10 Classics Western Stories. Samuel Merwin
“There was grass a foot high,” cried Creede in a hushed, sustained voice, as if he saw it again, “and flowers. Me and my brothers and sisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, big yaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies––and ferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget ’em––but I’ve been fightin’ these sheep so long and gittin’ so mean and ugly them flowers wouldn’t mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and stink squashes. But hell, what’s the use?” He threw out his hands once more, palms up, and dropped them limply.
“That’s old Pablo Moreno’s place down there,” he said, falling back abruptly into his old way. “We’ll stop there overnight––I want to help git that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we’ll go up by trail in the mornin’.”
Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the naked hills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy, quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once the grama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle of Jeff Creede’s father had stood knee-high in flowers.
Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desert lay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, and the sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there was no government; anybody’s land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, to hog for and fight over forever––and no law of right; only this, that the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will in the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, a word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand; and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious––a verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother’s knee many years before:
“Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace.”
But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.
Chapter 4 DON PABLO MORENO
On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the casa of Don Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the thorny cactus which the Mexicans call ocotilla. Within this fence, which inclosed several acres of standing grain and the miniature of a garden, there were all the signs of prosperity––a new wagon under its proper shade, a storehouse strongly built where chickens lingered about for grain, a clean-swept ramada casting a deep shadow across the open doorway; but outside the inclosure the ground was stamped as level as a threshing floor. As Creede and Hardy drew near, an old man, grave and dignified, came out from the shady veranda and opened the gate, bowing with the most courtly hospitality.
“Buenos tardes, señores,” he pronounced, touching his hat in a military salute. “Pasa! Welcome to my poor house.”
In response to these salutations Creede made the conventional replies, and then as the old man stood expectant he said in a hurried aside to Hardy:
“D’ye talk Spanish? He don’t understand a word of English.”
“Sure,” returned Hardy. “I was brought up on it!”
“No!” exclaimed Creede incredulously, and then, addressing the Señor Moreno in his native tongue, he said: “Don Pablo, this is my friend Señor Hardy, who will live with me at Agua Escondida!”
“With great pleasure, señor,” said the old gentleman, removing his hat, “I make your acquaintance!”
“The pleasure is mine,” replied Hardy, returning the salutation, and at the sound of his own language Don Pablo burst into renewed protestations of delight. Within the cool shadow of his ramada he offered his own chair and seated himself in another, neatly fashioned of mesquite wood and strung with thongs of rawhide. Then, turning his venerable head to the doorway which led to the inner court, he shouted in a terrible voice:
“Muchacho!”
Instantly from behind the adobe wall, around the corner of which he had been slyly peeping, a black-eyed boy appeared and stood before him, his ragged straw hat held respectfully against his breast.
“Sus manos!” roared the old man; and dropping his hat the muchacho touched his hands before him in an attitude of prayer.
“Give the gentlemen a drink!” commanded Don Pablo severely, and after Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a porous olla, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the mozo brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the river––Bull Durham and brown paper. The señor offered these to his guest, while Creede grinned in anticipation of the outcome.
“What?” exclaimed the Señor Moreno, astounded. “You do not smoke? Ah, perhaps it is my poor tobacco! But wait, I have a cigarro which the storekeeper gave me when I––No? No smoke nothing? Ah, well, well––no smoke, no Mexicano, as the saying goes.” He regarded his guest doubtfully, with a shadow of disfavor. Then, rolling a cigarette, he remarked: “You have a very white skin, Señor Hardy; I think you have not been in Arizona very long.”
“Only a year,” replied Hardy modestly.
“Muchacho!” cried the señor. “Run and tell the señora to hasten the dinner. And where,” he inquired, with the shrewd glance of a country lawyer, “and where did you learn, then, this excellent Spanish which you speak?”
“At Old Camp Verde, to the north,” replied Hardy categorically, and at the name Creede looked up with sudden interest. “I lived there when I was a boy.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Don Pablo, raising his eyebrows. “And were your parents with you?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Hardy, “my father was an officer at the post.”
“Ah, sí, sí, sí,” nodded the old man vigorously, “now I understand. Your father fought the Apaches and you played with the little Mexican boys, no? But now your skin is white––you have not lived long under our sun. When the Apaches were conquered your parents moved, of course––they are in San Francisco now, perhaps, or Nuevo York.”
“My father is living near San Francisco,” admitted Hardy, “but,” and his voice broke a little at the words, “my mother has been dead many years.”
“Ah, indeed,” exclaimed Don Pablo sympathetically, “I am very sorry. My own madre has been many years dead also. But what think you of our country? Is it not beautiful?”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Hardy honestly, “and you have a wonderful air here, very sweet and pure.”
“Seguro!” affirmed the old man, “seguro que sí! But alas,” he added sadly, “one cannot live on air alone. Ah, que malo, how bad these sheep are!”
He sighed, and regarded his guest sadly with eyes that were bloodshot from long searching of the hills for cattle.
“I remember the day when the first sheep came,” he said, in the manner of one who begins a set narration. “In the year of ’91 the rain came, more, more, more, until the earth was full and the excess made lagunas on the plain. That year the Salagua left all bounds and swept my fine fields of standing corn away, but we did not regret it beyond reason for the grass came up on the mesas high as a horse’s belly, and my cattle and those of my friend Don Luís, the good father of Jeff, here, spread out across the plains as far as the eye could see, and every cow raised her calf. But look! On the next year no rain came, and the river ran low, yet the plains were still yellow with last year’s grass. All would have been well now as before, with grass for all, when down from the north like grasshoppers came the