Part 5

Alice ate everything and did not stop talking for a moment. Clarence refused everything but a cracker, which he munched in silence. Suddenly he turned white and left the table. Owen escorted him out-of-doors while Alice and I followed. He was faint, just faint, and collapsed weakly onto a garden seat. Alice said it was the Denver water, but I suspected unassimilated Hamm. Owen stayed with him and Alice and I returned to finish supper. The Hamms left soon after and Clarence gradually revived under the influence of Owen’s New England accent and Scotch whisky.

All at once I thought of the freshly painted guest-room floor. I explained the situation to Alice and we went up to see if it was dry. It was, but the smell of paint was most evident. Alice gave a few sniffs and said apologetically:

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Esther, but Clarence couldn’t possibly sleep here. He is so sensitive to odors of any kind.” I was reminded of a faint aroma which had clung to the Hamm garments. “If there is another room we can occupy, I think it would be better.” Alice was accustomed to hotels. I offered our room; it was reluctantly but finally accepted, the scion of the Van Winkles must not breathe paint. All the things from the guest-room were put in our room and ours were moved up to the guest-room.

Just before they retired Alice confided to me that Clarence had had some temperature in Denver and the Doctor thought he might be threatened with typhoid fever.

“I really believe, Esther, if Clarence has any temperature in the morning we had better go back to Denver.”

I reassured her as I bade her good-night and then sought Owen. I was beginning to have some temperature myself.

“Owen, if Clarence Van Winkle has a thousandth of a degree of temperature in the morning don’t tell him that he’ll be all right; let him go back to Denver or anywhere else he pleases. Imagine that man with typhoid, here.”

The next morning Alice appeared at breakfast alone. Clarence had no temperature, but he felt weak and thought he had better stay in bed. He continued to feel weak for three days, Alice dancing attendance white the rest of us tried to get the household and water running again.

When Clarence finally emerged from his seclusion, he was in high spirits, positively buoyant.

“Well, now I want to see everything, all the cattle, the cow-boys, branding, dehorning, a round-up and what is it you call it? Oh, yes, ‘broncho busting’. We have to go back to Denver tomorrow, you know.” He had to stop for want of breath.

Alice beamed fondly upon her enthusiastic bridegroom. Mine looked far from enthusiastic. Owen was a perfect host but he could not give a demonstration of a year’s work in one day. The horse-breaking was over for the season and the branded and dehorned cattle scattered over miles of country. This he endeavored to explain to Clarence who made no attempt to conceal his disappointment nor his petulance.

“Oh, how unfortunate. I’ve heard so much of the fascination of ranch life I thought I’d like to see a little of it. I thought you had broncho busting or something interesting or entertaining going on every day.”

Owen bit his lip. He was busy beyond words but he dropped everything and afternoon we took our guests for a drive over the ranch. The wagon was new and rattled and, wishing to spare Clarence’s delicate sensibilities, Owen put on some washers.

We were in the middle of the prairie miles from the house, Clarence had recovered his good humor since he was “actually seeing something”, as he tactfully expressed it, when one of the wheels began to drag. The washers proved to be too tight, we had a hot spindle. There was nothing to do but sit there in the blazing sun while the two men took off the wheel, removed a washer or two and greased the spindle.

I wouldn’t have missed it, the mere thought of that scene was a joy to me for months afterwards. Clarence Van Winkle red and perspiring from the effort of lifting a wheel, wiping his greasy hands on a piece of dirty waste! Alice’s face was a study. I had to keep my eyes fixed on the landscape after one look over the side of the wagon. I was afraid I should laugh out loud.

The day they left Bill drove us all to the station. We just made the train, which was standing on the track as we arrived. Owen hurried to check the Van Winkle’s baggage. Bill had to stay with the horses. Alice and I had all the wraps, which left Clarence to carry two dress suit cases across the tracks. His eyes were fixed on the porter and he was hurrying toward the Pullman when he stubbed his toe on one rail, sprawled all the way across the track and hit his neck on the second rail. The suit cases flew in one direction, his hat in another, his glasses fell off and his watch dropped out of his pocket. Alice and I rushed to the rescue, the porter assisted Clarence to his feet and picked up the suit cases, we gathered up the rest of the articles while Clarence stood in the middle of the track rubbing his knees, to the great amusement of the passengers. Alice went up to him when suddenly he screwed his face up as a child does before it begins to cry, threw both arms around her neck and buried his face on her shoulder. The conductor terminated the scene by calling “All aboard”. Clarence limped to the train, rubbing his neck, and the last we saw was Alice holding all the wraps, the hat, glasses and watch, waving to us from the vestibule and Clarence comfortably seated in the Pullman smiling a wan farewell through the window. As the train with its precious freight was lost to sight around a curve, Owen and I began to laugh. We laughed until we were so weak we could scarcely get into the wagon. Bill’s face was perfectly serious, but his eyes had a little twinkle in them as he said with his slow drawl:

“Lord, Mrs. Brook, I’m glad that young man married that girl. He’d orter have somebody look after him. A poor little goslin’ feller like that ain’t got no business goin’ round alone.”

Bill always sized up a situation in the fewest possible words.

During the drive back to the ranch I thought of Alice and her future by the side of a man of that type. Our future was uncertain enough, but if trouble and vicissitudes were our portion, at least I had someone with whom to share them.

Tex had been away for several weeks and we were surprised to see him at the gate as we drove up. He looked very serious as he asked Owen if he might speak with him and Owen looked more serious when he came out of the office after their conversation.

“What is it, Owen? Something is wrong. Please tell me.”

Owen took me by the arm and we walked up and down under the trees.

“Tex came over to tell me, Esther, that I am to be arrested for ‘driving cattle off the range.’ Technically, it’s a serious charge, carrying a heavy fine and—” he paused—“imprisonment, but don’t worry, my dear,” as he felt me start a little at his last words, “it’s listed on the statute books as a criminal offence, connected with rustling, but that can’t hold in this case. It’s a ‘frame-up’ to give me trouble, that’s all. It might have been serious but Tex heard of it and came to warn me just in time. There’s been a plot to eat me out and now they want to drive me out. I’m going in to Denver to see my lawyer tomorrow. I’m more troubled on your account than anything else.”

“Don’t worry about me, Owen, we’re going to stay in this country and fight it out to the end. I’ll face anything, as long as you don’t cry,” and we went into the house laughing, as we thought of Clarence Van Winkle.

The miserable experience which followed was sufficiently serious, even after the charge had been changed to one of minor character.

Owen was arrested on our anniversary. I went his bond. There was a long, expensive law-suit which we lost, the Judge contending that if a man wished to protect his land he should fence it. It was explained that the Government had forbidden it, but the Judge said that did not affect the verdict in this case. Owen paid the damages awarded by the Court, we gathered together our sixteen cow-puncher witnesses who had been staying with us at one of the largest hotels in Denver, an event for the cow-punchers, and returned to the ranch.

Did Owen weep on my shoulder? He set his lips a little more firmly and his face had an added sternness as he looked across those miles of rolling prairie he owned but which now were utterly useless.

He broke the silence at last. His voice had a different tone.

“I am going to have the use of my own land. They shan’t keep me out of it any longer. I am going to sell off all the cattle and put in sheep. Then we’ll see! With herders we don’t need fences and cattle won’t graze where sheep have ranged.”

* * * * *

Thus with the first year of our marriage, the first chapter of our ranch experience ended and a totally different life began.

VIII

THE SHEEP BUSINESS

With the coming of the sheep everything was changed. It was like living in a different age, almost as though we had slipped back hundreds of years into Biblical times and had come into intimate association with Jacob and Joseph. With the advent of the wool or lamb buyers there was a sudden transition to the more commercial atmosphere of the twentieth century, but it was so fleeting our pastoral existence was scarcely interrupted.

A few of our old men had gone, Tex among them. He left with regret, but as he said—

“Lord knows I hate to go, Mr. Brook, but cattle’s all I know and an old cow man ain’t got no business around sheep; they just naturally despise each other.” And he went up into Montana where the cattle business still flourished.

Most of the other men stayed on, however, to ride the fence lines, look after the horses and do the various things about the ranch, but the days of branding, dehorning and round-ups were past and the cow-puncher was replaced by “camp tenders”.

The sheep were trailed all the way from New Mexico. Steve, who spoke Spanish, was foreman, and with three of the other men on horseback had come up the trail with the sheep and the soft-voiced Mexican herders.

Their entire camp equipment was skillfully packed on diminutive burros. It was somewhat startling to see what appeared to be animated wood-piles, water-casks, rolls of bedding or dish-pans bobbing about over the woolly backs of the sheep, until a parting in the band revealed the legs and lowered head of a sleepy-eyed burro.

The herders spoke no English and it was so charming to receive a gleaming smile and low bow while being addressed as “Padron” and “Señora” that we plunged into the study of their musical language forthwith.

Each herder was in charge of a band of from fifteen hundred to twenty-five hundred sheep. Two herders occupied a camp, but the sheep were placed in separate corrals and, in order to give the various bands ample pasturage, the camps were placed miles apart.

Early in the morning the sheep were driven out, the herders taking their bands in opposite directions. All day long the flock quietly grazed over the prairie, the Mexican with his dog at his feet standing like a sentinel on a hill from which he could overlook his entire band and ward off any prowling coyote whose approach was heralded by a sudden scurry among the sheep.

Eternal vigilance, faithfulness and good judgment were the essential qualities in a herder, judgment in the handling of the sheep, in the selection of the best grass and water, the time for taking them out and bringing them back to the camp. The herders were not supposed to meet and talk together for while they were engrossed in conversation or out of sight of the sheep the two bands might become mixed, a very serious thing when the ewes were accompanied by their lambs, for when the bands were separated again the lamb might be in one band and its mother in the other.

It was a lonely life, but one for which Mexicans are especially suited. They lack the initiative of the Anglo-Saxons, they are naturally tranquil, slow of speech and action and content to do nothing—gentle children from the land of Mañana.

Scattered over the prairie, the sheep from a distance looked like mere dots so closely resembling the clumps of weeds, it was necessary to locate the herder before they could be identified. He looked like a solitary fence post placed on the top of a hill.

The Mexicans were most gracious and responsive, so delighted to receive a visit from the Padron that it was a joy to talk with them. We were never certain just what we had said, to be sure, but the effect of our halting, broken sentences of Spanish appeared so pleasing, we were convinced that if we could only converse fluently our words would become immortal. Urbanity was most contagious. Owen and I made deep bows to the herders, we almost bowed to the sheep in an over-mastering desire to equal the politeness of Ramon, Fidel, Francisco or Tranquilino. What names! The atmosphere of the ranch became so poetic and romantic I should not have been surprised to see Owen adopt long hair and a flowing tie. After a day spent in visiting the sheep camps I returned in an ecstatic mood. I almost fancied myself the reincarnated spirit of Bo-Peep or Ramona but alas, my true identity was always disclosed as soon as I reached the house—I was only “the Missus”.

Nevertheless the sheep business was fascinating, and best of all successful. The question of the range was settled. We had the use of our own land and our rights were respected. The customary feud between the sheepman and the cattle owners was avoided, since our sheep were always kept within the limits of the land which we owned. From being the object of hatred and vilification, Owen became a personage; his opinion quoted, his method of handling sheep emulated.

There were a few sheep men in the country who had made an indifferent success. They had scoffed at Owen’s practice of selling off all the lambs in the autumn and maintaining the number of his sheep by additional purchases but, when they found how small his losses were, they promptly adopted his plan and even some of the old-time cattle men put in sheep.

The loss of the law suit had certainly proved to be the turning point in the history of the Brook family. Our popularity increased so rapidly it was amusing. Bill expressed what I felt as I met him riding through the meadow.

“Have you been riding the fence lines, Bill?”

“Yes’m, but it’s just takin’ exercise for my health. There ain’t nothin’ wrong any more. Since you folks got the world by the tail and a down-hill pull, everybody’s huntin’ around seein’ what they can do to make it pleasant for you. I notice the Three Circle outfit don’t go round no more leavin’ all the gates open and when we get a fence line staked out, the stakes ain’t all pulled up by mornin’.”

“It is peaceful, isn’t it?”

“Peaceful,” echoed Bill, with feeling, “I’m so chuck full of peace I can’t hardly hold any more. I’ll bet if a feller was to hit me, I’d only ‘baa-a’.”

There was a vast amount of “Baa-ing” going on at the ranch, where Mary and I were raising a few score orphan lambs on the bottle. There was a voracious chorus whenever we appeared. They jumped all over us and as soon as they got hold of the nipple of the bottle they flopped down on their knees and did not release it until they had gulped down the last drop of milk, after which they stood up, their little sides sticking out as though they had been stuffed. As much care had to be exercised with the bottles, the temperature and quantity of the milk as though we had been feeding so many babies.

There was no milk at the outside camps and no one to care for the poor abandoned lambs whose frivolous young mothers refused to own them, leaving them to starve. Occasionally an old ewe of truly maternal instinct could be fooled into adopting one of these little “dogies” or “bums”. The skin of her dead lamb was taken off and slipped over the orphan, which was joyfully accepted because of its smell!

When the lambs made their appearance in May, the bands were separated, we had additional herders and they had to be more watchful for “Spring lamb” is also very tempting to coyotes. It was easy for a herder to lose ten or twenty lambs, for the little things congregate behind rocks or clumps of weeds and go to sleep, are overlooked when the sheep are driven back to the camp in the evening, and become the victims of those prairie wolves which continually lurk about.

Sometimes when we were driving, a tiny white speck would come racing after the wagon, a lamb, which had been left behind. Lambs are such senseless little things, when they are frightened they will adopt any moving object in lieu of a mother.

We pulled them out of prairie-dog holes into which they had thrust their heads and become fastened by having the loose earth fall in about their necks—they were troublesome but so appealing and amusing, they were a never-ending source of entertainment from the first moment they appeared, a tiny body supported on long, wabbly legs.

As they grew stronger “playful as a lamb” acquired a new meaning. They capered and they bucked, they raced around the corral in the evening when the ewes were contentedly lying down, they frisked about on the backs of their patient mothers, they jumped stiff-legged, and in a wild excess of joy bounded into the air giving a cork-screw twist to their hindquarters, which produced a most ludicrous effect.

Old quotations from the Bible came to have added significance; as the shearer held a poor frightened sheep between his knees and rapidly clipped off the fleece with his gleaming shears, there was not a sound if a clumsy movement cut a deep gash in the tender flesh; the “sheep before her shearer was dumb” indeed.

I spent days in the shearing sheds watching the proceedings from a pile of wool sacks or passing out small metal disks in exchange for the fleeces the shearers turned in. At the end of the day the disks were counted and each shearer credited with the number of sheep he had shorn.

The fleeces were rolled and tied separately, then thrown up to a man on a platform, who packed them in a long sack which was suspended from the top of a high frame. As it was filled, it was taken down, sewed up and rolled into the end of the shed to remain until later in the season when the wool was sold and hauled to the railroad.

Life was certainly peaceful compared to what it had been, but there was little danger of our becoming “on weed”, as a certain retired cattle-man expressed it after a short sojourn in Europe.

Lambing, shearing and dipping followed in rapid succession. The herders cooked for themselves and once a week the wagons were piled with supplies and provisions which were left at each camp. In a huge store-room were kept quantities of salt-pork, sugar, dried fruits, coffee, flour and other groceries. Flour was bought by the ton and everything else in proportion. Making out the orders, having all the freight hauled the sixteen miles from the railroad, checking it out and keeping the camps supplied, were only details but it was the multitude of detail which filled the days and kept us from becoming “on weed”. We issued the supplies to the camp-tenders ourselves, after one of them had filled all of the Mexicans’ cans with gasoline instead of coal-oil, because “it kind’a had the same smell.”

Unless we chanced to have guests, for weeks at a time the only women I saw were those in our employ, but I resented having any of my friends think of my life as “dull” or “lonely”. On the contrary it was fascinating, full of incident, rich in experience which money could not buy. Living so close to the great heart of nature during those years on the plains, the vision of life partook of their breadth and a new sense of values replaced old, artificial standards. To be alone on the vast prairie was to gain a new conception of infinity and—eternity.

* * * * *

The Mexicans stayed on the ranch about nine months, then returned to their homes for a short visit. They were the most invariable creatures I ever knew. When they departed for Taos or Trinidad or Antonito, perhaps in July, they would announce on what date and by what train they would return in October. That was the end of it, and upon the appointed day in October someone would meet the designated train from which the smiling herder alighted. They never failed and they never left until another herder was there to take care of the sheep.

One summer during this vacation period, eight new herders came to replace eight that were going home. They were a fierce looking lot from a different section of the country. They had been on the ranch only a short time when Steve began to have trouble with them. They were late getting their sheep out in the morning, they drove them too rapidly and brought them in too early in the evening. In a few weeks the sheep began to lose flesh and show the effects of bad handling.

The newcomers disobeyed all orders, unless Steve happened to be on the spot. He had to watch them constantly. He came up to a camp unexpectedly one noon and found two of these Mexicans ready to sit down to a dinner they had just cooked. It was an invariable rule that the herders should take a lunch with them, for their mid-day meal, and not return to the camp. They had left their sheep alone, so Steve made them leave their dinner and go back to their bands, while he stayed to make sure they did not return.

It was impossible to discharge them until new herders could be brought from New Mexico and he and Owen talked over the situation at length that night.

Early in the morning Steve went out on another trip of inspection. About two o’clock he rode into the yard, his face covered with blood from a deep gash in his head. He fell from his horse into Owen’s arms. We brought him in, washed off the blood, gave him a stimulant and waited until he was able to tell us what had happened.

It developed that as he came in sight of the camp he saw four of the Mexicans outside of the cabin. They stood motionless as he approached, then began to hurl rocks at him. One hit his horse and he was nearly thrown but managed to keep his seat. He was struck several times on the body. Although realizing that the Mexicans intended to kill him, he jumped off his horse and went toward them. A rock struck his head, but with undaunted courage he picked up some of the rocks and threw them back at the herders. They had not expected that turn to the affair and ran into the cabin. Steve was unarmed and too badly hurt, single handed, to deal with the Mexicans, so he got on his horse, with difficulty, and came back to the ranch.

The next thing I knew, Owen, Bill and Fred, each carrying a gun, got into the wagon and drove off.

When anything happened it came with such suddenness there was never opportunity for questions, besides, my association with men had taught me the value of silence—in an emergency.

In a few hours Owen and Fred came back. They had met the eight new herders walking into the ranch to “quit”. They walked back to their respective camps instead, their pace accelerated by a loaded gun pointing at their backs. The cabins were searched, several villainous looking knives confiscated and eight subdued cut-throats returned to the peaceful occupation of herding sheep, under Bill’s watchful eye and loaded gun.

Owen said that it wasn’t at all necessary for the Mexicans to understand English since Bill’s few remarks were sufficiently lurid to attract their attention.

Until other herders could be brought to the ranch, one white man, always armed, stayed at each camp, constantly on guard lest the vindictive herders set fire to the camps or kill the sheep. These were no gentle children from the land of Mañana; we discovered they were desperate characters from Old Mexico, to whom murder was second nature.