Bransford of Rainbow Range
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Jeff turned down the river, past the broken acequias, to where a massive spur of basaltic rock had turned the fury of the floods and spared a few fields. In this sheltered cove dwelt Don Francisco Escobar in true pastoral and patriarchal manner; his stalwart sons and daughters, with their sons and daughters in turn, in clustering adobes around him: for neighbors, the allied family of Gonzales y Ortega.
A cheerful settlement, this of Los Baños, nestling at the foot of the friendly rampart, sheltered alike from flood and wind. South and west the close black Rim walled the horizon, the fantasy of Fray Cristobal closed in the narrow east: but northward, beyond the low sand-hills and the blue heat-haze, the high peaks of Organ, Guadalupe and Rainbow swam across the sleepy air, far and soft and dim.
In their fields the gente of Gonzales y Ortega and of Escobar raised ample crops of alfalfa, wheat, corn, frijoles and chili, with orchard, vineyard and garden. Their cows, sheep and goats grazed the foothills between river and Rim, watched by the young men or boys, penned nightly in the great corrals in the old Spanish fashion; as if the Moor still swooped and forayed. Their horses roamed the hills at will, only a few being kept in the alfalfa pasture. They ground their own grain, tanned their cow-hides at home. Mattress and pillow were wool of their raising, their blankets and cloth their own weave. There were granaries, a wine-press, a forge, a cumbrous stone mill, a great adobe oven like a monstrous bee-hive.
Once a year their oxen drew the great high-sided wagons up the sandy road to El Paso, and returned with the year’s marketing – salt, axes, iron and steel, powder and lead, bolts of white domestic or manta for sheets and shirtings, matches, tea, coffee, tobacco and sugar. Perhaps, if the saints had been kind, there were a few ribbons, trinkets or brightly colored prints of Joseph and Virgin and Child, St. John the Beloved, The Annunciation, The Children and Christ; perhaps an American rifle or a plow. But, for the most part, they held not with innovations; plowed, sowed and reaped as their fathers did, threshing with oxen or goats.
The women sewed by hand, cooked on fireplaces; or, better still, in the open air under the trees, with few and simple utensils. The family ate from whitest and cleanest of sheepskins spread on the floor. But, the walls were snowy with whitewash, the earthen floors smooth and clean, the coarse linen fresh and white. The scant furniture of the rooms – a pine bed, a chair or two, a mirror, a brass candlestick (with home-made candles), a cheap print on the wall, a great chest for clothes, blankets and simple treasures, the bright fire in the cozy fireplace – all combined to give an indescribable air of cheerfulness, of homely comfort and of rest. This quiet corner, where people still lived as simply as when Abraham went up from Ur of the Chaldees, in the spring-time of the world, held, for seeing eyes, an incommunicable charm.
When Jeff came at last to Casa Escobar, the cattle were already on the hills, the pigs and chickens far afield. Don Francisco, white-haired, erect, welcomed him eagerly, indeed, but with stately courtesy.
“Is it thou indeed, my son? Now, my old eyes are gladdened this day. Enter, then, amigo mio, thrice-welcome – the house is thine in very truth. Nay, the young men shall care for thy horse.”
He raised his voice. Three tall sons, Abran, Zenobio, Donociano, came at the summons, gave Bransford grave greeting, and stood to await their father’s commands. Fathers of families themselves, they presumed not to sit unbidden, to join in the conversation, or to loiter.
Breakfast was served presently, in high state, on the table reserved for honored guests. Savory venison, chili, fish, eggs, tortillas, etole, enchiladas, cream and steaming coffee – such was the fare. Don Francisco sat gravely by to bear him company, while a silently hovering damsel anticipated every need.
Thence, when his host could urge no more upon him, to the deep shading cottonwoods. Wine was brought and the “makings” of cigarettes – corn-husks, handcut; a great jar of tobacco; and a brazier of mesquite embers. At a little distance women washed, wove or sewed; the young men made buckskin, fashioned quirts, whips, ropes, bridle-reins, tie-straps, hobbles, pack-sacks and chaparejos of raw-hide; made cinches of horse-hair; wrought ox-yokes, plow-beams and other things needful for their simple husbandry.
Meanwhile, Don Francisco entertained his guest with grave and leisurely recital of the year’s annals. Mateo, son of Sebastian, had slain a great bear in the Pass of All the Winds; Alicia, daughter of their eldest, was wed with young Roman de la O, of Cañada Nogales, to the much healing of feud and ancient hatred; Diego, son of Eusebio, was proving a bold and fearless rider of wild horses, with reason, as behooved his father’s son; he had carried away the gallo at the Fiesta de San Juan, with the fleet dun colt “creased” from the wild bunch at Quemado; the herds had grown, the crops prospered, all sorrow passed them by, through the intercession of the blessed saints.
The year’s trophies were brought. He fingered with simple pride the great pelt of the silver-tip. Antlers there were and lion-skins, gleaming prisms of quartz, flint arrowheads and agates brought in by the shepherds, the costly Navajo blanket won by the fleet-limbed dun at Cañada races.
Hither came presently another visitor – Florentino, breaker of wild horses, despite his fifty years; wizened and withered and small, merry and cheerful, singer of forgotten folk-songs; chanting, even as he came, the song of Macario Romero – Macario, riding joyous and light-hearted, spite of warning, omen and sign, love-lured to doom and death.
“‘Concedame una licenciaVoy á ir á ver á me Chata.’“Dice Macario Romero,Parando en los estribos:‘Madre, pues, esto voy á ver,Si todos son mis amigos!’”And so, listening, weary and outworn, Jeff fell asleep.
Observe now, how Nature insists upon averages. Mr. Jeff Bransford was, as has been seen, an energetic man; but outraged nerves will have their revenge. After making proper amends to his damaged eye, Jeff’s remnant of energy kept up long enough to dispatch young Tomas Escobar y Mendoza to El Paso with a message to Hibler: which message enjoined Hibler at once to carry tidings to John Wesley Pringle, somewhere in Chihuahua, asking him kindly to set right what Arcadian times were out of joint, as he, Jeff, felt the climate of Old Mexico more favorable for his throat trouble than that of New Mexico; with a postscript asking Hibler for money by bearer. And young Tomas was instructed to buy, at Juarez, a complete outfit of clothing for Jeff, including a gun.
This done, the reaction set in – aided, perhaps, by the enervating lassitude of the hot baths and the sleepy atmosphere of that forgotten village. Jeff spent the better part of a week asleep, or half awake at best. He had pleasant dreams, too. One – perhaps the best dream of all – was that on their wedding trip they should follow again the devious line of his flight from Arcadia. That would need a prairie schooner – no, a prairie steamboat – a prairie yacht! He would tell her all the hideous details – show her the mine, the camp of the besiegers, the ambuscade on the road. And if he could have Ellinor meet Griffith and Gibson for a crowning touch!
After the strenuous violence of hand-strokes, here was a drowsy and peaceful time. The wine of that land was good, the shade pleasant, the Alician philosophy more delightful than of yore; he had all the accessories, but one, of an earthly paradise.
Man is ungrateful. Jeff was a man; neglectful of present bounties, his dreaming thoughts were all of the absent accessory and of a time when that absence should be no more, nor paradise be empty.
Life, like the Gryphon’s classical master, had taught him Laughter and Grief. He turned now the forgotten pages of the book of his years. Enough black pages were there; as you will know well, having yourself searched old records before now, with tears. He cast up that long account – the wasted lendings, the outlawed debts, the dishonored promises, the talents of his stewardship, unprofitable and brought to naught; set down – how gladly! – the items on the credit side. So men have set the good upon one side and the evil on the other since Crusoe’s day, and before; against the time when the Great Accountant, Whose values are not ours, shall strike a final balance.
Take that book at your elbow – yes, either one; it doesn’t matter. Now turn to where the hero first discovers his frightful condition – long after it has become neighborhood property… He bent his head in humility. He was not worthy of her!.. Something like that? Those may not be the precise words; but he groaned. He always groans. By-the-way, how this man-saying must amuse womankind! Yes, and they actually say it too – real, live, flesh-and-blood men. Who was it said life was a poor imitation of literature? Happily, either these people are insincere or they reconsider the matter – else what should we do for families?
It is to be said that Jeff Bransford lacked this becoming delicacy. If he groaned he swore also; if he decided that Miss Ellinor Hoffman deserved a better man than he was, he also highly resolved that she should not have him.
“For, after all, you know,” said Jeff to Alice:
“I’m sure he’s nothing extra – a quiet man and plain,And modest – though there isn’t much of which he could be vain.And had I mind to chant his praise, this were the kindest line —Somehow, she loves him dearly – this little love of mine!”CHAPTER XVII
TWENTIETH CENTURY
“And there that hulking PrejudiceSat all across the road.“I took my hat, I took my coat,My load I settled fair,I approached that awful incubusWith an absent-minded air —And I walked directly through himAs if he wasn’t there!”– An Obstacle:Charlotte Perkins Stetson.Johnny Dines rode with a pleasant jingle down the shady street of Los Baños de Santa Eulalia del Norte. His saddle was new, carven, wrought with silver; his bridle shone as the sun, his spurs as bright stars; he shed music from his feet. Jeff saw him turn to Casa Escobar: apple blossoms made a fragrant lane for him. He paused at Jeff’s tree.
“Alto alli!” said Johnny. The words, as sharp command, can be managed in two brisk syllables. The sound is then: “Altwai!” It is a crisp and startling sound, and the sense of it in our idiom is: “Hands up!”
Jeff had been taking a late breakfast al fresco; he made glad room on his bench.
“Light, stranger, and look at your saddle! Pretty slick saddle, too. Guess your playmates must ’a’ went home talking to themselves last night.”
“They’re going to kill a maverick for you at Arcadia and give a barbecue,” said Johnny. The cult of nil admirari reaches its highest pitch of prosperity in the cow-countries, and Johnny knew that it was for him to broach tidings unasked.
“Oh, that reminds me – how’s old Lars Porsena?” said Jeff, now free to question.
“Him? He’s all right,” said Johnny casually. “Goin’ to marry one or more of the nurses. They’re holdin’ elimination contests now.”
“Say, Johnny, when you go back, I wish you’d tell him I didn’t do it. Cross my heart and hope to die if I did!”
“Oh, he knows it wasn’t you!” said Johnny.
Jeff shook his head doubtfully.
“Evidence was pretty strong – pretty strong! Who was it then?”
“Why, Lake himself – the old hog!”
“If Lake keeps on like this he’s going to have people down on him,” said Jeff. “Who did the holmesing – John Wesley?”
“Oh, John Wesley! John Wesley!” said Dines scornfully. “You think the sun rises and sets in old John Wesley Pringle. Naw; he didn’t get back till it was all over. I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet!”
“Must have had it sharpened up!” said Jeff. “Tell it to me!”
“Why, there isn’t much to tell,” said Dines, suddenly modest. “Come to think of it, I had right considerable help. There was a young college chap – he first put it into my head that it wasn’t you.”
“That would be the devil?” said Jeff, ignoring the insult.
“Just so. Name’s White – and so’s he: Billy White, S. M. and G. P.”
“I don’t just remember them degrees,” said Jeff.
“Aw, keep still and you’ll hear more. They stand for Some Man and Good People. Well, as I was a-saying, Billy he seemed to think it wasn’t you. He stuck to it that Buttinski – that’s what he calls you – was in a garden just when the bank was robbed.”
Johnny contemplated the apple tree over his head. It was a wandering and sober glance, but a muscle twitched in his cheek, and he made no further explanation about the garden.
“And then I remembered about Nigger Babe throwin’ you off, and I began to think maybe you didn’t crack the safe after all. And there was some other things – little things – that made Billy and Jimmy Phillips – he was takin’ cards in the game too – made ’em think maybe it was Lake; but it wasn’t no proof – not to say proof. And there’s where I come in.”
“Well?” said Jeff, as Johnny paused.
“Simple enough, once you knowed how,” said Johnny modestly. “I’d been reading lots of them detective books – Sherlock Holmes and all them fellows. I got Billy to have his folks toll Lake’s sister away for the night, so she wouldn’t be scared. Then me and Billy and Jimmy Phillips and Monte, we broke in and blowed up Lake’s private safe. No trouble at all. Since the bank-robbin’ every one had been tellin’ round just how it ought to be done – crackin’ safes. Funny how a fellow picks up little scraps of useful knowledge like that – things you’d think he’d remember might come in handy most any time – and then forgets all about ’em. I wrote it down this time. Won’t forget it again.”
“Well?” said Jeff again.
“Oh, yes. And there was the nice money – all the notes and all of the gold he could tote.”
Jeff’s eye wandered to the new saddle.
“I kept some of the yellow stuff as a souvenir – half a quart, or maybe a pint,” said Johnny. “I don’t want no reward for doin’ a good deed… And that’s all.”
“Lake is a long, ugly word,” said Jeff thoughtfully.
“Well, what do you say?” prompted Johnny.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” said Jeff. “You showed marvelous penetration – marvelous! But say, Johnny, if the money hadn’t been there wouldn’t that have been awkward?”
“Oh, Billy was pretty sure Lake was the man. And we figured he hadn’t bothered to move it – you being the goat that way. What made you be a goat, Jeff? That whole performance was the most idiotic break I ever knew a grown-up man to get off. I knew you were not strictly accountable, but why didn’t you say, ‘Judge, your Honor, sir, at the time the bank was being robbed I was in a garden with a young lady, talking about the hereafter, the here and the heretofore?’”
“On the contrary, what made your Billy think it was Lake?”
Johnny told him, in detail.
“Pretty good article of plain thinking, wasn’t it?” he concluded. “Yet he mightn’t have got started on the right track at all if he hadn’t had the straight tip about your bein’ in a garden.” Johnny’s eye reverted to the apple tree. “Lake found your noseguard, you know, where you left it. I reckon maybe he saw you leave it there. – Say, Jeff! Lake’s grandfather must have been a white man. Anyhow, he’s got one decent drop of blood in him, from somewhere. For when we arrested him, he didn’t say a word about the garden. That was rather a good stunt, I think. Bully for Lake, just once!”
“Right you are! And, Mr. J. Dines, I’ve been thinking – ” Jeff began.
Johnny glanced at him anxiously.
“ – and I’ve about come to the conclusion that we’re some narrow contracted and bigoted on Rainbow. We don’t know it all. We ain’t the only pebble. From what I’ve seen of these Arcadia men they seem to be pretty good stuff – and like as not it’s just the same way all along the beach. There’s your Mr. White, and Griffith, and Gibson – did I tell you about Gibson?”
Johnny flashed a brilliant smile. His smiles always looked larger than they really were, because Johnny was a very small man.
“I saw Griffith and he gave me his version – several times. He’s real upset, Griffith… Last time he told me, he leaned up against my neck and wept because there was only ten commandments!”
“Didn’t see Gibson, did you? You know him?”
“Nope. Pappy picked him up – or he picked Pappy up, rather. Hasn’t been seen since. I guess Gibby, old boy, has gone to the wild bunch. He wouldn’t suspect you of bein’ innocent, and he dreamed he dwelt in marble walls, makin’ shoes for the state. So he gets cold feet and he just naturally evaporates – good night!”
“Yes – he said he was going to hike out, or something to that effect,” responded Jeff absently – the fact being that he was not thinking of Gibson, at all, but was pondering deeply upon Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Had she gone to New York according to the original plan? It did not seem probable. Her face stood out before him – bright, vivid, sparkling, as he had seen her last, in the court room of Arcadia. Good heavens! Was that only a week ago? Seven days? It seemed seven years! – No – she had not gone – at least, certainly not until she was sure that he, Jeff, had made good his escape. Then, perhaps, she might have gone. Perhaps her mother had made her go. Oh, well! – New York wasn’t far, as he had told her that first wonderful day on Rainbow Rim. What a marvelous day that was!
Jeff was suddenly struck with the thought that he had never seen Ellinor’s mother. Great Scott! She had a father, too! How annoying! He meditated upon this unpleasant theme for a space. Then, as if groping in a dark room, he had suddenly turned on the light, his thought changed to —What a girl! Ah, what a wonderful girl! Where is she?
Looking up, Jeff became once more aware of Johnny Dines, leg curled around the horn of the new saddle, elbow on knee, cheek on hand, contemplating his poor friend with benevolent pity. And then Jeff knew that he could make no queries of Johnny Dines.
Johnny spake soothingly.
“You are in North America. This is the Twentieth Century. Your name is Bransford. That round bright object is the sun. This direction is East. This way is called ‘up.’ This is a stream of water that you see. It is called the Rio River Grand Big. We are advertised by our loving friends. I cannot sing the old songs. There’s a reason. Two of a kind flock together. Never trump your pardner’s ace. It’s a wise child that dreads the fire. Wake up! Come out of it! Change cars!”
“I ought to kill you,” said Jeff. “Now giggle, you idiot, and make everybody hate you! – Wait till I say Adios to my old compadre and the rest of the Escobar gente and I’ll side you to El Paso.”
“Not I. Little Johnny, he’ll make San Elizario ferry by noon and Helm’s by dark. Thought maybe so you’d be going along.”
“Why, no,” said Jeff uneasily. “I guess maybe I’ll go up to El Paso and june around a spell.”
“Oh, well – just as you say! Such bein’ the case, I’ll be jogging.”
“Better wait till after dinner – I’ll square it with Don Francisco if … anything’s missing.”
“No – that makes too long a jaunt for this afternoon. Me for San Elizario. So long!”
But beyond the first acequia he turned and rode back.
“Funny thing, Jeff! Remember me telling you about a girl I saw on Mayhill, the day Nigger Babe throwed you off? Now, what was that girl’s name? – I’ve forgotten again. Oh, yes! – Hoffman – Miss Ellinor Hoffman. Well – she’s at Arcadia still. The mother lady was all for going back to New York – but, no, sir! Girl says she’s twenty-one, likes Arcadia, and she’s going to stay a spell. Leastwise, so I hear.”
“I will kill you!” said Jeff. “Here, wait till I saddle my nag and say good-by.”
Beyond San Elizario, as they climbed the Pass of All the Winds, the two friends halted to breathe their horses.
“Jeff,” said Johnny, rather soberly, “you can kick me after I say my little piece – I’ll think poorly of you if you don’t – but ain’t you making maybe a mistake? That girl, now – nice girl, and all that – but that girl’s got money, Jeff.”
“I hate a fool worse than a knave, any day in the week,” said Jeff: “and the man that would let money keep him from the only girl – why, Johnny, he’s so much more of a fool than the other fellow is a scoundrel – ”
“I get you!” said Johnny. “You mean that a submarine boat is better built for roping steers than a mogul engine is skilful at painting steeples, and you wonder if you can’t get a fresh horse somewhere and go on through to Arcadia to-night?”
“Something like that,” admitted Jeff. “Besides,” he added lightly, “while I’d like that girl just as well if I didn’t have a cent – why, as it happens, I’m pretty well fixed, myself. I’ve got money to throw at the little dicky-birds – all kinds of money. Got a fifty-one-per-cent interest in a copper mine over in Harqua Hala that’s been payin’ me all the way from ten to five thousand clear per each and every year for the last seven years, besides what I pay a lad for lookout to keep anybody but himself from stealing any of it. He’s been buyin’ real estate for me in Los Angeles lately.”
Johnny’s jaw dropped in unaffected amazement.
“All this while? Before you and Leo hit Rainbow?”
“Sure!” said Jeff.
“And you workin’ for forty a month and stealin’ your own beef? – then saving up and buying your little old brand along with Beebe and Leo and old Wes’, joggin’ along, workin’ like a yaller dog with fleas?”
“Why not? Wasn’t I having a heap of fun? Where can I see any better time than I had here, or find better friends? Money’s no good by itself. I haven’t drawn a dollar from Arizona since I left. It was fun to make the mine go round at first; but when it got so it’d work I looked for something else more amusing.”
“I should think you’d want to travel, anyhow.”
“Travel?” echoed Jeff. “Travel? Why, you damn fool, I’m here now!”
“Will you stay here, if you marry her, Jeff?”
“So you’ve no objection to make, if I’ve got a few dollars? That squares everything all right, does it? Not a yeep of protest from you now? See here, you everlasting fool! I’m just the same man I was fifteen minutes ago when you thought I didn’t have any money. If I’m fit for her now, I was then. If I wasn’t good enough then, I’m not good enough now.”
“But I wasn’t thinking of her – I was thinking of – how it would look.”
“Look? Who cares how it looks? Just a silly prejudice! ‘They say – what say they – let them say!’ Johnny, maybe I was just stringin’ you. If I was lying about the money – how about it then? Changed your mind again?”
“You wasn’t lyin’, was you?”
“Shan’t tell you! It doesn’t really make any difference, anyhow.”
CHAPTER XVIII
AT THE RAINBOW’S END
“Helen’s lips are drifting dust;Ilion is consumed with rust;All the galleons of GreeceDrink the ocean’s dreamless peace;Lost was Solomon’s purple showRestless centuries ago;Stately empires wax and wane —Babylon, Barbary and Spain —Only one thing, undefaced,Lasts, though all the worlds lie wasteAnd the heavens are overturned,– Dear, how long ago we learned!”– Frederick Lawrence Knowles.Starlit and moonlight leagues, the slow, fresh dawn; in the cool of the morning, Bransford came to the crest of the ground-swell known as Frenchman’s Ridge, and saw low-lying Arcadia dim against the north, a toy town huddling close to the shelter of Rainbow Range; he splashed through the shallow waters of Alamo, failing to a trickle before it sank in the desert sands; and so came at last to the moat of Arcadia. With what joyous and eager-choking heart-beat you may well guess: not the needlessness of those swift pulses or of that joy. For Ellinor was not there. With Mrs. Hoffman, she had gone to visit the Sutherlands at Rainbow’s End. And Jeff could not go on. Arcadia rose to greet him in impromptu Roman holiday.
Poor Bransford has never known clearly what chanced on that awful day. There is a jumbled, whirling memory of endless kaleidoscopic troops of joyful Arcadians: Billy White, Monte, Jimmy, Clarke, the grim-smiling sheriff, the judge. It was dimly borne upon him by one or both of the two last, that there were yet certain formalities to be observed in the matter of his escape from custody of the Law and of the horse he had borrowed from the court house square. Indeed, it seemed to Jeff, in a hazy afterthought, that perhaps the sheriff had arrested him again. If so, it had slipped Jeff’s mind, swallowed up in a gruesome horror of congratulations, hand-shakings, back-slappings, badinage and questions; heaped on a hero heartsick, dazed and dumb. Pleading weariness, he tore himself away at last, almost by violence, and flung himself down in a darkened bedroom of the Arcadian Atalanta.