The trail was a long one. We had thirst and heat and stampedes and some Indian scares. But in the queer atmospheric conditions that prevailed that summer, I never saw the desert more wonderful. It was like waking to the glory of God to sit up at dawn and see the colours change on the dry ranges.
At the home ranch, again, Tim managed to get permission to stay on. He kept his own mount of horses, took care of them, hunted, and took part in all the cow work. We lost some cattle from Indians, of course, but it was too near the Reservation for them to do more than pick up a few stray head on their way through. The troops were always after them full jump, and so they never had time to round up the beef. But of course we had to look out or we’d lose our hair, and many a cowboy has won out to the home ranch in an almighty exciting race. This was nuts for the Honourable Timothy Clare, much better than hunting silver-tips, and he enjoyed it no limit.
Things went along that way for some time, until one evening as I was turning out the horses a buckboard drew in, and from it descended Tony Briggs and a dapper little fellow dressed all in black and with a plug hat.
“Which I accounts for said hat reachin’ the ranch, because it’s Friday and the boys not in town,” Tony whispered to me.
As I happened to be the only man in sight, the stranger addressed me.
“I am looking,” said he in a peculiar, sing-song manner I have since learned to be English, “for the Honourable Timothy Clare. Is he here?”
“Oh, you’re looking for him are you?” said I. “And who might you be?”
You see, I liked Tim, and I didn’t intend to deliver him over into trouble.
The man picked a pair of eye-glasses off his stomach where they dangled at the end of a chain, perched them on his nose, and stared me over. I must have looked uncompromising, for after a few seconds he abruptly wrinkled his nose so that the glasses fell promptly to his stomach again, felt his waistcoat pocket, and produced a card. I took it, and read:
JEFFRIES CASE, Barrister.
“A lawyer!” said I suspiciously.
“My dear man,” he rejoined with a slight impatience, “I am not here to do your young friend a harm. In fact, my firm have been his family solicitors for generations.”
“Very well,” I agreed, and led the way to the one-room adobe that Tim and I occupied.
If I had expected an enthusiastic greeting for the boyhood friend from the old home, I would have been disappointed. Tim was sitting with his back to the door reading an old magazine. When we entered he glanced over his shoulder.
“Ah, Case,” said he, and went on reading. After a moment he said without looking up, “Sit down.”
The little man took it calmly, deposited himself in a chair and his bag between his feet, and looked about him daintily at our rough quarters. I made a move to go, whereupon Tim laid down his magazine, yawned, stretched his arms over his head, and sighed.
“Don’t go, Harry,” he begged. “Well, Case,” he addressed the barrister, “what is it this time? Must be something devilish important to bring you—how many thousand miles is it—into such a country as this.”
“It is important, Mr. Clare,” stated the lawyer in his dry sing-song tones; “but my journey might have been avoided had you paid some attention to my letters.”
“Letters!” repeated Tim, opening his eyes. “My dear chap, I’ve had no letters.”
“Addressed as usual to your New York bankers.”
Tim laughed softly. “Where they are, with my last two quarters’ allowance. I especially instructed them to send me no mail. One spends no money in this country.” He paused, pulling his moustache. “I’m truly sorry you had to come so far,” he continued, “and if your business is, as I suspect, the old one of inducing me to return to my dear uncle’s arms, I assure you the mission will prove quite fruitless. Uncle Hillary and I could never live in the same county, let alone the same house.”
“And yet your uncle, the Viscount Mar, was very fond of you,” ventured Case. “Your allowances—”
“Oh, I grant you his generosity in MONEY affairs—”
“He has continued that generosity in the terms of his will, and those terms I am here to communicate to you.”
“Uncle Hillary is dead!” cried Tim.
“He passed away the sixteenth of last June.”
A slight pause ensued.
“I am ready to hear you,” said Tim soberly, at last.
The barrister stooped and began to fumble with his bag.
“No, not that!” cried Tim, with some impatience. “Tell me in your own words.”
The lawyer sat back and pressed his finger points together over his stomach.
“The late Viscount,” said he, “has been graciously pleased to leave you in fee simple his entire estate of Staghurst, together with its buildings, rentals, and privileges. This, besides the residential rights, amounts to some ten thousands pounds sterling per annum.”
“A little less than fifty thousand dollars a year, Harry,” Tim shot over his shoulder at me.
“There is one condition,” put in the lawyer.
“Oh, there is!” exclaimed Tim, his crest falling. “Well, knowing my Uncle Hillary—”
“The condition is not extravagant,” the lawyer hastily interposed. “It merely entails continued residence in England, and a minimum of nine months on the estate. This provision is absolute, and the estate reverts in its discontinuance, but may I be permitted to observe that the majority of men, myself among the number, are content to spend the most of their lives, not merely in the confines of a kingdom, but between the four walls of a room, for much less than ten thousand pounds a year. Also that England is not without its attractions for an Englishman, and that Staghurst is a country place of many possibilities.”
The Honourable Timothy had recovered from his first surprise.
“And if the conditions are not complied with?” he inquired.
“Then the estate reverts to the heirs at law, and you receive an annuity of one hundred pounds, payable quarterly.”
“May I ask further the reason for this extraordinary condition?”
“My distinguished client never informed me,” replied the lawyer, “but”—and a twinkle appeared in his eye—“as an occasional disburser of funds—Monte Carlo—”
Tim burst out laughing.
“Oh, but I recognise Uncle Hillary there!” he cried. “Well, Mr. Case, I am sure Mr. Johnson, the owner of this ranch, can put you up, and tomorrow we’ll start back.”
He returned after a few minutes to find me sitting’ smoking a moody pipe. I liked Tim, and I was sorry to have him go. Then, too, I was ruffled, in the senseless manner of youth, by the sudden altitude to which his changed fortunes had lifted him. He stood in the middle of the room, surveying me, then came across and laid his arm on my shoulder.
“Well,” I growled, without looking up, “you’re a very rich man now, Mr. Clare.”
At that he jerked me bodily out of my seat and stood me up in the centre of the room, the Irish blazing out of his eyes.
“Here, none of that!” he snapped. “You damn little fool! Don’t you ‘Mr. Clare’ me!”
So in five minutes we were talking it over. Tim was very much excited at the prospect. He knew Staghurst well, and told me all about the big stone house, and the avenue through the trees; and the hedge-row roads, and the lawn with its peacocks, and the round green hills, and the labourers’ cottages.
“It’s home,” said he, “and I didn’t realise before how much I wanted to see it. And I’ll be a man of weight there, Harry, and it’ll be mighty good.”
We made all sorts of plans as to how I was going to visit him just as soon as I could get together the money for the passage. He had the delicacy not to offer to let me have it; and that clinched my trust and love of him.
The next day he drove away with Tony and the dapper little lawyer. I am not ashamed to say that I watched the buckboard until it disappeared in the mirage.
I was with
Buck Johnson all that summer, and the following winter, as well. We had our first round-up, found the natural increase much in excess of the loss by Indians, and extended our holdings up over the Rock Creek country. We witnessed the start of many Indian campaigns, participated in a few little brushes with the Chiricahuas, saw the beginning of the cattle-rustling. A man had not much opportunity to think of anything but what he had right on hand, but I found time for a few speculations on Tim. I wondered how he looked now, and what he was doing, and how in blazes he managed to get away with fifty thousand a year.
And then one Sunday in June, while I was lying on my bunk, Tim pushed open the door and walked in. I was young, but I’d seen a lot, and I knew the expression of his face. So I laid low and said nothing.
In a minute the door opened again, and Buck Johnson himself came in.
“How do,” said he; “I saw you ride up.”
“How do you do,” replied Tim.
“I know all about you,” said Buck, without any preliminaries; “your man, Case, has wrote me. I don’t know your reasons, and I don’t want to know—it’s none of my business—and I ain’t goin’ to tell you just what kind of a damn fool I think you are—that’s none of my business, either. But I want you to understand without question how you stand on the ranch.”
“Quite good, sir,” said Tim very quietly.
“When you were out here before I was glad to have you here as a sort of guest. Then you were what I’ve heerd called a gentleman of leisure. Now you’re nothin’ but a remittance man. Your money’s nothin’ to me, but the principle of the thing is. The country is plumb pestered with remittance men, doin’ nothin’, and I don’t aim to run no home for incompetents. I had a son of a duke drivin’ wagon for me; and he couldn’t drive nails in a snowbanks. So don’t you herd up with the idea that you can come on this ranch and loaf.”
“I don’t want to loaf,” put in Tim, “I want a job.”
“I’m willing to give you a job,” replied Buck, “but it’s jest an ordinary cow-puncher’s job at forty a month. And if you don’t fill your saddle, it goes to someone else.”
“That’s satisfactory,” agreed Tim.
“All right,” finished Buck, “so that’s understood. Your friend Case wanted me to give you a lot of advice. A man generally has about as much use for advice as a cow has for four hind legs.”
He went out.
“For God’s sake, what’s up?” I cried, leaping from my bunk.
“Hullo, Harry,” said he, as though he had seen me the day before, “I’ve come back.”
“How come back?” I asked. “I thought you couldn’t leave the estate. Have they broken the will?”
“No,” said he.
“Is the money lost?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“The long and short of it is, that I couldn’t afford that estate and that money.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve given it up.”
“Given it up! What for?”
“To come back here.”
took this all in slowly.
“Tim Clare,” said I at last, “do you mean to say that you have given up an English estate and fifty thousand dollars a year to be a remittance man at five hundred, and a cow-puncher on as much more?”
“Exactly,” said he.
“Tim,” I adjured him solemnly, “you are a damn fool!”
“Maybe,” he agreed.
“Why did you do it?” I begged.
He walked to the door and looked out across the desert to where the mountains hovered like soap-bubbles on the horizon. For a long time he looked; then whirled on me.
“Harry,” said he in a low voice, “do you remember the camp we made on the shoulder of the mountain that night we were caught out? And do you remember how the dawn came up on the big snow peaks across the way—and all the canon below us filled with whirling mists—and the steel stars leaving us one by one? Where could I find room for that in English paddocks? And do you recall the day we trailed across the Yuma deserts, and the sun beat into our skulls, and the dry, brittle hills looked like papier-mache, and the grey sage-bush ran off into the rise of the hills; and then came sunset and the hard, dry mountains grew filmy, like gauze veils of many colours, and melted and glowed and faded to slate blue, and the stars came out? The English hills are rounded and green and curried, and the sky is near, and the stars only a few miles up. And do you recollect that dark night when old Loco and his warriors were camped at the base of Cochise’s Stronghold, and we crept down through the velvet dark wondering when we would be discovered, our mouths sticky with excitement, and the little winds blowing?”
He walked up and down a half-dozen times, his breast heaving.
“It’s all very well for the man who is brought up to it, and who has seen nothing else. Case can exist in four walls; he has been brought up to it and knows nothing different. But a man like me—
“They wanted me to canter between hedge-row,—I who have ridden the desert where the sky over me and the plain under me were bigger than the Islander’s universe! They wanted me to oversee little farms—I who have watched the sun rising over half a world! Talk of your ten thou’ a year and what it’ll buy! You know, Harry, how it feels when a steer takes the slack of your rope, and your pony sits back! Where in England can I buy that? You know the rising and the falling of days, and the boundless spaces where your heart grows big, and the thirst of the desert and the hunger of the trail, and a sun that shines and fills the sky, and a wind that blows fresh from the wide places! Where in parcelled, snug, green, tight little England could I buy that with ten thou’—aye, or an hundred times ten thou’? No, no, Harry, that fortune would cost me too dear. I have seen and done and been too much. I’ve come back to the Big Country, where the pay is poor and the work is hard and the comfort small, but where a man and his soul meet their Maker face to face.”
The Cattleman had finished his yarn. For a time no one spoke. Outside, the volume of rain was subsiding. Windy Bill reported a few stars shining through rifts in the showers. The chill that precedes the dawn brought us as close to the fire as the smouldering guano would permit.
“I don’t know whether he was right or wrong,” mused the Cattleman, after a while. “A man can do a heap with that much money. And yet an old ‘alkali’ is never happy anywhere else. However,” he concluded emphatically, “one thing I do know: rain, cold, hunger, discomfort, curses, kicks, and violent deaths included, there isn’t one of you grumblers who would hold that gardening job you spoke of three days!”
CHAPTER FOUR
THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
Dawn broke, so we descended through wet grasses to the canon. There, after some difficulty, we managed to start a fire, and so ate breakfast, the rain still pouring down on us. About nine o’clock, with miraculous suddenness, the torrent stopped. It began to turn cold. The Cattleman and I decided to climb to the top of the butte after meat, which we entirely lacked.
It was rather a stiff ascent, but once above the sheer cliffs we found ourselves on a rolling meadow tableland a half-mile broad by, perhaps, a mile and a half in length. Grass grew high; here and there were small live oaks planted park-like; slight and rounded ravines accommodated brooklets. As we walked back, the edges blended in the edges of the mesa across the canon. The deep gorges, which had heretofore seemed the most prominent elements of the scenery, were lost. We stood, apparently, in the middle of a wide and undulating plain, diversified by little ridges, and running with a free sweep to the very foot of the snowy Galiuros. It seemed as though we should be able to ride horseback in almost any given direction. Yet we knew that ten minutes’ walk would take us to the brink of most stupendous chasms—so deep that the water flowing in them hardly seemed to move; so rugged that only with the greatest difficulty could a horseman make his way through the country at all; and yet so ancient that the bottoms supported forests, rich grasses, and rounded, gentle knolls. It was a most astonishing set
of double impressions.
We succeeded in killing a nice, fat white-tail buck, and so returned to camp happy. The rain, held off. We dug ditches, organised shelters, cooked a warm meal. For the next day we planned a bear hunt afoot, far up a manzanita canon where Uncle Jim knew of some “holing up” caves.
But when we awoke in the morning we threw aside our coverings with some difficulty to look on a ground covered with snow; trees laden almost to the breaking point with snow, and the air filled with it.
“No bear today” said the Cattleman.
“No,” agreed Uncle Jim drily. “No b’ar. And what’s more, unless yo’re aimin’ to stop here somewhat of a spell, we’ll have to make out to-day.”
We cooked with freezing fingers, ate while dodging avalanches from the trees, and packed reluctantly. The ropes were frozen, the hobbles stiff, everything either crackling or wet. Finally the task was finished. We took a last warming of the fingers and climbed on.
The country was wonderfully beautiful with the white not yet shaken from the trees and rock ledges. Also it was wonderfully slippery. The snow was soft enough to ball under the horses’ hoofs, so that most of the time the poor animals skated and stumbled along on stilts. Thus we made our way back over ground which, naked of these difficulties, we had considered bad enough.
Imagine riding along a slant of rock shelving off to a bad tumble, so steep that your pony has to do more or less expert ankle work to keep from slipping off sideways. During the passage of that rock you are apt to sit very light. Now cover it with several inches of snow, stick a snowball on each hoof of your mount, and try again. When you have ridden it—or its duplicate—a few score of times, select a steep mountain side, cover it with round rocks the size of your head, and over that spread a concealing blanket of the same sticky snow. You are privileged to vary these to the limits of your imagination.
Once across the divide, we ran into a new sort of trouble. You may remember that on our journey over we had been forced to travel for some distance in a narrow stream-bed. During our passage we had scrambled up some rather steep and rough slopes, and hopped up some fairly high ledges. Now we found the heretofore dry bed flowing a good eight inches deep. The steep slopes had become cascades; the ledges, waterfalls. When we came to them, we had to “shoot the rapids” as best we could, only to land with a PLUNK in an indeterminately deep pool at the bottom. Some of the pack horses went down, sousing again our unfortunate bedding, but by the grace of fortune not a saddle pony lost his feet.
Arizona Nights Page 4