ALAMO RANCH
_A Story of New Mexico_
BY SARAH WARNER BROOKS
Author of "My Fire Opal," "The Search of Ceres," etc.
CAMBRIDGE
PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMIII
UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON
AND SON . CAMBRIDGE . U.S.A.
TO LEON
_Across the silence that between us stays,
Speak! I should hear it from God's outmost sun,
Above Earth's noise of idle blame and praise,--
The longed-for whisper of thy dear "Well done!"_
[Illustration: ALAMO RANCH]
ALAMO RANCH
_A STORY OF NEW MEXICO_
CHAPTER I
It is autumn; and the last week in November. In New Mexico, this land of
sunshine, the season is now as kindly as in the early weeks of our
Northern September.
To-day the sky is one cloudless arch of sapphire! The light breeze
scarce ruffles a leaf of the tall alamo, the name tree of this ranch.
Here any holding bigger than a kitchen garden is known as a ranch. The
alamo, Spanish for poplar, lends here and there its scant, stiff shade
to this roomy adobe dwelling, with its warm southern frontage and
half-detached wings. Behind the house irregular out-buildings are
scattered about.
A commodious corral, now the distinguished residence of six fine Jersey
cows, lies between the house and the orchard,--a not over-flourishing
collection of peach, apricot, and plum trees.
Here and there may be seen wide patches of kitchen garden, carefully
intersected by irrigating ditches.
Near and afar, wide alfalfa fields with their stiff aftermath stretch
away to the very rim of the mesa, where the cotton-tail makes his home,
and sage-brush and mesquite strike root in the meagre soil. Cones of
alfalfa hay stacked here and there outline themselves like giant
beehives against the soft blue sky; and over all lies the sunny silence
of a cloudless afternoon with its smiling westering sun.
Basking in this grateful warmth, their splint arm-chairs idly tilted
against the house-front, the boarders look with sated invalid eyes upon
this gracious landscape.
Alamo Ranch is a health resort. In this thin, dry air of Mesilla Valley,
high above the sea level, the consumptive finds his Eldorado. Hither,
year by year, come these foredoomed children of men to fight for breath,
putting into this struggle more noble heroism and praiseworthy courage
than sometimes goes to victory in battle-fields.
Of these combatants some are still buoyed by the hope of recovery;
others are but hopeless mortals, with the single sad choice of eking out
existence far from friends and home, or returning to native skies, there
to throw up hands in despair and succumb to the foe.
Sixteen miles away the Organ Mountains--seeming, in this wonderfully
clear atmosphere, within but a stone's throw--loom superbly against the
cloudless sky; great hills of sand are these, surmounted by tall,
serrated peaks of bare rock, and now taking on their afternoon array in
the ever-changing light, rare marvels of shifting color,--amethyst and
violet, rosy pink, creamy gold, and dusky purple.
The El Paso range rises sombrely on the gray distance, and on every hand
detached sugar-loaf peaks lend their magnificence to the grand
mesa-range that cordons the Mesilla Valley.
And now, out on the mesa, at first but a speck between the loungers on
the piazza and the distant mountain view, a single pedestrian, an
invalid sportsman, comes in sight. As he nears the ranch with the slowed
step of fatigue, he is heartening himself by the way with a song. When
the listeners hear the familiar tune,--it is "Home, Sweet Home,"--one of
them rallying his meagre wind whistles a faint accompaniment to the
chorus. It is not a success; and with a mirthless laugh, the whistler
abandons his poor attempt, and, with the big lump in his throat swelling
to a sob, rises from his chair and goes dejectedly in. A sympathetic
chord thrills along the tilted piazza chairs.
The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble
step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will
not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the
uncharted country.
And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.
"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag,
"behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a
Mexican chore-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he
cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa)
goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed
and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas
had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.
Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe.
Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat,
look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the
substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes
those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these
dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and
cheerily matching them with their own.
Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children
are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."