"None do hereUse to swear,Oaths to frayFish away."
"None do hereUse to swear,Oaths to frayFish away."
"None do here
Use to swear,
Oaths to fray
Fish away."
And yet, methinks, with the "poetry of earth,"something is mingled now that sounds not like the music of waters, the song of birds, or the fluttering of a butterfly's wings—no, nor was it a hymn in praise of tackle-makers' carelessness. Let us hope that the "recording angel" for the day was once a keen sportsman, and appreciated, therefore, the extenuating circumstances of the case. Eventually the fly is replaced, and the campaign continued.
By lunch-time we reach one of the wooden shanties, with which it is becoming the custom on these streams to provide for temporary shelter. There is not a fish moving, and for the present it is useless to flog the water. Sandwiches and a pipe fill the interlude; and by-and-by the keeper, a shrewd, wooden-visaged, terrier-looking countryman, suddenly drops upon us (after the fashion of keepers), as it were, from the clouds. Locke, in his way, is a type, and his utterances occasionally have a refreshing dryness.
"Marning sir, marning sir," he says cheerily, laying a six-pound jack on the grass to leeward of the hut (for wind spoils the look of fish), and depositing his "rod," a bamboo pole furnished with wire noose, beside it. "Have you caught anything?"
"No, nothing; it's too bright."
"It is so; 'sides, the rise was over afore you come. I eyed you coming with my glass. There was a few fish feeding 'tween nine and ten this marning. I wish you'd been here."
"We came in for the tail of the rise. How did you get the jack?"
"I noosed un, sir, I allus nooses 'em. You can't get 'em out with the net, they's too artful. They lies right close on the ground, and lets the net rub over 'em."
Incited to continue, Locke plunges into a dissertation on the art of snaring jack, against which he is very naturally the sworn foe. He proudly recounts how he one day removed eighteen of these cannibals from his water, and, on another occasion, snared a leviathan of nineteen pounds eight ounces. Every now and then producing from an inner pocket a small telescope, the lens of which he polishes on his velveteen cuff, he pauses to reconnoitre suspiciously some distant figures in Nun's Walk, near which he has a small backwater full of "store" trout, that cause him a good deal of anxiety.
"In fact," he continues, a little abstractedly, afterone of these surveys, "they's reg'lar reptiles, they jack, and you can't never quite get rid of 'em. You has to keep 'em down. I'm allus looking for 'em. Now, maybe, you won't believe me, sir, when I tell you that, that there little bit of backwater alongside Nun's Waark gives me moore trouble than all this here put together. I'll just take a cast round there, and see what they chaps there is about. Don't you leave none of your things lying about wheere they Herefords can get at 'em," he warns us, as he prepares to move off, indicating some white-faced cattle grazing in the neighbourhood. "They's moore destructive than our beasts about here. They'll chew up a mackintosh, or a basket—anything. Now, maybe, you won't believe what I'm going to say, sir, but they eat up my coat once—moleskin it war—and my dinner was in the pockets. Walking pikes I calls they Herefords."
Beyond St. Catherine's Hill heavy rain clouds, fringed with long "drifting locks," are passing slowly across the scene, and a few drops of the shower reach us. But in a little while the magnificent skyscape of mountainous cumuli, mellowing in the afternoon light, regains its brilliancy, and my energetic companion marches off by himself, convinced that he had put up"the fly" at last. As for me I remain smoking on a rail, lazy and unambitious no doubt, but supremely contented. Perhaps my appreciation of the moment's ease is not a little enhanced by watching another laboriously drying his fly, and crouching low as he creeps along the bank. And so I sit, and let my glance go wandering across the meads to the big elms, over against Nun's Walk and Abbots Barton Farm, where crowded cities of rooks may be seen, the movements of whose black inhabitants are clearly distinguishable in the half-naked boughs; and on and on to scalloped ranks of trees in the farther distance, that, in the scanty foliage of the season, stand out against the horizon like fret-work fans; till, finally, by many a hedge, and field, and ditch, I come back to the river-side again.
The silvery whisper of this spring's young rushes mingles with the harsher rustling of last year's dead blades, and the softened sleepy wash of water at a hatch-hole hard by. Locke says he took a five-pound trout out of that little hatch-hole some years ago, and though of course I believe him, I cannot help casually wondering whether—as an old hunter in Alaska once cautiously added to a choice yarn that he had beentelling me about a three-headed fish—"he was the only man who saw it"? With its swelling spaces of glassy smoothness, mantling with opalescent gleams of colour, with its glittering arabesque and tracery of swirl and ripple, its tiny, short-lived surface whirlpools, the full-bosomed river glides by, bearing its now rapidly accumulating cargo of fly. And in serried hosts the swifts and swallows have congregated above its course, and are busy skirmishing to and fro there. Now mingling and now scattering, crossing and recrossing one another, they clamber up against little currents of wind, and poise themselves, then dive, and skim the surface of the water, daintily picking therefrom fly after fly, and rarely making that slight fault which breaks the deep tones in the distance of the river's reach, with a small fan-shaped flash of silver spray! The fly is up! By twos and threes they came at first, but hundreds inadequately number the unbroken swarms that now cover the water, and Olives of every shade dance past from ripple to ripple in alluring pageantry.
In the whole range of Nature there is probably nothing more exquisitely, coquettishly graceful, than are these water insects. With the stamp of refinementthat marks the typically aristocratic maiden, they somehow combine the traditional piquancy of the French actress in opera bouffe. Nothing can possibly appear more appetising. But these epicurean fish are spoiled. The splendid condition they show at this early season of the year proves that they are overfed; and even under the temptation of such a banquet as the present, they indulge with more or less deliberation.
We are fishing a plain canal-looking piece of water—a kind of upper-school, only frequented by fish of good size, and under a dishevelled tuft of brown rushes on the opposite bank a trout is feeding, taking with the regularity of clock-work about three flies a minute. The little gleam of transparent wings can be seen approaching the fatal spot, undulating with the motion of the tide. There is a slight disturbance on the surface, a subdued rich "gulp" is heard, and a few expanding rings are drifting from the scene of the disaster, whilst the course of the hapless fly is pursued by a short-lived bubble. Again and again the tragedy is repeated, and, at length, opportunely substituted for the genuine delicacy, a Light-Olive of silk, feathers, and steel floats over the swirl that marks the masked lair. There is a sudden commotion, a tremendous splashing,and a second later a good fish is making a determined rush for a neighbouring sanctuary of heavy weed. It is a question of pull devil, pull baker. If he reach the weed, he will inevitably escape with the fly and half the collar, and in the absolute necessity of stopping him the butt is forcibly applied and a breakage risked at once. Fortunately the fine tackle stands the strain, and, foiled in his purpose, the trout turns suddenly and shoots down stream at a pace that makes the reel sing merrily. For a little while now he sulks in deep water, but, brought to the surface, catches sight of us and darts across the river, following this effort up by a succession of short and savage dashes. Some nice steering and manipulation coax him safely through a dangerous archipelago of weed, and then, though with lowered head, he still endeavours to plough on down stream, the constant strain of tackle begins to tire him. From time to time he yields temporarily to the power that turns him open-jawed against the current, and at length, almost a hundred yards below where he first was hooked, a two-pound-and-a-half fish, in the perfection of beauty and condition, glides into the net. He had fought so gallantly that he deserved to escape.
Before the rise ceases another fish, of within anounce of two pounds, completes our brace. Then a long period of tranquillity ensues, and it becomes evident that if the trout move again to-day it will be in the evening, and for the evening fishing we do not intend to wait. Pausing to make an occasional cast over a likely spot, therefore, we work back towards Winchester.
In a mood of exquisite serenity the last phase of afternoon is closing. There is no wind. The sky is filled with soft gold and silver clouds, dimmed by transparent veils of pearliest gray. Black rooks plodding lazily homewards are relieved against its pure tones, and an occasional couple of duck cross its broad fields with strenuous haste that jars oddly with the ineffable calm up there. Upreared in virtual isolation, Winchester Cathedral stretches its great length on the town like a stranded whale—possessed, though, of a majestic dignity and repose that I am afraid the simile does not convey. A curious contrast exists between its massive tower and the sharp, pretentious little spires of the modern churches near it, which seem to be tiptoeing enviously to attract unmerited attention. By his works shall a man be known. Does the difference in the style of these buildings indicate any parallel change in the character of the race that raised them?
With his back against a pine-log, B. sits cleaning his gun, and, for the moment unoccupied, I smoke and watch "Texas" singeing a plucked grouse over the camp-fire. Opposite to him, "Mac" is engaged in baking a damper in an enormous frying-pan, the ringed handle of which is propped against a deadwood stick. The fire itself, built just above the highest water-mark, is composed of drift-wood and confined between two pine-logs, on either end of which are arranged our tin cooking utensils. In the background lies the lake.
And who is B.? who "Texas"? who "Mac"? What lake is here alluded to? B. is an old travelling companion of mine; the reader has met him before. The lake is that called Pend d'Oreille, in northernIdaho, Texas and Mac (partners, and, respectively, an ex-cowboy and unsuccessful miner) are a couple of waifs, whom we found spending the summer in hunting round its edges.
An oddly assorted pair they were, these two. Texas, the incarnation of action and life, wasvif, cheery, and good-natured, industrious, ambitious, and roughly but genuinely polite—a man who economised labour, and yet whose hands were never idle, who foresaw events, and as far as possible prepared for them himself. If he were ostensibly wasting his time here, it was because, driven out of Texas by the "chills," he was endeavouring to reinstate his health, before resuming regular work. He chewed "baccer," talked "stock," washed dishes, had towels drying, water boiling, coffee cooling, an eye for passing events, and an ear for transient sounds, simultaneously. What he did, he, nevertheless, did thoroughly, and withal he was intelligent, and talked shrewd sense.
Texas was a truegaminin appearance. There was an irrepressible air of cock-sparrow-like bravado about him. His boyish figure was clad in a blue flax shirt, brown flax overalls, and mocassins. Hisperky nose, of a sun-burnt, fiery red, seemed to be in an everlasting condition of strenuous rivalry with the perky peak of his black cloth cap, and his small bright eyes sparkled in a small round face, of leathery-complexioned features, partially hidden by a dusty-coloured beard and moustache. He cocked his eye, he cocked his nose, he cocked his elbow. Cheek in his presence would have hung its head abashed. He had the effect upon one of a pick-me-up, and you often caught yourself involuntarily smiling as you looked at him.
Mac (an abbreviation, by the way, of "Macaroni"), an old mining enthusiast, was an Italian by birth, and looked like the typical European organ-grinder—a resemblance heightened by the broad black sombrero that he wore. He was one of those easy-going, good-natured men, who inevitably obtain nicknames, and the familiar prefix "old." Old Mac was a capital cook, and though always willing to be employed, was not given, like Texas, to initiating work of his own proper motion. Texas lived entirely in the present; Mac chiefly in the past, or future, in a ruined palace, or brand-new castle in the air.Absently twisting a spear of grass, or piece of string, in his fingers, he would sit by the hour, cross-legged, gazing into the camp-fire, with eyes that smouldered and darkened, glowed and again grew shadowed, as he dreamt of magnificent "prospects," big "leads," and "twenty-stamp mills," or failure, and the enforced sale of claims at insignificant prices, for lack of "a little more" capital to develop their hidden treasures. Sometimes he would break abruptly into the conversation with an irrelevant remark concerning mines, or mining, and, seduced by the subject, launch out, and unfold the schemes he nourished for employing that wealth which he would probably never acquire. He had found a good mine once—a well-known mine, which produced $17,000,000 after he had sold the prospect for $1,000.
No occupation is so fascinating as that of mining, it would seem. Once a miner always a miner. Found in any other walk in life, the old prospector is only "lying by" to tide over evil times, or "making a raise" to enable him to return to his favourite pursuit. Even if he resolve to abandon it, sooner or later resolution fails him, and,metaphorically speaking, it is at the mouth of the shaft that he dies. Nor is there one in a thousand of these men but dies a pauper. Still they are not to be pitied. It matters little how a man dies; the material point is, how he lives. And the lives of these men are spent on the shores of enchanting mirage lakes, they themselves the very genii of wealth, in fancy. If life be a dream, theirs at any rate is a pleasant one, for, in expectation, they enjoy more happiness than is ever achieved by the most fortunate of practical men. And since expectation is the better part of happiness, and they never live to see their idols and ideals shattered, they are doubly to be envied. Perpetually, as it were, beneath the influence of opium, present miseries but lightly affect them, and they revel in "fine phrensies," the magnificence, if not sensuous splendour of which may fairly vie with the gorgeous visions of an Eastern imagination stimulated by majoon.
For a few dollars Texas and Mac had purchased a kind of duck punt, that an amateur undertaker had apparently begun to build as a coffin for his mother-in-law, or some other but littlebeloved relative. It combined the lightness and symmetry of a wood pile with the sea-going qualities of a crate, and the fact that its present owners had navigated the lake in it for some weeks in safety, afforded a most interesting instance of the inexhaustible mercy of Providence.
It would be useless to recount what led us to this Ultima Thule, or how it further happened that we took ship haphazard with a brace of loafers, and went in quest of game there. Rub the Aladdin's lamp of imagination, and transport yourself to our camp-fire; do so, at least, if you admit the charm of a vagabond life in a fine climate, the enchantment of fine skies, fine days, and finer nights spent at Musette's Hôtel de la Belle Étoile, undisturbed, though, by the "courants d'air" she dreaded.
With doubtful hearts we had embarked in the modified coffin. Laden down with baggage it had had a more than usually unseaworthy appearance. But although once or twice we had shipped seas, and once had been nearly swamped by a billow at least four inches high, after a voyage of six miles we had safely reached the point where the reader first discovered us. Then, whilst B. and Mac had goneout to shoot some grouse, Texas and I had chosen a site for camp, shifted the baggage, lit a fire, and placed in readiness our cooking apparatus and stores.
The million-voiced hum of tiny surf breaking upon the sand, some fifty yards away, was heard in long, low chords, singing a song writ long before the era of man, but whether betokening prophecy or strange record, an eternal requiem or only a passing overture, equally unintelligible now. In the crests of the little knot of cotton-wood trees by which we were located, the wind was stirring with a touch so light that it barely tilted the topmost leaves. But in endless corridors of quill-fringed pines, in leagues upon leagues of forest behind us, it had gathered force, and softened by distance, enriched exquisitely in sweetness, in a chorus audible only when sought for above the fairy clashing of leafy cymbals near at hand, its organ tones rose and fell like the measured breathing of a great sound that slept.
"So the bull chased you too, Texas, did he?" said B., looking up from his gun-barrels, as he continued a conversation with reference to an incident that had lately occurred on a small neighbouring cattle-ranch.
"That's what he did, now," replied the ex-cowboy sharply; and he paused to elaborate the singeing of an awkward corner in the anatomy of one of the grouse. "That's what he did—sure! The old son of a gun put after me once. A durned nasty old cuss he is, and don't you forget it!"
"How did it happen?"
"Oh, I was crossing the fields on foot, and the bull he was feeling kinder ugly, I guess; that's all there was to it."
"And he came for you?"
"When he'd got up steam he did. He stamped, and tore, and frothed, and swelled, and primed, and snorted fit to bust 'fore he started. Then fust thing I knew, he dropped his head and put after me on all-fours—horns in front. I backed a piece, but the bull he kept coming, so, as I wasn't looking for any foot race, I jest drew a bead on him, and was going to shoot when Owens [from the ranch] runs down shouting 'not to kill him.'Hedrove him off; but the old bull hated to quit—the worst kind."
The autumn evening came early, and closed on us quickly, and save for one red cloud that lingeredthere, the blue sky was already growing silvery and gray, on the dark bosom of the lake only a few flickering lines of gold and scarlet were playing still, and the purple islands seemed to recede and partially dissolve in the swimming light and air when Texas called us to supper.
Is there any gossip in the world more delightful than that which takes place round a camp-fire? Are there any meetings that leave such soothing impressions and recollections? Look back and note the host of faces, fates, incidents, even of local sounds that the thought of a camp-fire recalls. Yes, local sounds! With the everlasting restlessness, and melancholy of the sough of the wind from the sea, is heard once more the shy, fresh whispering of grass on the veldt or prairie, the silkenfrou-frouof bamboo foliage, the tinkling of pine-tassels, the murmur of falling water. And mingled with the memory of such voices as these, there is the distant thunder of an avalanche or of the hippo, re-entering his native stream, the reverberating roar of the lion, the wild, weird cries of lesser beasts of the bush or jungle, the notes of night-birds, the "Number one, all's well! Number two, all's well!" of the beleaguered camp;the "Lights out" bugle-call, or the sudden alarm of rifles, and the rush of many feet.
Round a Western frontier camp-fire the conversation is always interesting. The change and incident that occurs in the lives of the men who collect there, gives them a fund of ideas not common to their class in Europe. The surliest old "tough" amongst them has experience of some line of country, some business, some isolated community, or fashion of life that is well worth while to listen to. Texas had punched cattle from Lower California to Louisiana; Mac had prospected from Mexico to Puget Sound. But besides this, B. was a perfect mine of wealth in Western lore. We had a wide country to range over, therefore, and not until the wood pile that we had collected was almost exhausted did we seek our blankets that night. One of B.'s yarns must be recorded here.
"Away back in the good old times of the West—when fortunes were made and lost in a day, and one went to bed a pauper and woke a millionaire, orvice versâ—I was cruising round, looking up new mines with an old sea-captain, named Rogers. We were coming down from Virginia City on the stage, andlate one evening we got into ——, and found everything in the shape of accommodation occupied. It so happened, however, that Rogers met a friend called Bob Malone, who kept a livery stable there, and he invited us to his place, and put us up for the night. The next morning we hired a buggy from him, to drive out and look at a new 'prospect' that we had some idea of buying, and coming back the horse ran away, and broke a little iron bar under the buggy—did, in fact, about ten dollars mischief to it. The following day we got a room at one of the saloons, and stopped about a week longer there. In the course of that time we tried on two or three occasions to get Malone's bill for damages. But he put us off, and put us off, saying that 'it didn't matter;' 'he had been too busy to attend to it;' 'there wasn't any hurry about it,' and so forth. And it wasn't until just as we were absolutely going off on the stage, that he came up and gave it to the Captain. We were in a hurry, the coach was starting, and there wasn't any time to look into it, so Rogers glanced at the total and paid it. We pulled out, and got on the road, and by-and-by I leant forward to the Captain, who sat on the box-seat, andasked him what I had to give him for my share of the bill. Then he remembered it, and fetched it out, and looked it through. This was how it ran:
"Well, the old fellow swore by all the gods of sea or land, and all the ports that he had ever been swindled in, that it was the stiffest bill that he had struck yet. And even after I had paid him my half of it, every now and then as we went along, he would pull it out of his pocket, and take another look at it. But that didn't seem to do him any good, for the more he studied it the madder he got, until finally, when we stopped for lunch, the first thing he did was to get some paper, and write Malone a letter. I forget how it ran, but the gist of it was that, 'In view of the extravagant total of the bill, he thought that Mr. Malone had taken the opportunity afforded by the injury done to his buggy to charge in a delicate manner for the hospitality that we had received from him. But that since Mr. Malone was afriend of his, not of mine, and he (the Captain) did not like to charge me for hospitality which he had indirectly been the means ofofferingme, he should be glad to know the exact state of the case, etc., etc.'
"Some time afterwards, I happened to be going up to —— again, so I got the bill from Rogers, and when I had leisure just dropped in to call on Malone. 'By the way, Malone,' said I, in the course of conversation, 'that was a devil of a bill that you slipped on us the other day.'
"That started him! 'Of all the ungentlemanly and disgraceful letters that he had ever seen, heard, or read of, the Captain's was the worst,' he said. 'He had never been so insulted in his life. After all his kindness to us—after the hospitality that he had tendered us—after taking us into the bosom of his family circle, to have a letter written to him in such terms was a perfect outrage! He couldn't have believed it, if he hadn't seen it.'
"'Well,' said I, 'that depends, of course, on how you look at it. Now, Dick Rose wants to give me forty dollars for that bill.' (Rose was the rival livery-stable keeper in the place.)
"'The —— he does! What for?'
"'Why, he wants to paste it up on his gate, and label it "Bob Malone's Bill," for the boys to come and look at; it would be sure to get into the papers, and there'd be no end of chaff about it. Of course it would be an advertisement for Rose.' 'But you ain't going to sell it to him?' 'Why not?' 'What, sell another chap my bill?' 'Why shouldn't I,' said I, 'if I can get half the total for it?' 'Oh!—well, Iam——Well! Well, there, if it comes to that, I guess I can give as much for my bill as anybody else. —— me if I am going to have anybody buy a bill of mine!' 'But I didn't say that I was going totakeforty dollars for it,' I said. 'The —— you didn't! Whatdoyou want, then?' 'Well, if you want to buy that bill, I guess I could letyouhave it for sixty dollars; but you'll have to make up your mind about it at once.' The end of it was that Malone brought out the money, and I handed him the bill. I gave the old Captain thirty dollars, and I think he was better pleased with it than he would have been if he had struck a big Bonanza."
Early morning saw us under way in different directions. B. and Mac rowed to a point twomiles down the shore of the lake; Texas struck inland for a little lake in the woods.
Into the broken country we plunged, where the scarlet of the vine aspen softened into amber; the shades of purple lake, that distinguished the fallen and decayed trunks, graduated into cinnamons and browns; the claret-hued bark of living pines contrasted with the charcoal of dead trees, which bore the indelible legend of a fire that had swept the hills a few summers ago. Passing into a section of the country that had suffered more severely from its ravages, we found the new growth of pine saplings standing almost as thick as corn in a corn-field. It was tedious work thrusting a way through this miniature forest; and not less troublesome was it to traverse some of the intervening valleys, where the fire had not penetrated, and where fallen trunks, the accumulation of long decades, crossed one another in inextricable confusion, like gigantic squills. Sometimes, by emulating Blondin, it was possible to advance unimpeded for forty or fifty—even a hundred feet along the naked stem of a tree that lay athwart its brethren. But this was rare, and the incidental croppers rendered clambering in and out of thelog wells the most satisfactory mode of progress after all.
Occasionally we came to a partially bare-backed ridge where deer-tracks were numerous, and where usually we should have been likely to find game. But prolonged drought had rendered everything as dry as touchwood. Every twig, every fern, every leaf, every blade of grass crackled if touched. It was impossible to approach game noiselessly until after a rainfall, and the futility of endeavouring to do so was strikingly illustrated to us once.
We were resting upon a hill-side, when a series of reports, that fairly mimicked the "hammer" of distant rifle-firing in a wood, reached us. For the moment I thought that it was firing, but attention immediately corrected the impression. The sound approached, and though it might have been heard a mile away in the perfectly still air, it was evidently only the echo of breaking twigs and sticks, caused by a deer moving rapidly through a narrow bottom.
We reached the small lake we were in search of. In its hollow of purple pines it lay like a basket, woven of feathery reflections, filled with silver clouds, fragments of dusky blue, and floating aquatic foliageand flowers. Fish were rising wherever the windless surface was unobstructed by vegetation, and surely they could not have had a more delightful abode than was this crystal crypt, with its sapphire shadows, and myriad slender columns of emerald stalks.
On the way back to camp Texas shot two grouse with his revolver. Grouse here, by the way, remain perched on the branches of a tree until one is within ten or fifteen yards of them.
B. and Mac had returned before us. B. (an old hunter in the States) had grasped the situation, and thenceforward refused to undertake the heavy work tramping through these woods entailed, when it was practically labour wasted. In future he devoted his attention to fishing and duck shooting. It was possible to bag a few stray duck, but although at certain seasons of the year the fishing is unrivalled in Pend d'Oreille Lake, when we were there, it was not worth mentioning.
We shifted camp, and for two or three days I persevered unsuccessfully with the rifle. Once, selecting the bald summit of a ridge where there were plenty of deer-trails as our point of operations, Texas and I lay hidden and watched from latein the afternoon till dark, when we bivouacked on the ground. But we saw no game, although two or three times during the night we heard deer moving.
Disappointed of sport on the lake itself, we commenced the ascent of its tributary, Pack River. Five portages in the first four miles, however, and the fact that there was no prospect of the surrounding country growing any clearer, cooled our enthusiasm for exploration, and, eventually, having added a duck, a brace of plover, and three brook-trout to our game list, we returned to the lake, determined to seek other if not happier hunting-grounds.
The reader is disgusted—deceived, perhaps, in the expectation of perusing an account of dire slaughter. Undoubtedly, the supposition that game was to be killed on Pend d'Oreille Lake in September, was a delusion. But delusions, illusions, and the like are the salt of life. Only the illusions do not pall; only the illusions do not pass away. True disappointment lies in complete success. One thing, at any rate, we were not deceived about. Pend d'Oreille was very beautiful, and it is worth something to be able to close your eyes, and see it as I saw it onthe morning that we left—as I see it now, in fact, although two thousand miles of mountain and prairie lie between us as I write.
A slender shaft of blue smoke rises straight from the smouldering embers of our last night's fire on the beach. The air is fresh and still—there is no stillness, though, like that of the expectant pause which heralds the roar of day, no freshness like the evanescent freshness of sunrise. Texas is gathering drift-wood at high-water mark. Down where the boat is drawn up on the sands, the dark figure of Old Mac, in his broad black sombrero, is keenly outlined against the steely waters. Already the leaden sky is luminous with dawn; its pearly tones, as delicate in their nuances of shading as the neck of a dove, flush faintly and uncertainly. Cloud-edge after cloud-edge grows dazzling with silvery light, and, at length, the sun lifts the last clinging shred of the lake's gauze coverlet of mist, and reveals it in its bed of soft and hazy hills, motionless and pale for a moment before it is dyed with, surely the loveliest tint of rose that even Nature ever displayed. The first breath of the morning wind steals down from the mountains,to kiss its tranquil surface; it shivers, trembles, breaks into shattered light and motion like a thing of life awaking, and once more the old song of the waters has softly recommenced.
Yonder gleam of white, low down on the far side, under that pine-scattered mountain, is Hope Station, whence we take our departure at noon.
"Well, there's Animas Valley, the 'rustlers' home,' where Curly Bill and all those boys used to lie up, when they had been sousing it to the 'enlightened citizen' a little too freely. There's the boss ranch in New Mexico! There's where the cattle graze, and graze, and graze upon a thousand hills, and go around laughing to think how much better off they are than other cattle, and saying to one another: 'Cows!' or 'bull, old pard!' or 'steers,' as the case may be, 'ain't we struck it big, eh? ain't we just eternally heeled?' There 're all kinds of grasses for them to eat, and if they don't like one they can take another. And there are big waters, and little waters, and all sorts, and they please themselves. And there are cable roads, and elevators, always running, to save them climbingup the steep places, and in warm weather every cow is provided with a canteen and a parasol. And Sundays you can see them taking their Bibles and campstools under their arms, and going off to sit down in the shade, and read to their calves; and when they want to know anything, why, they just come and ask old Murray or me. And ... and ... and if you think that I'm trying to boost the place up because it belongs to us, or if you think that it isn't all true what I'm telling you now, why, go ahead and call me an old mud-turtle, and say so at once. You don't mind how disrespectfully you speak to me, I know that."
Don Cabeza, the speaker, had checked the horses, and the light spring waggon we were sitting in was poised on the summit of a down grade, at the mouth of a mountain pass we had just emerged from. A great valley lay below us, varying in breadth from twelve to twenty miles. Afar off to the right a mirage lake stretched its silver sheen across one end of it; the other was thirty-five miles away on the Mexican border, and, since the valley curved, was out of sight. To the left lay Animas Peak and the conjoining mountains; before us the rugged hills that separated us from the San Simon valley; and behind these loomed upthe favourite highway, betwixt Mexico and the States, of the hostile Apaches—the wild Chiricaua range, whose naked crests glittered in the sunlight, above a confusion of scarped cliffs and jagged pinnacles, and lakes of purple shadow. Below, the broad valley bottom—flat here,
"Gleamed like a praying carpet at the footOf those divinest altars,"
"Gleamed like a praying carpet at the footOf those divinest altars,"
"Gleamed like a praying carpet at the foot
Of those divinest altars,"
and was dotted by the small adobe buildings that marked Horse Springs, Granite Tanks, Russian Bill's Place, the Cunningham Place, and a few other such spots, towards which (for it was midday), small squads of cattle marched stolidly down to water from the foot-hills and the "draws," in single file, save where a calf trotted by its mother's side.
Four years have elapsed since the reader and I left Don Cabeza waving adieu to us in the streets of Magdalena. Then he was mining. Now he is a cattle king, with ranges, and ranges, and ranches, and ranches, and managers under him, and cow-boys under them, and under them again, cattle on a thousand hills, more or less. For the old style and title of Don Cabeza (by which he was known in Sonora) the cow-punchers of New Mexico havesubstituted that of "The Colonel." But nothing else about him is changed. He is the same old Cabeza, the soul of good nature and geniality, the most delightful of companions. Animas Valley, which we were now visiting, was one of the ranges under his control.
"Get up!—get up, or I'll beat the stuffing out of you!" he says mildly, stirring the reins at the same time, and once more the horses resume their gait, and their driver a tale that he had begun a moment before we stopped. "Well, it was during one of these Indian scares. Is that an Indian over there, or is it only a soap-weed?"
"Indian," I answered, noticing the distant soap-weed that he indicated with the point of his whip.
The "Colonel" glanced at me sideways. "There's a hell's mint of soap-weed killed these Indian times, though—grease-bush too—and cactus—cactus gets fits! The boys are death on cactus when they get scared. Some of them would just as soon shoot a cactus as not—some of these Indian fighters, I mean. They don't care what they kill. Well, it was in one of these Indian times—old Hoo was out, and Victorio was out, and Geronimo was out, and—I don't know—they were all out—the Apaches were out to beathell—at least that was the tune we were all talking to, about that time. And theywereginning her[5]up, and making things a bit lively, that's a fact! Whenever anything of that kind is going on, I make a point of driving down from Deming into this valley, and the Plyas Valley, back here, just to encourage the boys and keep them in their places. Jim Tracy was with me that time, and as we drew near Sherlock's (where we slept last night), we saw a whole crowd of fellows come streaming out of the house. I knew at once that they had got scared, and had bunched up like a bevy of quail; so I said to Jim: 'Now, you let me do the talking when they begin to sing "Indians;" don't you chip!'
"Jim caught on, and we drove up, and unhitched the horses, and came indoors. Every cow-puncher in the valley was there, sure enough—and polite!—--! they were all as sweet as maple syrup. But I didn't say a word. Pretty soon they began:
"'Well, what d'ye know, anyhow?—what's the Indian news?'
"'Indian news! I guess the Indians are quiet enough,' I said, a little surprised.
"'But who have they got away with lately?—where are they now?'
"'On the reservation, I suppose.'
"'Oh, pshaw!'
"'Why not?' I said. 'Have you boys seen any Indians round?'
"'No, they hadn't seen any.'
"'Nobody been joshing[6]you, I suppose?'
"'Oh, no! Joshingthem?—not much!'
"'Well,' said I, 'I don't know! It's the first talk that we've heard of Indians, and we've driven all through the country. But if you boys are frightened that there 're any about, why, you bunch up, and keep together until you feel safe. I don't suppose the Indians will hurt the cows any.'
"So, we got to talking about other things, and pretty soon Mat Campbell slid out on his ear and got his horse, and went off without saying a word; then Reid and Dan Patch pulled out—as quiet assick monkeys. In about ten minutes there were only ourselves and Lou Sherlock left; they'd all skinned out, every man Jack of them. And you bet, grease-bush and cactus caught it for a day or two; the boys had to take it out of something."
A shimmering bar of yellow, faintly tinged with red here and there, marked a distant line of autumnal foliage, in the direction of Animas Peak.
"Yonder lies the Double Adobes—near those cotton-woods," said the Colonel, pointing towards it. "To the left—there—is Pigpen's place, and to the right—in that second deep cañon under the shoulder of the Peak—is what they call Indian Springs, where there are some curious Indian drawings on the rocks. There is permanent water at all those places; and in spring and summer there is any quantity of water away back in those hills, and oceans of feed for the cattle too. They drift back there then, and give the valley a rest."
On we drove past the tumble-down adobe huts, that had once been inhabited by Curly Bill, Russian Bill, Black Jack, Cunningham, and other celebrities of their type, whose stronghold and cache for stolen cattle Animas Valley had been a few years ago. Then the"rustlers" had congregated there in force, the locality affording exceptional advantages for their chief occupation, namely, "running off" cattle and horses from either side of the border. Many a spot is pointed out as the scene of a sanguinary skirmish between these modern moss-troopers, and the owners and their followers (Mexican or American), whom they had despoiled and were endeavouring to escape from. And many a local legend relates how the "rustlers" were overtaken and surrounded or besieged in this or that adobe or pass, lost their booty, obtained reinforcements and recaptured it, were similarly outnumbered and again stripped by their pursuers, and so on, with glowing details of the feats performed in these encounters. But more prudent and artistic methods of spoliation have spread with civilisation and the law from the East. And now, although some ambitious youngster, or knot of youngsters, burning to emulate the thefts and assassinations that are the eternal theme of frontier history under the red line of "Bills" (Why should nineteen-twentieths of these butchers have been named "Bill," by the way?), occasionally sneak off with an old man'sburroor a steer or two, or blow the top off some unoffending Mexican's head, the halcyondays of such knight-errantry are gone. It is no longer customary, when you hire or borrow a horse, to ask its nominal owner before setting out, "which way it isgood?" The sheriff and his posse are quickly on the trail of any young aspirants to fame, and as a rule they are soon brought into town, handcuffed, red-eyed, and penitent.
A jury of fat store-keepers, saloon proprietors, and rancheros, without romance or remorse in them, but all more or less interested in preserving unimpeded the rolling of the dollar, sits in judgment over them, and if the case admits of it, and the offenders are too poor to buy themselves off, glibly sentences them to be hung by the neck until dead; whilst the populace, instead of risingen masseto rescue the heroes, as might have been the case formerly, rushen masseto buy copies of that journal which gives the most intimate and repulsive details of their execution. These are not healthy times for vulgar crimes. Education has refined our minds, and broadened our views. It is as hard as ever, perhaps, to offend our morals, but our taste in crime, as in other matters, has become fastidious.
The prairie dogs had colonised in a part of this,the upper end of the valley, and we traversed a "dog town" some acres in extent, each underground habitation of which was marked by a little heap of excavated earth. Queer little squirrel-like beggars are these burrowers; the resemblance would be even more complete were it not for the short spigot-shaped tails they jerk so comically when, lodged in the entrances of their abodes, head and tail alone visible, they chirp and chipper so desperately at the intruder. One is tempted at first to laugh at, and consider them harmless, but a glance at the extent of grass-land which they have desolated, checks the impulse. As for the Colonel, he does not experience it apparently, but apostrophises them in language grotesquely solemn and ingeniously opprobrious, as long as we are in the neighbourhood of their city.
Following the level strip that wound through the centre of the valley, we passed the Red Rock, and sighted Juniper Point.
We had left the flats behind, and were now in a rolling country, intersected by grassy "draws," or miniature valleys which afforded the "finest kind" of shelter for cattle. A cavalcade hove in sight, consisting of three horsemen and a four-mule team andwaggon, the latter full of soldiers and loafers (from the supply camp[7]at the Lang ranch),en routefor the railroad. Amongst them was a camp trader with whom the Colonel was acquainted, and who stopped to exchange news with him.
"By the way, Colonel," he said, as he was leaving, "your boys want to ride that San Luis Pass carefully, and read the 'sign'[8]there; that's the weak point in the valley, and being so near the border, them Mexicans can run a few head of stock over from time to time, without taking any chances.[9]I met a couple of greasers there the other day, driving off three cows and a couple of calves. If I'd had any show, I'd have drawn on 'em right away—I wanted to ter'ble bad; but I hadn't got no Winchester along, and only two cartridges in my six-shooter, whilst they was both well heeled."
"You got the stock, though?"
"Oh, ——, yes! I run a bluff on 'em.[10]They said they wasn'tdriving'em anyhow, but they got started in the trail ahead of 'em, and it wasn't theirbusiness to turn 'em. That's a point, though, that you want to watch—all the time. Well, so long." And ramming his great jingling Mexican spurs into the belly of his little mustang, he scurried away to overtake his party.
"Three cows and two calves! Three cows and two calves!" ejaculated the Colonel wrathfully from time to time, as we proceeded. "I'll fix them, though! I'll fix them—and fix them good while I'm about it. I'll put Long-necked Abner and Indian George over there, and then those greasers'll have a good time. They'll round 'em up! Just let them catch one of them with any of our cattle! They'll pump him so full of lead that if a prospector happens to find the corpse he'll 'denounce' it for a mining claim. Three cows and two calves, eh! Three——" Then assuming a painfully querulous tone to the horses, awaking suddenly to the fact that they had slackened their pace into a walk: "Now, why can't you get up? What's the matter with you anyhow? Get up! Get up, or I'll knock the filling out of you! Get up, I say, or I'll haul off and beat the—the—the eternal wadding right out of you—once for all! Now I've said it, so look out!" And in pursuance of these direthreats, the Colonel gently stroked the quarters of each horse in turn with the point of the whip. "Three cows and two calves, eh? Well, that's pretty good for those greasers, isn't it?" he resumed more cheerfully—"and the cattle business lying on its back burst wide open, too! I'll fix those noble descendants of Cortez and his crew, though—those blanketed, horse-thieving hidalgoes!—and while I am about it I'll fix 'em good—so they'll know it. You never shot any Mexicans, did you?"
"Never."
"Well, we'll put you over there too for a bit, along with Long-neck and Indian George. If you have any sort of luck you'll get a fight on once a day, and you can make out the rest of the time killing Apaches."
I thanked him in language befitting the occasion.
We passed the Clanton Cienega,[11]and near it some large cattle corrals built for branding and marking cattle in; we drove along the edge of the Gray Cienega (the best water in the valley), and passing the end of a large "draw," in which two troops of U. S. cavalry, under Major Tupper, were encamped, finally reached the Gray Place, the headquarters ranch of the valley.
As we pulled up before the long, low, rambling adobe house, two or three dogs ran forward and barked. But they did so only half-heartedly, and prudently, to be on the safe side as it were, and soon, confirmed in their partial recognition of my host, desisted altogether. Meanwhile a young girl had arisen from a bench in the shadow of an angle made by the walls, and in that leisurely and somewhat forced style of Western indifference—a manner more often the result of shyness than of anything else—was strolling down the slope towards us.
She was very small and slight—a girl of twelve years old might well have been bigger; she, however, was more than fifteen. Clad in a rough woollen frock, that showed considerable signs of wear and tear, and was gathered in at the waist by a dilapidated old cartridge-belt, she certainly owed nothing to dress. But she wore her rags as surely no one born to them could have worn them; and a curious contrast existed between the pretty preciseness of her slightly foreign pronunciation, the infantine clearness of her voice, and the Western slang that she talked.
Save for a few crisp curls, her black hair (which was cut short) was thrown back from her forehead, and with her sunburnt, glowing complexion, betrayed herSouthern origin. Her head and features were small. She had a superficially old manner, the healthy look and self-reliance of a boy, but the eyes of a woman—of an angel sometimes. Eyes that recalled legends of the "star-eyed Egyptian"—dusky hazel orbs, grand and pure in tone, with a world of deep lights and sorrowful shadows in them—divinely innocent now, and now far-reaching, full of haunting mystery and meaning—eyes that in their more serious moments looked immortal, and seemed to have lived in ages past, to have seen all, to know all, and to be striving passionately to break the mute spell that now overpowered them. But this was only in their serious moods. For the most part they mocked the world with restless mischief and malice. And this temper it was that had gained for her the sobriquet, "Mosquito," usually contracted into the more easily available "Squito."
Murray had picked up Squito on one of his trips into Mexico to buy cattle. The old man liked to have a youngster dependent on him—something to pet and to spoil—something to "swap affection with." And Rafaeleta and he were devoted to one another.