Stepsons of Light Part 5

_Foot in the stirrup and a hand on the horn, Best old cowboy ever was born!

Hi, yi-yippy, yippy-hi-yi-yi, Hi-yi-yippy-yippy-yay!_

_Stray in the herd and the boss said kill it, Shot him in the ear with the handle of the skillet!

Hi, yi-yippy, yippy-hi-yi-yi, Hi-yi-yippy-yippy-yay!_

That rollicking chorus died away. The wagon road turned up a sandy draw for a long detour, to cross the high ridges far inland.

Stargazer clambered up the Drunkard's Mile, a steep and dizzy cut-off.

High on an overhang of halfway shelf, between water and sky, Stargazer paused for breathing s.p.a.ce.

_The world has no place for a dreamer of dreams, Then 'tis no place for me, it seems, Dearie!... My dearie!_

Echo rang bugle-brave from cliff to cliff, pealed exulting, answered again--came back long after, faint and far:

"Dearie!... My dearie!"

He looked down, musing, at the swirling black waters far below.

_For I dream of you all the day long!

You run through the hours like a song!

Nothing's worth while save dreams of you, And you can make every dream come true-- Dearie! My dearie!_

Drunkard's Mile fell off into the valley at Redbrush and joined the wagon road there. They pa.s.sed Beck's Ferry and Beneteau's; they came to a bridge over the _acequia madre_, the mother ditch, wide and deep. Beyond was a wide valley of cleared and irrigated farm lands.

This was Garfield settlement.

You remember Mr. d.i.c.k and how he could not keep King Charles' head out of his Memorial? A like unhappiness is mine. When I remember that pleasant settlement as it really was, cheerful and busy and merry, I am forced to think how gleefully the super-sophisticated Sons of Light would fall afoul of these friendly folk--how they would pounce upon them with jeering laughter, scoff at their simple joys and fears; set down, with heavy and hateful satisfaction, every lack and longing; flout at each brave makes.h.i.+ft, such as Little Miss Brag crowed over, jubilant, when she pointed with pride:

_For little Miss Brag, she lays much stress On the privileges of a gingham dress-- A-ha-a! O-ho-o!_

A lump comes to my throat, remembering; now my way is plain; if I would not be incomparably base, I must speak up for my own people.

Now, like Mr. d.i.c.k, I must fly my kite, with these sc.r.a.ps and tags of Memorial. The string is long, and if the kite flies high it may take the facts a long way; the winds must bear them as they will.

Consider now the spreading gospel of despair, and marvel at the power of words--noises in the air, marks upon paper. Let us wonder to see how little wit is needed to twist and distort truth that it may set forth a lie. A tumblebug zest, a nose pinched to sneering, a slurring tongue--with no more equipment you and I could draw a picture of Garfield as it is done in the fas.h.i.+on of to-day.

Be blind and deaf to help and hope, gay courage, hards.h.i.+p n.o.bly borne; appeal to envy, greed, covetousness; belaud extravagance and luxury; magnify every drawback; exclaim at rude homes, simple dress, plain food, manners not copied from imitators of Europe's idlesse; use ever the mean and mocking word--how easy to belittle! Behold Garfield--barbarous, uncouth, dreary, desolate, savage and forlorn; there misery kennels, huddled between jungle and moaning waste; there, lout and boor crouch in their wretched hovels! We have left out little; only the peace of mighty mountains far and splendid, a gallant sun and the illimitable sky, tingling and eager life, and the invincible spirit of man.

Such picture as this of Garfield _comme il faut_ is, I humbly conceive, what a great man, who trod earth bravely, had in mind when he wondered at "the spectral unreality of realistic books." It is what he forswore in his up-summing: "And the true realism is ... to find out where joy resides and give it a voice beyond singing."

This trouble about Charles the First and our head--it started in 1645, I think--needs looking into.

There are circles where "adventurer" is a term of reproach, where "romance" is made synonym for a lie, and a silly lie at that.

Curious! The very kernel and meaning of romance is the overcoming of difficulties or a manly constancy of striving; a strong play pushed home or defeat well borne. And it would be hard to find a man but found his own life a breathless adventure, brief and hard, with ups and downs enough, strivings through all defeats.

Interesting, if true. But can we prove this? Certainly--by trying.

Mr. d.i.c.k sets us all right. Put any man to talk of what he knows best--corn, coal or lumber--and hear matters throbbing with the entrancing interest born only of first-hand knowledge. Our pessimists "suspect nothing but what they do not understand, and they suspect everything"--as was said of the commission set to judge the regicides who cut off the head of Charles the Martyr--whom I may have mentioned, perhaps.

Let the dullest man tell of the thing he knows at first hand, and his speech shall tingle with battle and luck and loss, purr for small comforts of cakes and ale or sound the bell note of clean mirth; his voice shall exult with pride of work, tingle and tense to speak of hard-won steeps, the burden and heat of the day and "the bright face of danger"; it shall be soft as quiet water to tell of shadows where winds loiter, of moon magic and far-off suns, friends.h.i.+p and fire and song. There will be more, too, which he may not say, having no words.

We prate of little things, each to each; but we fall silent before love and death.

It was once commonly understood that it is not good for a man to whine. Only of late has it been discovered that a thinker is superficial and shallow unless he whines; that no man is wise unless he views with alarm. Eager propaganda has disseminated the glad news that everything is going to the demnition bowwows. Willing hands pa.s.s on the word. The method is simple. They write very long books in which they set down the evil on the one side--and nothing on the other. That is "realism." Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are of ill report; if there be any vice, and if there be any shame--they think on these things. They gloat upon these things; they wallow in these things.

The next time you hanker for a gripping, stinging, roaring romance, try the story of Eddystone Lighthouse. There wasn't a realist on the job--they couldn't stand the gaff. For any tough lay like this of Winstanley's dream you want a gang of idealists--the impractical kind.

It is not a dismal story; it is a long record of trouble, delay, setbacks, exposure, hards.h.i.+p, death and danger, failure, humiliation, jeers, disaster and ruin. Crippled idealists were common in Plymouth Harbor. The sea and the wind mocked their labor; they were crushed, frozen and drowned; but they built Eddystone Light! And men in other harbors took heart again to build great lights against night and storm; the world over, realists fare safelier on the sea for Winstanley's dream.

There is the great distinction between realism and reality: It is the business of a realist to preach how man is mastered by circ.u.mstances; it is the business of a man to prove that he will be d.a.m.ned first.

You may note this curious fact of dismal books--that you remember no pa.s.sage to quote to your friends. Not one. And you perceive, with lively astonishment, that despairing books are written by the fortunate. The homespun are not so easily discouraged. When crows pull up their corn they do not quarrel with Creation. They comment on the crows, and plant more corn.

This trouble in King Charles' head may be explained, in part, on a closer looking. As for those who announce the bankruptcy of an insolvent and wildcat universe, with no extradition, and who proclaim G.o.d the Great Absconder--they are mostly of the emerged tenth. Their lips do curl with scorn; and what they scorn most is work--and doers.

For what they deign to praise--observe, sir, for yourself, what they uphold, directly or by implication. See if it be not a thing compact of graces possible only to idleness. See if it be not their great and fatal mistake that they regard culture as an end in itself, and not as a means for service. Aristocracy? Patricians? In a world which has known the tinker of Bedford, the druggist's clerk of Edmonton, the Stratford poacher, backwoods Lincoln, a thousand others, and ten thousand--a carpenter's son among them?

Returning to the Provisional Government: Regard its members closely, these G.o.ds _ad interim_. The ground of their depression is that everybody is not Just like Them. They have a grievance also in the matter of death; which might have been arranged better. It saddens them to know that so much excellence as theirs should perish from the earth. The skeptic is slacker, too; excusing himself from the hards.h.i.+ps of right living by pleading the futility of effort.

Unfair? Of course I am unfair; all this is a.s.sumption without knowledge, a malicious imputation of the worst possible motives, judgment from a part. It is their own method.

A wise word was said of late: "There are poor colonels, but no poor regiments." It would be truer to change a word; to say that there are poor soldiers, but no poor regiments. The gloomster picks the poorest soldier he can find, and holds him up to our eyes as a sample. "This is life!" says the pessimist, proud at last. "Now you see the stuff your regiments are made of!"

If one of these pallbearers should write a treatise on pomology he would dwell lovingly on apple-tree borers, blight and pest and scale.

He would say no word of spray or pruning; he would scoff at the glory of apple blossoms as the rosy illusion of romance; and he would resolutely suppress all mention of--apples. But he would feature hard cider, for all that; and he would revel in cankerworms.

These blighters and borers--figuratively speaking--when the curse of the bottle is upon them--the ink bottle--they weave ugly words to ugly phrases for ugly books about ugly things; with ugly thoughts of ugly deeds they chronicle life and men as dreary, sordid, base, squalid, paltry, tawdry, mean, dismal, dull and dull again, interminably dull--vile, flat, stale, unprofitable and insipid. No splendid folly or valiant sin--much less impracticable idealisms, such as kindness, generosity, faith, forgiveness, courage, honor, friends.h.i.+p, love; no charm or joy or beauty, no ardors that flame and glow. They show forth a world of beastliness and bankruptcy; they picture life as a purposeless h.e.l.l.

I beg of you, sir, do not permit yourself to be alarmed. What you hear is but the backdoor gossip of the world. And these people do not get enough exercise. Their livers are torpid. Some of them, poor fellows, are quite sincere--and some are merely in the fas.h.i.+on. It isn't true, you know; not of all of us, all the time. Nothing is changed; there is no shadow but proves the light; in the farthest world of any universe, in the latest eternity you choose to mention, it will still be playing the game to run out your hits; and there, as here, only the s.h.i.+rker will lie down on the job.

In the meantime, now and here, there are two things, and two only, that a man may do with his ideals: He may hold and shape them, or tread them under foot; ripen or rot.

What, sir, the hills are steep, the sand heavy, the mire is Despond-deep; for that reason will you choose a balky horse? Or will you follow a leader who plans surrender?

The bookshelviki have thrown away the sword before the fight. They shriek a shameful message: "All is lost! Save yourselves who can!"

The battle is sore upon us; true. But there is another war cry than this. It was born of a bitter hour; it was n.o.bly boasted, and brave men made it good. Now, and for all time to come, as the lost and furious fight reels by, men will turn and turn again for the watchword of Verdun: "They shall not pa.s.s! They shall not pa.s.s!"

Pardon the pontifical character of these remarks. They come tardy off.

For years I have kept a safe and shameful silence when I should have been shouting, "Janet! Donkeys!" and throwing things. I will be highbrow-beaten no longer. I hereby resign from the choir inaudible.

Modesty may go hang and prudence be jiggered; I wear Little Miss Brag's colors for favor; I have cut me an ellum gad, and I mean to use it on the seat of the scorner.

"Everything in Nature is engaged in writing its own history." So says Emerson or somebody. Here is the roll call of that lonesome bit between the Rio Grande and Caballo Mountain. Salem, Garfield, Donahue's, Derry and Shandon; those were the hamlets of the east side. Sound Irish, don't they? They were just what they sound like, at first. A few Irish families, big families, half of them girls--Irish girls; young gentlemen with a fancy to settle down settled right there or thereabouts. That's a quick way to start settlements. There was also a sardonic Greenhorn, to keep alive a memory of the old-time Texans, before the fences. A hundred years older than Greenhorn was the old Mexican outpost, San Ysidro; ruthlessly changed to Garfield when the Mississippi Valley moved in. Transportation was the poorest ever; this was the last-won farm land of New Mexico.

Along with snakes, centipedes, little yellow bobcats, whisky, poker, maybe a beef or two--there were other features worthy of note. Each man had to be cook, housekeeper, hunter, laundryman, shoemaker, blacksmith, bookkeeper, purchasing agent, miner, mason, nurse, doctor, gravedigger, interpreter, surveyor, tailor, jailor, judge, jury and sheriff. Having no sea handy, he was seldom a sailorman.

A man who could do these things well enough to make them work might be illiterate, but he couldn't be ignorant, not on a bet. It wasn't possible. He knew too much. He had to do his own thinking. There was no one else to do it for him. And he could not be wretched. He was too busy. "We may be poor sinners, but we're not miserable"--that was a favorite saying. When they brought in supplies or when they packed for a long trip, they learned foresight and imagination. A right good college, the frontier; there are many who are proud of that degree.

It is easy to be hospitable, kindly and free-hearted in a thinly settled country; it is your turn next, you know generosity from both sides; the Golden Rule has no chance to get rusty. So they were pleasant and friendly people. They learned cooperation by making wagon roads together, by making dams and big irrigation ditches, and from the round-ups. They lived in the open air, and their work was hard, they had health; there were endless difficulties to overcome; happiness had a long start and the pursuit was merry.

There was one other great advantage--hope. They had much to hope for.

Almost everything. They wished three great wishes: Water for the fields, safety from floods, a way to the outside world. To-day the thick and tangled _bosques_ are cleared to smiling farms, linked by a s.h.i.+ning network of ditches. The floods are impounded at Engle Dam, and held there for man's uses. A great irrigation ca.n.a.l keeps high and wide, with just fall enough to move the water; each foot saved of high level means added miles of reclaimed land under the ditch. To a stranger's eye the water of that ditch runs clearly uphill. To hold that high level the main ditch, which is first taken out to serve the west side, crosses the Rio Grande on a high flume to Derry; curves high and winding about the wide farm lands of Garfield valley; is siphoned under the river for Hatch and Rodey, and then is siphoned once again to the east side, to break out in the sunlight for the use of Rincon Valley. Rough and crooked is made smooth and straight; safe bridge and easy grade, a modern highway follows up the valley, with a brave firefly twinkling by night, to join the great National Trail at Engle Dam. This is what they dreamed amid sand and thorn--and their dreams have all come true. Now who can say which was better, the hoping or the having?