" he inquired, finally, and Dave
agreed:
"Yes. She's got a grand framework, Blaze. She'll be most as big as Fort
Worth when you fatten her up."
Jones waved his buggy-whip in a wide circle that took in the miles of
level prairie on all sides. "We've got the whole blamed state to grow
in. And, Dave, I haven't got an enemy in the place! It wasn't many
years ago that certain people allowed I'd never live to raise this
town. Why, it used to be that nobody dared to ride with me--except
Paloma, and she used to sleep with a shot-gun at her bedside."
"You sure have been a responsibility to her."
"But I'm as safe now as if I was in church."
Law ventured to remark that none of Blaze's enemies had grown fat in
prosecuting their feuds, but this was a subject which the elder man
invariably found embarrassing, and now he said:
"Pshaw! I never was the blood-letter people think. I'm as gentle as a
sheep." Then to escape further curiosity on that point he suggested
that they round out their riotous evening with a game of pool.
Law boasted a liberal education, but he was no match for the father of
Jonesville, who wielded a cue with a dexterity born of years of
devotion to the game. In consequence, Blaze's enjoyment was in a fair
way to languish when the proprietor of the Elite Billiard Parlor
returned from supper to say:
"Mr. Jones, there's a real good pool-player in town, and he wants to
meet you."
Blaze uttered a triumphant cry. "Get him, quick! Send the brass-band to
bring him. Dave, you hook your spurs over the rung of a chair and watch
your uncle clean this tenderfoot. If he's got class, I'll make him
mayor of the town, for a good pool-shooter is all this metropolis
lacks. Why, sometimes I go plumb to San Antone for a game." He
whispered in his friend's ear, "Paloma don't let me gamble, but if
you've got any dinero, get it down on me." Then, addressing the
bystanders, he proclaimed, "Boys, if this pilgrim is good enough to
stretch me out we'll marry him off and settle him down."
"No chance, Uncle Blaze; he's the most married person in town," some
one volunteered. "His wife is the new dressmaker--and she's got a
mustache." For some reason this remark excited general mirth.
"That's too bad. I never saw but one woman with a mustache, and she
licked me good. If he's yoked up to that kind of a lady, I allow his
nerves will be wrecked before he gets here. I hope to God he ain't
entirely done for." Blaze ran the last three balls from a well-nigh
impossible position, then racked up the whole fifteen with trembling
eagerness and eyed the door expectantly. He was wiping his spectacles
when the proprietor returned with a slim, sallow man whom he introduced
as Mr. Strange.
"Welcome to our city!" Blaze cried, with a flourish of his glasses.
"Get a prod, Mr. Strange, and bust 'em, while I clean my wind-shields.
These fellow-townsmen of mine handle a cue like it was an ox-gad."
Mr. Strange selected a cue, studied the pyramid for an instant, then
called the three ball for the upper left-hand corner, and pocketed it,
following which he ran the remaining fourteen. Blaze watched this
procedure near-sightedly, and when the table was bare he thumped his
cue loudly upon the floor. He beamed upon his opponent; he appeared
ready to embrace him.
"Bueno! There's art, science, and natural aptitude! Fly at 'em again,
Mr. Strange, and take your fill." He finished polishing his spectacles,
and readjusted them. "I aim to make you so comfortable in Jonesville
that---" Blaze paused, he started, and a peculiar expression crept over
his face.
It seemed to Law that his friend actually turned pale; at any rate, his
mouth dropped open and his gaze was no longer hypnotically following
the pool-balls, but was fixed upon his opponent.
Now there were chapters in the life of Blaze Jones that had never been
fully written, and it occurred to Dave that such a one had been
suddenly reopened; therefore he prepared himself for some kind of an
outburst. But Blaze appeared to be numbed; he even jumped nervously
when Mr. Strange missed a shot and advised him that his chance had come.
As water escapes from a leaky pail, so had Jones's fondness for pool
oozed away, and with it had gone his accustomed skill. He shot blindly,
and, much to the general surprise, missed an easy attempt.
"Can't expect to get 'em all," comfortingly observed Mr. Strange as he
executed a combination that netted him two balls and broke the bunch.
After that he proved the insincerity of his statement by clearing the
cloth for a second time. The succeeding frames went much the same, and
finally Blaze put up his cue, mumbling:
"I reckon I must have another chill coming on. My feet are plumb dead."
"Cold feet are sure bad." Strange favored the crowd with a wink.
"I'm sort of sick."
"That's tough!" the victor exclaimed, regretfully. "But I'll tell you
what we'll do--we'll take a little look into the future."
"What d'you mean?"
"Simply this: Nature has favored me with second sight and the ability
to read fortunes. I foretell good an' evil, questions of love and
mattermony by means of numbers, cards, dice, dominoes, apple-parings,
egg-shells, tea-leaves, an' coffee-grounds." The speaker's voice had
taken on the brazen tones of a circus barker. "I pro'nosticate by
charms, ceremonies, omens, and moles; by the features of the face,
lines of the hand, spots an' blemishes of the skin. I speak the
language of flowers. I know one hundred and eighty-seven weather signs,
and I interpet dreams. Now, ladies and gents, this is no idle boast.
Triflin' incidents, little marks on the cuticle, although they appear
to be the effect of chance, are nevertheless of the utmost consequence,
an' to the skilled interpeter they foretell the temper of, an' the
events that will happen to, the person bearin' 'em. Now let us take
this little deck of common playing-cards---"
The monologist, suiting the action to the word, conjured a deck of
cards from somewhere, and extended them to Blaze. "Select one; any
one---"
"Hell!" snorted Jones, slipping into his coat.
"You are a skeptic! Very well. I convince nobody against his will. But
wait! You have a strong face. Stand where you are." Extracting from
another pocket a tiny pair of scissors and a sheet of carbon paper, Mr.
Strange, with the undivided attention of the audience upon him, began
to cut Blaze's silhouette. He was extraordinarily adept, and despite
his subject's restlessness he completed the likeness in a few moments;
then, fixing it upon a plain white cardboard, he presented it with a
flourish.
Blaze accepted the thing and plunged for the open air.