Sandridge quickly explained to his men the official part of the
missive. The rangers protested against his going alone.
“I’ll get him easy enough,” said the lieutenant. “The girl’s got him
trapped. And don’t even think he’ll get the drop on me.”
Sandridge saddled his horse and rode to the Lone Wolf Crossing. He tied
his big dun in a clump of brush on the arroyo, took his Winchester from
its scabbard, and carefully approached the Perez _jacal_. There was
only the half of a high moon drifted over by ragged, milk-white gulf
clouds.
The wagon-shed was an excellent place for ambush; and the ranger got
inside it safely. In the black shadow of the brush shelter in front of
the _jacal_ he could see a horse tied and hear him impatiently pawing
the hard-trodden earth.
He waited almost an hour before two figures came out of the _jacal_.
One, in man’s clothes, quickly mounted the horse and galloped past the
wagon-shed toward the crossing and village. And then the other figure,
in skirt, waist, and mantilla over its head, stepped out into the faint
moonlight, gazing after the rider. Sandridge thought he would take his
chance then before Tonia rode back. He fancied she might not care to
see it.
“Throw up your hands,” he ordered loudly, stepping out of the
wagon-shed with his Winchester at his shoulder.
There was a quick turn of the figure, but no movement to obey, so the
ranger pumped in the bullets—one—two—three—and then twice more; for you
never could be too sure of bringing down the Cisco Kid. There was no
danger of missing at ten paces, even in that half moonlight.
The old ancestor, asleep on his blanket, was awakened by the shots.
Listening further, he heard a great cry from some man in mortal
distress or anguish, and rose up grumbling at the disturbing ways of
moderns.
The tall, red ghost of a man burst into the _jacal_, reaching one hand,
shaking like a _tule_ reed, for the lantern hanging on its nail. The
other spread a letter on the table.
“Look at this letter, Perez,” cried the man. “Who wrote it?”
“_Ah, Dios!_ it is Señor Sandridge,” mumbled the old man, approaching.
“_Pues, señor_, that letter was written by ‘_El Chivato_,’ as he is
called—by the man of Tonia. They say he is a bad man; I do not know.
While Tonia slept he wrote the letter and sent it by this old hand of
mine to Domingo Sales to be brought to you. Is there anything wrong in
the letter? I am very old; and I did not know. _Valgame Dios!_ it is a
very foolish world; and there is nothing in the house to drink— nothing
to drink.”
Just then all that Sandridge could think of to do was to go outside and
throw himself face downward in the dust by the side of his
humming-bird, of whom not a feather fluttered. He was not a _caballero_
by instinct, and he could not understand the niceties of revenge.
A mile away the rider who had ridden past the wagon-shed struck up a
harsh, untuneful song, the words of which began:
Don’t you monkey with my Lulu girl
Or I’ll tell you what I’ll do—
XII
THE SPHINX APPLE
Twenty miles out from Paradise, and fifteen miles short of Sunrise
City, Bildad Rose, the stage-driver, stopped his team. A furious snow
had been falling all day. Eight inches it measured now, on a level. The
remainder of the road was not without peril in daylight, creeping along
the ribs of a bijou range of ragged mountains. Now, when both snow and
night masked its dangers, further travel was not to be thought of, said
Bildad Rose. So he pulled up his four stout horses, and delivered to
his five passengers oral deductions of his wisdom.
Judge Menefee, to whom men granted leadership and the initiatory as
upon a silver salver, sprang from the coach at once. Four of his
fellow-passengers followed, inspired by his example, ready to explore,
to objurgate, to resist, to submit, to proceed, according as their
prime factor might be inclined to sway them. The fifth passenger, a
young woman, remained in the coach.
Bildad had halted upon the shoulder of the first mountain spur. Two
rail-fences, ragged-black, hemmed the road. Fifty yards above the upper
fence, showing a dark blot in the white drifts, stood a small house.
Upon this house descended—or rather ascended—Judge Menefee and his
cohorts with boyish whoops born of the snow and stress. They called;
they pounded at window and door. At the inhospitable silence they waxed
restive; they assaulted and forced the pregnable barriers, and invaded
the premises.
The watchers from the coach heard stumblings and shoutings from the
interior of the ravaged house. Before long a light within flickered,
glowed, flamed high and bright and cheerful. Then came running back
through the driving flakes the exuberant explorers. More deeply pitched
than the clarion—even orchestral in volume—the voice of Judge Menefee
proclaimed the succour that lay in apposition with their state of
travail. The one room of the house was uninhabited, he said, and bare
of furniture; but it contained a great fireplace, and they had
discovered an ample store of chopped wood in a lean-to at the rear.
Housing and warmth against the shivering night were thus assured. For
the placation of Bildad Rose there was news of a stable, not ruined
beyond service, with hay in a loft, near the house.
“Gentlemen,” cried Bildad Rose from his seat, swathed in coats and
robes, “tear me down two panels of that fence, so I can drive in. That
is old man Redruth’s shanty. I thought we must be nigh it. They took
him to the foolish house in August.”
Cheerfully the four passengers sprang at the snow-capped rails. The
exhorted team tugged the coach up the slant to the door of the edifice
from which a mid-summer madness had ravished its proprietor. The driver
and two of the passengers began to unhitch. Judge Menefee opened the
door of the coach, and removed his hat.
“I have to announce, Miss Garland,” said he, “the enforced suspension
of our journey. The driver asserts that the risk in travelling the
mountain road by night is too great even to consider. It will be
necessary to remain in the shelter of this house until morning. I beg
that you will feel that there is nothing to fear beyond a temporary
inconvenience. I have personally inspected the house, and find that
there are means to provide against the rigour of the weather, at least.
You shall be made as comfortable as possible. Permit me to assist you
to alight.”
To the Judge’s side came the passenger whose pursuit in life was the
placing of the Little Goliath windmill. His name was Dunwoody; but that
matters not much. In travelling merely from Paradise to Sunrise City
one needs little or no name. Still, one who would seek to divide
honours with Judge Madison L. Menefee deserves a cognomenal peg upon
which Fame may hang a wreath. Thus spake, loudly and buoyantly, the
aerial miller:
“Guess you’ll have to climb out of the ark, Mrs. McFarland. This wigwam
isn’t exactly the Palmer House, but it turns snow, and they won’t
search your grip for souvenir spoons when you leave. _We’ve_ got a fire
going; and _we’ll_ fix you up with dry Tilbys and keep the mice away,
anyhow, all right, all right.”
One of the two passengers who were struggling in a _melée_ of horses,
harness, snow, and the sarcastic injunctions of Bildad Rose, called
loudly from the whirl of his volunteer duties: “Say! some of you
fellows get Miss Solomon into the house, will you? Whoa, there! you
confounded brute!”
Again must it be gently urged that in travelling from Paradise to
Sunrise City an accurate name is prodigality. When Judge Menefee—
sanctioned to the act by his grey hair and widespread repute—had
introduced himself to the lady passenger, she had, herself, sweetly
breathed a name, in response, that the hearing of the male passengers
had variously interpreted. In the not unjealous spirit of rivalry that
eventuated, each clung stubbornly to his own theory. For the lady
passenger to have reasseverated or corrected would have seemed didactic
if not unduly solicitous of a specific acquaintance. Therefore the lady
passenger permitted herself to be Garlanded and McFarlanded and
Solomoned with equal and discreet complacency. It is thirty-five miles
from Paradise to Sunrise City. _Compagnon de voyage_ is name enough, by
the gripsack of the Wandering Jew! for so brief a journey.
Soon the little party of wayfarers were happily seated in a cheerful
arc before the roaring fire. The robes, cushions, and removable
portions of the coach had been brought in and put to service. The lady
passenger chose a place near the hearth at one end of the arc. There
she graced almost a throne that her subjects had prepared. She sat upon
cushions and leaned against an empty box and barrel, robe bespread,
which formed a defence from the invading draughts. She extended her
feet, delectably shod, to the cordial heat. She ungloved her hands, but
retained about her neck her long fur boa. The unstable flames half
revealed, while the warding boa half submerged, her face— a youthful
face, altogether feminine, clearly moulded and calm with beauty’s
unchallenged confidence. Chivalry and manhood were here vying to please
and comfort her. She seemed to accept their devoirs—not piquantly, as
one courted and attended; nor preeningly, as many of her sex unworthily
reap their honours; not yet stolidly, as the ox receives his hay; but
concordantly with nature’s own plan—as the lily ingests the drop of dew
foreordained to its refreshment.
Outside the wind roared mightily, the fine snow whizzed through the
cracks, the cold besieged the backs of the immolated six; but the
elements did not lack a champion that night. Judge Menefee was attorney
for the storm. The weather was his client, and he strove by special
pleading to convince his companions in that frigid jury-box that they
sojourned in a bower of roses, beset only by benignant zephyrs. He drew
upon a fund of gaiety, wit, and anecdote, sophistical, but crowned with
success. His cheerfulness communicated itself irresistibly. Each one
hastened to contribute his own quota toward the general optimism. Even
the lady passenger was moved to expression.
“I think it is quite charming,” she said, in her slow, crystal tones.
At intervals some one of the passengers would rise and humorously
explore the room. There was little evidence to be collected of its
habitation by old man Redruth.
Bildad Rose was called upon vivaciously for the ex-hermit’s history.
Now, since the stage-driver’s horses were fairly comfortable and his
passengers appeared to be so, peace and comity returned to him.
“The old didapper,” began Bildad, somewhat irreverently, “infested this
here house about twenty year. He never allowed nobody to come nigh him.
He’d duck his head inside and slam the door whenever a team drove
along. There was spinning-wheels up in his loft, all right. He used to
buy his groceries and tobacco at Sam Tilly’s store, on the Little
Muddy. Last August he went up there dressed in a red bedquilt, and told
Sam he was King Solomon, and that the Queen of Sheba was coming to
visit him. He fetched along all the money he had—a little bag full of
silver—and dropped it in Sam’s well. ‘She won’t come,’ says old man
Redruth to Sam, ‘if she knows I’ve got any money.’
“As soon as folks heard he had that sort of a theory about women and
money they knowed he was crazy; so they sent down and packed him to the
foolish asylum.”
“Was there a romance in his life that drove him to a solitary
existence?” asked one of the passengers, a young man who had an Agency.
“No,” said Bildad, “not that I ever heard spoke of. Just ordinary
trouble. They say he had had unfortunateness in the way of love
derangements with a young lady when he was young; before he contracted
red bed-quilts and had his financial conclusions disqualified. I never
heard of no romance.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Judge Menefee, impressively; “a case of unrequited
affection, no doubt.”
“No, sir,” returned Bildad, “not at all. She never married him.
Marmaduke Mulligan, down at Paradise, seen a man once that come from
old Redruth’s town. He said Redruth was a fine young man, but when you
kicked him on the pocket all you could hear jingle was a cuff-fastener
and a bunch of keys. He was engaged to this young lady—Miss Alice—
something was her name; I’ve forgot. This man said she was the kind of
girl you like to have reach across you in a car to pay the fare. Well,
there come to the town a young chap all affluent and easy, and fixed up
with buggies and mining stock and leisure time. Although she was a
staked claim, Miss Alice and the new entry seemed to strike a mutual
kind of a clip. They had calls and coincidences of going to the post
office and such things as sometimes make a girl send back the
engagement ring and other presents—‘a rift within the loot,’ the poetry
man calls it.
“One day folks seen Redruth and Miss Alice standing talking at the
gate. Then he lifts his hat and walks away, and that was the last
anybody in that town seen of him, as far as this man knew.”
“What about the young lady?” asked the young man who had an Agency.
“Never heard,” answered Bildad. “Right there is where my lode of
information turns to an old spavined crowbait, and folds its wings, for
I’ve pumped it dry.”
“A very sad—” began Judge Menefee, but his remark was curtailed by a
higher authority.
“What a charming story!” said the lady passenger, in flute-like tones.
A little silence followed, except for the wind and the crackling of the
fire.
The men were seated upon the floor, having slightly mitigated its
inhospitable surface with wraps and stray pieces of boards. The man who
was placing Little Goliath windmills arose and walked about to ease his
cramped muscles.
Suddenly a triumphant shout came from him. He hurried back from a dusky
corner of the room, bearing aloft something in his hand. It was an
apple—a large, red-mottled, firm pippin, pleasing to behold. In a paper
bag on a high shelf in that corner he had found it. It could have been
no relic of the lovewrecked Redruth, for its glorious soundness
repudiated the theory that it had lain on that musty shelf since
August. No doubt some recent bivouackers, lunching in the deserted
house, had left it there.
Dunwoody—again his exploits demand for him the honours of
nomenclature—flaunted his apple in the faces of his fellow-marooners.
“See what I found, Mrs. McFarland!” he cried, vaingloriously. He held
the apple high up in the light of the fire, where it glowed a still
richer red. The lady passenger smiled calmly—always calmly.
“What a charming apple!” she murmured, clearly.
For a brief space Judge Menefee felt crushed, humiliated, relegated.
Second place galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished
man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover
the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a
function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of
comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady
passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an
admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed a feat! And the windmill
man swelled and gyrated like a sample of his own goods, puffed up with
the wind that ever blows from the chorus land toward the domain of the
star.
While the transported Dunwoody, with his Aladdin’s apple, was receiving
the fickle attentions of all, the resourceful jurist formed a plan to
recover his own laurels.
With his courtliest smile upon his heavy but classic features, Judge
Menefee advanced, and took the apple, as if to examine it, from the
hand of Dunwoody. In his hand it became Exhibit A.
“A fine apple,” he said, approvingly. “Really, my dear Mr. Dudwindy,
you have eclipsed all of us as a forager. But I have an idea. This
apple shall become an emblem, a token, a symbol, a prize bestowed by
the mind and heart of beauty upon the most deserving.”
The audience, except one, applauded. “Good on the stump, ain’t he?”
commented the passenger who was nobody in particular to the young man
who had an Agency.
The unresponsive one was the windmill man. He saw himself reduced to
the ranks. Never would the thought have occurred to him to declare his
apple an emblem. He had intended, after it had been divided and eaten,
to create diversion by sticking the seeds against his forehead and
naming them for young ladies of his acquaintance. One he was going to
name Mrs. McFarland. The seed that fell off first would be—but ’twas
too late now.
“The apple,” continued Judge Menefee, charging his jury, “in modern
days occupies, though undeservedly, a lowly place in our esteem.
Indeed, it is so constantly associated with the culinary and the
commercial that it is hardly to be classed among the polite fruits. But
in ancient times this was not so. Biblical, historical, and
mythological lore abounds with evidences that the apple was the
aristocrat of fruits. We still say ‘the apple of the eye’ when we wish
to describe something superlatively precious. We find in Proverbs the
comparison to ‘apples of silver.’ No other product of tree or vine has
been so utilised in figurative speech. Who has not heard of and longed
for the ‘apples of the Hesperides’? I need not call your attention to
the most tremendous and significant instance of the apple’s ancient
prestige when its consumption by our first parents occasioned the fall
of man from his state of goodness and perfection.”
“Apples like them,” said the windmill man, lingering with the objective
article, “are worth $3.50 a barrel in the Chicago market.”
“Now, what I have to propose,” said Judge Menefee, conceding an
indulgent smile to his interrupter, “is this: We must remain here,
perforce, until morning. We have wood in plenty to keep us warm. Our
next need is to entertain ourselves as best we can, in order that the
time shall not pass too slowly. I propose that we place this apple in
the hands of Miss Garland. It is no longer a fruit, but, as I said, a
prize, in award, representing a great human idea. Miss Garland,
herself, shall cease to be an individual—but only temporarily, I am
happy to add”—(a low bow, full of the old-time grace). “She shall
represent her sex; she shall be the embodiment, the epitome of
womankind—the heart and brain, I may say, of God’s masterpiece of
creation. In this guise she shall judge and decide the question which
follows:
“But a few minutes ago our friend, Mr. Rose, favoured us with an
entertaining but fragmentary sketch of the romance in the life of the
former professor of this habitation. The few facts that we have learned
seem to me to open up a fascinating field for conjecture, for the study
of human hearts, for the exercise of the imagination—in short, for
story-telling. Let us make use of the opportunity. Let each one of us
relate his own version of the story of Redruth, the hermit, and his
lady-love, beginning where Mr. Rose’s narrative ends—at the parting of
the lovers at the gate. This much should be assumed and conceded—that
the young lady was not necessarily to blame for Redruth’s becoming a
crazed and world-hating hermit. When we have done, Miss Garland shall
render the JUDGEMENT OF WOMAN. As the Spirit of her Sex she shall
decide which version of the story best and most truly depicts human and
love interest, and most faithfully estimates the character and acts of
Redruth’s betrothed according to the feminine view. The apple shall be
bestowed upon him who is awarded the decision. If you are all agreed,
we shall be pleased to hear the first story from Mr. Dinwiddie.”
The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger
in the dumps.
“That’s a first-rate scheme, Judge,” he said, heartily. “Be a regular
short-story vaudeville, won’t it? I used to be correspondent for a
paper in Springfield, and when there wasn’t any news I faked it. Guess
I can do my turn all right.”
“I think the idea is charming,” said the lady passenger, brightly. “It
will be almost like a game.”
Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand
impressively.
“In olden days,” he said, orotundly, “Paris awarded the golden apple to
the most beautiful.”
“I was at the Exposition,” remarked the windmill man, now cheerful
again, “but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the
time I wasn’t at the machinery exhibit.”
“But now,” continued the Judge, “the fruit shall translate to us the
mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland.
Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as you may
deem it just.”
The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath her
robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark, brightly
and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might have
listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon the
fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. “Will you oblige us with the
initial story?” he asked.
The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his head
on account of the draughts.
“Well,” he began, without any embarrassment, “this is about the way I
size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by
this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of
his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is
still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold
bonds when he’s got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see
her. Well, maybe he’s hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets
that an engagement ain’t always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that
makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. Well, she answers back sharp.
Well, he—”
“Say!” interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, “if you
could put up a windmill on every one of them ‘wells’ you’re using,
you’d be able to retire from business, wouldn’t you?”
The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.
“Oh, I ain’t no _Guy de Mopassong_,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m giving
it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this:
‘Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,’ says she; ‘but he takes me riding
and buys me theatre tickets, and that’s what you never do. Ain’t I to
never have any pleasure in life while I can?’ ‘Pass this
chatfield-chatfield thing along,’ says Redruth;—‘hand out the mitt to
the Willie with creases in it or you don’t put your slippers under my
wardrobe.’
“Now that kind of train orders don’t go with a girl that’s got any
spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only
wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and
caramels before she settled down to patch George’s other pair, and be a
good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won’t come down.
Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away
and hits the booze. Yep. That’s what done it. I bet that girl fired the
cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left. George
boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts unknown. He
sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the aniline and
aquafortis gets the decision. ‘Me for the hermit’s hut,’ says George,
‘and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that isn’t there.’
“But that Alice, in my mind, was on the level. She never married, but
took up typewriting as soon as the wrinkles began to show, and kept a
cat that came when you said ‘weeny—weeny—weeny!’ I got too much faith
in good women to believe they throw down the fellow they’re stuck on
every time for the dough.” The windmill man ceased.
“I think,” said the lady passenger, slightly moving upon her lowly
throne, “that that is a char—”
“Oh, Miss Garland!” interposed Judge Menefee, with uplifted hand, “I
beg of you, no comments! It would not be fair to the other contestants.
Mr.—er—will you take the next turn?” The Judge addressed the young man
who had the Agency.
“My version of the romance,” began the young man, diffidently clasping
his hands, “would be this: They did not quarrel when they parted. Mr.
Redruth bade her good-by and went out into the world to seek his
fortune. He knew his love would remain true to him. He scorned the
thought that his rival could make an impression upon a heart so fond
and faithful. I would say that Mr. Redruth went out to the Rocky
Mountains in Wyoming to seek for gold. One day a crew of pirates landed
and captured him while at work, and—”
“Hey! what’s that?” sharply called the passenger who was nobody in
particular—“a crew of pirates landed in the Rocky Mountains! Will you
tell us how they sailed—”
“Landed from a train,” said the narrator, quietly and not without some
readiness. “They kept him prisoner in a cave for months, and then they
took him hundreds of miles away to the forests of Alaska. There a
beautiful Indian girl fell in love with him, but he remained true to
Alice. After another year of wandering in the woods, he set out with
the diamonds—”
“What diamonds?” asked the unimportant passenger, almost with acerbity.
“The ones the saddlemaker showed him in the Peruvian temple,” said the
other, somewhat obscurely. “When he reached home, Alice’s mother led
him, weeping, to a green mound under a willow tree. ‘Her heart was
broken when you left,’ said her mother. ‘And what of my rival—of
Chester McIntosh?’ asked Mr. Redruth, as he knelt sadly by Alice’s
grave. ‘When he found out,’ she answered, ‘that her heart was yours, he
pined away day by day until, at length, he started a furniture store in
Grand Rapids. We heard lately that he was bitten to death by an
infuriated moose near South Bend, Ind., where he had gone to try to
forget scenes of civilisation.’ With which, Mr. Redruth forsook the
face of mankind and became a hermit, as we have seen.
“My story,” concluded the young man with an Agency, “may lack the
literary quality; but what I wanted it to show is that the young lady
remained true. She cared nothing for wealth in comparison with true
affection. I admire and believe in the fair sex too much to think
otherwise.”
The narrator ceased, with a sidelong glance at the corner where
reclined the lady passenger.
Bildad Rose was next invited by Judge Menefee to contribute his story
in the contest for the apple of judgment. The stage-driver’s essay was
brief.
“I’m not one of them lobo wolves,” he said, “who are always blaming on
women the calamities of life. My testimony in regards to the fiction
story you ask for, Judge, will be about as follows: What ailed Redruth
was pure laziness. If he had up and slugged this Percival De Lacey that
tried to give him the outside of the road, and had kept Alice in the
grape-vine swing with the blind-bridle on, all would have been well.
The woman you want is sure worth taking pains for.
“‘Send for me if you want me again,’ says Redruth, and hoists his
Stetson, and walks off. He’d have called it pride, but the
nixycomlogical name for it is laziness. No woman don’t like to run
after a man. ‘Let him come back, hisself,’ says the girl; and I’ll be
bound she tells the boy with the pay ore to trot; and then spends her
time watching out the window for the man with the empty pocket-book and
the tickly moustache.
“I reckon Redruth waits about nine year expecting her to send him a
note by a nigger asking him to forgive her. But she don’t. ‘This game
won’t work,’ says Redruth; ‘then so won’t I.’ And he goes in the hermit
business and raises whiskers. Yes; laziness and whiskers was what done
the trick. They travel together. You ever hear of a man with long
whiskers and hair striking a bonanza? No. Look at the Duke of
Marlborough and this Standard Oil snoozer. Have they got ’em?
“Now, this Alice didn’t never marry, I’ll bet a hoss. If Redruth had
married somebody else she might have done so, too. But he never turns
up. She has these here things they call fond memories, and maybe a lock
of hair and a corset steel that he broke, treasured up. Them sort of
articles is as good as a husband to some women. I’d say she played out
a lone hand. I don’t blame no woman for old man Redruth’s abandonment
of barber shops and clean shirts.”
Next in order came the passenger who was nobody in particular. Nameless
to us, he travels the road from Paradise to Sunrise City.
But him you shall see, if the firelight be not too dim, as he responds
to the Judge’s call.
A lean form, in rusty-brown clothing, sitting like a frog, his arms
wrapped about his legs, his chin resting upon his knees. Smooth,
oakum-coloured hair; long nose; mouth like a satyr’s, with upturned,
tobacco-stained corners. An eye like a fish’s; a red necktie with a
horseshoe pin. He began with a rasping chuckle that gradually formed
itself into words.
“Everybody wrong so far. What! a romance without any orange blossoms!
Ho, ho! My money on the lad with the butterfly tie and the certified
checks in his trouserings.
“Take ’em as they parted at the gate? All right. ‘You never loved me,’
says Redruth, wildly, ‘or you wouldn’t speak to a man who can buy you
the ice-cream.’ ‘I hate him,’ says she. ‘I loathe his side-bar buggy; I
despise the elegant cream bonbons he sends me in gilt boxes covered
with real lace; I feel that I could stab him to the heart when he
presents me with a solid medallion locket with turquoises and pearls
running in a vine around the border. Away with him! ’Tis only you I
love.’ ‘Back to the cosy corner!’ says Redruth. ‘Was I bound and
lettered in East Aurora? Get platonic, if you please. No jack-pots for
mine. Go and hate your friend some more. For me the Nickerson girl on
Avenue B, and gum, and a trolley ride.’
“Around that night comes John W. Croesus. ‘What! tears?’ says he,
arranging his pearl pin. ‘You have driven my lover away,’ says little
Alice, sobbing: ‘I hate the sight of you.’ ‘Marry me, then,’ says John
W., lighting a Henry Clay. ‘What!’ she cries indignantly, ‘marry you!
Never,’ she says, ‘until this blows over, and I can do some shopping,
and you see about the licence. There’s a telephone next door if you
want to call up the county clerk.’”
The narrator paused to give vent to his cynical chuckle.
“Did they marry?” he continued. “Did the duck swallow the June-bug? And
then I take up the case of Old Boy Redruth. There’s where you are all
wrong again, according to my theory. What turned him into a hermit? One
says laziness; one says remorse; one says booze. I say women did it.
How old is the old man now?” asked the speaker, turning to Bildad Rose.
“I should say about sixty-five.”
“All right. He conducted his hermit shop here for twenty years. Say he
was twenty-five when he took off his hat at the gate. That leaves
twenty years for him to account for, or else be docked. Where did he
spend that ten and two fives? I’ll give you my idea. Up for bigamy. Say
there was the fat blonde in Saint Jo, and the panatela brunette at
Skillet Ridge, and the gold tooth down in the Kaw valley. Redruth gets
his cases mixed, and they send him up the road. He gets out after they
are through with him, and says: ‘Any line for me except the crinoline.
The hermit trade is not overdone, and the stenographers never apply to
’em for work. The jolly hermit’s life for me. No more long hairs in the
comb or dill pickles lying around in the cigar tray.’ You tell me they
pinched old Redruth for the noodle villa just because he said he was
King Solomon? Figs! He _was_ Solomon. That’s all of mine. I guess it
don’t call for any apples. Enclosed find stamps. It don’t sound much
like a prize winner.”
Respecting the stricture laid by Judge Menefee against comments upon
the stories, all were silent when the passenger who was nobody in
particular had concluded. And then the ingenious originator of the
contest cleared his throat to begin the ultimate entry for the prize.
Though seated with small comfort upon the floor, you might search in
vain for any abatement of dignity in Judge Menefee. The now diminishing
firelight played softly upon his face, as clearly chiselled as a Roman
emperor’s on some old coin, and upon the thick waves of his honourable
grey hair.
“A woman’s heart!” he began, in even but thrilling tones—“who can hope
to fathom it? The ways and desires of men are various. I think that the
hearts of all women beat with the same rhythm, and to the same old tune
of love. Love, to a woman, means sacrifice. If she be worthy of the
name, no gold or rank will outweigh with her a genuine devotion.
“Gentlemen of the—er—I should say, my friends, the case of Redruth
_versus_ love and affection has been called. Yet, who is on trial? Not
Redruth, for he has been punished. Not those immortal passions that
clothe our lives with the joy of the angels. Then who? Each man of us
here to-night stands at the bar to answer if chivalry or darkness
inhabits his bosom. To judge us sits womankind in the form of one of
its fairest flowers. In her hand she holds the prize, intrinsically
insignificant, but worthy of our noblest efforts to win as a guerdon of
approval from so worthy a representative of feminine judgment and
taste.
“In taking up the imaginary history of Redruth and the fair being to
whom he gave his heart, I must, in the beginning, raise my voice
against the unworthy insinuation that the selfishness or perfidy or
love of luxury of any woman drove him to renounce the world. I have not
found woman to be so unspiritual or venal. We must seek elsewhere,
among man’s baser nature and lower motives for the cause.
“There was, in all probability, a lover’s quarrel as they stood at the
gate on that memorable day. Tormented by jealousy, young Redruth
vanished from his native haunts. But had he just cause to do so? There
is no evidence for or against. But there is something higher than
evidence; there is the grand, eternal belief in woman’s goodness, in
her steadfastness against temptation, in her loyalty even in the face
of proffered riches.
“I picture to myself the rash lover, wandering, self-tortured, about
the world. I picture his gradual descent, and, finally, his complete
despair when he realises that he has lost the most precious gift life
had to offer him. Then his withdrawal from the world of sorrow and the
subsequent derangement of his faculties becomes intelligible.
“But what do I see on the other hand? A lonely woman fading away as the
years roll by; still faithful, still waiting, still watching for a form
and listening for a step that will come no more. She is old now. Her
hair is white and smoothly banded. Each day she sits at the door and
gazes longingly down the dusty road. In spirit she is waiting there at
the gate, just as he left her—his forever, but not here below. Yes; my
belief in woman paints that picture in my mind. Parted forever on
earth, but waiting! She in anticipation of a meeting in Elysium; he in
the Slough of Despond.”
“I thought he was in the bughouse,” said the passenger who was nobody
in particular.
Judge Menefee stirred, a little impatiently. The men sat, drooping, in
grotesque attitudes. The wind had abated its violence; coming now in
fitful, virulent puffs. The fire had burned to a mass of red coals
which shed but a dim light within the room. The lady passenger in her
cosy nook looked to be but a formless dark bulk, crowned by a mass of
coiled, sleek hair and showing but a small space of snowy forehead
above her clinging boa.
Judge Menefee got stiffly to his feet.
“And now, Miss Garland,” he announced, “we have concluded. It is for
you to award the prize to the one of us whose argument—especially, I
may say, in regard to his estimate of true womanhood—approaches nearest
to your own conception.”
No answer came from the lady passenger. Judge Menefee bent over
solicitously. The passenger who was nobody in particular laughed low
and harshly. The lady was sleeping sweetly. The Judge essayed to take
her hand to awaken her. In doing so he touched a small, cold, round,
irregular something in her lap.
“She has eaten the apple,” announced Judge Menefee, in awed tones, as
he held up the core for them to see.
XIII
THE MISSING CHORD
I stopped overnight at the sheep-ranch of Rush Kinney, on the Sandy
Fork of the Nueces. Mr. Kinney and I had been strangers up to the time
when I called “Hallo!” at his hitching-rack; but from that moment until
my departure on the next morning we were, according to the Texas code,
undeniable friends.
After supper the ranchman and I lugged our chairs outside the two-room
house, to its floorless gallery roofed with chaparral and sacuista
grass. With the rear legs of our chairs sinking deep into the
hardpacked loam, each of us reposed against an elm pillar of the
structure and smoked El Toro tobacco, while we wrangled amicably
concerning the affairs of the rest of the world.
As for conveying adequate conception of the engaging charm of that
prairie evening, despair waits upon it. It is a bold chronicler who
will undertake the description of a Texas night in the early spring. An
inventory must suffice.
The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient
prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear,
lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as
dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous
air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild
flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great,
round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark
lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. In
the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless panic
would send a squad of them huddling together with a drumming rush. For
other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped beyond the shearing-pen,
and whippoorwills twittered in the long grass. But even these
dissonances hardly rippled the clear torrent of the mocking-birds’
notes that fell from a dozen neighbouring shrubs and trees. It would
not have been preposterous for one to tiptoe and essay to touch the
stars, they hung so bright and imminent.
Mr. Kinney’s wife, a young and capable woman, we had left in the house.
She remained to busy herself with the domestic round of duties, in
which I had observed that she seemed to take a buoyant and contented
pride. In one room we had supped. Presently, from the other, as Kinney
and I sat without, there burst a volume of sudden and brilliant music.
If I could justly estimate the art of piano-playing, the construer of
that rollicking fantasia had creditably mastered the secrets of the
keyboard. A piano, and one so well played, seemed to me to be an
unusual thing to find in that small and unpromising ranch-house. I must
have looked my surprise at Rush Kinney, for he laughed in his soft,
Southern way, and nodded at me through the moonlit haze of our
cigarettes.
“You don’t often hear as agreeable a noise as that on a sheep-ranch,”
he remarked; “but I never see any reason for not playing up to the arts
and graces just because we happen to live out in the brush. It’s a
lonesome life for a woman; and if a little music can make it any
better, why not have it? That’s the way I look at it.”
“A wise and generous theory,” I assented. “And Mrs. Kinney plays well.
I am not learned in the science of music, but I should call her an
uncommonly good performer. She has technic and more than ordinary
power.”
The moon was very bright, you will understand, and I saw upon Kinney’s
face a sort of amused and pregnant expression, as though there were
things behind it that might be expounded.
“You came up the trail from the Double-Elm Fork,” he said promisingly.
“As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted _jacal_ to your
left under a comma mott.”
“I did,” said I. “There was a drove of _javalis_ rooting around it. I
could see by the broken corrals that no one lived there.”
“That’s where this music proposition started,” said Kinney. “I don’t
mind telling you about it while we smoke. That’s where old Cal Adams
lived. He had about eight hundred graded merinos and a daughter that
was solid silk and as handsome as a new stake-rope on a thirty-dollar
pony. And I don’t mind telling you that I was guilty in the second
degree of hanging around old Cal’s ranch all the time I could spare
away from lambing and shearing. Miss Marilla was her name; and I had
figured it out by the rule of two that she was destined to become the
chatelaine and lady superior of Rancho Lomito, belonging to R. Kinney,
Esq., where you are now a welcome and honoured guest.
“I will say that old Cal wasn’t distinguished as a sheepman. He was a
little, old stoop-shouldered _hombre_ about as big as a gun scabbard,
with scraggy white whiskers, and condemned to the continuous use of
language. Old Cal was so obscure in his chosen profession that he
wasn’t even hated by the cowmen. And when a sheepman don’t get eminent
enough to acquire the hostility of the cattlemen, he is mighty apt to
die unwept and considerably unsung.
“But that Marilla girl was a benefit to the eye. And she was the most
elegant kind of a housekeeper. I was the nearest neighbour, and I used
to ride over to the Double-Elm anywhere from nine to sixteen times a
week with fresh butter or a quarter of venison or a sample of new
sheep-dip just as a frivolous excuse to see Marilla. Marilla and me got
to be extensively inveigled with each other, and I was pretty sure I
was going to get my rope around her neck and lead her over to the
Lomito. Only she was so everlastingly permeated with filial sentiments
toward old Cal that I never could get her to talk about serious
matters.
“You never saw anybody in your life that was as full of knowledge and
had less sense than old Cal. He was advised about all the branches of
information contained in learning, and he was up to all the rudiments
of doctrines and enlightenment. You couldn’t advance him any ideas on
any of the parts of speech or lines of thought. You would have thought
he was a professor of the weather and politics and chemistry and
natural history and the origin of derivations. Any subject you brought
up old Cal could give you an abundant synopsis of it from the Greek
root up to the time it was sacked and on the market.
“One day just after the fall shearing I rides over to the Double-Elm
with a lady’s magazine about fashions for Marilla and a scientific
paper for old Cal.
“While I was tying my pony to a mesquite, out runs Marilla, ‘tickled to
death’ with some news that couldn’t wait.
“‘Oh, Rush,’ she says, all flushed up with esteem and gratification,
‘what do you think! Dad’s going to buy me a piano. Ain’t it grand? I
never dreamed I’d ever have one.”
“‘It’s sure joyful,’ says I. ‘I always admired the agreeable uproar of
a piano. It’ll be lots of company for you. That’s mighty good of Uncle
Cal to do that.’
“‘I’m all undecided,’ says Marilla, ‘between a piano and an organ. A
parlour organ is nice.’
“‘Either of ’em,’ says I, ‘is first-class for mitigating the lack of
noise around a sheep-ranch. For my part,’ I says, ‘I shouldn’t like
anything better than to ride home of an evening and listen to a few
waltzes and jigs, with somebody about your size sitting on the
piano-stool and rounding up the notes.’
“‘Oh, hush about that,’ says Marilla, ‘and go on in the house. Dad
hasn’t rode out to-day. He’s not feeling well.’
“Old Cal was inside, lying on a cot. He had a pretty bad cold and
cough. I stayed to supper.
“‘Going to get Marilla a piano, I hear,’ says I to him.
“‘Why, yes, something of the kind, Rush,’ says he. ‘She’s been
hankering for music for a long spell; and I allow to fix her up with
something in that line right away. The sheep sheared six pounds all
round this fall; and I’m going to get Marilla an instrument if it takes
the price of the whole clip to do it.’
“‘_Star wayno_,’ says I. ‘The little girl deserves it.’
“‘I’m going to San Antone on the last load of wool,’ says Uncle Cal,
‘and select an instrument for her myself.’
“‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ I suggests, ‘to take Marilla along and let
her pick out one that she likes?’
“I might have known that would set Uncle Cal going. Of course, a man
like him, that knew everything about everything, would look at that as
a reflection on his attainments.
“‘No, sir, it wouldn’t,’ says he, pulling at his white whiskers. ‘There
ain’t a better judge of musical instruments in the whole world than
what I am. I had an uncle,’ says he, ‘that was a partner in a
piano-factory, and I’ve seen thousands of ’em put together. I know all
about musical instruments from a pipe-organ to a corn-stalk fiddle.
There ain’t a man lives, sir, that can tell me any news about any
instrument that has to be pounded, blowed, scraped, grinded, picked, or
wound with a key.’
“‘You get me what you like, dad,’ says Marilla, who couldn’t keep her
feet on the floor from joy. ‘Of course you know what to select. I’d
just as lief it was a piano or a organ or what.’
“‘I see in St. Louis once what they call a orchestrion,’ says Uncle
Cal, ‘that I judged was about the finest thing in the way of music ever
invented. But there ain’t room in this house for one. Anyway, I imagine
they’d cost a thousand dollars. I reckon something in the piano line
would suit Marilla the best. She took lessons in that respect for two
years over at Birdstail. I wouldn’t trust the buying of an instrument
to anybody else but myself. I reckon if I hadn’t took up sheep-raising
I’d have been one of the finest composers or piano-and-organ
manufacturers in the world.’
“That was Uncle Cal’s style. But I never lost any patience with him, on
account of his thinking so much of Marilla. And she thought just as
much of him. He sent her to the academy over at Birdstail for two years
when it took nearly every pound of wool to pay the expenses.
“Along about Tuesday Uncle Cal put out for San Antone on the last
wagonload of wool. Marilla’s uncle Ben, who lived in Birdstail, come
over and stayed at the ranch while Uncle Cal was gone.
“It was ninety miles to San Antone, and forty to the nearest
railroad-station, so Uncle Cal was gone about four days. I was over at
the Double-Elm when he came rolling back one evening about sundown. And
up there in the wagon, sure enough, was a piano or a organ—we couldn’t
tell which—all wrapped up in woolsacks, with a wagon-sheet tied over it
in case of rain. And out skips Marilla, hollering, ‘Oh, oh!’ with her
eyes shining and her hair a-flying. ‘Dad—dad,’ she sings out, ‘have you
brought it—have you brought it?’—and it right there before her eyes, as
women will do.
“‘Finest piano in San Antone,’ says Uncle Cal, waving his hand, proud.
‘Genuine rosewood, and the finest, loudest tone you ever listened to. I
heard the storekeeper play it, and I took it on the spot and paid cash
down.’
“Me and Ben and Uncle Cal and a Mexican lifted it out of the wagon and
carried it in the house and set it in a corner. It was one of them
upright instruments, and not very heavy or very big.
“And then all of a sudden Uncle Cal flops over and says he’s mighty
sick. He’s got a high fever, and he complains of his lungs. He gets
into bed, while me and Ben goes out to unhitch and put the horses in
the pasture, and Marilla flies around to get Uncle Cal something hot to
drink. But first she puts both arms on that piano and hugs it with a
soft kind of a smile, like you see kids doing with their Christmas
toys.
“When I came in from the pasture, Marilla was in the room where the
piano was. I could see by the strings and woolsacks on the floor that
she had had it unwrapped. But now she was tying the wagon-sheet over it
again, and there was a kind of solemn, whitish look on her face.
“‘Ain’t wrapping up the music again, are you, Marilla?’ I asks. ‘What’s
the matter with just a couple of tunes for to see how she goes under
the saddle?’
“‘Not to-night, Rush,’ says she. ‘I don’t want to play any to-night.
Dad’s too sick. Just think, Rush, he paid three hundred dollars for it
—nearly a third of what the wool-clip brought!’
“‘Well, it ain’t anyways in the neighbourhood of a third of what you
are worth,’ I told her. ‘And I don’t think Uncle Cal is too sick to
hear a little agitation of the piano-keys just to christen the machine.
“‘Not to-night, Rush,’ says Marilla, in a way that she had when she
wanted to settle things.
“But it seems that Uncle Cal was plenty sick, after all. He got so bad
that Ben saddled up and rode over to Birdstail for Doc Simpson. I
stayed around to see if I’d be needed for anything.
“When Uncle Cal’s pain let up on him a little he called Marilla and
says to her: ‘Did you look at your instrument, honey? And do you like
it?’
“‘It’s lovely, dad,’ says she, leaning down by his pillow; ‘I never saw
one so pretty. How dear and good it was of you to buy it for me!’
“‘I haven’t heard you play on it any yet,’ says Uncle Cal; ‘and I’ve
been listening. My side don’t hurt quite so bad now—won’t you play a
piece, Marilla?’
“But no; she puts Uncle Cal off and soothes him down like you’ve seen
women do with a kid. It seems she’s made up her mind not to touch that
piano at present.
“When Doc Simpson comes over he tells us that Uncle Cal has pneumonia
the worst kind; and as the old man was past sixty and nearly on the
lift anyhow, the odds was against his walking on grass any more.
“On the fourth day of his sickness he calls for Marilla again and wants
to talk piano. Doc Simpson was there, and so was Ben and Mrs. Ben,
trying to do all they could.
“‘I’d have made a wonderful success in anything connected with music,’
says Uncle Cal. ‘I got the finest instrument for the money in San
Antone. Ain’t that piano all right in every respect, Marilla?’
“‘It’s just perfect, dad,’ says she. ‘It’s got the finest tone I ever
heard. But don’t you think you could sleep a little while now, dad?’
“‘No, I don’t,’ says Uncle Cal. ‘I want to hear that piano. I don’t
believe you’ve even tried it yet. I went all the way to San Antone and
picked it out for you myself. It took a third of the fall clip to buy
it; but I don’t mind that if it makes my good girl happier. Won’t you
play a little bit for dad, Marilla?’
“Doc Simpson beckoned Marilla to one side and recommended her to do
what Uncle Cal wanted, so it would get him quieted. And her uncle Ben
and his wife asked her, too.
“‘Why not hit out a tune or two with the soft pedal on?’ I asks
Marilla. ‘Uncle Cal has begged you so often. It would please him a good
deal to hear you touch up the piano he’s bought for you. Don’t you
think you might?’
“But Marilla stands there with big tears rolling down from her eyes and
says nothing. And then she runs over and slips her arm under Uncle
Cal’s neck and hugs him tight.
“‘Why, last night, dad,’ we heard her say, ‘I played it ever so much.
Honest—I have been playing it. And it’s such a splendid instrument, you
don’t know how I love it. Last night I played “Bonnie Dundee” and the
“Anvil Polka” and the “Blue Danube”—and lots of pieces. You must surely
have heard me playing a little, didn’t you, dad? I didn’t like to play
loud when you was so sick.’
“‘Well, well,’ says Uncle Cal, ‘maybe I did. Maybe I did and forgot
about it. My head is a little cranky at times. I heard the man in the
store play it fine. I’m mighty glad you like it, Marilla. Yes, I
believe I could go to sleep a while if you’ll stay right beside me till
I do.’
“There was where Marilla had me guessing. Much as she thought of that
old man, she wouldn’t strike a note on that piano that he’d bought her.
I couldn’t imagine why she told him she’d been playing it, for the
wagon-sheet hadn’t ever been off of it since she put it back on the
same day it come. I knew she could play a little anyhow, for I’d once
heard her snatch some pretty fair dance-music out of an old piano at
the Charco Largo Ranch.
“Well, in about a week the pneumonia got the best of Uncle Cal. They
had the funeral over at Birdstail, and all of us went over. I brought
Marilla back home in my buckboard. Her uncle Ben and his wife were
going to stay there a few days with her.
“That night Marilla takes me in the room where the piano was, while the
others were out on the gallery.
“‘Come here, Rush,’ says she; ‘I want you to see this now.’
“She unties the rope, and drags off the wagon-sheet.
“If you ever rode a saddle without a horse, or fired off a gun that
wasn’t loaded, or took a drink out of an empty bottle, why, then you
might have been able to scare an opera or two out of the instrument
Uncle Cal had bought.
“Instead of a piano, it was one of the machines they’ve invented to
play the piano with. By itself it was about as musical as the holes of
a flute without the flute.
“And that was the piano that Uncle Cal had selected; and standing by it
was the good, fine, all-wool girl that never let him know it.
“And what you heard playing a while ago,” concluded Mr. Kinney, “was
that same deputy-piano machine; only just at present it’s shoved up
against a six-hundred-dollar piano that I bought for Marilla as soon as
we was married.”
XIV
A CALL LOAN
In those days the cattlemen were the anointed. They were the grandees
of the grass, kings of the kine, lords of the lea, barons of beef and
bone. They might have ridden in golden chariots had their tastes so
inclined. The cattleman was caught in a stampede of dollars. It seemed
to him that he had more money than was decent. But when he had bought a
watch with precious stones set in the case so large that they hurt his
ribs, and a California saddle with silver nails and Angora skin
_suaderos_, and ordered everybody up to the bar for whisky—what else
was there for him to spend money for?
Not so circumscribed in expedient for the reduction of surplus wealth
were those lairds of the lariat who had womenfolk to their name. In the
breast of the rib-sprung sex the genius of purse lightening may slumber
through years of inopportunity, but never, my brothers, does it become
extinct.
So, out of the chaparral came Long Bill Longley from the Bar Circle
Branch on the Frio—a wife-driven man—to taste the urban joys of
success. Something like half a million dollars he had, with an income
steadily increasing.
Long Bill was a graduate of the camp and trail. Luck and thrift, a cool
head, and a telescopic eye for mavericks had raised him from cowboy to
be a cowman. Then came the boom in cattle, and Fortune, stepping
gingerly among the cactus thorns, came and emptied her cornucopia at
the doorstep of the ranch.
In the little frontier city of Chaparosa, Longley built a costly
residence. Here he became a captive, bound to the chariot of social
existence. He was doomed to become a leading citizen. He struggled for
a time like a mustang in his first corral, and then he hung up his
quirt and spurs. Time hung heavily on his hands. He organised the First
National Bank of Chaparosa, and was elected its president.
One day a dyspeptic man, wearing double-magnifying glasses, inserted an
official-looking card between the bars of the cashier’s window of the
First National Bank. Five minutes later the bank force was dancing at
the beck and call of a national bank examiner.
This examiner, Mr. J. Edgar Todd, proved to be a thorough one.
At the end of it all the examiner put on his hat, and called the
president, Mr. William R. Longley, into the private office.
“Well, how do you find things?” asked Longley, in his slow, deep tones.
“Any brands in the round-up you didn’t like the looks of?”
“The bank checks up all right, Mr. Longley,” said Todd; “and I find
your loans in very good shape—with one exception. You are carrying one
very bad bit of paper—one that is so bad that I have been thinking that
you surely do not realise the serious position it places you in. I
refer to a call loan of $10,000 made to Thomas Merwin. Not only is the
amount in excess of the maximum sum the bank can loan any individual
legally, but it is absolutely without endorsement or security. Thus you
have doubly violated the national banking laws, and have laid yourself
open to criminal prosecution by the Government. A report of the matter
to the Comptroller of the Currency—which I am bound to make—would, I am
sure, result in the matter being turned over to the Department of
Justice for action. You see what a serious thing it is.”
Bill Longley was leaning his lengthy, slowly moving frame back in his
swivel chair. His hands were clasped behind his head, and he turned a
little to look the examiner in the face. The examiner was surprised to
see a smile creep about the rugged mouth of the banker, and a kindly
twinkle in his light-blue eyes. If he saw the seriousness of the
affair, it did not show in his countenance.
“Of course, you don’t know Tom Merwin,” said Longley, almost genially.
“Yes, I know about that loan. It hasn’t any security except Tom
Merwin’s word. Somehow, I’ve always found that when a man’s word is
good it’s the best security there is. Oh, yes, I know the Government
doesn’t think so. I guess I’ll see Tom about that note.”
Mr. Todd’s dyspepsia seemed to grow suddenly worse. He looked at the
chaparral banker through his double-magnifying glasses in amazement.
“You see,” said Longley, easily explaining the thing away, “Tom heard
of 2000 head of two-year-olds down near Rocky Ford on the Rio Grande
that could be had for $8 a head. I reckon ’twas one of old Leandro
Garcia’s outfits that he had smuggled over, and he wanted to make a
quick turn on ’em. Those cattle are worth $15 on the hoof in Kansas
City. Tom knew it and I knew it. He had $6,000, and I let him have the
$10,000 to make the deal with. His brother Ed took ’em on to market
three weeks ago. He ought to be back ’most any day now with the money.
When he comes Tom’ll pay that note.”
The bank examiner was shocked. It was, perhaps, his duty to step out to
the telegraph office and wire the situation to the Comptroller. But he
did not. He talked pointedly and effectively to Longley for three
minutes. He succeeded in making the banker understand that he stood
upon the border of a catastrophe. And then he offered a tiny loophole
of escape.
“I am going to Hilldale’s to-night,” he told Longley, “to examine a
bank there. I will pass through Chaparosa on my way back. At twelve
o’clock to-morrow I shall call at this bank. If this loan has been
cleared out of the way by that time it will not be mentioned in my
report. If not—I will have to do my duty.”
With that the examiner bowed and departed.
The President of the First National lounged in his chair half an hour
longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin’s
house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat
with his feet upon a table, plaiting a rawhide quirt.
“Tom,” said Longley, leaning against the table, “you heard anything
from Ed yet?”
“Not yet,” said Merwin, continuing his plaiting. “I guess Ed’ll be
along back now in a few days.”
“There was a bank examiner,” said Longley, “nosing around our place
to-day, and he bucked a sight about that note of yours. You know I know
it’s all right, but the thing _is_ against the banking laws. I was
pretty sure you’d have paid it off before the bank was examined again,
but the son-of-a-gun slipped in on us, Tom. Now, I’m short of cash
myself just now, or I’d let you have the money to take it up with. I’ve
got till twelve o’clock to-morrow, and then I’ve got to show the cash
in place of that note or—”
“Or what, Bill?” asked Merwin, as Longley hesitated.
“Well, I suppose it means be jumped on with both of Uncle Sam’s feet.”
“I’ll try to raise the money for you on time,” said Merwin, interested
in his plaiting.
“All right, Tom,” concluded Longley, as he turned toward the door; “I
knew you would if you could.”
Merwin threw down his whip and went to the only other bank in town, a
private one, run by Cooper & Craig.
“Cooper,” he said, to the partner by that name, “I’ve got to have
$10,000 to-day or to-morrow. I’ve got a house and lot there that’s
worth about $6,000 and that’s all the actual collateral. But I’ve got a
cattle deal on that’s sure to bring me in more than that much profit
within a few days.”
Cooper began to cough.
“Now, for God’s sake don’t say no,” said Merwin. “I owe that much money
on a call loan. It’s been called, and the man that called it is a man
I’ve laid on the same blanket with in cow-camps and ranger-camps for
ten years. He can call anything I’ve got. He can call the blood out of
my veins and it’ll come. He’s got to have the money. He’s in a devil of
a—Well, he needs the money, and I’ve got to get it for him. You know my
word’s good, Cooper.”
“No doubt of it,” assented Cooper, urbanely, “but I’ve a partner, you
know. I’m not free in making loans. And even if you had the best
security in your hands, Merwin, we couldn’t accommodate you in less
than a week. We’re just making a shipment of $15,000 to Myer Brothers
in Rockdell, to buy cotton with. It goes down on the narrow-gauge
to-night. That leaves our cash quite short at present. Sorry we can’t
arrange it for you.”
Merwin went back to his little bare office and plaited at his quirt
again. About four o’clock in the afternoon he went to the First
National Bank and leaned over the railing of Longley’s desk.
“I’ll try to get that money for you to-night—I mean to-morrow, Bill.”
“All right, Tom,” said Longley quietly.
At nine o’clock that night Tom Merwin stepped cautiously out of the
small frame house in which he lived. It was near the edge of the little
town, and few citizens were in the neighbourhood at that hour. Merwin
wore two six-shooters in a belt, and a slouch hat. He moved swiftly
down a lonely street, and then followed the sandy road that ran
parallel to the narrow-gauge track until he reached the water-tank, two
miles below the town. There Tom Merwin stopped, tied a black silk
handkerchief about the lower part of his face, and pulled his hat down
low.
In ten minutes the night train for Rockdell pulled up at the tank,
having come from Chaparosa.
With a gun in each hand Merwin raised himself from behind a clump of
chaparral and started for the engine. But before he had taken three
steps, two long, strong arms clasped him from behind, and he was lifted
from his feet and thrown, face downward upon the grass. There was a
heavy knee pressing against his back, and an iron hand grasping each of
his wrists. He was held thus, like a child, until the engine had taken
water, and until the train had moved, with accelerating speed, out of
sight. Then he was released, and rose to his feet to face Bill Longley.
“The case never needed to be fixed up this way, Tom,” said Longley. “I
saw Cooper this evening, and he told me what you and him talked about.
Then I went down to your house to-night and saw you come out with your
guns on, and I followed you. Let’s go back, Tom.”
They walked away together, side by side.
“’Twas the only chance I saw,” said Merwin presently. “You called your
loan, and I tried to answer you. Now, what’ll you do, Bill, if they
sock it to you?”
“What would you have done if they’d socked it to you?” was the answer
Longley made.
“I never thought I’d lay in a bush to stick up a train,” remarked
Merwin; “but a call loan’s different. A call’s a call with me. We’ve
got twelve hours yet, Bill, before this spy jumps onto you. We’ve got
to raise them spondulicks somehow. Maybe we can—Great Sam Houston! do
you hear that?”
Merwin broke into a run, and Longley kept with him, hearing only a
rather pleasing whistle somewhere in the night rendering the lugubrious
air of “The Cowboy’s Lament.”
“It’s the only tune he knows,” shouted Merwin, as he ran. “I’ll bet—”
They were at the door of Merwin’s house. He kicked it open and fell
over an old valise lying in the middle of the floor. A sunburned,
firm-jawed youth, stained by travel, lay upon the bed puffing at a
brown cigarette.
“What’s the word, Ed?” gasped Merwin.
“So, so,” drawled that capable youngster. “Just got in on the 9:30.
Sold the bunch for fifteen, straight. Now, buddy, you want to quit
kickin’ a valise around that’s got $29,000 in greenbacks in its
in’ards.”
XV
THE PRINCESS AND THE PUMA
There had to be a king and queen, of course. The king was a terrible
old man who wore six-shooters and spurs, and shouted in such a
tremendous voice that the rattlers on the prairie would run into their
holes under the prickly pear. Before there was a royal family they
called the man “Whispering Ben.” When he came to own 50,000 acres of
land and more cattle than he could count, they called him O’Donnell
“the Cattle King.”
The queen had been a Mexican girl from Laredo. She made a good, mild,
Colorado-claro wife, and even succeeded in teaching Ben to modify his
voice sufficiently while in the house to keep the dishes from being
broken. When Ben got to be king she would sit on the gallery of
Espinosa Ranch and weave rush mats. When wealth became so irresistible
and oppressive that upholstered chairs and a centre table were brought
down from San Antone in the wagons, she bowed her smooth, dark head,
and shared the fate of the Danae.
To avoid _lèse-majesté_ you have been presented first to the king and
queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called “The
Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled
his Job.”
Josefa O’Donnell was the surviving daughter, the princess. From her
mother she inherited warmth of nature and a dusky, semi-tropic beauty.
From Ben O’Donnell the royal she acquired a store of intrepidity,
common sense, and the faculty of ruling. The combination was one worth
going miles to see. Josefa while riding her pony at a gallop could put
five out of six bullets through a tomato-can swinging at the end of a
string. She could play for hours with a white kitten she owned,
dressing it in all manner of absurd clothes. Scorning a pencil, she
could tell you out of her head what 1545 two-year-olds would bring on
the hoof, at $8.50 per head. Roughly speaking, the Espinosa Ranch is
forty miles long and thirty broad—but mostly leased land. Josefa, on
her pony, had prospected over every mile of it. Every cow-puncher on
the range knew her by sight and was a loyal vassal. Ripley Givens,
foreman of one of the Espinosa outfits, saw her one day, and made up
his mind to form a royal matrimonial alliance. Presumptuous? No. In
those days in the Nueces country a man was a man. And, after all, the
title of cattle king does not presuppose blood royalty. Often it only
signifies that its owner wears the crown in token of his magnificent
qualities in the art of cattle stealing.
One day Ripley Givens rode over to the Double Elm Ranch to inquire
about a bunch of strayed yearlings. He was late in setting out on his
return trip, and it was sundown when he struck the White Horse Crossing
of the Nueces. From there to his own camp it was sixteen miles. To the
Espinosa ranch it was twelve. Givens was tired. He decided to pass the
night at the Crossing.
There was a fine water hole in the river-bed. The banks were thickly
covered with great trees, undergrown with brush. Back from the water
hole fifty yards was a stretch of curly mesquite grass—supper for his
horse and bed for himself. Givens staked his horse, and spread out his
saddle blankets to dry. He sat down with his back against a tree and
rolled a cigarette. From somewhere in the dense timber along the river
came a sudden, rageful, shivering wail. The pony danced at the end of
his rope and blew a whistling snort of comprehending fear. Givens
puffed at his cigarette, but he reached leisurely for his pistol-belt,
which lay on the grass, and twirled the cylinder of his weapon
tentatively. A great gar plunged with a loud splash into the water
hole. A little brown rabbit skipped around a bunch of catclaw and sat
twitching his whiskers and looking humorously at Givens. The pony went
on eating grass.
It is well to be reasonably watchful when a Mexican lion sings soprano
along the arroyos at sundown. The burden of his song may be that young
calves and fat lambs are scarce, and that he has a carnivorous desire
for your acquaintance.
In the grass lay an empty fruit can, cast there by some former
sojourner. Givens caught sight of it with a grunt of satisfaction. In
his coat pocket tied behind his saddle was a handful or two of ground
coffee. Black coffee and cigarettes! What ranchero could desire more?
In two minutes he had a little fire going clearly. He started, with his
can, for the water hole. When within fifteen yards of its edge he saw,
between the bushes, a side-saddled pony with down-dropped reins
cropping grass a little distance to his left. Just rising from her
hands and knees on the brink of the water hole was Josefa O’Donnell.
She had been drinking water, and she brushed the sand from the palms of
her hands. Ten yards away, to her right, half concealed by a clump of
sacuista, Givens saw the crouching form of the Mexican lion. His amber
eyeballs glared hungrily; six feet from them was the tip of the tail
stretched straight, like a pointer’s. His hind-quarters rocked with the
motion of the cat tribe preliminary to leaping.
Givens did what he could. His six-shooter was thirty-five yards away
lying on the grass. He gave a loud yell, and dashed between the lion
and the princess.
The “rucus,” as Givens called it afterward, was brief and somewhat
confused. When he arrived on the line of attack he saw a dim streak in
the air, and heard a couple of faint cracks. Then a hundred pounds of
Mexican lion plumped down upon his head and flattened him, with a heavy
jar, to the ground. He remembered calling out: “Let up, now—no fair
gouging!” and then he crawled from under the lion like a worm, with his
mouth full of grass and dirt, and a big lump on the back of his head
where it had struck the root of a water-elm. The lion lay motionless.
Givens, feeling aggrieved, and suspicious of fouls, shook his fist at
the lion, and shouted: “I’ll rastle you again for twenty—” and then he
got back to himself.
Josefa was standing in her tracks, quietly reloading her silver-mounted
.38. It had not been a difficult shot. The lion’s head made an easier
mark than a tomato-can swinging at the end of a string. There was a
provoking, teasing, maddening smile upon her mouth and in her dark
eyes. The would-be-rescuing knight felt the fire of his fiasco burn
down to his soul. Here had been his chance, the chance that he had
dreamed of; and Momus, and not Cupid, had presided over it. The satyrs
in the wood were, no doubt, holding their sides in hilarious, silent
laughter. There had been something like vaudeville—say Signor Givens
and his funny knockabout act with the stuffed lion.
“Is that you, Mr. Givens?” said Josefa, in her deliberate, saccharine
contralto. “You nearly spoilt my shot when you yelled. Did you hurt
your head when you fell?”
“Oh, no,” said Givens, quietly; “that didn’t hurt.” He stooped
ignominiously and dragged his best Stetson hat from under the beast. It
was crushed and wrinkled to a fine comedy effect. Then he knelt down
and softly stroked the fierce, open-jawed head of the dead lion.
“Poor old Bill!” he exclaimed mournfully.
“What’s that?” asked Josefa, sharply.
“Of course you didn’t know, Miss Josefa,” said Givens, with an air of
one allowing magnanimity to triumph over grief. “Nobody can blame you.
I tried to save him, but I couldn’t let you know in time.”
“Save who?”
“Why, Bill. I’ve been looking for him all day. You see, he’s been our
camp pet for two years. Poor old fellow, he wouldn’t have hurt a
cottontail rabbit. It’ll break the boys all up when they hear about it.
But you couldn’t tell, of course, that Bill was just trying to play
with you.”
Josefa’s black eyes burned steadily upon him. Ripley Givens met the
test successfully. He stood rumpling the yellow-brown curls on his head
pensively. In his eye was regret, not unmingled with a gentle reproach.
His smooth features were set to a pattern of indisputable sorrow.
Josefa wavered.
“What was your pet doing here?” she asked, making a last stand.
“There’s no camp near the White Horse Crossing.”
“The old rascal ran away from camp yesterday,” answered Givens readily.
“It’s a wonder the coyotes didn’t scare him to death. You see, Jim
Webster, our horse wrangler, brought a little terrier pup into camp
last week. The pup made life miserable for Bill—he used to chase him
around and chew his hind legs for hours at a time. Every night when
bedtime came Bill would sneak under one of the boy’s blankets and sleep
to keep the pup from finding him. I reckon he must have been worried
pretty desperate or he wouldn’t have run away. He was always afraid to
get out of sight of camp.”
Josefa looked at the body of the fierce animal. Givens gently patted
one of the formidable paws that could have killed a yearling calf with
one blow. Slowly a red flush widened upon the dark olive face of the
girl. Was it the signal of shame of the true sportsman who has brought
down ignoble quarry? Her eyes grew softer, and the lowered lids drove
away all their bright mockery.
“I’m very sorry,” she said humbly; “but he looked so big, and jumped so
high that—”
“Poor old Bill was hungry,” interrupted Givens, in quick defence of the
deceased. “We always made him jump for his supper in camp. He would lie
down and roll over for a piece of meat. When he saw you he thought he
was going to get something to eat from you.”
Suddenly Josefa’s eyes opened wide.
“I might have shot you!” she exclaimed. “You ran right in between. You
risked your life to save your pet! That was fine, Mr. Givens. I like a
man who is kind to animals.”
Yes; there was even admiration in her gaze now. After all, there was a
hero rising out of the ruins of the anti-climax. The look on Givens’s
face would have secured him a high position in the S.P.C.A.
“I always loved ’em,” said he; “horses, dogs, Mexican lions, cows,
alligators—”
“I hate alligators,” instantly demurred Josefa; “crawly, muddy things!”
“Did I say alligators?” said Givens. “I meant antelopes, of course.”
Josefa’s conscience drove her to make further amends. She held out her
hand penitently. There was a bright, unshed drop in each of her eyes.
“Please forgive me, Mr. Givens, won’t you? I’m only a girl, you know,
and I was frightened at first. I’m very, very sorry I shot Bill. You
don’t know how ashamed I feel. I wouldn’t have done it for anything.”
Givens took the proffered hand. He held it for a time while he allowed
the generosity of his nature to overcome his grief at the loss of Bill.
At last it was clear that he had forgiven her.
“Please don’t speak of it any more, Miss Josefa. ’Twas enough to
frighten any young lady the way Bill looked. I’ll explain it all right
to the boys.”
“Are you really sure you don’t hate me?” Josefa came closer to him
impulsively. Her eyes were sweet—oh, sweet and pleading with gracious
penitence. “I would hate anyone who would kill my kitten. And how
daring and kind of you to risk being shot when you tried to save him!
How very few men would have done that!” Victory wrested from defeat!
Vaudeville turned into drama! Bravo, Ripley Givens!
It was now twilight. Of course Miss Josefa could not be allowed to ride
on to the ranch-house alone. Givens resaddled his pony in spite of that
animal’s reproachful glances, and rode with her. Side by side they
galloped across the smooth grass, the princess and the man who was kind
to animals. The prairie odours of fruitful earth and delicate bloom
were thick and sweet around them. Coyotes yelping over there on the
hill! No fear. And yet—
Josefa rode closer. A little hand seemed to grope. Givens found it with
his own. The ponies kept an even gait. The hands lingered together, and
the owner of one explained:
“I never was frightened before, but just think! How terrible it would
be to meet a really wild lion! Poor Bill! I’m so glad you came with
me!”
O’Donnell was sitting on the ranch gallery.
“Hello, Rip!” he shouted—“that you?”
“He rode in with me,” said Josefa. “I lost my way and was late.”
“Much obliged,” called the cattle king. “Stop over, Rip, and ride to
camp in the morning.”
But Givens would not. He would push on to camp. There was a bunch of
steers to start off on the trail at daybreak. He said good-night, and
trotted away.
An hour later, when the lights were out, Josefa, in her night-robe,
came to her door and called to the king in his own room across the
brick-paved hallway:
“Say, pop, you know that old Mexican lion they call the ‘Gotch-eared
Devil’—the one that killed Gonzales, Mr. Martin’s sheep herder, and
about fifty calves on the Salado range? Well, I settled his hash this
afternoon over at the White Horse Crossing. Put two balls in his head
with my .38 while he was on the jump. I knew him by the slice gone from
his left ear that old Gonzales cut off with his machete. You couldn’t
have made a better shot yourself, daddy.”
“Bully for you!” thundered Whispering Ben from the darkness of the
royal chamber.
XVI
THE INDIAN SUMMER OF DRY VALLEY JOHNSON