that it was a principle, not profit, for which he battled. They had
completed their _Whereases_, incorporating the language of the several
sections as to how the appropriation should be made, who disbursed such
money, mileage, and, in short, all things pertinent to their bill, when
Pete Cawthon made a suggestion.
"Ain't there anything 'bout how much the Gove'nuh gits?" he asks.
"And the Secretary?" added Wingo.
"Oh, you can leave us out," said Ballard.
"Pardon me, Gove'nuh," said Gilet. "You stated that yoh difficulty was
not confined to Mr. Wingo or any individual gentleman, but was general.
Does it not apply to yo'self, suh? Do you not need any bill?"
"Oh no," said Ballard, laughing. "I don't need any bill."
"And why not?" said Cawthon. "You've jist ez much earned yoh money ez us
fellers."
"Quite as much," said Ballard. "But we're not alike--at present."
Gilet grew very stately. "Except certain differences in political
opinions, suh, I am not awah of how we differ in merit as public
servants of this Territory."
"The difference is of your own making, Mr. Gilet, and no bill you could
frame would cure it or destroy my responsibility. You cannot make any
law contrary to a law of the United States."
"Contrary to a law of the United States? And what, suh, has the United
States to say about my pay I have earned in Idaho?"
"Mr. Gilet, there has been but one government in this country since
April, 1865, and as friends you and I have often agreed to differ as to
how many there were before then. That government has a law compelling
people like you and me to go through a formality, which I have done, and
you and your friends have refused to do each time it has been suggested
to you. I have raised no point until now, having my reasons, which were
mainly that it would make less trouble now for the Territory of which I
have been appointed Governor. I am held accountable to the Secretary of
the Treasury semiannually for the manner in which the appropriation has
been expended. If you will kindly hand me that book--"
Gilet, more and more stately, handed Ballard the Statutes, which he had
taken from Des Peres. The others were watching Ballard with gathering
sullenness, as they had watched Hewley while he was winning Wingo's
money, only now the sullenness was of a more decided complexion.
Ballard turned the pages. "'Second July, 1862. Every person elected or
appointed to any office of honor or profit, either in the civil,
military, or naval service, ... shall before entering upon the duties of
such office, and before being entitled to any salary or other emoluments
thereof, take and subscribe the following oath: I--'"
"What does this mean, suh?" said Gilet.
"It means there is no difference in our positions as to what
preliminaries the law requires of us, no matter how we may vary in
convictions. I as Governor have taken the oath of allegiance to the
United States, and you as Councillor must do the same before you can get
your pay. Look at the book."
"I decline, suh. I repudiate yoh proposition. There is a wide difference
in our positions."
"What do you understand it to be, Mr. Gilet?" Ballard's temper was
rising.
"If you have chosen to take an oath that did not go against yoh
convictions--"
"Oh, Mr. Gilet!" said Ballard, smiling. "Look at the book." He would not
risk losing his temper through further discussion. He would stick to the
law as it lay open before them.
But the Northern smile sent Missouri logic to the winds. "In what are
you superior to me, suh, that I cannot choose? Who are you that I and
these gentlemen must take oaths befo' you?"
"Not before me. Look at the book."
"I'll look at no book, suh. Do you mean to tell me you have seen me day
aftuh day and meditated this treacherous attempt?"
"There is no attempt and no treachery, Mr. Gilet. You could have taken
the oath long ago, like other officials. You can take it to-day--or take
the consequences."
"What? You threaten me, suh? Do I understand you to threaten me?
Gentlemen of the Council, it seems Idaho will be less free than Missouri
unless we look to it." The President of the Council had risen in his
indignant oratorical might, and his more and more restless friends
glared admiration at him. "When was the time that Price's Left Wing
surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their
shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have
crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning.
As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the
soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in
the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood in my veins I
will nevuh, nevuh, nevuh submit to Northern rule and dictation. I will
risk all to be with the Southern people, and if defeated I can, with a
patriot of old, exclaim,
"'More true joy an exile feels
Than Caesuh with a Senate at his heels.'
"Aye, gentlemen! And we will not be defeated! Our rights are here and
are ours." He stretched his arm towards the Treasurer's strong-box, and
his enthusiastic audience rose at the rhetoric. "Contain yo'selves,
gentlemen," said the orator. "Twelve o'clock and our bill!"
"I've said my say," said Ballard, remaining seated.
"An' what'll ye do?" inquired Pete Cawthon from the agitated group.
"I forbid you to touch that!" shouted Ballard. He saw Wingo moving
towards the box.
"Gentlemen, do not resort--" began Gilet.
But small, iron-gray Hewley snatched his pistol from the box, and sat
down astraddle of it, guarding his charge. At this hostile movement the
others precipitated themselves towards the table where lay their
weapons, and Governor Ballard, whipping his own from his armhole, said,
as he covered the table: "Go easy, gentlemen! Don't hurt our Treasurer!"
"Don't nobody hurt anybody," said Specimen Jones, opening the door.
This prudent corporal had been looking in at a window and hearing
plainly for the past two minutes, and he had his men posted. Each member
of the Council stopped as he stood, his pistol not quite yet attained;
Ballard restored his own to its armhole and sat in his chair; little
Hewley sat on his box; and F. Jackson Gilet towered haughtily, gazing at
the intruding blue uniform of the United States.
"I'll hev to take you to the commanding officer," said Jones, briefly,
to Hewley. "You and yer box."
"Oh, my stars and stripes, but that's a keen move!" rejoiced Ballard to
himself. "He's arresting _us_."
[Illustration: "'DON'T NOBODY HURT ANYBODY,' SAID SPECIMEN JONES"]
In Jones's judgment, after he had taken in the situation, this had
seemed the only possible way to stop trouble without making any, and
therefore, even now, bayonets were not fixed. Best not ruffle Price's
Left Wing just now, if you could avoid it. For a new corporal it was
well thought and done. But it was high noon, the clock not pushed
back, and punctual Representatives strolling innocently towards their
expected pay. There must be no time for a gathering and possible
reaction. "I'll hev to clear this State-House out," Jones decided.
"We're makin' an arrest," he said, aloud, "and we want a little room."
The outside bystanders stood back obediently, but the Councillors
delayed. Their pistols were, with Ballard's and Hewley's, of course in
custody. "Here," said Jones, restoring them. "Go home now. The
commanding officer's waitin' fer the prisoner. Put yer boots on, sir,
and leave," he added to Pete Cawthon, who still stood in his
stockings. "I don't want to hev to disperse anybody more'n what I've
done."
Disconcerted Price's Left Wing now saw file out between armed soldiers
the Treasurer and his strong-box; and thus guarded they were brought to
Boise Barracks, whence they did not reappear. The Governor also went to
the post.
After delivering Hewley and his treasure to the commanding officer,
Jones with his five troopers went to the sutler's store and took a drink
at Jones's expense. Then one of them asked the corporal to have another.
But Jones refused. "If a man drinks much of that," said he (and the
whiskey certainly was of a livid, unlikely flavor), "he's liable to go
home and steal his own pants." He walked away to his quarters, and as he
went they heard him thoughtfully humming his most inveterate song, "Ye
shepherds tell me have you seen my Flora pass this way."
But poisonous whiskey was not the inner reason for his moderation. He
felt very much like a responsible corporal to-day, and the troopers knew
it. "Jones has done himself a good turn in this fuss," they said. "He'll
be changing his chevron."
That afternoon the Legislature sat in the State-House and read to
itself in the Statutes all about oaths. It is not believed that any of
them sat up another night; sleeping on a problem is often much better.
Next morning the commanding officer and Governor Ballard were called
upon by F. Jackson Gilet and the Speaker of the House. Every one was
civil and hearty as possible. Gilet pronounced the captain's whiskey
"equal to any at the Southern, Saint Louey," and conversed for some time
about the cold season, General Crook's remarkable astuteness in dealing
with Indians, and other topics of public interest. "And concernin' yoh
difficulty yesterday, Gove'nuh," said he, "I've been consulting the
laws, suh, and I perceive yoh construction is entahley correct."
And so the Legislature signed that form of oath prescribed for
participants in the late Rebellion, and Hewley did not have to wait for
his poker money. He and Wingo played many subsequent games; for, as they
all said in referring to the matter, "A little thing like that should
nevuh stand between friends."
Thus was accomplished by Ballard, Paisley--and Jones--the Second
Missouri Compromise, at Boise City, Idaho, 1867--an eccentric moment in
the eccentric years of our development westward, and historic also. That
it has gone unrecorded until now is because of Ballard's modesty,
Paisley's preference for the sword, and Jones's hatred of the pen. He
was never known to write except, later, in the pages of his company
roster and such unavoidable official places; for the troopers were
prophetic. In not many months there was no longer a Corporal Jones, but
a person widely known as Sergeant Jones of Company A; called also the
"Singing Sergeant"; but still familiar to his intimate friends as
"Specimen."
LA TINAJA BONITA
"And it came to pass after a while that the brook dried up,
because there had been no rain in the land."--1 Kings xvii. 7.
A pretty girl was kneeling on the roof of a flat mud cabin, a harvest of
red peppers round her knees. On the ground below her stood a swarthy
young man, the bloom on his Mexican cheeks rich and dusky, like her own.
His face was irresponsible and winning, and his watching eyes shone upon
her with admiration and desire. She on the roof was entertained by her
visitor's attention, but unfavorable to it. Through the live-long sunny
day she had parried his love-talk with light and complete skill,
enjoying herself, and liking him very well, as she had done since they
were two children playing together in the Arizona desert. She was quite
mistress of the situation, because she was a woman, and he as yet merely
a boy; he was only twenty-two; she was almost sixteen. The Mexican man
at twenty-two may be as experienced as his Northern brother of thirty,
but at sixteen the Mexican woman is also mature, and can competently
deal with the man. So this girl had relished the thoughtless morning and
noon as they passed; but twice lately she had glanced across the low
tree-tops of her garden down the trail, where the canon descended to the
silent plain below.
"I think I must go back now," said the young man, not thinking so. He
had a guitar from the cabin.
"Oh!" said she, diverted by his youthful feint. "Well, if you think it
is so late." She busied herself with the harvest. Her red handkerchief
and strands of her black hair had fallen loosely together from her head
to her shoulders. The red peppers were heaped thick, hiding the whole
roof, and she stooped among them, levelling them to a ripening layer
with buckskin gloves (for peppers sting sharper than mustard), sorting
and turning them in the bright sun. The boy looked at her most
wistfully.
"It is not precisely late--yet," said he.
"To be sure not," she assented, consulting the sky. "We have still three
hours of day."
He brightened as he lounged against a water-barrel. "But after night it
is so very dark on the trail to camp," he insincerely objected.
"I never could have believed you were afraid of the dark."
"It is for the horse's legs, Lolita. Of course I fear nothing."
"Bueno! I was sure of it. Do you know, Luis, you have become a man quite
suddenly? That mustache will be beautiful in a few years. And you have a
good figure."
"I am much heavier than last year," said he. "My arm--"
"I can see, I can see. I am not sure I shall let you kiss me any more.
You didn't offer to when you came this morning--and that shows you men
perceive things more quickly than we can. But don't go yet. You can lead
your horse. His legs will come to no harm, eased of your weight. I
should have been lonely to-day, and you have made it pass so quickly.
You have talked so much that my peppers are not half spread."
"We could finish them in five minutes together," said the youth, taking
a step.
"Two up here among all these peppers! Oh no, Luis. We should tread on
them, and our ankles would burn all night. If you want to help me, go
bring some fresh water. The barrel is almost empty."
But Luis stood ardently gazing up at the roof.
"Very well, then," said Lolita. "If you like this better, finish the
peppers, and I'll go for the water."
"Why do you look down the trail so often?" said the baffled love-maker,
petulantly.
"Because Uncle Ramon said the American would be coming to-day," the girl
replied, softly.
"Was it Uncle Ramon said that? He told you that?"
"Why not?" She shaded her eyes, and looked where the canon's widening
slit gave view of a slant of sand merging fan-spread into a changeless
waste of plain. Many watercourses, crooked and straight, came out of the
gaps, creasing the sudden Sierra, descending to the flat through bushes
and leaning margin trees; but in these empty shapes not a rill tinkled
to refresh the silence, nor did a drop slide over the glaring rocks, or
even dampen the heated, cheating sand. Lolita strained her gaze at the
dry distance, and stooped again to her harvest.
"What does he come here for?" demanded Luis.
"The American? We buy white flour of him sometimes."
"Sometimes! That must be worth his while! He will get rich!" Luis
lounged back against his water-barrel, and was silent. As he watched
Lolita, serenely working, his silver crescent ear-rings swung a little
with the slight tilting of his head, and his fingers, forgotten and
unguided by his thoughts, ruffled the strings of the guitar, drawing
from it gay, purposeless tendrils of sound. Occasionally, when Lolita
knew the song, she would hum it on the roof, inattentively, busy rolling
her peppers:
"'Soy purita mejicana;
Nada tengo espanol.'"
(I am a pure Mexican. I have nothing Spanish about me.) And this
melodious inattention of Lolita's Luis felt to be the extreme of slight.
"Have you seen him lately?" he asked, sourly.
"Not very. Not since the last time he came to the mines from Maricopa."
"I heard a man at Gun Sight say he was dead," snapped Luis.
But she made no sign. "That would be a pity," she said, humming gayly.
"Very sad. Uncle Ramon would have to go himself to Maricopa for that
white flour."
Pleased with this remark, the youth took to song himself; and there they
were like two mischievous birds. Only the bird on the ground was cross
with a sense of failure. "El telele se murio," he sang.
"'The hunchback is dead.
Ay! Ay! Ay!
And no one could be found to bury him except--'"
"Luis, aren't you going to get my water for me?"
"Poco tiempo: I'll bring it directly."
"You have to go to the Tinaja Bonita for it."
The Pretty Spring--or water-hole, or tank--was half a mile from the
cabin.
"Well, it's not nice out there in the sun. I like it better in here,
where it is pleasant.
"'And no one could be found to bury him except
Five dragoons and a corporal
And the sacristan's cat.'"
Singing resentfully, young Luis stayed in here, where it was pleasant.
Bright green branches of fruit-trees and small cottonwoods and a fenced
irrigated square of green growing garden hid the tiny adobe home like a
nut, smooth and hard and dry in their clustered midst. The lightest air
that could blow among these limber, ready leaves set going at once their
varnished twinkling round the house. Their white and dark sides gleamed
and went out with chasing lights that quickened the torpid place into a
holiday of motion. Closed in by this cool green, you did not have to see
or think of Arizona, just outside.
"Where is Uncle Ramon to-day?" inquired Luis, dropping his music.
She sighed. "He has gone to drive our cattle to a new spring. There is
no pasture at the Tinaja Bonita. Our streams and ditches went dry last
week. They have never done so in all the years before. I don't know what
is going to happen to us." The anxiety in the girl's face seemed to come
outward more plainly for a moment, and then recede to its permanent
abiding-place.
"There cannot be much water to keep flour-sellers alive on the trail to
Maricopa," chirped the bird on the ground.
She made no answer to this. "What are you doing nowadays?" she asked.
"I have been working very hard on the wood contract for the American
soldiers," he replied, promptly.
"By Tucson?"
"No. Huachuca."
"Away over there again? I thought you had cut all they wanted last May."
"It is of that enterprise of which I speak, Lolita."
"But it's October now!" Lolita lifted her face, ruddy with stooping, and
broke into laughter.
"I do not see why you mock me. No one has asked me to work since."
"Have you asked any one for work?"
"It is not my way to beg."
"Luis, I don't believe you're quite a man yet, in spite of your
mustache. You complain there's no money for Mexicans in Arizona because
the Americans get it all. Why don't you go back to Sonora, then, and be
rich in five minutes? It would sound finely: 'Luis Romero, Merchant,
Hermosillo.' Or perhaps gold would fall more quickly into your lap at
Guaymas. You would live in a big house, perhaps with two stories, and I
would come and visit you at Easter--if your wife would allow it." Here
Lolita threw a pepper at him.
The guitar grated a few pretty notes; otherwise there was silence.
"And it was Uncle Ramon persuaded them to hire you in May. He told the
American contractor you owned a strong burro good for heavy loads. He
didn't say much about you," added the little lady.
"Much good it did me! The American contractor-pig retained my wages to
pay for the food he supplied us. They charge you extra for starvation,
those gringos. They are all pigs. Ah, Lolita, a man needs a wife, so he
may strive to win a home for her."
"I have heard men say that they needed a home before they could strive
to win a wife for it. But you go about it the other way."
"I am not an American pig, I thank the Virgin! I have none of their
gringo customs."
"You speak truly indeed," murmured Lolita.
"It is you who know about them," the boy said, angry like a child. He
had seen her eye drawn to the trail again as by a magnet. "They say you
prefer gringos to your own people."
"Who dares say that?"
The elated Luis played loudly on the guitar. He had touched her that
time.
But Lolita's eye softened at the instant of speaking, and she broke into
her sweet laugh. "There!" she said, recapturing the situation; "is it
not like old times for you and me to be fighting."
"Me? I am not fighting."
"You relieve me."
"I do not consider a gringo worth my notice."
"Sensible boy! You speak as wisely as one who has been to school in a
large city. Luis, do you remember the day Uncle Ramon locked me up for
riding on the kicking burro, and you came and unlocked me when uncle was
gone? You took me walking, and lost us both in the mountains. We were
really only a little, little way from home, but I thought we had got
into another country where they eat children. I was six, and I beat you
for losing me, and cried, and you were big, and you kissed me till I
stopped crying. Do you remember?"
"No."
"Don't you remember?"
"I don't remember child's tricks."
"Luis, I have come to a conclusion. You are still young enough for me to
kiss quite safely. Every time you fight with me--I shall kiss you. Won't
you get me some fresh water now?"
He lounged, sulky, against his barrel.
"Come, querido! Must I go all that way myself? Well, then, if you intend
to stand and glare at me till the moon rises--Ah! he moves!"
Luis laid the guitar gradually down, and gradually lifting a pail in
which the dipper rattled with emptiness, he proceeded to crawl on his
journey.
"You know that is not the one we use, muchacho," (little boy), remarked
Lolita.
"Keep your kisses for your gringo," the water-carrier growled, with his
back to her.
"I shall always save some for my little cousin."
The pail clattered on the stones, and the child stopped crawling. She on
the roof stared at this performance for an open-mouthed moment, gloves
idle among the spicy peppers. Then, laughing, she sprang to her feet,
descended, and, catching up the water-jar (the olla de agua), overtook
him, and shook it in his face with the sweetest derision. "Now we'll go
together," said she, and started gayly through the green trees and the
garden. He followed her, two paces behind, half ashamed, and gazing at
her red handkerchief, and the black hair blowing a little; thus did they
cross the tiny cool home acre through the twinkling pleasantness of the
leaves, and pass at once outside the magic circle of irrigation into
Arizona's domain, among a prone herd of carcasses upon the ground--dead
cattle, two seasons dead now, hunted to this sanctuary by the drought,
killed in the sanctuary by cold water.
A wise, quiet man, with a man's will, may sometimes after three days of
thirst still hold grip enough upon his slipping mind to know, when he
has found the water, that he must not drink it, must only dampen his
lips and tongue in a drop-by-drop fashion until he has endured the
passing of many slow, insidious hours. Even a wise man had best have a
friend by his side then, who shall fight and tear him from the perilous
excesses that he craves, knock him senseless if he cannot pin him down;
but cattle know nothing of drop by drop, and you cannot pin down a
hundred head that have found water after three days. So these hundred
had drunk themselves swollen, and died. Cracked hide and white bone they
lay, brown, dry, gaping humps straddled stiff askew in the last
convulsion; and over them presided Arizona--silent, vast, all sunshine
everlasting.
Luis saw these corpses that had stumbled to their fate, and he
remembered; with Lolita in those trees all day, he had forgotten for a
while. He pointed to the wide-strewn sight, familiar, monotonous as
misfortune. "There will be many more," he said. "Another rainy season is
gone without doing anything for the country. It cannot rain now for
another year, Lolita."
"God help us and our cattle, and travellers!" she whispered.
Luis musingly repeated a saying of the country about the Tinaja Bonita,
"'When you see the Black Cross dry,
Fill the wagon cisterns high'"
--a doggerel in homely Spanish metre, unwritten mouth-to-mouth wisdom,
stable as a proverb, enduring through generations of unrecorded
wanderers, that repeated it for a few years, and passed beneath the
desert.
"But the Black Cross has never been dry yet," Luis said.
"You have not seen it lately," said Lolita.
"Lolita! do you mean--" He looked in her troubled eyes, and they went on
in silence together. They left behind them the bones and the bald level
on which they lay, and came to where the canon's broader descent
quickened until they sank below that sight of the cattle, and for a time
below the home and trees. They went down steeply by cactus and dry rock
to a meeting of several canons opening from side rifts in the Sierra,
furrowing the main valley's mesa with deep watercourses that brought no
water. Finding their way in this lumpy meeting-ground, they came upon
the lurking-place of the Tinaja Bonita. They stood above it at the edge
of a pitch of rock, watching the motionless crystal of the pool.
"How well it hides down there in its own canon!" said Luis. "How pretty
and clear! But there's plenty of water, Lolita."