A Texas Matchmaker, Andy Adams [best english novels to read txt] 📗

On awakening, I found the sun had already risen. Enrique and his wife were missing from the room, but a peep through a crevice in the palisade wall revealed Doña Anita in the kitchen adjoining. She had detected my awakening, and soon brought me a cup of splendid coffee, which I drank with relish. She urged on me also some dainty dishes, which had always been favorites with me in Mexican cookery, but my appetite was gone. Throwing myself back on the cowskin, I asked Doña Anita how long Enrique had been gone in quest of my horse, and was informed that he left before dawn, not even waiting for his customary cup of coffee. With the kindness of a sister, the girl wife urged me to take their bed; but I assured her that comfort was the least of my concerns, complete effacement being my consuming thought.

Doña Anita withdrew, and as I lay pondering over the several possible routes of escape, I heard a commotion in the ranch. I was in the act of rising when Doña Anita burst into the jacal to tell me that Don Lance had been sighted returning. I was on my feet in an instant, heard the long-drawn notes of the horn calling in the hounds, and, peering through the largest crack, saw the cavalcade. As they approached, driving their loose mounts in front of them, I felt that my ill luck still hung over me; for among the unsaddled horses were the two which I had turned free but a few hours before. The hunters had met the gaunted animals between the ranch and the river, and were bringing them in to return them to their own remuda. But at the same time the horses were evidence that I was in the ranch. From the position of Uncle Lance, in advance, I could see that he was riding direct to the house, and my absence there would surely cause surprise. At best it was but a question of time until I was discovered.

In the face of this new development, I gave up. There was no escaping fate. Enrique might not return for two hours yet, and if he came, driving in my horse, it would only prove my presence. I begged Doña Anita to throw open the door and conceal nothing. But she was still ready to aid in my concealment until night, offering to deny my presence. But how could I conceal myself in a single room, and what was so simple a device to a worldly man of sixty years' experience? To me the case looked hopeless. Even before we had concluded our discussion, I saw Uncle Lance and the boys coming towards the Mexican quarters, followed by Miss Jean and the household contingent. The fact that the door of Enrique's jacal was closed, made it a shining mark for investigation. Opening the inner door, I started to meet the visitors; but Doña Anita planted herself at the outer entrance of the stoop, met the visitors, and within my hearing and without being asked stoutly denied my presence. "Hush up, you little liar," said a voice, and I heard a step and clanking spurs which I recognized. I had sat down on the edge of the bed, and was rolling a cigarette as the crowd filed into the jacal. A fortunate flush of anger came over me which served to steady my voice; but I met their staring, after all, much as if I had been a culprit and they a vigilance committee.

"Well, young fellow, explain your presence here," demanded Uncle Lance. Had it not been for the presence of Miss Jean, I had on my tongue's end a reply, relative to the eleventh commandment, emphasized with sulphurous adjectives. But out of deference to the mistress of the ranch, I controlled my anger, and, taking out of my pocket a flint, a steel, and, a bit of yesca, struck fire and leisurely lighted my cigarette. Throwing myself back on the bed, as my employer repeated his demand, I replied, "Ask Anita." The girl understood, and, nothing abashed, told the story in her native tongue, continually referring to me as pobre Tomas. When her disconnected narrative was concluded, Uncle Lance turned on me, saying:—

"And this is the result of all our plans. You went into Oakville, did you? Tom, you haven't, got as much sense as a candy frog. Walked right into a trap with your head up and sassy. That's right—don't you listen to any one. Didn't I tell you that stage people would stick by each other like thieves? And you forgot all my warnings and deliberately"—

"Hold on," I interrupted. "You must recollect that the horses had had a fifty-mile forced ride, were jaded, and on the point of collapse. With the down stage refusing to carry us, and the girl on the point of hysteria, where else could I go?"

"Go to jail if necessary. Go anywhere but the place you went. The horses were jaded on a fifty-mile ride, were they? Either one of them was good for a hundred without unsaddling, and you know it. Haven't I told you that this ranch would raise horses when we were all dead and gone? Suppose you had killed a couple of horses? What would that have been, compared to your sneaking into the ranch this way, like a whipped cur with your tail between your legs? Now, the countryside will laugh at us both."

"The country may laugh," I answered, "but I'll not be here to hear it. Enrique has gone after my horse, and as soon as he gets in I'm leaving you for good."

"You'll do nothing of the kind. You think you're all shot to pieces, don't you? Well, you'll stay right here until all your wounds heal. I've taken all these degrees myself, and have lived to laugh at them afterward. And I have had lessons that I hope you'll never have to learn. When I found out that my third wife had known a gambler before she married me, I found out what the Bible means by rottenness of the bones with which it says an evil woman uncrowns her husband. I'll tell you about it some day. But you've not been scarred in this little side-play. You're not even powder burnt. Why, in less than a month you'll be just as happy again as if you had good sense."

Miss Jean now interrupted. "Clear right out of here," she said to her brother and the rest. "Yes, the whole pack of you. I want to talk with Tom alone. Yes, you too—you've said too much already. Run along out."

As they filed out, I noticed Uncle Lance pick up my saddle and throw it across his shoulder, while Theodore gathered up the rancid blankets and my fancy bridle, taking everything with them to the house. Waiting until she saw that her orders were obeyed, Miss Jean came over and sat down beside me on the bed. Anita stood like a fawn near the door, likewise fearing banishment, but on a sign from her mistress she spread a goatskin on the floor and sat down at our feet. Between two languages and two women, I was as helpless as an ironed prisoner. Not that Anita had any influence over me, but the mistress of the ranch had. In her hands I was as helpless as a baby. I had come to the ranch a stranger only a little over a year before, but had I been born there her interest could have been no stronger. Jean Lovelace relinquished no one, any more than a mother would one of her boys. I wanted to escape, to get away from observation; I even plead for a month's leave of absence. But my reasons were of no avail, and after arguing pro and con for over an hour, I went with her to the house. If the Almighty ever made a good woman and placed her among men for their betterment, then the presence of Jean Lovelace at Las Palomas savored of divine appointment.

On reaching the yard, we rested a long time on a settee under a group of china trees. The boys had dispersed, and after quite a friendly chat together, we saw Uncle Lance sauntering out of the house, smiling as he approached. "Tom's going to stay," said Miss Jean to her brother, as the latter seated himself beside us; "but this abuse and blame you're heaping on him must stop. He did what he thought was best under the circumstances, and you don't know what they were. He has given me his promise to stay, and I have given him mine that talk about this matter will be dropped. Now that your anger has cooled, and I have you both together, I want your word."

"Tom," said my employer, throwing his long bony arm around me, "I was disappointed, terribly put out, and I showed it in freeing my mind. But I feel better now—towards you, at least. I understand just how you felt when your plans were thwarted by an unforeseen incident. If I don't know everything, then, since the milk is spilt, I'm not asking for further particulars. If you did what you thought was best under the circumstances, why, that's all we ever ask of any one at Las Palomas. A mistake is nothing; my whole life is a series of errors. I've been trying, and expect to keep right on trying, to give you youngsters the benefit of my years; but if you insist on learning it for yourselves, well enough. When I was your age, I took no one's advice; but look how I've paid the fiddler. Possibly it was ordained otherwise, but it looks to me like a shame that I can't give you boys the benefit of my dearly bought experience. But whether you take my advice or not, we're going to be just as good friends as ever. I need young fellows like you on this ranch. I've sent Dan out after Deweese, and to-morrow we're going to commence gathering beeves. A few weeks' good hard work will do you worlds of good. In less than a year, you'll look back at this as a splendid lesson. Shucks! boy, a man is a narrow, calloused creature until he has been shook up a few times by love affairs. They develop him into the man he was intended to be. Come on into the house, Tom, and Jean will make us a couple of mint juleps."

What a blessed panacea for mental trouble is work! We were in the saddle by daybreak the next morning, rounding up remudas. Every available vaquero at the outlying ranchitas had been summoned. Dividing the outfit and horses, Uncle Lance took twelve men and struck west for the Ganso. With an equal number of men, Deweese pushed north for the Frio, which he was to work down below Shepherd's, thence back along the home river. From the ranch books, we knew there were fully two thousand beeves over five years old in our brand. These cattle had never known an hour's restraint since the day they were branded, and caution and cool judgment would be required in handling them. Since the contract only required twelve hundred, we expected to make an extra clean gathering, using the oldest and naturally the largest beeves.

During the week spent in gathering, I got the full benefit of every possible hour in the saddle. We reached the Ganso about an hour before sundown. The weather had settled; water was plentiful, and every one realized that the work in hand would require wider riding than under dry conditions. By the time we had caught up fresh horses, the sun had gone down. "Boys," said Uncle Lance, "we want to make a big rodeo on the head of this creek in the morning. Tom, you take two vaqueros and lay off to the southwest about ten miles, and make a dry camp to-night. Glenn may have the same help to the southeast; and every rascal of you be in your saddles by daybreak. There are a lot of big ladino beeves in those brushy hills to the south and west. Be sure and be in your saddles early enough to catch all wild cattle out on the prairies. If you want to, you can take a lunch in your pocket for breakfast. No; you need no blankets—you'll get up earlier if you sleep cold."

Taking José Pena and Pasquale Arispe with me, I struck off on our course in the gathering twilight. The first twitter of a bird in the morning brought me to my feet; I roused the others, and we