The Light of Western Stars

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"Please tell me, Mr. Stillwell, exactly what you would do here if
you had unlimited means?" went on Madeline.

"Good Lud!" ejaculated the rancher, and started so he dropped his
pipe. Then with his clumsy huge fingers he refilled it,
relighted it, took a few long pulls, puffed great clouds of
smoke, and, squaring round, hands on his knees, he looked at
Madeline with piercing intentness. His hard face began to relax
and soften and wrinkle into a smile.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, it jest makes my old heart warm up to think
of sich a thing. I dreamed a lot when I first come hyar. What
would I do if I hed unlimited money? Listen. I'd buy out Don
Carlos an' the Greasers. I'd give a job to every good cowman in
this country. I'd make them prosper as I prospered myself. I'd
buy all the good horses on the ranges. I'd fence twenty thousand
acres of the best grazin'. I'd drill fer water in the valley.
I'd pipe water down from the mountains. I'd dam up that draw out
there. A mile-long dam from hill to hill would give me a big
lake, an' hevin' an eye fer beauty, I'd plant cottonwoods around
it. I'd fill that lake full of fish. I'd put in the biggest
field of alfalfa in the South-west. I'd plant fruit-trees an'
garden. I'd tear down them old corrals an' barns an' bunk-houses
to build new ones. I'd make this old rancho some comfortable an'
fine. I'd put in grass an' flowers all around an' bring young
pine-trees down from the mountains. An' when all thet was done
I'd sit in my chair an' smoke an' watch the cattle stringin' in
fer water an' stragglin' back into the valley. An' I see the
cowboys ridin' easy an' heah them singin' in their bunks. An'
thet red sun out there wouldn't set on a happier man in the world
than Bill Stillwell, last of the old cattlemen."

Madeline thanked the rancher, and then rather abruptly retired to
her room, where she felt no restraint to hide the force of that
wonderful idea, now full-grown and tenacious and alluring.

Upon the next day, late in the afternoon, she asked Alfred if it
would be safe for her to ride out to the mesa.

"I'll go with you," he said, gaily.

"Dear fellow, I want to go alone," she replied.

"Ah!" Alfred exclaimed, suddenly serious. He gave her just a
quick glance, then turned away. "Go ahead. I think it's safe.
I'll make it safe by sitting here with my glass and keeping an
eye on you. Be careful coming down the trail. Let the horse
pick his way. That's all."

She rode Majesty across the wide flat, up the zigzag trail,
across the beautiful grassy level to the far rim of the mesa, and
not till then did she lift her eyes to face the southwest.

Madeline looked from the gray valley at her feet to the blue
Sierra Madres, gold-tipped in the setting sun. Her vision
embraced in that glance distance and depth and glory hitherto
unrevealed to her. The gray valley sloped and widened to the
black sentinel Chiricahuas, and beyond was lost in a vast
corrugated sweep of earth, reddening down to the west, where a
golden blaze lifted the dark, rugged mountains into bold relief.
The scene had infinite beauty. But after Madeline's first swift,
all-embracing flash of enraptured eyes, thought of beauty passed
away. In that darkening desert there was something illimitable.
Madeline saw the hollow of a stupendous hand; she felt a mighty
hold upon her heart. Out of the endless space, out of silence
and desolation and mystery and age, came slow-changing colored
shadows, phantoms of peace, and they whispered to Madeline. They
whispered that it was a great, grim, immutable earth; that time
was eternity; that life was fleeting. They whispered for her to
be a woman; to love some one before it was too late; to love any
one, every one; to realize the need of work, and in doing it to
find happiness.

She rode back across the mesa and down the trail, and, once more
upon the flat, she called to the horse and made him run. His
spirit seemed to race with hers. The wind of his speed blew her
hair from its fastenings. When he thundered to a halt at the
porch steps Madeline, breathless and disheveled, alighted with
the mass of her hair tumbling around her.

Alfred met her, and his exclamation, and Florence's rapt eyes
shining on her face, and Stillwell's speechlessness made her
self-conscious. Laughing, she tried to put up the mass of hair.

"I must--look a--fright," she panted.

"Wal, you can say what you like," replied the old cattleman, "but
I know what I think."

Madeline strove to attain calmness.

"My hat--and my combs--went on the wind. I thought my hair would
go, too. . . . There is the evening star. . . . I think I am very
hungry."

And then she gave up trying to be calm, and likewise to fasten up
her hair, which fell again in a golden mass.

"Mr. Stillwell," she began, and paused, strangely aware of a
hurried note, a deeper ring in her voice. "Mr. Stillwell, I want
to buy your ranch--to engage you as my superintendent. I want to
buy Don Carlos's ranch and other property to the extent, say, of
fifty thousand acres. I want you to buy horses and cattle--in
short, to make all those improvements which you said you had so
long dreamed of. Then I have ideas of my own, in the development
of which I must have your advice and Alfred's. I intend to
better the condition of those poor Mexicans in the valley. I
intend to make life a little more worth living for them and for
the cowboys of this range. To-morrow we shall talk it all over,
plan all the business details."

Madeline turned from the huge, ever-widening smile that beamed
down upon her and held out her hands to her brother.

"Alfred, strange, is it not, my coming out to you? Nay, don't
smile. I hope I have found myself--my work--my happiness--here
under the light of that western star."

VII Her Majesty's Rancho

FIVE months brought all that Stillwell had dreamed of, and so
many more changes and improvements and innovations that it was as
if a magic touch had transformed the old ranch. Madeline and
Alfred and Florence had talked over a fitting name, and had
decided on one chosen by Madeline. But this instance was the
only one in the course of developments in which Madeline's wishes
were not compiled with. The cowboys named the new ranch "Her
Majesty's Rancho." Stillwell said the names cowboys bestowed
were felicitous, and as unchangeable as the everlasting hills;
Florence went over to the enemy; and Alfred, laughing at
Madeline's protest, declared the cowboys had elected her queen of
the ranges, and that there was no help for it. So the name stood
"Her Majesty's Rancho."

The April sun shone down upon a slow-rising green knoll that
nestled in the lee of the foothills, and seemed to center bright
rays upon the long ranch-house, which gleamed snow-white from the
level summit. The grounds around the house bore no semblance to
Eastern lawns or parks; there had been no landscape-gardening;
Stillwell had just brought water and grass and flowers and plants
to the knoll-top, and there had left them, as it were, to follow
nature. His idea may have been crude, but the result was
beautiful. Under that hot sun and balmy air, with cool water
daily soaking into the rich soil, a green covering sprang into
life, and everywhere upon it, as if by magic, many colored
flowers rose in the sweet air. Pale wild flowers, lavender
daisies, fragile bluebells, white four-petaled lilies like
Eastern mayflowers, and golden poppies, deep sunset gold, color
of the West, bloomed in happy confusion. California roses,
crimson as blood, nodded heavy heads and trembled with the weight
of bees. Low down in bare places, isolated, open to the full
power of the sun, blazed the vermilion and magenta blossoms of
cactus plants.

Green slopes led all the way down to where new adobe barns and
sheds had been erected, and wide corrals stretched high-barred
fences down to the great squares of alfalfa gently inclining to
the gray of the valley. The bottom of a dammed-up hollow shone
brightly with its slowly increasing acreage of water, upon which
thousands of migratory wildfowl whirred and splashed and
squawked, as if reluctant to leave this cool, wet surprise so new
in the long desert journey to the northland. Quarters for the
cowboys--comfortable, roomy adobe houses that not even the lamest
cowboy dared describe as crampy bunks--stood in a row upon a long
bench of ground above the lake. And down to the edge of the
valley the cluster of Mexican habitations and the little church
showed the touch of the same renewing hand.

All that had been left of the old Spanish house which had been
Stillwell's home for so long was the bare, massive structure, and
some of this had been cut away for new doors and windows. Every
modern convenience, even to hot and cold running water and
acetylene light, had been installed; and the whole interior
painted and carpentered and furnished. The ideal sought had not
been luxury, but comfort. Every door into the patio looked out
upon dark, rich grass and sweet-faced flowers, and every window
looked down the green slopes.

Madeline's rooms occupied the west end of the building and
comprised four in number, all opening out upon the long porch.
There was a small room for her maid, another which she used as an
office, then her sleeping-apartment; and, lastly, the great light
chamber which she had liked so well upon first sight, and which
now, simply yet beautifully furnished and containing her favorite
books and pictures, she had come to love as she had never loved
any room at home. In the morning the fragrant, balmy air blew
the white curtains of the open windows; at noon the drowsy,
sultry quiet seemed to creep in for the siesta that was
characteristic of the country; in the afternoon the westering sun
peeped under the porch roof and painted the walls with gold bars
that slowly changed to red.

Madeline Hammond cherished a fancy that the transformation she
had wrought in the old Spanish house and in the people with whom
she had surrounded herself, great as that transformation had
been, was as nothing compared to the one wrought in herself. She
had found an object in life. She was busy, she worked with her
hands as well as mind, yet she seemed to have more time to read
and think and study and idle and dream than ever before. She had
seen her brother through his difficulties, on the road to all the
success and prosperity that he cared for. Madeline had been a
conscientious student of ranching and an apt pupil of Stillwell.
The old cattleman, in his simplicity, gave her the place in his
heart that was meant for the daughter he had never had. His
pride in her, Madeline thought, was beyond reason or belief or
words to tell. Under his guidance, sometimes accompanied by
Alfred and Florence, Madeline had ridden the ranges and had
studied the life and work of the cowboys. She had camped on the
open range, slept under the blinking stars, ridden forty miles a
day in the face of dust and wind. She had taken two wonderful
trips down into the desert--one trip to Chiricahua, and from
there across the waste of sand and rock and alkali and cactus to
the Mexican borderline; and the other through the Aravaipa
Valley, with its deep, red-walled canyons and wild fastnesses.

This breaking-in, this training into Western ways, though she had
been a so-called outdoor girl, had required great effort and
severe pain; but the education, now past its grades, had become a
labor of love. She had perfect health, abounding spirits. She
was so active hat she had to train herself into taking the midday
siesta, a custom of the country and imperative during the hot
summer months. Sometimes she looked in her mirror and laughed
with sheer joy at sight of the lithe, audacious, brown-faced,
flashing-eyed creature reflected there. It was not so much joy
in her beauty as sheer joy of life. Eastern critics had been
wont to call her beautiful in those days when she had been pale
and slender and proud and cold. She laughed. If they could only
see her now! From the tip of her golden head to her feet she was
alive, pulsating, on fire.

Sometimes she thought of her parents, sister, friends, of how
they had persistently refused to believe she could or would stay
in the West. They were always asking her to come home. And when
she wrote, which was dutifully often, the last thing under the
sun that she was likely to mention was the change in her. She
wrote that she would return to her old home some time, of course,
for a visit; and letters such as this brought returns that amused
Madeline, sometimes saddened her. She meant to go back East for a
while, and after that once or twice every year. But the
initiative was a difficult step from which she shrank. Once
home, she would have to make explanations, and these would not be
understood. Her father's business had been such that he could
not leave it for the time required for a Western trip, or else,
according to his letter, he would have come for her. Mrs.
Hammond could not have been driven to cross the Hudson River; her
un-American idea of the wilderness westward was that Indians
still chased buffalo on the outskirts of Chicago. Madeline's
sister Helen had long been eager to come, as much from curiosity,
Madeline thought, as from sisterly regard. And at length
Madeline concluded that the proof of her breaking permanent ties
might better be seen by visiting relatives and friends before she
went back East. With that in mind she invited Helen to visit her
during the summer, and bring as many friends as she liked.

* * *

No slight task indeed was it to oversee the many business details
of Her Majesty's Rancho and to keep a record of them. Madeline
found the course of business training upon which her father had
insisted to be invaluable to her now. It helped her to
assimilate and arrange the practical details of cattle-raising as
put forth by the blunt Stillwell. She split up the great stock
of cattle into different herds, and when any of these were out
running upon the open range she had them closely watched. Part
of the time each herd was kept in an inclosed range, fed and
watered, and carefully handled by a big force of cowboys. She
employed three cowboy scouts whose sole duty was to ride the
ranges searching for stray, sick, or crippled cattle or
motherless calves, and to bring these in to be treated and
nursed. There were two cowboys whose business was to master a
pack of Russian stag-hounds and to hunt down the coyotes, wolves,
and lions that preyed upon the herds. The better and tamer milch
cows were separated from the ranging herds and kept in a pasture
adjoining the dairy. All branding was done in corrals, and
calves were weaned from mother-cows at the proper time to benefit
both. The old method of branding and classing, that had so
shocked Madeline, had been abandoned, and one had been
inaugurated whereby cattle and cowboys and horses were spared
brutality and injury.

Madeline established an extensive vegetable farm, and she planted
orchards. The climate was superior to that of California, and,
with abundant water, trees and plants and gardens flourished and
bloomed in a way wonderful to behold. It was with ever-increasing
pleasure that Madeline walked through acres of ground once bare,
now green and bright and fragrant. There were poultry-yards and
pig-pens and marshy quarters for ducks and geese. Here in the
farming section of the ranch Madeline found employment for the
little colony of Mexicans. Their lives had been as hard and
barren as the dry valley where they had lived. But as the valley
had been transformed by the soft, rich touch of water, so their
lives had been transformed by help and sympathy and work. The
children were wretched no more, and many that had been blind
could now see, and Madeline had become to them a new and blessed
virgin.

Madeline looked abroad over these lands and likened the change in
them and those who lived by them to the change in her heart. It
may have been fancy, but the sun seemed to be brighter, the sky
bluer, the wind sweeter. Certain it was that the deep green of
grass and garden was not fancy, nor the white and pink of
blossom, nor the blaze and perfume of flower, nor the sheen of
lake and the fluttering of new-born leaves. Where there had been
monotonous gray there was now vivid and changing color. Formerly
there had been silence both day and night; now during the sunny
hours there was music. The whistle of prancing stallions pealed
in from the grassy ridges. Innumerable birds had come and, like
the northward-journeying ducks, they had tarried to stay. The
song of meadow-lark and blackbird and robin, familiar to Madeline
from childhood, mingled with the new and strange heart-throbbing
song of mocking-bird and the piercing blast of the desert eagle
and the melancholy moan of turtle-dove.

* * *

One April morning Madeline sat in her office wrestling with a
problem. She had problems to solve every day. The majority of
these were concerned with the management of twenty-seven
incomprehensible cowboys. This particular problem involved
Ambrose Mills, who had eloped with her French maid, Christine.

Stillwell faced Madeline with a smile almost as huge as his bulk.

"Wal, Miss Majesty, we ketched them; but not before Padre Marcos
had married them. All thet speedin' in the autoomoobile was jest
a-scarin' of me to death fer nothin'. I tell you Link Stevens is
crazy about runnin' thet car. Link never hed no sense even with
a hoss. He ain't afraid of the devil hisself. If my hair hedn't
been white it 'd be white now. No more rides in thet thing fer
me! Wal, we ketched Ambrose an' the girl too late. But we
fetched them back, an' they're out there now, spoonin', sure
oblivious to their shameless conduct."

"Stillwell, what shall I say to Ambrose? How shall I punish him?
He has done wrong to deceive me. I never was so surprised in my
life. Christine did not seem to care any more for Ambrose than
for any of the other cowboys. What does my authority amount to?
I must do something. Stillwell, you must help me."

Whenever Madeline fell into a quandary she had to call upon the
old cattleman. No man ever held a position with greater pride
than Stillwell, but he had been put to tests that steeped him in
humility. Here he scratched his head in great perplexity.

"Dog-gone the luck! What's this elopin' bizness to do with
cattle-raisin'? I don't know nothin' but cattle. Miss Majesty,
it's amazin' strange what these cowboys hev come to. I never seen
no cowboys like these we've got hyar now. I don't know them any
more. They dress swell an' read books, an' some of them hev
actooly stopped cussin' an' drinkin'. I ain't sayin' all this is
against them. Why, now, they're jest the finest bunch of
cow-punchers I ever seen or dreamed of. But managin' them now is
beyond me. When cowboys begin to play thet game gol-lof an' run
off with French maids I reckon Bill Stillwell has got to resign."

"Stillwell! Oh, you will not leave me? What in the world would
I do?" exclaimed Madeline, in great anxiety.

"Wal, I sure won't leave you, Miss Majesty. No, I never'll do
thet. I'll run the cattle bizness fer you an' see after the
hosses an' other stock. But I've got to hev a foreman who can
handle this amazin' strange bunch of cowboys."

"You've tried half a dozen foremen. Try more until you find the
man who meets your requirements," said Madeline. "Never mind that
now. Tell me how to impress Ambrose--to make him an example, so
to speak. I must have another maid. And I do not want a new
one carried off in this summary manner."

"Wal, if you fetch pretty maids out hyar you can't expect nothin'
else. Why, thet black-eyed little French girl, with her white
skin an' pretty airs an' smiles an' shrugs, she had the cowboys
crazy. It'll be wuss with the next one."

"Oh dear!" sighed Madeline.

"An' as fer impressin' Ambrose, I reckon I can tell you how to do
thet. Jest give it to him good an' say you're goin' to fire him.
That'll fix Ambrose, an' mebbe scare the other boys fer a spell."

"Very well, Stillwell, bring Ambrose in to see me, and tell
Christine to wait in my room."

It was a handsome debonair, bright-eyed cowboy that came
tramping into Madeline's presence. His accustomed shyness and
awkwardness had disappeared in an excited manner. He was a happy
boy. He looked straight into Madeline's face as if he expected
her to wish him joy. And Madeline actually found that expression
trembling to her lips. She held it back until she could be
severe. But Madeline feared she would fail of much severity.
Something warm and sweet, like a fragrance, had entered the room
with Ambrose.

"Ambrose, what have you done?" she asked.

"Miss Hammond, I've been and gone and got married," replied Ambrose,
his words tumbling over one another. His eyes snapped, and there
was a kind of glow upon his clean-shaven brown cheek. "I've stole
a march on the other boys. There was Frank Slade pushin' me close,
and I was havin' some runnin' to keep Jim Bell back in my dust.
Even old man Nels made eyes at Christine! So I wasn't goin' to
take any chances. I just packed her off to El Cajon and married
her."

"Oh, so I heard," said Madeline, slowly, as she watched him.
"Ambrose, do you--love her?"

He reddened under her clear gaze, dropped his head, and fumbled
with his new sombrero, and there was a catch in his breath.
Madeline saw his powerful brown hand tremble. It affected her
strangely that this stalwart cowboy, who could rope and throw and
tie a wild steer in less than one minute, should tremble at a
mere question. Suddenly he raised his head, and at the beautiful
blase of his eyes Madeline turned her own away.

"Yes, Miss Hammond, I love her," he said. "I think I love her in
the way you're askin' about. I know the first time I saw her I
thought how wonderful it'd be to have a girl like that for my
wife. It's all been so strange--her comin' an' how she made me
feel. Sure I never knew many girls, and I haven't seen any girls
at all for years. But when she came! A girl makes a wonderful
difference in a man's feelin's and thoughts. I guess I never had
any before. Leastways, none like I have now. My--it--well, I
guess I have a little understandin' now of Padre Marcos's
blessin'."

"Ambrose, have you nothing to say to me?" asked Madeline.

"I'm sure sorry I didn't have time to tell you. But I was in
some hurry."

"What did you intend to do? Where were you going when Stillwell
found you?"

"We'd just been married. I hadn't thought of anything after
that. Suppose I'd have rustled back to my job. I'll sure have
to work now and save my money."

"Oh, well, Ambrose, I am glad you realize your responsibilities.
Do you earn enough--is your pay sufficient to keep a wife?"

"Sure it is! Why, Miss Hammond, I never before earned half the
salary I'm gettin' now. It's some fine to work for you. I'm
goin' to fire the boys out of my bunk-house and fix it up for
Christine and me. Say, won't they be jealous?"

"Ambrose, I--I congratulate you. I wish you joy," said Madeline.
"I--I shall make Christine a little wedding-present. I want to
talk to her for a few moments. You may go now."

It would have been impossible for Madeline to say one severe word
to that happy cowboy. She experienced difficulty in hiding her
own happiness at the turn of events. Curiosity and interest
mingled with her pleasure when she called to Christine.

"Mrs. Ambrose Mills, please come in."

No sound came from the other room.

"I should like very much to see the bride," went on Madeline.

Still there was no stir or reply

"Christine!" called Madeline.

Then it was as if a little whirlwind of flying feet and
entreating hands and beseeching eyes blew in upon Madeline.
Christine was small, graceful, plump, with very white skin and
very dark hair. She had been Madeline's favorite maid for years
and there was sincere affection between the two. Whatever had
been the blissful ignorance of Ambrose, it was manifestly certain
that Christine knew how she had transgressed. Her fear and
remorse and appeal for forgiveness were poured out in an
incoherent storm. Plain it was that the little French maid had
been overwhelmed. It was only after Madeline had taken the
emotional girl in her arms and had forgiven and soothed her that
her part in the elopement became clear. Christine was in a maze.
But gradually, as she talked and saw that she was forgiven,
calmness came in some degree, and with it a story which amused
yet shocked Madeline. The unmistakable, shy, marveling love,
scarcely realized by Christine, gave Madeline relief and joy. If
Christine loved Ambrose there was no harm done. Watching the
girl's eyes, wonderful with their changes of thought, listening
to her attempts to explain what it was evident she did not
understand, Madeline gathered that if ever a caveman had taken
unto himself a wife, if ever a barbarian had carried off a Sabine
woman, then Ambrose Mills had acted with the violence of such
ancient forebears. Just how it all happened seemed to be beyond
Christine.

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