by O. Henry
Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three sub-bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for instructions.
“Morning,” said Bud briefly. “Where do you want them beeves to go in town — to Barber’s, as usual?”
Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the reins of business — buying, selling, and banking — had been held by her capable fingers. The handling of cattle had been entrusted fully to her husband. In the days of “King” McAllister, Santa had been his secretary and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom and profit. But before she could reply, the prince-consort spake up with calm decision:
“You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit’s pens. I spoke to Zimmerman about it some time ago.”
Bud turned on his high boot-heels.
“Wait!” called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with surprise in her steady gray eyes.
“Why, what do you mean, Webb?” she asked, with a small wrinkle gathering between her brows. “I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit. Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market for five years. I’m not going to take the business out of his hands.” She faced Bud Turner. “Deliver those cattle to Barber,” she concluded positively.
Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, stood on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite-leaf.
“I want this bunch of beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit,” said Webb, with a frosty light in his blue eyes.
“Nonsense,” said Santa impatiently. “You’d better start on, Bud, so as to noon at the Little Elm water-hole. Tell Barber we’ll have another lot of culls ready in about a month.”
Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb’s. Webb saw apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration.
“You deliver them cattle,” he said grimly, “to— “
“Barber,” finished Santa sharply. “Let that settle it. Is there anything else you are waiting for, Bud?”
“No, m’m,” said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow’s tail could have switched thrice; for man is man’s ally; and even the Philistines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they did.
“You hear your boss!” cried Webb sardonically. He took off his hat, and bowed until it touched the floor before his wife.
“Webb,” said Santa rebukingly, “you’re acting mighty foolish to-day.”
“Court fool, your Majesty,” said Webb, in his slow tones, which had changed their quality. “What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I was a man before I married a cattle-queen. What am I now? The laughing-stock of the camps. I’ll be a man again.”
Santa looked at him closely.
“Don’t be unreasonable, Webb,” she said calmly. “You haven’t been slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the cattle? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do. I learned it from Dad. Be sensible.”
“Kingdoms and queendoms,” said Webb, “don’t suit me unless I am in the pictures, too. I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. All right. I’d rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than the eight-spot in a queen-high flush. It’s your ranch; and Barber gets the beeves.”
Webb’s horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and brought out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on long rides, and his “slicker,” and his longest stake-rope of plaited raw-hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a little pale, followed him.
Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without expression except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.
“There’s a herd of cows and calves,” said he, “near the Hondo water- hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos have killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You’d better tell Simms to attend to it.”
Santa laid a hand on the horse’s bridle, and looked her husband in the eye.
“Are you going to leave me, Webb?” she asked quietly.
“I am going to be a man again,” he answered.
“I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt,” she said, with a sudden coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house.
Webb Yeager rode to the southeast as straight as the topography of West Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito went. And the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal squads; and the weeks, captained by the full moon, closed ranks into menstrual companies crying “Tempus fugit” on their banners; and the months marched on toward the vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb Yeager came no more to the dominions of his queen.
One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheep-man — and therefore of little account — from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight of the Nopalito ranch-house, and felt hunger assail him. /Ex consuetudine/ he was soon seated at the mid-day dining table of that hospitable kingdom. Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten with Aaron’s rod — that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is vouchsafed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool.
“Missis Yeager,” he babbled, “I see a man the other day on the Rancho Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name — Webb Yeager was his. He’d just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, not saying much. Perhaps he was some kin of yours, do you think?”
“A husband,” said Santa cordially. “The Seco has done well. Mr. Yeager is one of the best stockmen in the West.”
The dropping out of a prince-consort rarely disorganises a monarchy. Queen Santa had appointed as /mayordomo/ of the ranch a trusty subject, named Ramsay, who had been one of her father’s faithful vassals. And there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save when the gulf-breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide acres.
For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt upon the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory; and a pasture had been set aside for the blue-bloods. The fame of them had gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in saddles. Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new dissatisfaction upon the long-horns.
As a consequence, one day a sunburned, capable, silk-kerchiefed nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three Mexican /vaqueros/, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the following business-like epistle to the queen thereof:
Mrs. Yeager — The Nopalito Ranch:
Dear Madam:
I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100
head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by
you. If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the
bearer; and a check will be forwarded to you at once.
Respectfully,
Webster Yeager,
Manager the Rancho Seco.
Business is business, even — very scantily did it escape being written “especially” — in a kingdom.
That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture and penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the morning.
When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager throw herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping, and calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had kept from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter, in her business way, retaining her royal balance and strength?
Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. But this much you shall learn:
At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranch-house, clothed in something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-oak trees. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable, flying mist. But the mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers
scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the southeast and threw three kisses thitherward; for there was none to see.
Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away; and what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed red; and there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make when he sharpens his arrow-points.
Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one hand, and a portable furnace, such as are seen in branding-camps, in the other. To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned she sped with these things swiftly in the moonlight.
She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex cattle were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that was milky white — notable among the others.
And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not seen before — a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the length in her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.
The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the animal fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it scrambled up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of grass.
Again she made her cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the four sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the white cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made the lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple knot, and had leaped upon the cow again with the rawhide hobbles.
In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no record-breaking deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time, panting and lax.
And then she ran swiftly to her furnace at the gate and brought the branding-iron, queerly shaped and white-hot.
The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, should have stirred the slumbering auricular nerves and consciences of the near-by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid the deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to the ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed — sobbed as though queens had hearts as simple ranchmen’s wives have, and as though she would gladly make kings of prince-consorts, should they ride back again from over the hills and far away.
In the morning the capable, revolvered youth and his /vaqueros/ set forth, driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the Rancho Seco. Ninety miles it was; a six days’ journey, grazing and watering the animals on the way.
The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.
The next morning at eight o’clock a horseman loped out of the brush to the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiffly, and strode, with whizzing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.
But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel. To-day, in Nopalito horse-pasture he survives, pampered, beloved, unridden, cherished record-holder of long-distance rides.
The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his neck, and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike: “Webb — oh, Webb!”
“I was a skunk,” said Webb Yeager.
“Hush,” said Santa, “did you see it?”
“I saw it,” said Webb.
What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read the primer of events.
“Be the cattle-queen,” said Webb; “and overlook it if you can. I was a mangy, sheep-stealing coyote.”
“Hush!” said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. “There’s no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First Lady of the Bedchamber. Come here.”
She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. There stood a cradle with an infant in it — a red, ribald, unintelligible, babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an unseemly manner.
“There’s no queen on this ranch,” said Santa again. “Look at the king. He’s got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at his Highness.”
But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled there again with the same query that he had brought, lacking a few days, a year ago.
“‘Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I drive ‘em to Barber’s, or— “
He saw Webb and stopped, open-mouthed.
“Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!” shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the air with his fists.
“You hear your boss, Bud,” said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin — just as he had said a year ago.
And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the Rancho Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he had bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager:
“What’s the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?”
“X Bar Y,” said Wilson.
“I thought so,” said Quinn. “But look at that white heifer there; she’s got another brand — a heart with a cross inside of it. What brand is that?”
THE RANSOM OF MACK
Me and old Mack Lonsbury, we got out of that Little Hide-and-Seek gold mine affair with about $40,000 apiece. I say “old” Mack; but he wasn’t old. Forty-one, I should say; but he always seemed old.
“Andy,” he says to me, “I’m tired of hustling. You and me have been working hard together for three years. Say we knock off for a while, and spend some of this idle money we’ve coaxed our way.”
“The proposition hits me just right,” says I. “Let’s be nabobs for a while and see how it feels. What’ll we do — take in the Niagara Falls, or buck at faro?”
“For a good many years,” says Mack, “I’ve thought that if I ever had extravagant money I’d rent a two-room cabin somewhere, hire a Chinaman to cook, and sit in my stocking feet and read Buckle’s History of Civilisation.”
“That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar ostentation,” says I; “and I don’t see how money could be better invested. Give me a cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner’s Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I’ll join you.”
A week afterwards me and Mack hits this small town of Pina, about thirty miles out from Denver, and finds an elegant two-room house that just suits us. We deposited half-a-peck of money in the Pina bank and shook hands with every one of the 340 citizens in the town. We brought along the Chinaman and the cuckoo clock and Buckle and the Instructor with us from Denver; and they made the cabin seem like home at once.
Never believe it when they tell you riches don’t bring happiness. If you could have seen old Mack sitting in his rocking-chair with his blue-yarn sock feet up in the window and absorbing in that Buckle stuff through his specs you’d have seen a picture of content that would have made Rockefeller jealous. And I was learning to pick out “Old Zip Coon” on the banjo, and the cuckoo was on time with his remarks, and Ah Sing was messing up the atmosphere with the handsomest smell of ham and eggs that ever laid the honeysuckle in the shade. When it got too dark to make out Buckle’s nonsense and the notes in the Instructor, me and Mack would light our pipes and talk about science and pearl diving and sciatica and Egypt and spelling and fish and trade-winds and leather and gratitude and eagles, and a lot of subjects that we’d never had time to explain our sentiments about before.
One evening Mack spoke up and asked me if I was much apprised in the habits and policies of women folks.
“Why, yes,” says I, in a tone of voice; “I know ‘em from Alfred to Omaha. The feminine nature and similitude,” says I, “is as plain to my sight as the Rocky Mountains is to a blue-eyed burro. I’m onto all their little side-steps and punctual discrepancies.”
“I tell you, Andy,” says Mack, with a kind of sigh, “I never had the least amount of intersection with their predispositions. Maybe I might have had a proneness in respect to their vicinity, but I never took the time. I made my own li
ving since I was fourteen; and I never seemed to get my ratiocinations equipped with the sentiments usually depicted toward the sect. I sometimes wish I had,” says old Mack.
“They’re an adverse study,” says I, “and adapted to points of view. Although they vary in rationale, I have found ‘em quite often obviously differing from each other in divergences of contrast.”
“It seems to me,” goes on Mack, “that a man had better take ‘em in and secure his inspirations of the sect when he’s young and so preordained. I let my chance go by; and I guess I’m too old now to go hopping into the curriculum.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I tells him. “Maybe you better credit yourself with a barrel of money and a lot of emancipation from a quantity of uncontent. Still, I don’t regret my knowledge of ‘em,” I says. “It takes a man who understands the symptoms and by-plays of women-folks to take care of himself in this world.”
We stayed on in Pina because we liked the place. Some folks might enjoy their money with noise and rapture and locomotion; but me and Mack we had had plenty of turmoils and hotel towels. The people were friendly; Ah Sing got the swing of the grub we liked; Mack and Buckle were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial resemblance to “Buffalo Gals, Can’t You Come Out To-night,” on the banjo.
One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there; and I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy life once more.
When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be smiling then.
That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid with colic.