Arizona Nights
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Stewart Edward White >> Arizona Nights
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CHAPTER SIX
THE WAGON TIRE
About noon she emerged from the room, fully refreshed and wide
awake. She and Susie O'Toole had unpacked at least one of the
trunks, and now she stood arrayed in shirtwaist and blue skirt.
At once she stepped into the open air and looked about her with
considerable curiosity.
"So this is a real cattle ranch," was her comment.
Senor Johnson was at her side pressing on her with boyish
eagerness the sights of the place. She patted the stag hounds
and inspected the garden. Then, confessing herself hungry, she
obeyed with alacrity Sang's call to an early meal. At the table
she ate coquettishly, throwing her birdlike side glances at the
man opposite.
"I want to see a real cowboy," she announced, as she pushed her
chair back.
"Why, sure!" cried Senor Johnson joyously. "Sang! hi, Sang!
Tell Brent Palmer to step in here a minute."
After an interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his
high-heeled boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his
chaps impacting softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his
broad hat in both hands, his dark, level brows fixed on his
chief.
"Shake hands with Mrs. Johnson, Brent. I called you in because
she said she wanted to see a real cow-puncher."
"Oh, BUCK!" cried the woman.
For an instant the cow-puncher's level brows drew together. Then
he caught the woman's glance fair. He smiled.
"Well, I ain't much to look at," he proffered.
"That's not for you to say, sir," said Estrella, recovering.
"Brent, here, gentled your pony for you," exclaimed Senor
Johnson.
"Oh," cried Estrella, "have I a pony? How nice. And it was so
good of you, Mr. Brent. Can't I see him? I want to see him. I
want to give him a piece of sugar." She fumbled in the bowl.
"Sure you can see him. I don't know as he'll eat sugar. He
ain't that educated. Think you could teach him to eat sugar,
Brent?"
"I reckon," replied the cowboy.
They went out toward the corral, the cowboy joining them as a
matter of course. Estrella demanded explanations as she went
along. Their progress was leisurely. The blindfolded pump mule
interested her.
"And he goes round and round that way all day without stopping,
thinking he's really getting somewhere!" she marvelled. "I think
that's a shame! Poor old fellow, to get fooled that way!"
"It is some foolish," said Brent Palmer, "but he ain't any worse
off than a cow-pony that hikes out twenty mile and then twenty
back."
"No, I suppose not," admitted Estrella.
"And we got to have water, you know," added Senor Johnson.
Brent rode up the sorrel bareback. The pretty animal, gentle as
a kitten, nevertheless planted his forefeet strongly and snorted
at Estrella.
"I reckon he ain't used to the sight of a woman," proffered the
Senor, disappointed. "He'll get used to you. Go up to him
soft-like and rub him between the eyes."'
Estrella approached, but the pony jerked back his head with every
symptom of distrust. She forgot the sugar she had intended to
offer him.
"He's a perfect beauty," she said at last, "but, my! I'd never
dare ride him. I'm awful scairt of horses."
"Oh, he'll come around all right," assured Brent easily. "I'll
fix him."
"Oh, Mr. Brent," she exclaimed, "don't think I don't appreciate
what you've done. I'm sure he's really just as gentle as he can
be. It's only that I'm foolish."
"I'll fix him," repeated Brent.
The two men conducted her here and there, showing her the various
institutions of the place. A man bent near the shed nailing a
shoe to a horse's hoof.
"So you even have a blacksmith!" said Estrella. Her guides
laughed amusedly.
"Tommy, come here!" called the Senor.
The horseshoer straightened up and approached. He was a lithe,
curly-haired young boy, with a reckless, humorous eye and a
smooth face, now red from bending over.
"Tommy, shake hands with Mrs. Johnson," said the Senor. "Mrs.
Johnson wants to know if you're the blacksmith." He exploded in
laughter.
"Oh, BUCK!" cried Estrella again.
"No, ma'am," answered the boy directly; "I'm just tacking a shoe
on Danger, here. We all does our own blacksmithing."
His roving eye examined her countenance respectfully, but with
admiration. She caught the admiration and returned it, covertly
but unmistakably, pleased that her charms were appreciated.
They continued their rounds. The sun was very hot and the dust
deep. A woman would have known that these things distressed
Estrella. She picked her way through the debris; she dropped her
head from the burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening
with perspiration, her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through
the air. Over in the large corral a bronco buster, assisted by
two of the cowboys, was engaged in roping and throwing some wild
mustangs. The sight was wonderful, but here the dust billowed in
clouds.
"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I
think I'll go to the house."
But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of
herself by a bit of repairing Tommy had under way. The tire of a
wagon wheel had been destroyed. Tommy was mending it. On the
ground lay a fresh cowhide. From this Tommy was cutting a wide
strip. As she watched lie measured the strip around the
circumference of the wheel.
"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed,
incredulously.
"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.
"Will it wear?"
"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from
town."
Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide. Tommy was
fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.
"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come
right off as soon as you use it."
"It'll harden on tight enough."
"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"
Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it
shrink?" he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more,
nor harder. It'll mighty nigh break that wood."
Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why,
stooped again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her
head.
"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused
brightly. "I know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a
lot, but to break wood--that's piling it on a little thick."
"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful
strong. It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it.
You wrap anything up in a piece of that hide and see what
happens. Some time you take and wrap a piece around a potato and
put her out in the sun and see how it'll squeeze the water out of
her."
"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are
making fun of me."
"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.
Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her
wrists.
"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast,"
she said.
"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.
She untwisted the strip, and stood looking at it, her eyes wide.
"I--I don't know why--" she faltered. "The thought makes me a
little sick. Why, isn't it queer? Ugh! it's like a snake!" She
flung it from her energetically and turned toward the ranch
house.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ESTRELLA
The honeymoon developed and the necessary adjustments took place.
The latter Senor Johnson had not foreseen; and yet, when the
necessity for them arose, he acknowledged them right and proper.
"Course she don't want to ride over to Circle I with us," he
informed his confidant, Jed Parker. "It's a long ride, and she
ain't used to riding yet. Trouble is I've been thinking of doing
things with her just as if she was a man. Women are different.
They likes different things."
This second idea gradually overlaid the first in Senor Johnson's
mind. Estrella showed little aptitude or interest in the rougher
side of life. Her husband's statement as to her being still
unused to riding was distinctly a euphemism. Estrella never
arrived at the point of feeling safe on a horse. In time she
gave up trying, and the sorrel drifted back to cow-punching. The
range work she never understood.
As a spectacle it imposed itself on her interest for a week; but
since she could discover no real and vital concern in the welfare
of cows, soon the mere outward show became an old story.
Estrella's sleek nature avoided instinctively all that interfered
with bodily well-being. When she was cool and well-fed and not
thirsty, and surrounded by a proper degree of feminine
daintiness, then she was ready to amuse herself. But she could
not understand the desirability of those pleasures for which a
certain price in discomfort must be paid. As for firearms, she
confessed herself frankly afraid of them. That was the point at
which her intimacy with them stopped.
The natural level to which these waters fell is easily seen.
Quite simply, the Senor found that a wife does not enter fully
into her husband's workaday life. The dreams he had dreamed did
not come true.
This was at first a disappointment to him, of course, but the
disappointment did not last. Senor Johnson was a man of sense,
and he easily modified his first scheme of married life.
"She'd get sick of it, and I'd get sick of it," he formulated his
new philosophy. "Now I got something to come back to, somebody
to look forward to. And it's a WOMAN; it ain't one of these darn
gangle-leg cowgirls. The great thing is to feel you BELONG to
someone; and that someone nice and cool and fresh and purty is
waitin' for you when you come in tired. It beats that other
little old idee of mine slick as a gun barrel."
So, during this, the busy season of the range riding, immediately
before the great fall round-ups, Senor Johnson rode abroad all
day, and returned to his own hearth as many evenings of the week
as he could. Estrella always saw him coming and stood in the
doorway to greet him. He kicked off his spurs, washed and dusted
himself, and spent the evening with his wife. He liked the sound
of exactly that phrase, and was fond of repeating it to himself
in a variety of connections.
"When I get in I'll spend the evening with my wife." "If I don't
ride over to Circle I, I'll spend the evening with my wife," and
so on. He had a good deal to tell her of the day's discoveries,
the state of the range, and the condition of the cattle. To all
of this she listened at least with patience. Senor Johnson, like
most men who have long delayed marriage, was self-centred without
knowing it. His interest in his mate had to do with her
personality rather than with her doings.
"What you do with yourself all day to-day?" he occasionally
inquired.
"Oh, there's lots to do," she would answer, a trifle listlessly;
and this reply always seemed quite to satisfy his interest in the
subject.
Senor Johnson, with a curiously instant transformation often to
be observed among the adventurous, settled luxuriously into the
state of being a married man. Its smallest details gave him
distinct and separate sensations of pleasure.
"I plumb likes it all," he said. "I likes havin' interest in some
fool geranium plant, and I likes worryin' about the screen doors
and all the rest of the plumb foolishness. It does me good. It
feels like stretchin' your legs in front of a good warm fire."
The centre, the compelling influence of this new state of
affairs, was undoubtedly Estrella, and yet it is equally to be
doubted whether she stood for more than the suggestion. Senor
Johnson conducted his entire life with reference to his wife.
His waking hours were concerned only with the thought of her, his
every act revolved in its orbit controlled by her influence.
Nevertheless she, as an individual human being, had little to do
with it. Senor Johnson referred his life to a state of affairs
he had himself invented and which he called the married state,
and to a woman whose attitude he had himself determined upon and
whom be designated as his wife. The actual state of affairs--
whatever it might be--he did not see; and the actual woman
supplied merely the material medium necessary to the reality of
his idea. Whether Estrella's eyes were interested or bored,
bright or dull, alert or abstracted, contented or afraid, Senor
Johnson could not have told you. He might have replied promptly
enough--that they were happy and loving. That is the way Senor
Johnson conceived a wife's eyes.
The routine of life, then, soon settled. After breakfast the
Senor insisted that his wife accompany him on a short tour of
inspection. "A little pasear," he called it, "just to get set
for the day." Then his horse was brought, and he rode away on
whatever business called him. Like a true son of the alkali, he
took no lunch with him, nor expected his horse to feed until his
return. This was an hour before sunset. The evening passed as
has been described. It was all very simple.
When the business hung close to the ranch house was in the bronco
busting, the rebranding of bought cattle, and the like--he was
able to share his wife's day. Estrella conducted herself
dreamily, with a slow smile for him when his actual presence
insisted on her attention. She seemed much given to staring out
over the desert. Senor Johnson, appreciatively, thought he could
understand this. Again, she gave much leisure to rocking back
and forth on the low, wide veranda, her hands idle, her eyes
vacant, her lips dumb. Susie O'Toole had early proved
incompatible and had gone.
"A nice, contented, home sort of a woman," said Senor Johnson.
One thing alone besides the deserts on which she never seemed
tired of looking, fascinated her. Whenever a beef was killed for
the uses of the ranch, she commanded strips of the green skin.
Then, like a child, she bound them and sewed them and nailed them
to substances particularly susceptible to their constricting
power. She choked the necks of green gourds, she indented the
tender bark of cottonwood shoots, she expended an apparently
exhaustless ingenuity on the fabrication of mechanical devices
whose principle answered to the pulling of the drying rawhide.
And always along the adobe fence could be seen a long row of
potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh and smooth and round;
some sweating in the agony of squeezing; some wrinkled and dry
and little, the last drops of life tortured out of them. Senor
Johnson laughed good-humouredly at these toys, puzzled to explain
their fascination for his wife.
"They're sure an amusing enough contraption honey," said he, "but
what makes you stand out there in the hot sun staring at them
that way? It's cooler on the porch."
"I don't know," said Estrella, helplessly, turning her slow,
vacant gaze on him. Suddenly she shivered in a strong physical
revulsion. "I don't know!" she cried with passion.
After they had been married about a month Senor Johnson found it
necessary to drive into Willets.
"How would you like to go, too, and buy some duds?" he asked
Estrella.
"Oh!" she cried strangely. "When?"
"Day after tomorrow."
The trip decided, her entire attitude changed. The vacancy of
her gaze lifted; her movements quickened; she left off staring at
the desert, and her rawhide toys were neglected. Before
starting, Senor Johnson gave her a check book. He explained that
there were no banks in Willets, but that Goodrich, the
storekeeper, would honour her signature.
"Buy what you want to, honey," said he. "Tear her wide open. I'm
good for it."
"How much can I draw?" she asked, smiling.
"As much as you want to," he replied with emphasis.
"Take care"--she poised before him with the check book extended--
"I may draw--I might draw fifty thousand dollars."
"Not out of Goodrich," he grinned; "you'd bust the game. But
hold him up for the limit, anyway."
He chuckled aloud, pleased at the rare, bird-like coquetry of the
woman. They drove to Willets. It took them two days to go and
two days to return. Estrella went through the town in a cyclone
burst of enthusiasm, saw everything, bought everything, exhausted
everything in two hours. Willets was not a large place. On her
return to the ranch she sat down at once in the rocking-chair on
the veranda. Her hands fell into her lap. She stared out over
the desert.
Senor Johnson stole up behind her, clumsy as a playful bear. His
eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay
across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch
of ink.
"Pretty, isn't it, honey?" said he. "Glad to get back?"
She smiled at him her vacant, slow smile.
"Here's my check book," she said; "put it away for me. I'm
through with it."
"I'll put it in my desk," said he. "It's in the left-hand
cubbyhole," he called from inside.
"Very well," she replied.
He stood in the doorway, looking fondly at her unconscious
shoulders and the pose of her blonde head thrown back against the
high rocking-chair.
"That's the sort of a woman, after all," said Senor Johnson. "No
blame fuss about her."
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ROUND-UP
This, as you well may gather, was in the summer routine. Now the
time of the great fall round-up drew near. The home ranch began
to bustle in preparation.
All through Cochise County were short mountain ranges set down,
apparently at random, like a child's blocks. In and out between
them flowed the broad, plain-like valleys. On the valleys were
the various ranges, great or small, controlled by the different
individuals of the Cattlemen's Association. During the year an
unimportant, but certain, shifting of stock took place. A few
cattle of Senor Johnson's Lazy Y eluded the vigilance of his
riders to drift over through the Grant Pass and into the ranges
of his neighbour; equally, many of the neighbour's steers watered
daily at Senor Johnson's troughs. It was a matter of courtesy to
permit this, but one of the reasons for the fall round-up was a
redistribution to the proper ranges. Each cattle-owner sent an
outfit to the scene of labour. The combined outfits moved slowly
from one valley to another, cutting out the strays, branding the
late calves, collecting for the owner of that particular range
all his stock, that he might select his marketable beef. In turn
each cattleman was host to his neighbours and their men.
This year it had been decided to begin the circle of the round-up
at the C 0 Bar, near the banks of the San Pedro. Thence it would
work eastward, wandering slowly in north and south deviation, to
include all the country, until the final break-up would occur at
the Lazy Y.
The Lazy Y crew was to consist of four men, thirty riding horses,
a "chuck wagon," and cook. These, helping others, and receiving
help in turn, would suffice, for in the round-up labour was
pooled to a common end. With them would ride Jed Parker, to
safeguard his master's interests.
For a week the punchers, in their daily rides, gathered in the
range ponies. Senor Johnson owned fifty horses which he
maintained at the home ranch for every-day riding, two hundred
broken saddle animals, allowed the freedom of the range, except
when special occasion demanded their use, and perhaps half a
thousand quite unbroken--brood mares, stallions, young horses,
broncos, and the like. At this time of year it was his habit to
corral all those saddlewise in order to select horses for the
round-ups and to replace the ranch animals. The latter he turned
loose for their turn at the freedom of the range.
The horses chosen, next the men turned their attention to outfit.
Each had, of course, his saddle, spurs, and "rope." Of the
latter the chuck wagon carried many extra. That vehicle,
furthermore, transported such articles as the blankets, the
tarpaulins under which to sleep, the running irons for branding,
the cooking layout, and the men's personal effects. All was in
readiness to move for the six weeks' circle, when a complication
arose. Jed Parker, while nimbly escaping an irritated steer,
twisted the high heel of his boot on the corral fence. He
insisted the injury amounted to nothing. Senor Johnson however,
disagreed.
"It don't amount to nothing, Jed," he pronounced, after
manipulation, "but she might make a good able-bodied injury with
a little coaxing. Rest her a week and then you'll be all
right."
"Rest her, the devil!" growled Jed; "who's going to San Pedro?"
"I will, of course," replied the Senor promptly. "Didje think
we'd send the Chink?"
"I was first cousin to a Yaqui jackass for sendin' young Billy
Ellis out. He'll be back in a week. He'd do."
"So'd the President," the Senor pointed out; "I hear he's had
some experience."
"I hate to have you to go," objected Jed. "There's the missis."
He shot a glance sideways at his chief.
"I guess she and I can stand it for a week," scoffed the latter.
"Why, we are old married folks by now. Besides, you can take
care of her."
"I'll try," said Jed Parker, a little grimly.
CHAPTER NINE
THE LONG TRAIL
The round-up crew started early the next morning, just about
sun-up. Senor Johnson rode first, merely to keep out of the
dust. Then followed Torn Rich, jogging along easily in the
cow-puncher's "Spanish trot" whistling soothingly to quiet the
horses, giving a lead to the band of saddle animals strung out
loosely behind him. These moved on gracefully and lightly in the
manner of the unburdened plains horse, half decided to follow
Tom's guidance, half inclined to break to right or left. Homer
and Jim Lester flanked them, also riding in a slouch of apparent
laziness, but every once in a while darting forward like bullets
to turn back into the main herd certain individuals whom the
early morning of the unwearied day had inspired to make a dash
for liberty. The rear was brought up by Jerky Jones, the fourth
cow-puncher, and the four-mule chuck wagon, lost in its own dust.
The sun mounted; the desert went silently through its changes.
Wind devils raised straight, true columns of dust six, eight
hundred, even a thousand feet into the air. The billows of dust
from the horses and men crept and crawled with them like a living
creature. Glorious colour, magnificent distance, astonishing
illusion, filled the world.
Senor Johnson rode ahead, looking at these things. The
separation from his wife, brief as it would be, left room in his
soul for the heart-hunger which beauty arouses in men. He loved
the charm of the desert, yet it hurt him.
Behind him the punchers relieved the tedium of the march, each
after his own manner. In an hour the bunch of loose horses lost
its early-morning good spirits and settled down to a steady
plodding, that needed no supervision. Tom Rich led them, now, in
silence, his time fully occupied in rolling Mexican cigarettes
with one hand. The other three dropped back together and
exchanged desultory remarks. Occasionally Jim Lester sang. It
was always the same song of uncounted verses, but Jim had a
strange fashion of singing a single verse at a time. After a
long interval he would sing another.
"My Love is a rider
And broncos he breaks,
But he's given up riding
And all for my sake,
For he found him a horse
And it suited him so
That he vowed he'd ne'er ride
Any other bronco!"
he warbled, and then in the same breath:
"Say, boys, did you get onto the pisano-looking shorthorn at
Willets last week?
"Nope."
"He sifted in wearin' one of these hardboiled hats, and carryin'
a brogue thick enough to skate on. Says he wants a job drivin'
team--that he drives a truck plenty back to St. Louis, where he
comes from. Goodrich sets him behind them little pinto cavallos
he has. Say! that son of a gun a driver! He couldn't drive
nails in a snow bank." An expressive free-hand gesture told all
there was to tell of the runaway. "Th' shorthorn landed
headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's horse trough. Charlie fishes him
out. 'How the devil, stranger,' says Charlie, 'did you come to
fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the shorthorn, just cryin'
mad, 'I didn't come to fall in here, I come to drive horses.'"
And then, without a transitory pause:
"Oh, my love has a gun
And that gun he can use,
But he's quit his gun fighting
As well as his booze.
And he's sold him his saddle,
His spurs, and his rope,
And there's no more cow-punching
And that's what I hope."
The alkali dust, swirled back by a little breeze, billowed up and
choked him. Behind, the mules coughed, their coats whitening
with the powder. Far ahead in the distance lay the westerly
mountains. They looked an hour away, and yet every man and beast
in the outfit knew that hour after hour they were doomed, by the
enchantment of the land, to plod ahead without apparently getting
an inch nearer. The only salvation was to forget the mountains
and to fill the present moment full of little things.
But Senor Johnson, to-day, found himself unable to do this. In
spite of his best efforts he caught himself straining toward the
distant goal, becoming impatient, trying to measure progress by
landmarks--in short acting like a tenderfoot on the desert, who
wears himself down and dies, not from the hardship, but from the
nervous strain which he does not know how to avoid. Senor
Johnson knew this as well as you and I. He cursed himself
vigorously, and began with great resolution to think of something
else.
He was aroused from this by Tom Rich, riding alongside. "Somebody
coming, Senor," said he.
Senor Johnson raised his eyes to the approaching cloud of dust.
Silently the two watched it until it resolved into a rider loping
easily along. In fifteen minutes he drew rein, his pony dropped
immediately from a gallop to immobility, he swung into a graceful
at-ease attitude across his saddle, grinned amiably, and began to
roll a cigarette.
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