Heart of the West

O >> O. Henry >> Heart of the West


"Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And
then:

"There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to
eat. Better make it enough for two."

Ranse walked out toward the /jacals/. A boy came running.

"Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?"

"Why not, senor? I saw him near the /puerta/ but two hours past. He
bears a drag-rope."

"Get him and saddle him as quick as you can."

"/Prontito, senor/."

Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his
knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his
guitar in the moonlight.

Vaminos shall have a word--Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans,
who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him
/gruyo/. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roan-
dun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail
went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not
laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day.

Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure
of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow
ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of
France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal
sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together
like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that
appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often
steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de
los Olmos.

In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony
Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.

"I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never
will let me."

Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white
teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the
moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse
Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to
meet him.

"How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way
girl? Always half-way."

"Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones.

"I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when
I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion,
Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost
tore the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm
afraid--I'm afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never
marry a Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have?"

"The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would
never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty
old. I'm sorry, Yenna."

The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the
horn of his saddle.

"I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said
ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the
house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour."

"Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."

They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her
saddle and called clearly:

"Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."

"Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse
vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own
room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the
packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had
gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it
savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both
his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an
envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one
of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican /jacals/.

"Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while."

An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose
from a stool.

"Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in
the /jacal/. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish.

"Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered
the old woman wonderingly.

"Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into
hers.

A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her
black shawl.

"Who am I, Tia Juana?" said Ranse once more.

"Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana.
"I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before
these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will
speak. I see in your face that you know."

An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his
way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.

The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.

"Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after
kidnappin' him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that
fresh guy and had a shave. But that ain't all a man needs. Say--can't
you loosen up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never
asked you to bring me to your d--d farm."

"Stand up out here in the light," said Ranse, looking at him closely.

Curly got up sullenly and took a step or two.

His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been
combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a
peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink;
and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost
gave distinction to his looks.

Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.

"Where did you come from--have you got any home or folks anywhere?"

"Me? Why, I'm a dook," said Curly. "I'm Sir Reginald--oh, cheese it.
No; I don't know anything about my ancestors. I've been a tramp ever
since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set 'em up again
to-night or not?"

"You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a
tramp?"

"Me?" answered Curly. "Why, I adopted that profession when I was an
infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a
big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses
to beg. I wasn't hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate."

"Did he ever tell you how he got you?" asked Ranse.

"Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter
and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's
the diff? That's all I know."

"All right," said Ranse. "I reckon you're a maverick for certain. I'm
going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I'll start you to work in
one of the camps to-morrow."

"Work!" sniffed Curly, disdainfully. "What do you take me for? Do you
think I'd chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep
like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget
it."

"Oh, you'll like it when you get used to it," said Ranse. "Yes, I'll
send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you'll make a first-class
cowpuncher before I get through with you."

"Me?" said Curly. "I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go
chase themselves. Don't forget my nightcap, please, boss."

Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell
was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed.

"Any of the boys from the San Gabriel camp riding in early in the
morning?" asked Ranse.

"Long Collins," said Sam briefly. "For the mail."

"Tell him," said Ranse, "to take that tramp out to camp with him and
keep him till I get there."

Curly was sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing
talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next
afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with
dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in
favour of the conventions.

Ranse went up to Buck Rabb, the camp boss, and spoke briefly.

"He's a plumb buzzard," said Buck. "He won't work, and he's the low-
downest passel of inhumanity I ever see. I didn't know what you wanted
done with him, Ranse, so I just let him set. That seems to suit him.
He's been condemned to death by the boys a dozen times, but I told 'em
maybe you was savin' him for the torture."

Ranse took off his coat.

"I've got a hard job before me, Buck, I reckon, but it has to be done.
I've got to make a man out of that thing. That's what I've come to
camp for."

He went up to Curly.

"Brother," he said, "don't you think if you had a bath it would allow
you to take a seat in the company of your fellow-man with less
injustice to the atmosphere."

"Run away, farmer," said Curly, sardonically. "Willie will send for
nursey when he feels like having his tub."

The /charco/, or water hole, was twelve yards away. Ranse took one of
Curly's ankles and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the brink.
Then with the strength and sleight of a hammer-throw he hurled the
offending member of society far into the lake.

Curly crawled out and up the bank spluttering like a porpoise.

Ranse met him with a piece of soap and a coarse towel in his hands.

"Go to the other end of the lake and use this," he said. "Buck will
give you some dry clothes at the wagon."

The tramp obeyed without protest. By the time supper was ready he had
returned to camp. He was hardly to be recognised in his new shirt and
brown duck clothes. Ranse observed him out of the corner of his eye.

"Lordy, I hope he ain't a coward," he was saying to himself. "I hope
he won't turn out to be a coward."

His doubts were soon allayed. Curly walked straight to where he stood.
His light-blue eyes were blazing.

"Now I'm clean," he said meaningly, "maybe you'll talk to me. Think
you've got a picnic here, do you? You clodhoppers think you can run
over a man because you know he can't get away. All right. Now, what do
you think of that?"

Curly planted a stinging slap against Ranse's left cheek. The print of
his hand stood out a dull red against the tan.

Ranse smiled happily.

The cowpunchers talk to this day of the battle that followed.

Somewhere in his restless tour of the cities Curly had acquired the
art of self-defence. The ranchman was equipped only with the splendid
strength and equilibrium of perfect health and the endurance conferred
by decent living. The two attributes nearly matched. There were no
formal rounds. At last the fibre of the clean liver prevailed. The
last time Curly went down from one of the ranchman's awkward but
powerful blows he remained on the grass, but looking up with an
unquenched eye.

Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on his
chin in the stream from the faucet.

On his face was a grin of satisfaction.

Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they could
know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through which Ranse
put his waif during the month that he spent in the San Gabriel camp.
The ranchman had no fine theories to work out--perhaps his whole stock
of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of horse-breaking and a belief
in heredity.

The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out of
the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly
organised themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system
was their own.

Curly's first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on intimate
terms with soap and water. And the thing that pleased Ranse most was
that his "subject" held his ground at each successive higher step. But
the steps were sometimes far apart.

Once he got at the quart bottle of whisky kept sacredly in the grub
tent for rattlesnake bites, and spent sixteen hours on the grass,
magnificently drunk. But when he staggered to his feet his first move
was to find his soap and towel and start for the /charco/. And once,
when a treat came from the ranch in the form of a basket of fresh
tomatoes and young onions, Curly devoured the entire consignment
before the punchers reached the camp at supper time.

And then the punchers punished him in their own way. For three days
they did not speak to him, except to reply to his own questions or
remarks. And they spoke with absolute and unfailing politeness. They
played tricks on one another; they pounded one another hurtfully and
affectionately; they heaped upon one another's heads friendly curses
and obloquy; but they were polite to Curly. He saw it, and it stung
him as much as Ranse hoped it would.

Then came a night that brought a cold, wet norther. Wilson, the
youngest of the outfit, had lain in camp two days, ill with fever.
When Joe got up at daylight to begin breakfast he found Curly sitting
asleep against a wheel of the grub wagon with only a saddle blanket
around him, while Curly's blankets were stretched over Wilson to
protect him from the rain and wind.

Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and went
to sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and began to make
preparations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope to the horn of a
saddle. Others were getting out their six-shooters.

"Boys," said Ranse, "I'm much obliged. I was hoping you would. But I
didn't like to ask."

Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop--awful yells rent the air--Long
Collins galloped wildly across Curly's bed, dragging the saddle after
him. That was merely their way of gently awaking their victim. Then
they hazed him for an hour, carefully and ridiculously, after the code
of cow camps. Whenever he uttered protest they held him stretched over
a roll of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather
leggings.

And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was receiving
the puncher's accolade. Nevermore would they be polite to him. But he
would be their "pardner" and stirrup-brother, foot to foot.

When the fooling was ended all hands made a raid on Joe's big coffee-
pot by the fire for a Java nightcap. Ranse watched the new knight
carefully to see if he understood and was worthy. Curly limped with
his cup of coffee to a log and sat upon it. Long Collins followed and
sat by his side. Buck Rabb went and sat at the other. Curly--grinned.

And then Ranse furnished Curly with mounts and saddle and equipment,
and turned him over to Buck Rabb, instructing him to finish the job.

Three weeks later Ranse rode from the ranch into Rabb's camp, which
was then in Snake Valley. The boys were saddling for the day's ride.
He sought out Long Collins among them.

"How about that bronco?" he asked.

Long Collins grinned.

"Reach out your hand, Ranse Truesdell," he said, "and you'll touch
him. And you can shake his'n, too, if you like, for he's plumb white
and there's none better in no camp."

Ranse looked again at the clear-faced, bronzed, smiling cowpuncher who
stood at Collins's side. Could that be Curly? He held out his hand,
and Curly grasped it with the muscles of a bronco-buster.

"I want you at the ranch," said Ranse.

"All right, sport," said Curly, heartily. "But I want to come back
again. Say, pal, this is a dandy farm. And I don't want any better fun
than hustlin' cows with this bunch of guys. They're all to the merry-
merry."

At the Cibolo ranch-house they dismounted. Ranse bade Curly wait at
the door of the living room. He walked inside. Old "Kiowa" Truesdell
was reading at a table.

"Good-morning, Mr. Truesdell," said Ranse.

The old man turned his white head quickly.

"How is this?" he began. "Why do you call me 'Mr.--'?"

When he looked at Ranse's face he stopped, and the hand that held his
newspaper shook slightly.

"Boy," he said slowly, "how did you find it out?"

"It's all right," said Ranse, with a smile. "I made Tia Juana tell me.
It was kind of by accident, but it's all right."

"You've been like a son to me," said old "Kiowa," trembling.

"Tia Juana told me all about it," said Ranse. "She told me how you
adopted me when I was knee-high to a puddle duck out of a wagon train
of prospectors that was bound West. And she told me how the kid--your
own kid, you know--got lost or was run away with. And she said it was
the same day that the sheep-shearers got on a bender and left the
ranch."

"Our boy strayed from the house when he was two years old," said the
old man. "And then along came those emigrant wagons with a youngster
they didn't want; and we took you. I never intended you to know,
Ranse. We never heard of our boy again."

"He's right outside, unless I'm mighty mistaken," said Ranse, opening
the door and beckoning.

Curly walked in.

No one could have doubted. The old man and the young had the same
sweep of hair, the same nose, chin, line of face, and prominent light-
blue eyes.

Old "Kiowa" rose eagerly.

Curly looked about the room curiously. A puzzled expression came over
his face. He pointed to the wall opposite.

"Where's the tick-tock?" he asked, absent-mindedly.

"The clock," cried old "Kiowa" loudly. "The eight-day clock used to
stand there. Why--"

He turned to Ranse, but Ranse was not there.

Already a hundred yards away, Vaminos, the good flea-bitten dun, was
bearing him eastward like a racer through dust and chaparral towards
the Rancho de los Olmos.



X

CUPID A LA CARTE

"The dispositions of woman," said Jeff Peters, after various opinions
on the subject had been advanced, "run, regular, to diversions. What a
woman wants is what you're out of. She wants more of a thing when it's
scarce. She likes to have souvenirs of things that never happened. She
likes to be reminded of things she never heard of. A one-sided view of
objects is disjointing to the female composition.

"'Tis a misfortune of mine, begotten by nature and travel," continued
Jeff, looking thoughtfully between his elevated feet at the grocery
stove, "to look deeper into some subjects than most people do. I've
breathed gasoline smoke talking to street crowds in nearly every town
in the United States. I've held 'em spellbound with music, oratory,
sleight of hand, and prevarications, while I've sold 'em jewelry,
medicine, soap, hair tonic, and junk of other nominations. And during
my travels, as a matter of recreation and expiation, I've taken
cognisance some of women. It takes a man a lifetime to find out about
one particular woman; but if he puts in, say, ten years, industrious
and curious, he can acquire the general rudiments of the sex. One
lesson I picked up was when I was working the West with a line of
Brazilian diamonds and a patent fire kindler just after my trip from
Savannah down through the cotton belt with Dalby's Anti-explosive Lamp
Oil Powder. 'Twas when the Oklahoma country was in first bloom.
Guthrie was rising in the middle of it like a lump of self-raising
dough. It was a boom town of the regular kind--you stood in line to
get a chance to wash your face; if you ate over ten minutes you had a
lodging bill added on; if you slept on a plank at night they charged
it to you as board the next morning.

"By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering
choice places wherein to feed. So I looked around and found a
proposition that exactly cut the mustard. I found a restaurant tent
just opened up by an outfit that had drifted in on the tail of the
boom. They had knocked together a box house, where they lived and did
the cooking, and served the meals in a tent pitched against the side.
That tent was joyful with placards on it calculated to redeem the
world-worn pilgrim from the sinfulness of boarding houses and pick-me-
up hotels. 'Try Mother's Home-Made Biscuits,' 'What's the Matter with
Our Apple Dumplings and Hard Sauce?' 'Hot Cakes and Maple Syrup Like
You Ate When a Boy,' 'Our Fried Chicken Never Was Heard to Crow'--
there was literature doomed to please the digestions of man! I said to
myself that mother's wandering boy should munch there that night. And
so it came to pass. And there is where I contracted my case of Mame
Dugan.

"Old Man Dugan was six feet by one of Indiana loafer, and he spent his
time sitting on his shoulder blades in a rocking-chair in the shanty
memorialising the great corn-crop failure of '96. Ma Dugan did the
cooking, and Mame waited on the table.

"As soon as I saw Mame I knew there was a mistake in the census
reports. There wasn't but one girl in the United States. When you come
to specifications it isn't easy. She was about the size of an angel,
and she had eyes, and ways about her. When you come to the kind of a
girl she was, you'll find a belt of 'em reaching from the Brooklyn
Bridge west as far as the courthouse in Council Bluffs, Ia. They earn
their own living in stores, restaurants, factories, and offices.
They're chummy and honest and free and tender and sassy, and they look
life straight in the eye. They've met man face to face, and discovered
that he's a poor creature. They've dropped to it that the reports in
the Seaside Library about his being a fairy prince lack confirmation.

"Mame was that sort. She was full of life and fun, and breezy; she
passed the repartee with the boarders quick as a wink; you'd have
smothered laughing. I am disinclined to make excavations into the
insides of a personal affection. I am glued to the theory that the
diversions and discrepancies of the indisposition known as love should
be as private a sentiment as a toothbrush. 'Tis my opinion that the
biographies of the heart should be confined with the historical
romances of the liver to the advertising pages of the magazines. So,
you'll excuse the lack of an itemised bill of my feelings toward Mame.

"Pretty soon I got a regular habit of dropping into the tent to eat at
irregular times when there wasn't so many around. Mame would sail in
with a smile, in a black dress and white apron, and say: 'Hello, Jeff
--why don't you come at mealtime? Want to see how much trouble you can
be, of course. Friedchickenbeefsteakporkchopshamandeggspotpie'--and so
on. She called me Jeff, but there was no significations attached.
Designations was all she meant. The front names of any of us she used
as they came to hand. I'd eat about two meals before I left, and
string 'em out like a society spread where they changed plates and
wives, and josh one another festively between bites. Mame stood for
it, pleasant, for it wasn't up to her to take any canvas off the tent
by declining dollars just because they were whipped in after meal
times.

"It wasn't long until there was another fellow named Ed Collier got
the between-meals affliction, and him and me put in bridges between
breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper, that made a three-ringed
circus of that tent, and Mame's turn as waiter a continuous
performance. That Collier man was saturated with designs and
contrivings. He was in well-boring or insurance or claim-jumping, or
something--I've forgotten which. He was a man well lubricated with
gentility, and his words were such as recommended you to his point of
view. So, Collier and me infested the grub tent with care and
activity. Mame was level full of impartiality. 'Twas like a casino
hand the way she dealt out her favours--one to Collier and one to me
and one to the board, and not a card up her sleeve.

"Me and Collier naturally got acquainted, and gravitated together some
on the outside. Divested of his stratagems, he seemed to be a pleasant
chap, full of an amiable sort of hostility.

"'I notice you have an affinity for grubbing in the banquet hall after
the guests have fled,' says I to him one day, to draw his conclusions.

"'Well, yes,' says Collier, reflecting; 'the tumult of a crowded board
seems to harass my sensitive nerves.'

"'It exasperates mine some, too,' says I. 'Nice little girl, don't you
think?'

"'I see,' says Collier, laughing. 'Well, now that you mention it, I
have noticed that she doesn't seem to displease the optic nerve.'

"'She's a joy to mine,' says I, 'and I'm going after her. Notice is
hereby served.'

"'I'll be as candid as you,' admits Collier, 'and if the drug stores
don't run out of pepsin I'll give you a run for your money that'll
leave you a dyspeptic at the wind-up.'

"So Collier and me begins the race; the grub department lays in new
supplies; Mame waits on us, jolly and kind and agreeable, and it looks
like an even break, with Cupid and the cook working overtime in
Dugan's restaurant.

"'Twas one night in September when I got Mame to take a walk after
supper when the things were all cleared away. We strolled out a
distance and sat on a pile of lumber at the edge of town. Such
opportunities was seldom, so I spoke my piece, explaining how the
Brazilian diamonds and the fire kindler were laying up sufficient
treasure to guarantee the happiness of two, and that both of 'em
together couldn't equal the light from somebody's eyes, and that the
name of Dugan should be changed to Peters, or reasons why not would be
in order.