Santa Fe's Partner Part 1

Santa Fe's Partner.

by Thomas A. Janvier.

I

PALOMITAS

I've been around considerable in the Western Country--mostly some years back--and I've seen quite a little, one way and another, of the folks living there: but I can't really and truly say I've often come up with them nature's n.o.blemen--all the time at it doing stunts in natural n.o.bility--the story-books make out is the chief population of them parts. Like enough the young fellers from the East who write such sorts of books--having plenty of spare time for writing, while they're giving their feet a rest to get the ache out--do come across 'em, same as they say they do; but I reckon the herd's a small one--and, for a fact, if you could cross the book brand with the kind you mostly meet on the ranges the breed would be improved.

Cow-punchers and prospectors and such don't look like and don't act like what tenderfoots is accustomed to, and so they size 'em up to be different all the way through. They ain't. They're just plain human nature, same as the rest of us--only more so, through not being herded close in. About the size of it is, most folks needs barbed wire to keep 'em from straying. In a rough country--where laws and constables ain't met with frequent--a good-sized slice of the population 's apt to run wild. With them that's white, it don't much matter. The worst you can say against 'em is, they sometimes do a little more shooting than seems really needed; but such doings is apt to have a show of reason at the bottom of 'em, and don't happen often anyhow--most being satisfied to work off their high spirits some other way. With them that's not white, things is different. When the Apache streak gets on top it sends 'em along quick into clear deviltry--the kind that makes you cussed just for the sake of cussedness and not caring a d.a.m.n; and it's them that has give some parts of the Western Country--like it did New Mexico in the time I'm talking about, when they was bunched thick there--its bad name.

In the long run, of course, the toughs is got rid of--being shoved out or hung out, at first by committees and later on in regular shape by sheriffs and marshals--and things is quieted down. It's the everlasting truth, though, that them kind of mavericks mostly is a blame sight commoner in parts just opened than the story-book kind--that's always so calm-eyed and gentle-natured and generous and brave. What's more, I reckon they'll keep on being commoner, human nature not being a thing that changes much, till we get along to the Day of Judgment round-up--and the goats is cut out and corralled for keeps.

For certain, it was goats was right up at the head of the procession in the Territory in my time--which was the time when the railroads was a-coming in--and in them days things was rough. The Greasers living there to start with wasn't what you might call sand-papered; and the kind of folks found in parts railroads has just got to, same as I've mentioned, don't set out to be extry smooth. Back East they talked about the higher civilization that was overflowing New Mexico; but, for a cold fact, the higher civilization that did its overflowing on that section mostly had a sheriff on its tracks right along up to the Missouri--and the rest of the way done what it blame felt like, and used a gun.

Some of them native Mexicans wasn't bad fighters. When they went to hacking at one another with knives--the way they was used to--they often done right well. But when they got up against the higher civilization--which wasn't usually less 'n half drunk, and went heeled with two Colt's and a Winchester--they found out they'd bit off more'n they could chew. Being sandy, they kept at it--but the civilizers was apt to have the call. And in between times, when the two of 'em--the Greasers and the civilizers--wasn't taking the change out of each other, they both of 'em took it out of anybody who happened to come along.

Yes, sirree!--in them days things was a good deal at loose ends in the Territory. When you went anywheres, if you was going alone, you always felt you'd better leave word what trail you took: that is, if you was fussy in such matters, and wanted what the coyotes left of you brought in by your friends and planted stylish--with your name, and when it happened, painted on a board.

This place where the track got stuck--sticking partly because there was trouble with the Atchison, and partly because the Company couldn't foreclose onto a year jag any more out of the English stockholders to build on with--was up on a bluff right over the Rio Grande and was called Palomitas. Being only mostly Greasers and Indians living in the Territory--leaving out the white folks at Santa Fe and the army posts, and the few Germans there was scattered about--them kind of queer-sounding names was what was mainly used.

It wasn't never meant to be no sort of an American town nohow, Palomitas wasn't--being made to start with of 'dobes (which is Mexican for houses built of mud, and mud they was in the rainy season) spilled around on the bluff anywheres; and when the track come along through the middle of it the c.h.i.n.ks was filled in with tents and s.h.i.+ngle-shacks and dugouts--all being so mixed up and scattery you'd a-thought somebody'd been packing a town through them parts in a wagon and the load had jolted out, sort of casual over the tail-board, and stuck where it happened to come down. The only things you could call houses was the deepo, and the Forest Queen Hotel right across the track from it, and Bill Hart's store. Them three buildings was framed up respectable; with real windows that opened, and doors such as you could move without kicking at 'em till you was tired. The deepo was right down stylish--having a brick chimney and being painted brown. Aside the deepo was the tank and the windmill that pumped into it. Seems to me at nights, sometimes, I can hear that old windmill going around creaking and clumpetty-clumpetting now!

Palomitas means "little doves"--but I reckon the number of them birds about the place was few. For about a thousand years, more or less, it had been run on a basis of two or three hundred Mexicans and a sprinkling of pigs and Pueblo Indians--the pigs was the most respectable--and it was allowed to be, after the track got there, the toughest town the Territory had to show. Santa Cruz de la Canada, which was close to it, was said to have took the cake for toughness before railroad times. It was a holy terror, Santa Cruz was! The only decent folks in it was the French padre--who outcla.s.sed most saints, and hadn't a fly on him--and a German named Becker. He had the Government forage-station, Becker had; and he used to say he'd had a fresh surprise every one of the mornings of the five years he'd been forage-agent--when he woke up and found n.o.body'd knifed him in the night and he was keeping on being alive!

But when the track come in, and the higher civilization come in a-yelling with it and spread itself, Palomitas could give points to the Canada in cussedness all down the line. Most of it right away was saloons and dance-halls; and the pressure for faro accommodation was such the padre thought he could make money by closing down his own monte-bank and renting. Denver Jones took his place at fifty dollars a week, payable every Sat.u.r.day night--and rounded on the padre by getting back his rent-money over the table every Sunday afternoon.

He'd a-got it back Sunday mornings if the padre hadn't been tied up mornings to his work. (He was a native, that padre was--and went on so extra outrageous his own folks couldn't stand him and Bishop Lamy bounced him from his job.) Pretty much all the time there was rump.u.s.s.es; and the way they was managed made the Mexicans--being used, same as I've said, to knives mostly--open their eyes wide. It seemed really to jolt 'em when they begun to find out what a live man with his back up could do with a gun! Occurrences was so frequent--before construction started up again, and for a while after--the new cemetery out in the sage-brush on the mesa come close to having as big a population as the town.

What happened--shootings, and doings of all sorts--mostly centred on the Forest Queen. That was the only place that called itself a hotel in Palomitas--folks being able to get some sort of victuals there, and it having bunks in a room off the bar-room where pa.s.sers-through was give a chance to think (by morning they was apt to think different) they was going to have a night's sleep.

Kicking against what you got--and against the throwed-in extras you'd a-been better without--didn't do no good. Old Tenderfoot Sal, who kept the place, only stuck her fat elbows out and told the kickers she done the best she knowed how to, and she reckoned it was as good as you could expect in them parts, and most was suited. If they didn't like the Forest Queen Hotel, she said, they was free to get out of it and go to one that suited 'em better--and as there wasn't none to go to, Sal held the cards.

She was a corker, Sal was! By her own account of herself, she'd learned hotel-keeping through being a sutler's wife in the war. What sutling had had to do with it was left to guess at, and there was opinions as to how much her training in hoteling had done for her; but it was allowed she'd learned a heap of other things--of one sort and another--and her name of Tenderfoot was give her because them fat feet of hers, in the course of her travels, had got that hard I reckon she wouldn't a-noticed it walking on red-hot point-upwards ten-penny nails!

In the Forest Queen bar-room was the biggest bank there was in town.

Blister Mike--he was Irish, Blister was, and Sal's bar-keep--had some sort of a share in it; but it was run by a feller who'd got the name of Santa Fe Charley, he having had a bank over in Santa Fe afore Sal give him the offer to come across to Palomitas and take charge. He was one of the blue-eyed quiet kind, Charley was, that's not wholesome to monkey with; the sort that's extra particular about being polite and nice-spoken--and never makes no mistakes, when shooting-time comes, about shooting to kill. When he was sober, though--and he had to keep sober, mostly, or his business would a-suffered--he wasn't hunting after rump.u.s.s.es: all he did was to keep ready for 'em, and hold his end up when they come along. He had the habit--same as some other of the best card sharps I've met with--of dressing himself in black, real stylish: wearing a long-tail coat and a boiled s.h.i.+rt and white tie, and having a toney wide-brimmed black felt hat that touched him off fine. With them regular fire-escape clothes on, folks was apt to take him for one; and, when they did, he always met 'em half-way by letting on preaching was his business--till he got 'em on the other side of the table and begun to shake down what cards he needed from up inside them black coat-sleeves. Mostly they ended by thinking that maybe preaching wasn't just what you might call his strongest hold.

It helped him in his work more'n a little, sometimes, dressing up that way and talking to suit, like he knowed how to, real high-toned talk; but I do believe for a fact he enjoyed the dollars he got out of it less 'n he did the fun it give him making fools of folks by setting up rigs on 'em--he truly being the greatest hand at rigging I ever seen.

Somehow--not having the comfort of being able to get drunk half as often as he wanted to--it seemed like he give himself the let-out he needed in them queer antics; and, for certain, he managed 'em always so they went with a hum. When him and the Sage-Brush Hen played partners in rigging anybody--as they was apt to, the Hen being much such another and so special friends with Charley she'd come on after him from Santa Fe--there mostly was a real down spirited game!

She was what you might call the leading lady in the Forest Queen dance-hall, the Sage-Brush Hen was; and if you wanted fun, and had to choose between her and a basket of monkeys, all I've got to say is--n.o.body'd ever a-took the monkeys who knowed the Hen! That girl was up to more queer tricks than anybody of her size and shape--she had a powerful fine shape, the Hen had--I've ever laid eyes on; and she'd run 'em in you so slick and quiet--keeping as demure as a cat after birds while she was doing it--you'd never suspicion anything was happening till you found the whole town laughing its head off at you for being so many kinds of a fool!

Things wasn't any time what you might call too extra quiet in Palomitas; but when them two--the Hen and Santa Fe--started in together to run any racket you may bet your life there was a first-cla.s.s circus from the word go! Gra.s.s didn't grow much under their feet, either. The very minute the Hen struck the town--coming on after Santa Fe, same as I've said, and him waiting for her when she got there--they went at their monkey-s.h.i.+ning, finis.h.i.+ng two-handed what the Hen had started as a lone-hand game. Right along from then on they kept things moving spirited, one way and another, without much of a let-up. And they ended off--the day the two of 'em, owing to circ.u.mstances, lit out together--by setting up on all of us what I reckon was the best rig ever set up on anybody anywheres since rigs was begun!

Palomitas was a purer town, Cherry said--it was him led off in the purifying--after we was shut of 'em, and of some others that was fired for company; and I won't say he wasn't right in making out it was a better town, maybe, when we'd got it so blame pure. But they had their good points, the Hen and Santa Fe had--and after they was purified out of it some of us didn't never quite feel as if the place was just the same.

II

THE SAGE-BRUSH HEN

The Hen blew in one day on Hill's coach, coming from Santa Fe, setting up on the box with him--Hill run his coach all the time the track was stuck at Palomitas, it being quicker for Santa Fe folks going up that way to Pueblo and Denver and Leadville than taking the Atchison out to El Moro and changing to the Narrow Gauge--and she was so all over dust that Wood sung out to him: "Where'd you get your Sage-Brush Hen from?"

And the name stuck.

More folks in Palomitas had names that had tumbled to 'em like that than the kind that had come regular. And even when they sounded regular they likely wasn't. Regular names pretty often got lost coming across the Plains in them days--more'n a few finding it better, about as they got to the Missouri, to leave behind what they'd been called by back East and draw something new from the pack. Making some sort of a change was apt to be wholesomer and often saved talk.

Hill said the Hen was more fun coming across from Santa Fe than anything he'd ever got up against; and she was all the funnier, he said, because when he picked her up at the Fonda she looked like as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in her mouth and started in with her monkey-s.h.i.+nes so sort of quiet and demure. Along with her, waiting at the Fonda, was an old gent with spectacles who turned out to be a mine sharp--one of them fellows the Government sends out to the Territory to write up serious in books all the fool stories prospectors and such unload on 'em: the kind that needs to be led, and 'll eat out of your hand. The Hen and the old gent and Hill had the box-seat, the Hen in between; and she was that particular about her skirts climbing up, and about making room after she got there, that Hill said he sized her up himself for an officer's wife going East.

Except to say thank you, and talk polite that way, she didn't open her head till they'd got clear of the town and begun to go slow in that first bit of bad road among the sandhills; and it was the old gent speaking to her--telling her it was a fine day, and he hoped she liked it--that set her stamps to working a little then. She allowed the weather was about what it ought to be, and said she was much obliged and it suited her; and then she got her tongue in behind her teeth again as if she meant to keep it there--till the old gent took a fresh start by asking her if she'd been in the Territory long. She said polite she hadn't, and was quiet for a minute. Then she got out her pocket-handkerchief and put it up to her eyes and said she'd been in it longer'n she wanted, and was glad she was going away. Hill said her talking that way made him feel kind of curious himself; but he didn't have no need to ask questions--the old gent saving him that trouble by going for her sort of fatherly and pumping away at her till he got the whole thing.

It come out sc.r.a.ppy, like as might be expected, Hill said; and so natural-sounding he thought he must be asleep and dreaming--he knowing pretty well what was going on in the Territory, and she telling about doings that was news to him and the kind he'd a-been sure to hear a lot of if they'd ever really come off. Hill said he wished he could tell it all as she did--speaking low, and ketching her breath in the worst parts, and mopping at her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief--but he couldn't; and all he could say about it was it was better'n any theatre show he'd ever seen. The nubs of it was, he said, that she said her husband had taken out a troop from Fort Wingate against the Apaches (Hill knew blame well up there in the Navajo country was no place to look for Apaches) and the troop had been ambushed in a canon in the Zuni Mountains (which made the story still tougher) and every man of 'em, along with her "dear Captain" as she called him, had lost his hair. "His loved remains are where those fierce creatures left them," she said. "I have not even the sad solace of properly burying his precious bones!" And she cried.

The old gent was quite broke up, Hill said, and took a-hold of her hand fatherly--she was a powerful fine-looking woman--and said she had his sympathy; and when she eased up on her crying so she could talk she said she was much obliged--and felt it all the more, she said, because he looked like a young uncle of hers who'd brought her up, her father being dead, till she was married East to her dear Captain and had come out to the Territory with him to his dreadful doom.

Hill said it all went so smooth he took it down himself at first--but he got his wind while she was crying, and he asked her what her Captain's name was, and what was his regiment; telling her he hadn't heard of any trouble up around Wingate, and it was news to him Apaches was in them parts. She give him a dig in the ribs with her elbow--as much as to tell him he wasn't to ask no such questions--and said back to him her dear husband was Captain Chiswick of the Twelfth Cavalry; and it had been a big come down for him, she said, when he got his commission in the Regulars, after he'd been a Volunteer brigadier-general in the war.

Hill knowed right enough there wasn't no Twelfth Cavalry nowhere, and that the boys at Wingate was A and F troops of the Fourth; but he ketched on to the way she was giving it to the old gent--and so _he_ give _her_ a dig in the ribs, and said he'd knowed Captain Chiswick intimate, and he was as good a fellow as ever was, and it was a blame pity he was killed. She give him a dig back again, at that--and was less particular about making room on his side.

The old gent took it all in, just as it come along; and after she'd finished up about the Apaches killing her dear Captain he wanted to know where she was heading for--because if she was going home East, he said, he was going East himself and could give her a father's care.

She said back to him, pleasant like, that a young man like him couldn't well be fathering an old lady like her, though it was obliging of him to offer; but, anyway, she wasn't going straight back East, because she had to wait awhile at Palomitas for a remittance she was expecting to pay her way through--and she wasn't any too sure about it, she said, whether she'd get her remittance; or, if she did get it, when it would come. Everything bad always got down on you at once, she said; and just as the cruel savages had slain her dear Captain along come the news the bank East he'd put his money in had broke the worst kind. Her financial difficulties wasn't a patch on the trouble her sorrowing heart was giving her, she said; but she allowed they added what she called pangs of bitterness to her deeper pain.

The old gent--he wasn't a fool clean through--asked her what was the matter with her Government transportation; she having a right to transportation, being an officer's widow going home. Hill said he give her a nudge at that, as much as to say the old gent had her. She didn't faze a bit, though. It was her Government transportation she was waiting for, she cracked back to him smooth and natural; but such things had to go all the way to Was.h.i.+ngton to be settled, she said, and then come West again--Hill said he 'most snickered out at that--and she'd known cases when red-tape had got in the way and transportation hadn't been allowed at all. Then she sighed terrible, and said it might be a long, long while before she could get home again to her little boy--who was all there was left her in the world.

Her little w.i.l.l.y was being took care of by his grandmother, she said, and he was just his father's own handsome self over again--and she got out her pocket-handkerchief and jammed it up to her eyes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HER LEFT HAND WAS LAYING IN HER LAP, AND THE OLD GENT GOT A-HOLD OF IT"]

Her left hand was laying in her lap, sort of casual, and the old gent got a-hold of it and said he didn't know how to tell her how sorry he was for her. Talking from behind her pocket-handkerchief, she said such sympathy was precious; and then she went on, kind of pitiful, saying she s'posed her little w.i.l.l.y'd have forgot all about her before she'd get back to him--and she cried some more. Hill said she done it so well he was half took in himself for a minute, and felt so bad he went to licking and swearing at his mules.

After a while she took a brace--getting down her pocket-handkerchief, and calling in the hand the old gent was a-holding--and said she must be brave, like her dear Captain'd always been, so he'd see when he was a-looking at her from heaven she was doing the square thing. And as to having to wait around before she went East, she said, in one way it didn't make any matter--seeing she'd be well cared for and comfortable at Palomitas staying in the house of the Baptist minister, who'd married her aunt.

Hill said when she went to talking about Baptist ministers and aunts in Palomitas he shook so laughing inside he most fell off the box.

Except the Mexican padre who belonged there--the one I've spoke of that made a record, and Bishop Lamy had to bounce--and sometimes the French ones from San Juan and the Canada, who was straight as strings, there wasn't a fire-escape ever showed himself in Palomitas; and as to the ladies of the town--well, the ladies wasn't just what you'd call the aunt kind. It's a cold fact that Palomitas, that year when the end of the track stuck there, was the cussedest town, same as I've said it was, in the whole Territory--and so it was no more'n natural Hill should pretty near bust himself trying to hold in his laughing when the Hen took to talking so off-hand about Palomitas and Baptist ministers and aunts. She felt how he was shaking, and jammed him hard with her elbow to keep him from letting his laugh out and giving her away.

Hill said they'd got along to Pojuaque by the time the Hen had finished telling about herself, and the fix she was in because she had to wait along with her aunt in Palomitas till her transportation come from Was.h.i.+ngton--and she just sick to get East and grab her little w.i.l.l.y in her arms. And the old gent was that interested in it all, Hill said, it was a sight to see how he went on.

At Pojuaque the coach always made a noon stop, and the team was changed and the pa.s.sengers got dinner at old man Bouquet's. He was a Frenchman, old man Bouquet was; but he'd been in the Territory from 'way back, and he'd got a nice garden behind his house and things fixed up French style. His strongest hold was his wine-making. He made a first-cla.s.s drink, as drinks of that sort go; and, for its kind, it was pretty strong. As his cooking was first-cla.s.s too, Hill's pa.s.sengers--and the other folks that stopped for grub there--always wanted to make a good long halt.

Hill said it turned out the old gent knowed how to talk French, and that made old man Bouquet extra obliging--and he set up a rattling good dinner and fetched out some of the wine he said he was in the habit of keeping for his own drinking, seeing he'd got somebody in the house for once who really could tell the difference between good and bad. He fixed up a table out in the garden--aside of that queer tree, all growed together, he thought so much of--and set down with 'em himself; and Hill said it was one of the pleasantest parties he'd ever been at in all his born days.

The Hen and the old gent got friendlier and friendlier--she being more cheerful when she'd been setting at table a while, and getting to talking so comical she kept 'em all on a full laugh. Now and then, though, she'd pull up sudden and kind of back away--making out she didn't want it to show so much--and get her pocket-handkerchief to her eyes and snuffle; and then she'd pull herself together sort of conspicuous, and say she didn't want to spoil the party, but she couldn't help thinking how long it was likely to be before she'd see her little boy. And then the old gent would say that such tender motherliness did her credit, and hers was a sweet nature, and he'd hold her hand till she took it away.

Hill said the time pa.s.sed so pleasant he forgot how it was going, and when he happened to think to look at his watch he found he'd have to everlastingly hustle his mules to get over to Palomitas in time to ketch the Denver train. He went off in a tearing hurry to hitch up, and old man Bouquet went along to help him--the old gent saying he guessed he and Mrs. Chiswick would stay setting where they was, it being cool and comfortable in the garden, till the team was put to.