Heart Of The West

by O. Henry

  The tobaccoless punchers arranged themselves comfortably on the steps of the store. Inside Sam chopped open with a hatchet the tops of the cans of fruit.

  The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still farther the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens--for the Rancho Cibolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a little distance, were the grass-thatched /jacals/ of the Mexicans who bestowed their allegiance upon the Cibolo.

  The ranch-house was composed of four large rooms, with plastered adobe walls, and a two-room wooden ell. A twenty-feet-wide "gallery" circumvented the structure. It was set in a grove of immense live-oaks and water-elms near a lake--a long, not very wide, and tremendously deep lake in which at nightfall, great gars leaped to the surface and plunged with the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath. From the trees hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy grey moss of the South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of the South than of the West. It looked as if old "Kiowa" Truesdell might have brought it with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when he came to Texas with his rifle in the hollow of his arm in '55.

  But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting than brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family feud. And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles from the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the chaparral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or two Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried a brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at Cibolo. And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the ranches between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the head of his rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning his sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the bitter taste to life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last youthful survivor of the other end of the feud.

  *****

  For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair for the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.

  From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of sunshine.

  That evening ears were quicker than eyes.

  The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin against tin.

  "One waggeen," said he, "cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel. Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo."

  "You've got good ears, Gregorio," said Mustang Taylor. "I never heard nothin' but the song-bird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin' across the peaceful dell."

  In ten minutes Taylor remarked: "I see the dust of a wagon risin' right above the fur end of the flat."

  "You have verree good eyes, senor," said Gregorio, smiling.

  Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses' hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket, whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy.

  From the /jacals/ came a cry of: "El Amo! El Amo!" Four Mexican youths raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of greeting and delight.

  Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed.

  "It's under the wagon sheet, boys," he said. "I know what you're waiting for. If Sam lets it run out again we'll use those yellow shoes of his for a target. There's two cases. Pull 'em out and light up. I know you all want a smoke."

  After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the cases of tobacco.

  Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket and pulled out a fearful thing--a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.

  "Who-ee!" yelled Long Collins. "Ranse, are you a-packin' around of corpuses? Here's a--howlin' grasshoppers!"

  Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable, drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo de Merode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.

  Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with wide-open eyes.

  "Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get in there?"

  The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had forgotten tobacco.

  Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.

  "Where is this?" he rasped through his parched throat. "It's a damn farm in an old field. What'd you bring me here for--say? Did I say I wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin' at--hey? G'wan or I'll punch some of yer faces."

  "Drag him out, Collins," said Ranse.

  Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.

  "How'd you come in my wagon?" repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that drew a reply.

  Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and large persons in blue carrying clubs.

  "Me?" he growled. "Oh, was you talkin' to me? Why, I was on my way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard--see? I never told you to bring me out to this bloomin' farm--see?"

  "What is it, Mustang?" asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke in his ecstasy. "What do it live on?"

  "It's a galliwampus, Poky," said Mustang. "It's the thing that hollers 'willi-walloo' up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don't know if it bites."

  "No, it ain't, Mustang," volunteered Long Collins. "Them galliwampuses has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don't stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile tail."

  Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.

  "Well, ain't that a Willie for your whiskers?" he commented. "Where'd you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin' to make an auditorium for inbreviates out of the ranch?"

  "Say," said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell blunted. "Any of you kiddin' guys got a drin
k on you? Have your fun. Say, I've been hittin' the stuff till I don't know straight up."

  He turned to Ranse. "Say, you shanghaied me on your d--d old prairie schooner--did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I'm goin' all to little pieces. What's doin'?"

  Ranse saw that the tramp's nerves were racking him. He despatched one of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a glass of whisky. Curly gulped it down; and into his eyes came a brief, grateful glow--as human as the expression in the eye of a faithful setter dog.

  "Thanky, boss," he said, quietly.

  "You're thirty miles from a railroad, and forty miles from a saloon," said Ranse.

  Curly fell back weakly against the steps.

  "Since you are here," continued the ranchman, "come along with me. We can't turn you out on the prairie. A rabbit might tear you to pieces."

  He conducted Curly to a large shed where the ranch vehicles were kept. There he spread out a canvas cot and brought blankets.

  "I don't suppose you can sleep," said Ranse, "since you've been pounding your ear for twenty-four hours. But you can camp here till morning. I'll have Pedro fetch you up some grub."

  "Sleep!" said Curly. "I can sleep a week. Say, sport, have you got a coffin nail on you?"

  *****

  Fifty miles had Ransom Truesdell driven that day. And yet this is what he did.

  Old "Kiowa" Truesdell sat in his great wicker chair reading by the light of an immense oil lamp. Ranse laid a bundle of newspapers fresh from town at his elbow.

  "Back, Ranse?" said the old man, looking up.

  "Son," old "Kiowa" continued, "I've been thinking all day about a certain matter that we have talked about. I want you to tell me again. I've lived for you. I've fought wolves and Indians and worse white men to protect you. You never had any mother that you can remember. I've taught you to shoot straight, ride hard, and live clean. Later on I've worked to pile up dollars that'll be yours. You'll be a rich man, Ranse, when my chunk goes out. I've made you. I've licked you into shape like a leopard cat licks its cubs. You don't belong to yourself --you've got to be a Truesdell first. Now, is there to be any more nonsense about this Curtis girl?"

  "I'll tell you once more," said Ranse, slowly. "As I am a Truesdell and as you are my father, I'll never marry a Curtis."

  "Good boy," said old "Kiowa." "You'd better go get some supper."

  Ranse went to the kitchen at the rear of the house. Pedro, the Mexican cook, sprang up to bring the food he was keeping warm in the stove.

  "Just a cup of coffee, Pedro," he said, and drank it standing. And then:

  "There's a tramp on a cot in the wagon-shed. Take him something to eat. Better make it enough for two."

  Ranse walked out toward the /jacals/. A boy came running.

  "Manuel, can you catch Vaminos, in the little pasture, for me?"

  "Why not, senor? I saw him near the /puerta/ but two hours past. He bears a drag-rope."

  "Get him and saddle him as quick as you can."

  "/Prontito, senor/."

  Soon, mounted on Vaminos, Ranse leaned in the saddle, pressed with his knees, and galloped eastward past the store, where sat Sam trying his guitar in the moonlight.

  Vaminos shall have a word--Vaminos the good dun horse. The Mexicans, who have a hundred names for the colours of a horse, called him /gruyo/. He was a mouse-coloured, slate-coloured, flea-bitten roandun, if you can conceive it. Down his back from his mane to his tail went a line of black. He would live forever; and surveyors have not laid off as many miles in the world as he could travel in a day.

  Eight miles east of the Cibolo ranch-house Ranse loosened the pressure of his knees, and Vaminos stopped under a big ratama tree. The yellow ratama blossoms showered fragrance that would have undone the roses of France. The moon made the earth a great concave bowl with a crystal sky for a lid. In a glade five jack-rabbits leaped and played together like kittens. Eight miles farther east shone a faint star that appeared to have dropped below the horizon. Night riders, who often steered their course by it, knew it to be the light in the Rancho de los Olmos.

  In ten minutes Yenna Curtis galloped to the tree on her sorrel pony Dancer. The two leaned and clasped hands heartily.

  "I ought to have ridden nearer your home," said Ranse. "But you never will let me."

  Yenna laughed. And in the soft light you could see her strong white teeth and fearless eyes. No sentimentality there, in spite of the moonlight, the odour of the ratamas, and the admirable figure of Ranse Truesdell, the lover. But she was there, eight miles from her home, to meet him.

  "How often have I told you, Ranse," she said, "that I am your half-way girl? Always half-way."

  "Well?" said Ranse, with a question in his tones.

  "I did," said Yenna, with almost a sigh. "I told him after dinner when I thought he would be in a good humour. Did you ever wake up a lion, Ranse, with the mistaken idea that he would be a kitten? He almost tore the ranch to pieces. It's all up. I love my daddy, Ranse, and I'm afraid--I'm afraid of him too. He ordered me to promise that I'd never marry a Truesdell. I promised. That's all. What luck did you have?"

  "The same," said Ranse, slowly. "I promised him that his son would never marry a Curtis. Somehow I couldn't go against him. He's mighty old. I'm sorry, Yenna."

  The girl leaned in her saddle and laid one hand on Ranse's, on the horn of his saddle.

  "I never thought I'd like you better for giving me up," she said ardently, "but I do. I must ride back now, Ranse. I slipped out of the house and saddled Dancer myself. Good-night, neighbour."

  "Good-night," said Ranse. "Ride carefully over them badger holes."

  They wheeled and rode away in opposite directions. Yenna turned in her saddle and called clearly:

  "Don't forget I'm your half-way girl, Ranse."

  "Damn all family feuds and inherited scraps," muttered Ranse vindictively to the breeze as he rode back to the Cibolo.

  Ranse turned his horse into the small pasture and went to his own room. He opened the lowest drawer of an old bureau to get out the packet of letters that Yenna had written him one summer when she had gone to Mississippi for a visit. The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely--as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins--as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere--probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously.

  Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican /jacals/.

  "Tia Juana," he said, "I would like to talk with you a while."

  An old, old Mexican woman, white-haired and wonderfully wrinkled, rose from a stool.

  "Sit down," said Ranse, removing his hat and taking the one chair in the /jacal/. "Who am I, Tia Juana?" he asked, speaking Spanish.

  "Don Ransom, our good friend and employer. Why do you ask?" answered the old woman wonderingly.

  "Tia Juana, who am I?" he repeated, with his stern eyes looking into hers.

  A frightened look came in the old woman's face. She fumbled with her black shawl.

  "Who am I, Tia Juana?" said Ranse once more.

  "Thirty-two years I have lived on the Rancho Cibolo," said Tia Juana. "I thought to be buried under the coma mott beyond the garden before these things should be known. Close the door, Don Ransom, and I will speak. I see in your face that you know."

  An hour Ranse spent behind Tia Juana's closed door. As he was on his way back to the house Curly called to him from the wagon-shed.

  The tramp sat on his cot, swinging his feet and smoking.

  "Say, sport," he grumbled. "This is no way to treat a man after kidnappin' him. I went up to the store and borrowed a razor from that fresh guy and had a shave. But that ain't all a man needs. Say--can't you loosen up for about three fingers more of that booze? I never asked you to bring me to your d--d farm."

  "Stand up out here in the light," said Ranse, looking at him closely.

  Curly got up sullenly and took a s
tep or two.

  His face, now shaven smooth, seemed transformed. His hair had been combed, and it fell back from the right side of his forehead with a peculiar wave. The moonlight charitably softened the ravages of drink; and his aquiline, well-shaped nose and small, square cleft chin almost gave distinction to his looks.

  Ranse sat on the foot of the cot and looked at him curiously.

  "Where did you come from--have you got any home or folks anywhere?"

  "Me? Why, I'm a dook," said Curly. "I'm Sir Reginald--oh, cheese it. No; I don't know anything about my ancestors. I've been a tramp ever since I can remember. Say, old pal, are you going to set 'em up again to-night or not?"

  "You answer my questions and maybe I will. How did you come to be a tramp?"

  "Me?" answered Curly. "Why, I adopted that profession when I was an infant. Case of had to. First thing I can remember, I belonged to a big, lazy hobo called Beefsteak Charley. He sent me around to houses to beg. I wasn't hardly big enough to reach the latch of a gate."

  "Did he ever tell you how he got you?" asked Ranse.

  "Once when he was sober he said he bought me for an old six-shooter and six bits from a band of drunken Mexican sheep-shearers. But what's the diff? That's all I know."

  "All right," said Ranse. "I reckon you're a maverick for certain. I'm going to put the Rancho Cibolo brand on you. I'll start you to work in one of the camps to-morrow."

  "Work!" sniffed Curly, disdainfully. "What do you take me for? Do you think I'd chase cows, and hop-skip-and-jump around after crazy sheep like that pink and yellow guy at the store says these Reubs do? Forget it."

  "Oh, you'll like it when you get used to it," said Ranse. "Yes, I'll send you up one more drink by Pedro. I think you'll make a first-class cowpuncher before I get through with you."

  "Me?" said Curly. "I pity the cows you set me to chaperon. They can go chase themselves. Don't forget my nightcap, please, boss."

  Ranse paid a visit to the store before going to the house. Sam Rivell was taking off his tan shoes regretting and preparing for bed.