BY MAC A'RONY.
That is the idea; for Juliet's a dear, sweet, mere child of a
girl, you know, and she don't bray like a jackass.--_Huckleberry
Finn._
We did not tarry at the D. Horse Ranch, but later on pitched camp
near a sheep ranch run by a Mexican, who met us with a grunt that
nobody understood.
"Gee! how I wish I could speak Spanish!" remarked Pod, facing the
squatty ranchman. It was comical to watch Coonskin's puzzled face.
"I once studied Spanish, but why didn't I master it! Just two
words can I remember: "porque"--why, and "manana"--to-morrow. But
how can they help me? To utter them would be to ask, why
to-morrow? And there would be no sense in that."
"But it might convey the idea," I interrupted, "that either you
know more than you looked to know, or appeared to know more than
you do know; and that would be something."
My master did not answer, but when the Mexican came around again,
he said to him, "Porque manana?" The Mexican laughed--who could
blame him--and said something about Espanola, a young lady I never
heard tell of, and invited us all to the corral, except the men,
who followed him to the house. Nothing like Mexican hospitality
when one understands the language as Pod did.
At first the Mexican did not comprehend that we all were thirsty.
The Professor asked for a drink in many varieties of expression,
concluding with a desperate "Porque Manana?" at the same time
pointing to the well. The Mexican grinned, and replied in a peculiar
vernacular, and handed him a huge tin cup. Pod next inquired the
right trail to Brighton in many artistic demonstrations of verbal
inflection and gesticular design, and wound up with a heroic "Porque
Manana." The mystified sheep herder shook his head quizzically, and
began to pour out a whole tubful of liquid linguistics which my
pedantic master drained to the dregs without discovering their
meaning; then he shook hands with the gracious host and gave the
word to "hit the trail."
"Mighty lucky you understood Spanish, Mr. Pod," Coonskin remarked,
when we were some distance from the house. "I'd give a farm to
speak it like you."
That tickled Pod's vanity, and he told his flattering valet that
Spanish could not be learned in a day, but perhaps sometime he
would give him a few lessons, just to prepare him for an
emergency.
That night we donks were picketed to a rickety, barbed-wire fence,
and the men pitched the tent close by, cooked, and went to bed
early. Seldom had been so much care taken to prevent my getting
wound up in the rope so I couldn't eat or lie down. In the morning
there was a surprise for everybody. S' help me Balaam! if there
wasn't a circus, then I never saw one. We donks were completely
tangled in the dismantled wire fence, and cutting up capers to
beat a side-show. I kept my eye peeled on the tent door for an
hour. Finally Pod came out, took in the situation at a glance, and
then sat down on a cactus, for less than a fraction of a second,
to laugh.
I was proud of the rôle I played in that matinée. There I was,
with a fence post wired to each of my legs, which raised my feet
off the ground, walking about on veritable stilts, and close
behind me followed Cheese and Skates with a post yoking their
necks together, like oxen, while Damfino was rolling over and
over, unmindful of the cacti, as if our extraordinary sport were
for her special entertainment. We were quiet, until Cheese
suddenly opened his mouth and brayed with glee. I told him to shut
up. Says I, "Pod will think we got in this fix on purpose, and
give us Hail Columbia."
Pod looked worried. He said he wondered how they could dismount
that giraffe--meaning me, no doubt--without breaking his legs. I
didn't feel comfortable so far above the earth, the atmosphere was
chilly, and the rarified air made me dizzy; but that remark
frightened me. The trick was, at last, accomplished. Coonskin held
my fore-stilts, while Pod braced his feet, and with a violent push
threw me over on my side on a pile of blankets and pillows. Well,
let me tell you, my donkey friends, it required two hours to free
us from the fence-posts and wire. After that, both men busied
themselves like Red Cross Nurses. (Skates said they were cross
nurses of some sort), and bandaged up our cuts and scratches,
then, after breakfast, they saddled and packed us for the day's
journey. I never want another experience like that.
On Thursday night, I think (I ate up Pod's only calendar), we
again wandered from the trail, and about two o'clock camped near a
cottonwood tree which seemed to indicate we were near water.
Although I was awfully dry, I had to wait till morning. It was
pleasant to be lulled to sleep by the rustling of leaves (and it
was consoling to know something besides us donks had to rustle),
yet there we were in the boundless desert. Don's barking awoke us
early. A ranchman rode up and said we would find plenty of water
yonder at the well, the only water for many miles around; then he
rode away.
There was one long row of cottonwood trees hundreds of feet apart,
stretching for a mile or two across the desert, as if planted by
birds fifty years ago.
Pod took us empty donks and canteens over to the well. That was
the novelest thing I ever saw; and the water was the coolest I
ever tasted. An iron wheel turned in a cog and drove a piston-rod
down a deep well, the power being furnished by a meek-looking
horse which walked round the pump in circus fashion, thinking he
was the whole show, and pulled a sort of walking-beam that turned
the cog-wheel. There the ranchman and his big small boy rode every
morning many miles from home to pump water for their cattle, which
ate (they evidently had eaten everything in sight) during the day,
and chewed their cud at night in the cottonwood shade.
That morning, when several miles nearer our goal, a stiff wind
introduced itself and increased in velocity until such speed was
attained that the men had to stop traveling and tie the whole
outfit to the picket-pins driven in the ground. That gale beat the
tornado on the shore of Lake Erie, and the cyclone near Sterling.
We donks had to lie down with our backs to the wind, for Damfino,
not thinking, lay the other way at first, and the wind blew into
her mouth so fast she swelled up twice her natural size. She was
so full of air that she arose and turned around, before being able
to lie down again.
Pod said it was a good time to write his letter for the paper. So
he hitched his shoulders to ropes tied to picket-pins about five
feet apart, and sat in a camp-stool, and, facing the gale, laid
his writing pad on the wind, and finished his article in fine
style.
When I asked him how the wind could be so strong as to brace up
both the pad and his story, he said he was writing in a lighter
vein than usual.
We were in sight of Brighton next morning when a strange accident
happened to Pod. We were approaching a field of grain on an
irrigated ranch when, suddenly, he was struck on the head by a
mastodon grasshopper and knocked senseless out of the saddle. At
once Don chased the creature and headed him off, while Coonskin
lassoed him and bound him on Damfino. We took the wonder to
Denver. There Pod put the thing in a bottle of alcohol, but it
hadn't been there more than a half hour when it kicked out the
bottom, and almost upset a street car in trying to escape. Again
the grasshopper was captured, then poisoned and skinned, and the
bones were expressed to the Smithsonian Museum.
About one o'clock we left the line of the B. & M. railroad, and
cut across the plain six miles to the Union Pacific, which we had
left on the previous week. Then we began to descend into the
verdant valley of the Platte. Great fields of grain waved in the
breeze on either hand. The song of the reaper was cheering, the
glistening snow on the distant Rockies, cooling.
At last our caravan ambled into Brighton. It impressed me as a
pretty town; after crossing a two hundred mile desert, I was in
condition to compliment any sort of a place. That night we
traveled ten miles and camped near the Nine Mile House, where,
next morning, we were disappointed not to obtain breakfast.
Beautiful, far-famed Denver loomed up on the distant plain. The
smoke from her smelters curled on high, a dusky sign of
prosperity. We breakfasted three miles nearer the city, and at two
P. M. our picturesque outfit strode up Seventeenth street and
anchored in front of the Albany Hotel. Denver at last!