Part 1

A TENDERFOOT BRIDE

BY

CLARICE E. RICHARDS

GARDEN CITY—NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1927

COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY CLARICE E. RICHARDS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

To the One whose Companionship, Inspiration and Encouragement have made this book possible My Husband

CONTENTS

I. First Impressions II. A Surprise Party III. The Root Cellar IV. The Great Adventure Progresses V. The Government Contract VI. A Variety of Runaways VII. The Measure of a Man VIII. The Sheep Business IX. The Unexpected X. Around the Christmas Fire XI. Ted XII. Blizzards XIII. Echoes of the Past

ILLUSTRATIONS

Pike’s Peak from the Old Ranch Roping and Cutting Out Cattle Roping a Steer to Inspect Brand Inspecting a Brand The “Star” is a Frightened, Snorting “Broncho” Trailed All the Way from New Mexico Like a Solitary Fence Post Bucking Horse and Rider Facing Death Each Time They Ride a New Horse

A TENDERFOOT BRIDE

I

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

When our train left Colorado Springs and headed out into those vast stretches of the prairie, which spread East like a great green ocean from the foot of Pike’s Peak, all the sensations of Christopher Columbus setting sail for a new world, and a few peculiarly my own, mingled in my breast.

As the train pounded along I stole a look at Owen. He was absorbed in the contemplation of a map of our new holdings. Under that calm exterior I suspected hidden attributes of the primitive man. Certainly there was some reason why Western life was to his liking, having had the chance to choose.

It was late in the afternoon when we found ourselves on the platform of the solitary little wayside station. The train went rushing on through the July sunshine, as if impatient at the stop. Our fellow passengers had drawn their heads back from the car windows, after vainly trying to see what apparently sane people could find to stop for in a place like that. In truth, there was little—a water tank, a section house, two cottages and one store.

A combination station-agent and baggage-man stood on the platform. Near a hitching rack a tall individual was waving his long arms about like a windmill as he beckoned us to approach. Owen picked up the bags; I trudged along behind with various coats and packages, stopping midway between platform and wagon to disengage a large tumbleweed, which had rolled merrily to my feet and attached itself to my skirt.

The tall man took a few steps in our direction, still holding the reins in his hand. With one eye he gave us a greeting, while he kept the other on the lunging horses. He was hardly a prepossessing person at first sight, except for his smile. I felt that his keen black eyes had sized us up in one quick glance. I became blushingly conscious of being a new bride, and from “the East.”

“How-de-do? Whoa, now, Brownie. Just get in folks,—the old man had to go to town, so he sent me to meet you, but he’ll be back by the time we get to the ranch.” All this in one breath, while he helped Owen place the bags in the wagon.

“Don’t mind the horses; they’re plumb gentle—just a little excited now over the train, that’s all. Whoa now,” with decided emphasis. “Sorry, Mrs. Brook, hope you didn’t hurt yourself”—this last as the horses suddenly backed and knocked my foot off the step. “Oh, no, not at all,” I replied, hastily scrambling into the wagon and thanking heaven that I had landed on the seat before they gave an unexpected lurch forward. Owen got in beside the driver; the horses reared and started off. I gripped the seat and my hat, and fastened my eyes on the horses’ ears. When we had crossed the railroad and the movement was more steady, I began to “take notice” of things about me, and the conversation going on in the front seat reached me in fragments.

The driver said he was called “Tex.” He was a true son of Texas, and it was not difficult to imagine that particles of his native soil still clung to him. The deep creases in his neck were so filled with dirt that he looked like a charcoal sketch. As he turned his face, lined and seamed, I saw that his chin was covered with at least a week’s growth of greyish-black beard. I estimated his age. He might have been fifty; very quick in speech and action, yet there was a subdued power about the man. He managed the horses easily, and I caught in his drawling speech a casual, half-bantering tone.

“Wonder if them grips is botherin’ the Missus. Ridin’ all right?” he asked, turning with solicitude to see the location of the bags. As it happened, they were all located on top of my feet. It was Owen who removed them, for Tex’s attention was again engaged with Brownie, who suddenly landed quite outside the road. A cotton-tail had jumped from behind a rattleweed.

“Quit that now, Brownie. You never did have no sense.” The drawl was half-sarcastic. “’Pears like you ain’t never seen no rabbits before, ’stead a bein’ raised with ’em.” Brownie gave a little shake of her pretty head and crowded her long-suffering mate back into the road again. I was becoming very much interested. This man was a distinctly new type to me. I did not know then that he was the old-time cow-puncher, with an ease of manner a Chesterfield might have envied, and an unfailing, almost deferential, courtesy toward women.

Never shall I forget that first drive across the prairie,—not a house, not a tree in sight, except where the cottonwoods traced the borders of a waterless creek. Gently rolling hills were all about us, instead of the flat country I had expected to see; hills which failed to reveal anything when we reached the top, but yet higher hills to climb. An unexpected vastness seemed to extend to the very boundaries of the unknown, as we looked about on all sides, only to see the soft green circle of the hills, on which the bluest of skies gently rested, sweep about us. I felt the spell of unlimited space, and smiled as I thought of the tearful farewell of one of my bridesmaids. She had “hated” to think of my being “cooped up on a ranch.” “Cooped up” here, when for the first time I realized what unhampered freedom might mean in a country left as God had made it, with so little trace of man’s interference!

At last we came to a gate made of three strands of barbed wire, fastened together in the middle and attached to a stick at each end. It was a real gate when up, but when opened, it was a floppy invention of the Evil One, designed to tax the patience of a saint. The strands of wire got mixed and crossed and grew perceptibly shorter, so that it required superhuman strength and something of a disposition to get the end of the stick through the loop of wire, which held it in place again.

This gate marked the Southern boundary of the ranch, ten miles from the railroad station. We reached the top of a hill and looked up a long valley, where the creek wound its way, fringed by great cottonwood trees, until its source was lost behind three prominent buttes, purple in the haze of the late afternoon. Beyond the buttes stood Pike’s Peak, snow-capped and alone, guardian of the valley, the whole length of which it commanded. Through some peculiarity of position all the other peaks of the Rockies remained invisible, while this one mountain rose in majestic isolation from the plain.

Tex stopped the horses for a moment, and without a word pointed with the whip toward a clump of cottonwoods in the distance.

“The ranch?” I asked.

He nodded.

In the beautiful valley it stood, the white fences, corrals and outbuildings gleaming in the sun. Nestled among the trees, planted so densely that only a suggestion of its white walls showed between them, was the house—our first home!

As we drove up to the gate, a short man, with a thick beard, bustled out to meet us.

“Well, here you are! Got here all right. Sorry I couldn’t meet you. Come right in. You must be tired settin’.” And before we quite realized that we had arrived, we were ushered into the house through the back door.

As a matter of fact, there was no front door. Two outside doors opened into the kitchen, one on either side, and since the kitchen was in truth the “living-room,” what need of a front door?

A placid-faced, elderly woman greeted us, and after a few moments conducted us up a crooked stairway to a room under the eaves.

Owen left hastily “to look around outside,” and I followed as quickly as possible for I knew that if I looked around inside for any length of time, I should start back to the railroad station on foot.

Old Mr. and Mrs. Bohm had lived on the place for over thirty years in this house, which was the evolution of a dug-out, with many subsequent periods in prospect before it became a possible home. Mrs. Bohm had recently been having “fainting spells,” which frightened her husband into a plan to dispose of the ranch and live in town.

It was a wonderful ranch. Acres on acres of richest grass, a wealth of hay land and natural water holes,—a paradise for stock. To poor homesick me, this place had no suggestion of paradise. It looked run down and disorderly; the fences around the house were adorned with everything from old battered tin buckets and mowing-machine wheels to the smallest piece of rusty wire. Mrs. Bohm confided to me that “James liked it that way because everything was so handy.” There was no questioning that, but as a first impression it was hopeless, and my heart grew heavier and heavier as I thought of the new house in Wyoming, where we had expected to be, and the Eastern home I had just left.

I walked out of sight of the festooned fence and tried to think. Up the valley the Peak was deep blue against the golden evening sky, and in the vast, unbroken silence of the prairies I felt the sense of chaos and confusion give way to peace. The old house, tumble-down fences, mowing machine wheels and wire took an inconsequent place in the scale of things compared to Owen’s undertaking. He _must_ succeed. The undesirable could be removed or made over. We were in a new world, we had a great domain, we faced undreamed of experiences and possibilities. My spirits rose with a bound, and I resolved from that moment to consider our life here in the West, in the midst of new conditions, a great adventure. At that instant the original Bohm dug-out would have held no terrors for me.

Perhaps if I had known just how great the adventure was to be, what varied and nerve-testing experiences the future did hold, I might have been daunted; but with a farewell look at the Peak and a new sense of strength and courage, I went to meet Owen. I realized that he knew the possibilities of the place and that the conditions would all soon be changed, and I knew, too, that he was distressed at the realization of how it must all appear to me. He looked troubled, as he came toward me.

“Can you stand it for a little while?” he asked.

“Of course, I can,” I replied, cheerfully, blindly taking the first step toward the great adventure.

“It’s all right, dear; it’s going to be wonderful, living here.”

Mr. and Mrs. Bohm, Tex and six bashful cow-punchers were in the kitchen waiting for us before they sat down to supper. We were presented to the men, and in acknowledgment of the introduction received a fleeting glance from six pairs of diffident eyes and a quick jerk from six slickly brushed heads.

Mrs. Bohm took her seat at the foot of the long oil-cloth-covered table, and old Mr. Bohm sat at the head. Fortunate for me that Owen and I sat side by side. If once during that meal I had caught his eye, I should have disgraced myself forever.

Except old Bohm, no one said anything. Indeed, no one had a chance, for he talked all the time, telling stories, cracking jokes at which he laughed immoderately, interspersing his conversation with waves of his fork, with which from time to time he reflectively combed his beard. I could not take my eyes off him; there was a weird fascination in following the movements of that fork. It was prescience which led me to do so, for old Bohm suddenly ceased using it as a toilet article and jabbed it into a piece of meat, which he held out toward me.

“Here, Mrs. Brook, have some more beef. I’ve been talkin’ along here and clean forgot you folks must be hungry.” I assured him I couldn’t eat another bite. It was the most truthful statement of my life.

That night I lay awake for hours, thinking over the day’s experiences, and incidentally trying to find a spot on the mattress where a lump did not threaten to press a rib out of place. At last I fell asleep, to be suddenly awakened by the slam of a gate under our window, followed by an exclamation which floated up out of the grey dawn: “By hell, but this is a fine day.” Then came the squeak of the pump handle, as old Bohm performed his morning ablutions, more slams of the gate, and more salutations of the same order in varying phraseology, but always beginning with “By hell.”

Shades of my ministerial ancestors! Was this the language of the new country in which we had come to live? Surely the great adventure promised startling sensations at the outset, to say nothing of a certain sliding scale of standards.

Owen stirred and asked sleepily what on earth I was doing up at that hour of the day.

“Changing my viewpoint,” I replied, looking out toward old Bohm’s shadowy figure on its way toward the corral. “That has to be done early.”

II

A SURPRISE PARTY

We were living in the land of the unexpected. Six weeks on the ranch demonstrated that. The possibilities for surprise were inexhaustible, and the probabilities innumerable and certain, if Owen happened to be away.

On one of these occasions the cook eloped with the best rider on the place, more thrilling and upsetting to my peace of mind than the cloud-burst and flood that followed soon after. Twenty-two husky and hungry men wanted three square meals a day, and one inexperienced bride stood between them and starvation. The situation was mutually serious.

In my need came help. Tex, our coachman on that first drive, saved the day. Shortly after the elopement he came in for supplies for the cow-camp. I was almost hidden by pans of potatoes, and was paring away endlessly. He was very quiet when I explained, but after supper he gathered up the dishes to wash them for me, looking very serious. When he had finished, he suddenly turned to me:

“Say, Mrs. Brook, I’ve just been studyin’. Jack Brent kin cook for the boys out at camp all right, and if you kin stand it, I kin come in and cook for you. It sure got my goat to see you rastlin’ with them potatoes and wearin’ yourself out cookin’ for these here men.”

Good old Tex! That was little short of saintly. Camp cooking where he was autocrat was far more to his taste. He hated “messin’ ’round where there was women,” as he expressed it. Here was sacrifice indeed! Tex scrubbed his hands until they fairly bled, enveloped himself in a large checked gingham apron, and proceeded to act as chef until the eloper had been replaced.

Something deepened in me. I was seeing a new thing.

Owen had been gone nearly a week. One morning I happened to be in the kitchen when Mrs. Bohm entered. Casually she asked Tex whether Ed More’s wife had left him before he went to jail, or after he got out. Half in joke, I said:

“Mercy, Mrs. Bohm, is there a man in this country, with the exception of Tex, who hasn’t been in jail or on the way there?”

I was interrupted by the slamming of a door, and Tex had vanished. Mrs. Bohm looked embarrassed as she replied:

“I just hate to tell you, Mrs. Brook, and Tex would feel terrible to have you know; but you say such queer things sometimes, I’d better tell you now that Tex”—she paused a moment—“he’s only been out of the ‘pen’ himself a year.”

“Tex in the penitentiary? What on earth for?” I was almost dazed.

“Well, I’ll tell you.” Mrs. Bohm began the story with apparent reluctance, but her manner soon betrayed a certain zest. “You see, about four years ago Tex was workin’ for a man up on Crow Creek and took some cattle on to Omaha to sell for him. When he came back he never brought a cent of money, and told how he had been held up and robbed. Everybody believed it at first, then all to onct his family—they live over West—began to dress to kill, and Tex bought brass beds for every room in the house; then folks began to suspicion where he got the money, and he was sent to the Pen for two years.”

Poor old Tex! Who would ever have supposed a secret longing for brass beds would prove his undoing? I might have guessed horses or cards, but never brass beds. I almost felt the breath of tragedy. She seemed sweeping by.

Mrs. Bohm went on: “Tex’s mighty good to his family, though, and it most killed him when his wife went off with a Mexican sheep-herder while he was doin’ time. She’s back home now with the girls, but her and Tex’s separated. Ain’t it a fright the way women acts?”

“It certainly is,” I agreed, trying to reconcile my previous idea of convicts with having one for a cook. It was dreadfully confusing and disturbing. In spite of what I had just heard, I knew I trusted Tex. He would never steal from us, I felt sure. And my instinct told me he would be a true and loyal friend. There was no apparent excuse for what he had done, but he had paid for his moment of weakness more fully perhaps than anyone realized. I pondered over it.

Presently he came in, with a curious, troubled expression on his face. I gave him the orders, as usual, with no sign of having heard of the cloud under which he had lived for three miserable years. Our relations were re-established. I could see his relief.

We were still taking our meals in the kitchen, although the house was gradually being remodeled. It was Saturday evening, and we were expecting Owen home. There was an air of suppressed excitement among the men. One, and then another, bolted from the table and out of the door, returning in a shame-faced manner to explain that he “thought he heered somethin’.” Certainly Owen’s coming would never produce such a sensation, unless he was expected to arrive in an airship. I was more than ever mystified.

After the meal was over, there was such a general shaving—also in the kitchen—and such donning of red neckties, that I could not restrain my curiosity. I called Tex aside and asked him where they were going. He looked a little sheepish, as he replied:

“Why, we ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Then in a burst of confidence, “I don’t know as I’d orter tell you, but the fact is, you folks is goin’ to be surprised; all the folks ’round is goin’ to have a party here, and we’re expectin’ ’em.”

I gasped. A sudden suspicion flashed through my mind.

“Tex, did you plan this? What on earth shall I do?”

Tex saw I was really troubled. “Why, Mrs. Brook,” he said, “you don’t have to do nothin’. Just turn the house over to ’em, and along about midnight I’ll make some coffee—they’ll bring baskets.”

I was relieved to know that they only wanted the house, and would provide their own refreshments, for it was appalling to be an impromptu hostess to an entire community and to speculate upon the possibility of one small cold roast and chocolate cake satisfying a crowd of young people, after drives of thirty miles or more across the prairie.

“Me and the boys”—Tex spoke somewhat apologetically, as he started toward the door—“we kind a thought maybe you and Mr. Brook would like to get acquainted, seem’s how you’re goin’ to live here; but I guess we oughten to have did what we done.”

I felt ashamed of my momentary perturbation, as the force of that last sentence of Tex’s reached me. These men of the plains were as simple and sensitive as children about many things. They would really grieve if they felt this affair, planned solely on our account, gave us no pleasure. I hastened to reassure him.

“It was mighty nice of you men to think of it,” I said, cheerfully. “We do want to know the people in the country, and we are going to enjoy every moment. I was ‘surprised’ before the party began, that’s all.”

Tex went out satisfied, grinning broadly.

To my good fortune, Owen arrived before the guests came. I told him what was about to befall us. His expression was dubious. All he said was “Thunder.”

Owen and one of the men had been driving about the country all the week, buying horses suitable to turn in on a Government cavalry contract. The night before they had spent on the floor of a cold railroad station, wrapped up in their blankets, with a lighted lantern under the covering at their feet. Their sleep was somewhat broken, with either cremation or freezing pending that cold September night. Poor Owen! He was completely worn out. And now he had to go through a surprise party.

At eight o’clock, Tex, self-appointed master of ceremonies, ushered in the first arrivals. They were a tall, lean chap and two very much be-curled young misses. I made trials without number at conversation, but they could only be induced to say “Yes” and “No.”

From eight until ten they came,—ranchmen, cow-punchers, ex-cow-punchers running their own outfits, infant cow-punchers, girls and women, until kitchen and sitting room were filled to overflowing, and every chair and bench on the place in use. Among the last to arrive was a tall, languid Texan, accompanied by two languid, drab-colored women. They were presented to us as “Robert, Missus Reed and Maggie.” “Maggie,” I immediately concluded, was a sister, but not being quite certain, I sought enlightenment from Mrs. Bohm.

“She ain’t Reed’s sister,” she informed me in a low tone, “she’s his girl.”

“Oh, works for them, you mean?” I said, somewhat puzzled by the Reed connections.

“Works nothin’,” Mrs. Bohm replied, scornfully. “She’s got the next place to ’em and goes with ’em everywhere. Ella don’t seem to mind. I’d just call her Maggie’ if I was you,” and Mrs. Bohm departed to join a group of women near the door.

I looked over at the two with a new interest. They were chatting and laughing together, the “girl” and the wife seemingly on the best of terms, with no sign of rivalry for the tall Texan’s affections. Here was a situation fraught with latent possibilities that made me tremble, yet—“Ella don’t seem to mind.”

The kitchen had been converted into a ballroom by moving the table up against the wall and placing three chairs upon it. Unfortunately the sink and stove were fixtures, but everything else, including the bread jar, found a temporary resting place in the yard.

Old Bohm, with his fiddle under his arm, gingerly ascended the table first. Then another man followed with a similar instrument; and last came a youth with a mouth harp. No fatality having resulted from the musicians taking their seats, the dancing began.

The music, if such a combination of sounds can be dignified by that name, was such as to defy description. Never in the wildest flights of fancy could I have conceived of such execution and such sounds. The two men sawed their violins, and the third was purple in the face from his efforts on the mouth-harp; all were stamping time with their feet, and he of the harp was slapping his knee with his unoccupied hand.