It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.
First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse--the one lion of the ranch--makes
his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archæology, and
among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."
Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is
not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very
much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his
less scholarly fellow-men.
This well-groomed, handsome man of forty is James Morley of Bangor.
He has come to try this healing air for a slight, but persistent, lung
affection.
Mr. Morley is known to be a man of means, with all the advantages thus
implied; but all the same, he is given to railing at most things under
the sun; hence by the boarders he is surreptitiously dubbed "the
Grumbler." Mr. Morley's growl is a foregone conclusion, and one may
safely reckon on his bark; but as for his bite, it is simply nowhere.
Already he has manifested a most considerate kindness for this gray-eyed
little lady from Marblehead, Miss Mattie Norcross,--a sweet-mannered,
quiet gentlewoman, who is currently reported as scant of filthy lucre,
and hence compelled to content herself with a cramped, inexpensive
bedroom for herself and her invalid sister, who has one hopelessly
diseased lung. This cheery-faced Irishman, who with his shy little wife
is, for a stubborn bronchial trouble, making the grand tour of the
world's health resorts, and is now trying New Mexico, is, strange as it
may seem, a Methodist minister. His name is Patrick Haley. It may be
said of Mr. Haley that he has the genial temperament indigenous to Green
Erin, and he has already won golden opinions at Alamo Ranch by the
considerate brevity of his grace before meat.
Among the invalids attended by their wives are Mr. Bixbee, from Ohio,
and Mr. Fairlee, from New York City.
Mr. Bixbee has been bidden by his medical dictator to repair his damaged
vitality by rest and nourishing food. It is predicted that this
surfeited "lunger," in escaping his Scylla of consumption, bids fair to
strand upon the Charybdis of liver complaint, since Mrs. Bixbee, in her
wifely zeal, not only plies him all day long with lunches, but makes
night hideous by the administration of raw eggs throughout its drowsy
hours.
Mr. Roger Smith, an over-worked Harvard athlete, is taking as a
restorative a lazy winter in this restful land. He has also other irons
in the fire, of which, later, we shall hear more. Roger Smith is known
in Boston society as one having heaps of money, but badly off for
pedigree. All the same, he is, in manner and appearance, a gentleman,
and has distinctly the hall-mark of Beacon Hill. He is here known as the
"Harvard man."
Also, among the sound-lunged invalids, is Mr. Harry Warren, a brilliant
Chicago journalist. Mr. Warren is taking a vacation in Mesilla Valley,
where he is said to be collecting material for future articles, and
possibly for a book.
The Browns have also two table-boarders from Boston,--Miss Paulina
Hemmenshaw and her beautiful niece, Louise, a superbly healthy brunette.
Their friend, Mr. Henry Hilton, during an absence abroad, has lent for
the winter to these ladies his toy ranch, with its aesthetically
fashioned dwelling-house.
The Hemmenshaws dine and sup at Alamo Ranch, and the aunt, a
cooking-school graduate, is known to make at Hilton Ranch for herself
and niece wonderful blazer breakfasts, consisting mainly of dishes
new-fangled of name, and eminently trying to mortal digestion. There
are, besides, some half-dozen male lungers unaccompanied by friends; and
two impecunious invalids to whom the kind-hearted landlord, George
Brown, allows bed and board in return for light-choring about the ranch.
These latter are democratically counted in with the dining-room
boarders.
Leon Starr, by common consent the "star boarder" of Alamo Ranch, has
already been presented to the reader. He has taken the large
two-windowed room on the ground-floor commanding a glorious view of the
distant Organ Mountains. After getting his breath in this unaccustomed
altitude, Leon's next care has been for the depressed lungers who daily
gather on the boarding-house piazza and wonder if life is still worth
living. To get them outside themselves by cheery good-fellowship, to
perform for them little homely services, not much in the telling, but
making their lives a world easier, has been a part of his method for
uplifting their general tone.
Of an inventive turn of mind, and an amateur mechanic, he has brought
with him a tiny tool chest; and it soon becomes the family habit to look
to Leon Starr for general miscellaneous tinkering, as the mending of
door and trunk locks, the regulating watches and clocks, the adjustment
of the bedevilled sewing-machine of their good landlady, and the
restoration of harmonious working to all disgruntled mechanical gear,
from garret to cellar. He it is who, on rainy days, manufactures denim
clothes-bags for clumsy-fingered fellows; who fashions from common canes
gathered on banks of irrigating ditches, photo-frames for everybody, and
shows them how to arrange the long cane tassels with decorative effect
above door and window, and how to soften the glare of kerosene lamps by
making for them relieving shades of rose-colored paper.
Pessimistic indeed is that lunger who, succumbing to the charm of this
gracious nature, does not feel the cheery lift in his heavy atmosphere.
From the landlord and his wife, both worn by the strain of doing their
best for chronically discontented people, down to Fang Lee, the Chinese
chef, Dennis Kearney, the table-waiter, the over-worked Mexican
house-maids, and the two native chore-boys--one and all rise up to call
the star boarder blessed.
Out on the mesa the air is finer and brighter than on the lower plane of
the ranch, and full of the life and stir of moving things,--quail,
rabbits, and doves.
Leon had at first found the thin air of this altitude somewhat
difficult; but since time and use have accustomed his lungs to these
novel atmospheric conditions, shooting on the mesa has become a part of
his daily programme, and his quail, rabbits, and pigeons prove a
toothsome contribution to the already excellent ranch table.
A small, shy Mexican herd-boy, pasturing his lean goats on the mesa,
gradually makes friends with the tall, kindly sportsman. As they have
between them but these two mutually intelligible words, _bueno_ (good)
and _mucho calor_ (very warm), their conversation is circumscribed. Kind
deeds are, however, more to the point than words, and go without the
saying; and when Leon instructed the ragged herd-boy in the use of his
bow, and made and weighted his arrows for him, he _understood_, and
became his devoted henchman, following in his path all through the
week-day tramps, and on Sundays coming to the ranch with clean face and
hands to adore his fetich, and watch, with admiring eyes, his novel
works and ways.