Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories Part 5

The Indians, seeing his predicament, whipped up their horses and galloped beside the platform, reviling and jeering at him. Wemple scrambled to his feet and put his arm about Barbara, as though fearful they might yet try to take her from him. She leaned over the rail, laughed in their faces, and called out, in the Indian tongue:

"Good-bye! Good-bye, forever! Now I shall be a white woman!"

THE KID OF APACHE TEJU

Baby, my babe, What waits you yonder, Out in the world?

Dear little feet, There must they wander, Out in the world?

Soft little hands, What shall they do there, Out in the world?

Baby, my babe, What fate must you dare, Out in the world?

All around Apache Teju for miles and miles lies the gray, cactus-dotted, heat-devoured plain, weird and fascinating, with its placid, tree-fringed lakes, that are not; its barren, jagged, turquoise-tinted mountain-peaks, born here and there of the horizon and the desert; its whirling, dancing columns of sand, which mount to mid-sky; its lying distances and deceiving levels; its silence and its fierce, white, unclouded suns.h.i.+ne.

And when you draw rein under the cottonwoods at Apache Teju, uncurl the wrinkles of your eyelids in the welcome shade, and cool your eyes in the vivid green of the alfalfa field, it suddenly comes to you that never before did you understand what blessedness there is in a bit of shadow and a patch of green things growing.

From the spring at the top of the slope behind the house a line of n.o.ble old cottonwoods files along the _acequia_ halfway down the hill, and there, where the ditch divides, forks into a spreading double row, which incloses the house and stables and comes together again in a little grove beyond the road, where the two ditches empty into a pond.

The house lies there in this circlet of trees, a low, whitewashed, flat-roofed adobe, rambling along in apparent aimlessness from cosey rooms through sheds and stables, until the whole connecting structure incloses a large corral.

In front of the house is a tiny square of blue-gra.s.s, bordered by beds of geraniums and larkspurs and hollyhocks, inclosed by a low adobe wall, and shaded by a young cottonwood growing in the centre. Beyond, on the slope of the hill below the ditch, where its waters can be spread over all the surface, is the rich, velvety emerald of the alfalfa field. And the fame of that little square of gra.s.s and of that little field of alfalfa fills all the land from Deming to Silver City, and from Separ to the Mimbres.

And that is Apache Teju, headquarters for the northern half of a ranch that spreads over seven thousand square miles of the arid hills and plains of southern New Mexico, where for hours and hours you may travel toward a horizon swimming in heat, across the gray, hot, quivering levels, broken only by clumps of gay-flowered cactus and the blanching bones and sun-dried hides of cattle, dead of starvation and thirst.

The superintendent's wife and I sat in the tiny gra.s.s plat enjoying the balmy breath that in the late afternoon steals over and cools this strange, hot land. Texas Bill had just galloped home from the nearest railroad station with a big package of Eastern mail; and the combined attractions of letters, late magazines, and a box of New York candy so engrossed us that we did not see the Kid until the gate clicked and he stood before us, asking,

"Is this the double A, quart circ., bar H outfit?"

"The what?" I gasped, looking at the queer little figure in astonishment. He was perhaps a dozen years old, though the slender, childish figure and the experienced face belied each other and made guessing difficult. He wore a man's sombrero, old and dirty, which came down to his ears and flopped a wide, unstiffened brim around his face. With tardy recollection of his manners,--learned who knows where,--he doffed his head-gear after he had spoken, and stood with serious face, but unable to repress a smile that twinkled in his great blue child's eyes at my astonishment. A big rent across one shoulder of his s.h.i.+rt showed a strip of sunburned flesh beneath and sent one sleeve dangling over his hand. His baggy trousers--no, that is not the word, they were "pants"--were held in place by a halter strap buckled tightly about his waist, and his feet were concealed in shoes so much too large for him that his toes were not visible in the mouths gaping at their front ends. And on one foot clanked and jingled the pride and glory of his attire--a huge spur, three inches long, silver-plated and highly polished, and so heavy that that foot dragged as he walked.

He repeated his question, and the superintendent's wife leaned forward, with a laughing aside to me:

"You tenderfoot! Haven't you learned our brand yet?" And to the boy: "Yes, this is Apache Teju. Do you want to see any one?"

"Boss home yet from Deming?"

"Mr. Williams? I expect him this evening."

The boy threw himself down full length upon the gra.s.s and pressed his face against the cool, green blades.

"Well," he exclaimed, "it's pretty fine here, ain't it? That green down there is just out of sight. I heard there was blue-gra.s.s and alfalfa here, but who 'd have thought it would look so nice?"

"Do you want to see Mr. Williams?"

"I guess it ain't necessary," and he sat up again, pressing a handful of gra.s.s upon each glowing cheek.

I handed him the candy box and he helped himself daintily with the tongs, saying, "Thank you, ma'am," with a sidelong glance which let me know that his heart was won to my service from that moment. He put a piece in his mouth, and his face beamed with pleasure.

"This just strikes my gait! 'T ain't much like Deming candy, is it? I saw the boss last night in Deming," he added, turning to Mrs. Williams.

"You're his wife, ain't you? I thought so, soon as I saw you. He was kidding me about coming out here to be a cowboy, and I told him all right, if he wasn't running a blaze, I 'd go him on that. I was to have rode out with him in his buggy, but I was up pretty late last night with the boys, doing the town, and when I got up this morning he was gone. I was n't going to have him think I 'd backed out of the bargain, so I says to the conductor, 'I got a job out at Apache--cowboy--gimme a ride to Whitewater.' And he says, 'All right, jump on. You 're welcome to a ride on my train whenever you want it.'

So I walked over from Whitewater, and I 'm ready to go to work to-night if the boss says so. He won't find me no tenderfoot, you hear me."

The naive bravado of the child's speech was irresistible. It won my heart as completely as I had won his, and I straightway emptied my candy box into his hands. "Oh!" he breathed, looking at the heap of dainties with infantile delight. And then he fell upon them with avidity and did not speak another word until the last one had disappeared down his throat.

So that was how the Kid came to live at Apache Teju. He said his name was Guy Silvestre Raymond. But whether a mother's lips had really bestowed that name upon him, or he had appropriated it to himself out of some blood-and-thunder romance, whose hero he had decided to imitate, name and all, is one of the things that n.o.body but the Kid will ever know. But it did n't matter much anyway, for he had always been called Kid, and that name followed him to the ranch, much to his disgust. For he had decided, as he told me one day, that the ladies of the household should call him Guy, and that among the men his name should be "Broncho Bob."

He was a waif of the railroad. All his life had been spent along its line, blacking boots, selling nuts, candy, papers, on the trains or around the depots of the frontier cities and towns. And he had taken care of himself ever since he could remember. He had reached Deming a few days before in a worse but less picturesque state of dilapidation than that in which he presented himself at Apache Teju. After deciding that he would leave the railroad and become a cowboy, he had sc.r.a.ped together, in Heaven knows what devious ways and by what lucky chances, the apparel of state in which he set forth on his new life.

The next morning there was trouble in the corral. Kid had been directed to mount an old and gentle pony whose meek and humble appearance did not at all agree with his ideas of the sort of steed Broncho Bob should bestride. There was in the corral a black horse called Dynamite, a mettlesome young thing whose one specialty was bucking. And of this it never failed to give a continuous performance from the time a rider mounted its back until he was dislodged. Kid was determined to ride Dynamite. Texas Bill and Red Jack were trying to persuade him out of his notion by telling him how dangerous the horse was, and how he once landed Mr. Williams, the best rider on the whole ranch, on top of the house.

"Suppose he did," bl.u.s.tered the Kid. "He won't land me on top of the house, nor on top of the ground, neither. I tell you, I ain't afraid to fork any horse that ever bucked! I can ride anything that wears hair! You hear me shout? Anything that wears hair!"

"See here, youngster," said Texas Bill, in his longest and most indifferent drawl, "I 've been ridin' horses more years than you 've been born, an' I 've tamed more pitchin' horses than you ever saw any other kind, an' I ain't a little bit afraid of a pitchin' horse. I 'm a whole, big, blazin' lot afraid!"

"What if you are?" retorted Kid. "I don't have to be a coward 'cause you 're one!"

Texas Bill's eye glared, and his hand jerked toward his hip pocket.

Then he grunted and walked over to where I was feeding the two Angora goats out of my hands.

"If he was a man--" he began in an angry voice, and then broke off.

"But I 'm not fightin' babies. I thought I 'd keep him from breakin'

his durn fool neck, but he can go it now as fast as he wants to."

The superintendent came out and told Kid he would have to obey orders or go back to Deming at once. So he sullenly mounted the meek and humble pony and cantered off.

About mid-forenoon, when there was no one at home but little Madge, the ten-year-old daughter of the house, the cook, and myself, Kid galloped back alone. Madge came dancing from the corral to where I sat in the front yard, her eyes blazing and her hands quivering with excitement.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "He's going to ride Dynamite! He 's run off from them and come back to ride Dynamite!"

"He must not do it! I must not let him!" And I started for the corral. Madge grasped my skirt with both hands.

"Dynamite won't hurt him! I know he won't!"

"What do you know about it?"

"I know he won't because--don't you tell mamma--I was on him myself one day, and he never bucked a bit!"

"You! How did you dare?"

"I wanted to see if I could, and there was n.o.body in the corral, and I climbed on his back, and he was just lovely!"

And just then, with Kid astride him, Dynamite pranced and curveted down the road. With a beaming face Kid waved his hat at us and galloped off. Dynamite making not even the sign of a desire to buck. After that the boy could not be persuaded to ride any other horse. And as long as Kid bestrode him, or Madge, with Kid's connivance and help, surrept.i.tiously mounted him, Dynamite's behavior was perfect. But he worked woe upon any grown person that made the attempt.

The black horse's life was not an easy one under Kid's masters.h.i.+p. The boy never rode at a less pace than a gallop, and even in that dry, hot air Dynamite was always reeking with sweat when they came home.

Just how the Kid put in his time out on the plains was a mystery. The cowboys with whom and for whose a.s.sistance he was sent out good-naturedly swore that he was "not worth a whoop in h--l." If they needed him, he was nowhere in sight, and if they particularly did not want him he was sure to come charging over the plain, straight upon the cattle they had bunched, and scatter the frightened creatures to the four winds. But mostly they said he managed to get lost; which was only their kindly way of putting the fact that he slipped away from them and pursued his own amus.e.m.e.nts at a sufficient distance not to be disturbed by their need of him.

What he did with himself all day long Mrs. Williams and I discovered one day when driving to Whitewater. Out on the plain we saw the Kid yelling like a wild man, with Dynamite at his highest speed, chasing a jack-rabbit. That evening I heard him giving Madge a thrilling account of how he had chased a gray wolf, which, after running many miles, had turned on him and viciously sprung at his throat, and how he had made Dynamite jump on the beast and trample its life out. And I recognized in the tale merely Kid's version for Madge's ears of his chase of the jackrabbit.