The Song of the Lark

by Willa Sibert Cather

party actually set off. Gunner and Axel went with Thea, and Ray had

  asked Spanish Johnny to come and to bring Mrs. Tellamantez and his

  mandolin. Ray was artlessly fond of music, especially of Mexican music.

  He and Mrs. Tellamantez had got up the lunch between them, and they were

  to make coffee in the desert.

  When they left Mexican Town, Thea was on the front seat with Ray and

  Johnny, and Gunner and Axel sat behind with Mrs. Tellamantez. They

  objected to this, of course, but there were some things about which Thea

  would have her own way. “As stubborn as a Finn,” Mrs. Kronborg sometimes

  said of her, quoting an old Swedish saying. When they passed the

  Kohlers’, old Fritz and Wunsch were cutting grapes at the arbor. Thea

  gave them a businesslike nod. Wunsch came to the gate and looked after

  them. He divined Ray Kennedy’s hopes, and he distrusted every expedition

  that led away from the piano. Unconsciously he made Thea pay for

  frivolousness of this sort.

  As Ray Kennedy’s party followed the faint road across the sagebrush,

  they heard behind them the sound of church bells, which gave them a

  sense of escape and boundless freedom. Every rabbit that shot across the

  path, every sage hen that flew up by the trail, was like a runaway

  thought, a message that one sent into the desert. As they went farther,

  the illusion of the mirage became more instead of less convincing; a

  shallow silver lake that spread for many miles, a little misty in the

  sunlight. Here and there one saw reflected the image of a heifer, turned

  loose to live upon the sparse sand-grass. They were magnified to a

  preposterous height and looked like mammoths, prehistoric beasts

  standing solitary in the waters that for many thousands of years

  actually washed over that desert;—the mirage itself may be the ghost

  of that long-vanished sea. Beyond the phantom lake lay the line of

  many-colored hills; rich, sun-baked yellow, glowing turquoise, lavender,

  purple; all the open, pastel colors of the desert.

  After the first five miles the road grew heavier. The horses had to slow

  down to a walk and the wheels sank deep into the sand, which now lay in

  long ridges, like waves, where the last high wind had drifted it. Two

  hours brought the party to Pedro’s Cup, named for a Mexican desperado

  who had once held the sheriff at bay there. The Cup was a great

  amphitheater, cut out in the hills, its floor smooth and packed hard,

  dotted with sagebrush and greasewood.

  On either side of the Cup the yellow hills ran north and south, with

  winding ravines between them, full of soft sand which drained down from

  the crumbling banks. On the surface of this fluid sand, one could find

  bits of brilliant stone, crystals and agates and onyx, and petrified

  wood as red as blood. Dried toads and lizards were to be found there,

  too. Birds, decomposing more rapidly, left only feathered skeletons.

  After a little reconnoitering, Mrs. Tellamantez declared that it was

  time for lunch, and Ray took his hatchet and began to cut greasewood,

  which burns fiercely in its green state. The little boys dragged the

  bushes to the spot that Mrs. Tellamantez had chosen for her fire.

  Mexican women like to cook out of doors.

  After lunch Thea sent Gunner and Axel to hunt for agates. “If you see a

  rattlesnake, run. Don’t try to kill it,” she enjoined.

  Gunner hesitated. “If Ray would let me take the hatchet, I could kill

  one all right.”

  Mrs. Tellamantez smiled and said something to Johnny in Spanish.

  “Yes,” her husband replied, translating, “they say in Mexico, kill a

  snake but never hurt his feelings. Down in the hot country, MUCHACHA,”

  turning to Thea, “people keep a pet snake in the house to kill rats and

  mice. They call him the house snake. They keep a little mat for him by

  the fire, and at night he curl up there and sit with the family, just as

  friendly!”

  Gunner sniffed with disgust. “Well, I think that’s a dirty Mexican way

  to keep house; so there!”

  Johnny shrugged his shoulders. “Perhaps,” he muttered. A Mexican learns

  to dive below insults or soar above them, after he crosses the border.

  By this time the south wall of the amphitheater cast a narrow shelf of

  shadow, and the party withdrew to this refuge. Ray and Johnny began to

  talk about the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, two places much shrouded

  in mystery in those days, and Thea listened intently. Mrs. Tellamantez

  took out her drawn-work and pinned it to her knee. Ray could talk well

  about the large part of the continent over which he had been knocked

  about, and Johnny was appreciative.

  “You been all over, pretty near. Like a Spanish boy,” he commented

  respectfully.

  Ray, who had taken off his coat, whetted his pocketknife thoughtfully on

  the sole of his shoe. “I began to browse around early. I had a mind to

  see something of this world, and I ran away from home before I was

  twelve. Rustled for myself ever since.”

  “Ran away?” Johnny looked hopeful. “What for?”

  “Couldn’t make it go with my old man, and didn’t take to farming. There

  were plenty of boys at home. I wasn’t missed.”

  Thea wriggled down in the hot sand and rested her chin on her arm. “Tell

  Johnny about the melons, Ray, please do!”

  Ray’s solid, sunburned cheeks grew a shade redder, and he looked

  reproachfully at Thea. “You’re stuck on that story, kid. You like to get

  the laugh on me, don’t you? That was the finishing split I had with my

  old man, John. He had a claim along the creek, not far from Denver, and

  raised a little garden stuff for market. One day he had a load of melons

  and he decided to take ‘em to town and sell ‘em along the street, and he

  made me go along and drive for him. Denver wasn’t the queen city it is

  now, by any means, but it seemed a terrible big place to me; and when we

  got there, if he didn’t make me drive right up Capitol Hill! Pap got out

  and stopped at folkses houses to ask if they didn’t want to buy any

  melons, and I was to drive along slow. The farther I went the madder I

  got, but I was trying to look unconscious, when the end-gate came loose

  and one of the melons fell out and squashed. Just then a swell girl, all

  dressed up, comes out of one of the big houses and calls out, ‘Hello,

  boy, you’re losing your melons!’ Some dudes on the other side of the

  street took their hats off to her and began to laugh. I couldn’t stand

  it any longer. I grabbed the whip and lit into that team, and they tore

  up the hill like jack-rabbits, them damned melons bouncing out the back

  every jump, the old man cussin’ an’ yellin’ behind and everybody

  laughin’. I never looked behind, but the whole of Capitol Hill must have

  been a mess with them squashed melons. I didn’t stop the team till I got

  out of sight of town. Then I pulled up an’ left ‘em with a rancher I was

  acquainted with, and I never went home to get the lickin’ that was

  waitin’ for me. I expect it’s waitin’ for me yet.”

  Thea rolled over in the sand. “Oh, I wish I could have seen t
hose melons

  fly, Ray! I’ll never see anything as funny as that. Now, tell Johnny

  about your first job.”

  Ray had a collection of good stories. He was observant, truthful, and

  kindly—perhaps the chief requisites in a good story-teller.

  Occasionally he used newspaper phrases, conscientiously learned in his

  efforts at self-instruction, but when he talked naturally he was always

  worth listening to. Never having had any schooling to speak of, he had,

  almost from the time he first ran away, tried to make good his loss. As

  a sheep-herder he had worried an old grammar to tatters, and read

  instructive books with the help of a pocket dictionary. By the light of

  many camp-fires he had pondered upon Prescott’s histories, and the works

  of Washington Irving, which he bought at a high price from a book-agent.

  Mathematics and physics were easy for him, but general culture came

  hard, and he was determined to get it. Ray was a freethinker, and

  inconsistently believed himself damned for being one. When he was

  braking, down on the Santa Fe, at the end of his run he used to climb

  into the upper bunk of the caboose, while a noisy gang played poker

  about the stove below him, and by the roof-lamp read Robert Ingersoll’s

  speeches and “The Age of Reason.”

  Ray was a loyal-hearted fellow, and it had cost him a great deal to give

  up his God. He was one of the stepchildren of Fortune, and he had very

  little to show for all his hard work; the other fellow always got the

  best of it. He had come in too late, or too early, on several schemes

  that had made money. He brought with him from all his wanderings a good

  deal of information (more or less correct in itself, but unrelated, and

  therefore misleading), a high standard of personal honor, a sentimental

  veneration for all women, bad as well as good, and a bitter hatred of

  Englishmen. Thea often thought that the nicest thing about Ray was his

  love for Mexico and the Mexicans, who had been kind to him when he

  drifted, a homeless boy, over the border. In Mexico, Ray was Senor

  Ken-ay-dy, and when he answered to that name he was somehow a different

  fellow. He spoke Spanish fluently, and the sunny warmth of that tongue

  kept him from being quite as hard as his chin, or as narrow as his

  popular science.

  While Ray was smoking his cigar, he and Johnny fell to talking about the

  great fortunes that had been made in the Southwest, and about fellows

  they knew who had “struck it rich.”

  “I guess you been in on some big deals down there?” Johnny asked

  trustfully.

  Ray smiled and shook his head. “I’ve been out on some, John. I’ve never

  been exactly in on any. So far, I’ve either held on too long or let go

  too soon. But mine’s coming to me, all right.” Ray looked reflective. He

  leaned back in the shadow and dug out a rest for his elbow in the sand.

  “The narrowest escape I ever had, was in the Bridal Chamber. If I hadn’t

  let go there, it would have made me rich. That was a close call.”

  Johnny looked delighted. “You don’ say! She was silver mine, I guess?”

  “I guess she was! Down at Lake Valley. I put up a few hundred for the

  prospector, and he gave me a bunch of stock. Before we’d got anything

  out of it, my brother-in-law died of the fever in Cuba. My sister was

  beside herself to get his body back to Colorado to bury him. Seemed

  foolish to me, but she’s the only sister I got. It’s expensive for dead

  folks to travel, and I had to sell my stock in the mine to raise the

  money to get Elmer on the move. Two months afterward, the boys struck

  that big pocket in the rock, full of virgin silver. They named her the

  Bridal Chamber. It wasn’t ore, you remember. It was pure, soft metal you

  could have melted right down into dollars. The boys cut it out with

  chisels. If old Elmer hadn’t played that trick on me, I’d have been in

  for about fifty thousand. That was a close call, Spanish.”

  “I recollec’. When the pocket gone, the town go bust.”

  “You bet. Higher’n a kite. There was no vein, just a pocket in the rock

  that had sometime or another got filled up with molten silver. You’d

  think there would be more somewhere about, but NADA. There’s fools

  digging holes in that mountain yet.”

  When Ray had finished his cigar, Johnny took his mandolin and began

  Kennedy’s favorite, “Ultimo Amor.” It was now three o’clock in the

  afternoon, the hottest hour in the day. The narrow shelf of shadow had

  widened until the floor of the amphitheater was marked off in two

  halves, one glittering yellow, and one purple. The little boys had come

  back and were making a robbers’ cave to enact the bold deeds of Pedro

  the bandit. Johnny, stretched gracefully on the sand, passed from

  “Ultimo Amor” to “Fluvia de Oro,” and then to “Noches de Algeria,”

  playing languidly.

  Every one was busy with his own thoughts. Mrs. Tellamantez was thinking

  of the square in the little town in which she was born; of the white

  church steps, with people genuflecting as they passed, and the

  round-topped acacia trees, and the band playing in the plaza. Ray

  Kennedy was thinking of the future, dreaming the large Western dream of

  easy money, of a fortune kicked up somewhere in the hills,—an oil well,

  a gold mine, a ledge of copper. He always told himself, when he accepted

  a cigar from a newly married railroad man, that he knew enough not to

  marry until he had found his ideal, and could keep her like a queen. He

  believed that in the yellow head over there in the sand he had found his

  ideal, and that by the time she was old enough to marry, he would be

  able to keep her like a queen. He would kick it up from somewhere, when

  he got loose from the railroad.

  Thea, stirred by tales of adventure, of the Grand Canyon and Death

  Valley, was recalling a great adventure of her own. Early in the summer

  her father had been invited to conduct a reunion of old frontiersmen, up

  in Wyoming, near Laramie, and he took Thea along with him to play the

  organ and sing patriotic songs. There they stayed at the house of an old

  ranchman who told them about a ridge up in the hills called Laramie

  Plain, where the wagon-trails of the Forty-niners and the Mormons were

  still visible. The old man even volunteered to take Mr. Kronborg up into

  the hills to see this place, though it was a very long drive to make in

  one day. Thea had begged frantically to go along, and the old rancher,

  flattered by her rapt attention to his stories, had interceded for her.

  They set out from Laramie before daylight, behind a strong team of

  mules. All the way there was much talk of the Forty-niners. The old

  rancher had been a teamster in a freight train that used to crawl back

  and forth across the plains between Omaha and Cherry Creek, as Denver

  was then called, and he had met many a wagon train bound for California.

  He told of Indians and buffalo, thirst and slaughter, wanderings in

  snowstorms, and lonely graves in the desert.

  The road they followed was a wild and beautiful one. It led up and up,

  by granite
rocks and stunted pines, around deep ravines and echoing

  gorges. The top of the ridge, when they reached it, was a great flat

  plain, strewn with white boulders, with the wind howling over it. There

  was not one trail, as Thea had expected; there were a score; deep

  furrows, cut in the earth by heavy wagon wheels, and now grown over with

  dry, whitish grass. The furrows ran side by side; when one trail had

  been worn too deep, the next party had abandoned it and made a new trail

  to the right or left. They were, indeed, only old wagon ruts, running

  east and west, and grown over with grass. But as Thea ran about among

  the white stones, her skirts blowing this way and that, the wind brought

  to her eyes tears that might have come anyway. The old rancher picked up

  an iron ox-shoe from one of the furrows and gave it to her for a

  keepsake. To the west one could see range after range of blue mountains,

  and at last the snowy range, with its white, windy peaks, the clouds

  caught here and there on their spurs. Again and again Thea had to hide

  her face from the cold for a moment. The wind never slept on this plain,

  the old man said. Every little while eagles flew over.

  Coming up from Laramie, the old man had told them that he was in

  Brownsville, Nebraska, when the first telegraph wires were put across

  the Missouri River, and that the first message that ever crossed the

  river was “Westward the course of Empire takes its way.” He had been in

  the room when the instrument began to click, and all the men there had,

  without thinking what they were doing, taken off their hats, waiting

  bareheaded to hear the message translated. Thea remembered that message

  when she sighted down the wagon tracks toward the blue mountains. She

  told herself she would never, never forget it. The spirit of human

  courage seemed to live up there with the eagles. For long after, when

  she was moved by a Fourth-of-July oration, or a band, or a circus

  parade, she was apt to remember that windy ridge.

  To-day she went to sleep while she was thinking about it. When Ray

  wakened her, the horses were hitched to the wagon and Gunner and Axel

  were begging for a place on the front seat. The air had cooled, the sun

  was setting, and the desert was on fire. Thea contentedly took the back

  seat with Mrs. Tellamantez. As they drove homeward the stars began to