Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885. Various
attended by such an assemblage of young women that on the second day out their companions of the voyage confided the supposition that it had been a "bridal party." That little Spanish-American word ravaging our coasts and carrying off the pride of the youth has to answer for many such bridal parties, whose tours have been followed with pins and colored pencils and eyes more eager than those of mothers-in-law. In a month or so the young men had pitched a wall-tent within a day's ride of the Rio Grande, and were seriously occupied in sacrificing each other's feelings on the altar of experimental cookery, in herding sheep with the assistance of paper novels, and in writing exceedingly long letters to the North. This wall-tent was the larva of the ranch. But the arid southern country proved inconvenient, and collecting their effects in a prairie-schooner and driving their flocks before them, they effected a masterly change of base, which brought them two hundred miles to the northward and set them down in a delightful pasture-land, watered by three pretty creeks, near one of which they erected an adobe hut. This solitary house on a broad flat, an object of amazement to wandering hordes of cattle, was the ranch during a most interesting period, and its thatched roof and somewhat fetid walls became for the occupants overgrown with fine clusters of association. Within a few miles of its site the present village took shape.
The country was a frankly monotonous conformation of alternating hills and valleys,—"divides" and "draws,"—with wide flats near the creeks. Gulches, more or less deep, down the valley-lines of the draws, and traversing the flats to the creeks,—the so-called arroyos,—were a common physical feature. In the wet season they were running streams, but for most of the year they were dry, with here and there a waterhole, flowers and chaparral growing in them, and, at intervals, pecans. The pecan-trees grew thickly along the borders of the creeks, while the mesquites cloaked with gossamer wide portions of the flats; and here and there in the valleys and on the sides of the hills the sombre, self-enwrapped live-oaks stood about, like philosophers musing amid the general lightness. Spanish-dagger, bear-grass, and persimmon-bushes freckled the sides of the rocky divides with dark spots, and mistletoe hung its fine green globes like unillumined lanterns in the branches of the mesquites. Over the plains and slopes a sparse turf of various grasses, differing in color and changing with the season, gave the airy landscape its brilliant and versatile complexion. A dozen varieties of cactus, portulaccas, geraniums, petunias, verbenas, scattered over the prairie, morning-glories and sunflowers in the arroyos and along the creeks, and many a flower nameless to the general, abounded. So, it should be added, did in their season plover, snipe, ducks, and geese.
The business of the ranch was the antediluvian occupation of rearing and shearing sheep, and to that end the village included a shearing-shed and a large wool-house. Besides these there were three cottages and several other buildings, among which one called the "ranch-house" was the focus of the activity of the place, and, being also a survival from a comparatively early day, was a somewhat characteristic affair. It was a box-house, painted red, with a broad porch thatched with bear-grass, and a saddle-shed butting up against it. The interior, barring a little store at one end, was a single large room, bedroom, sitting-room, office, furnished with home-made tables with blankets for cloths, knocked-up chairs with cowhide seats and coyote-skin backs, deers' antlers draped with "slickers" (Texan for the 'longshoreman's yellow water-proof) and wide-brimmed "ten-dollar" hats, and at one end two tiers of bunks, with leather cases for six-shooters nailed to their sides. This room served for the abode of the storekeeper, for the transaction of business, and for the accommodation of the perennial casual guest. It was rude, but, especially of evenings about the lamp, it had a marked air of pipe-and-tobacco comfort.
The little store was patronized by the cow-boy, so much abused with sensational or picturesque intentions, and by the small farmers with irrigation patches in the vicinity. It was likewise the resort of Encarnacion and Tomas, and others their brethren, from the Mexican village a few miles up the creek, or from isolated abiding-places round about. Here they would come, and, rolling cigarettes of the brown paper they affect and the eleemosynary tobacco open on the counter, to which all were welcome (such were the amenities of shopping on the ranch), they would lounge about, ever smiling and chattering in soft voices, finally to say 'uenos dias with two bits' worth of bacon, or corn-meal, or pink candy for the chiquitas. Here, too, would come Tomasa, and, with even more than usual feminine zeal in matters of dress, at once try on the ready-made calico gown she purchased, while the store-keeper smoked his pipe and stroked his beard.
Excepting the cow-boys, the people composing the clientage of the store were for the most part resident in one of two farm-settlements located on the creek, about ten miles apart, one exclusively Mexican, the other almost entirely "white." Besides these, the families of many of the Mexican hands lived close by. These last were constantly assisting conversation at the cottages with such incidents as the following:
The cook—a tall, gaunt negro of a mediaevally "intense" nature—came in with an excited manner, followed by Madame Alguin, very much troubled, wringing her hands, and dissolved in tears.
"Panchot's little boy," said the cook, "is killed."
We were naturally aghast. Little Panchot had been colero at the recent shearing.
"Is he dead?" we queried hoarsely.
"He was dead," replied the cook, with seriousness: "he is not dead now."
With this light and delicate touch the cook swept the gamut of our emotions from awe at little Panchot's sudden taking off to pleasure at his speedy resurrection. We repaired at once to Madame Alguin's residence to view the subject of this miracle: lest the miracle should not be so complete as one might wish, we carried with us a little hartshorn and Pond's extract. Madame Alguin's villa was a fine wide-spreading live-oak, with a tent as a sort of annex, about two minutes from the ranch. On our arrival we found four Mexican women, seven children, one man, three dogs, four goats, and several roosters, gathered round the form of little Panchot stretched beneath the live-oak. A fire smouldered a little way off, and a cradle hung from the branch of the fatherly tree. Little Panchot had a nasty cut about an inch long through his cheek. He had been herding his goats on the bank of the creek when he was knocked over by a stone from the other side. He swooned,—then he was dead; he came to,—and, presto, he was alive again. He was soon running about with his wonted friskiness, and making himself useful in chasing wild tennis-balls. This little boy's mother was, poor woman, very much of a sloven, but he had a string of little sisters who were as nice as could be. They went about in white cotton gowns—amazingly clean, considering that they lived under a tree—tied at the waist with red scarfs; their black hair was smoothly gathered at the backs of their pretty heads, and they had a demure and quaintly maternal air; they looked at you with a tranquil, moon-like gaze, which seemed to say that their ideas, which were on the way, had tarried for the moment in some boon southern country.
III
In riding about the range it was very pleasant to find, as one constantly did, by the side of some "motte" (Texan for a considerable cluster of scrub growth), or beneath the shade of a great live-oak, or on the barren face of a divide, the little canvas A-tents of the herders, nestled cosily to circular pens for the sheep, and generally surrounded by brush to prevent the intrusion of inquisitive cattle. Within the tent a sheepskin or so, stretched on the ground or on a lattice of branches, for his bed, and without, a padlocked chest, with a coffee mill screwed to the top, in which he keeps his rations, a skillet and a few other utensils hanging from the branches of a neighboring tree, a whitened buffalo's skull for a metate, a smouldering fire,—this little spot, with its surrounding fence shutting out the solitude, is the herder's palace, schloss, villa, town-and country-house. "Seguro," says Juan, as he lights a brown cigarette and quenches the yellow fuse in an empty cartridge-shell, "man wants but little here below." They were a genial and hospitable set, the herders, and if one arrived about mid-day they would regale him with scraps of jerked beef, a cake of unleavened bread cooked in the skillet, and coffee which, considering what it was made of, was a very inspiring drink. In particular I recall the pastor Patricio, a very pretty fellow, with curly black hair and black eyes, a fine nose with a patrician lift to the nostrils, a little black moustache bristling like a cat's on a smiling lip, a red handkerchief about his neck: he was very voluble of soft words, and made the waste blossom with his distinguished manner. A dozen of these camps were to be discovered about the range, and the brush fences and unused