CHAPTER XXXV.
BY MAC A'RONY.
That is the idea; for Juliet's a dear, sweet, mere child of a girl, you know, and she don't bray like a jackass.--_Huckleberry Finn._
We did not tarry at the D. Horse Ranch, but later on pitched camp near a sheep ranch run by a Mexican, who met us with a grunt that nobody understood.
"Gee! how I wish I could speak Spanish!" remarked Pod, facing the squatty ranchman. It was comical to watch Coonskin's puzzled face. "I once studied Spanish, but why didn't I master it! Just two words can I remember: "porque"--why, and "manana"--to-morrow. But how can they help me? To utter them would be to ask, why to-morrow? And there would be no sense in that."
"But it might convey the idea," I interrupted, "that either you know more than you looked to know, or appeared to know more than you do know; and that would be something."
My master did not answer, but when the Mexican came around again, he said to him, "Porque manana?" The Mexican laughed--who could blame him--and said something about Espanola, a young lady I never heard tell of, and invited us all to the corral, except the men, who followed him to the house. Nothing like Mexican hospitality when one understands the language as Pod did.
At first the Mexican did not comprehend that we all were thirsty. The Professor asked for a drink in many varieties of expression, concluding with a desperate "Porque Manana?" at the same time pointing to the well. The Mexican grinned, and replied in a peculiar vernacular, and handed him a huge tin cup. Pod next inquired the right trail to Brighton in many artistic demonstrations of verbal inflection and gesticular design, and wound up with a heroic "Porque Manana." The mystified sheep herder shook his head quizzically, and began to pour out a whole tubful of liquid linguistics which my pedantic master drained to the dregs without discovering their meaning; then he shook hands with the gracious host and gave the word to "hit the trail."
"Mighty lucky you understood Spanish, Mr. Pod," Coonskin remarked, when we were some distance from the house. "I'd give a farm to speak it like you."
That tickled Pod's vanity, and he told his flattering valet that Spanish could not be learned in a day, but perhaps sometime he would give him a few lessons, just to prepare him for an emergency.
That night we donks were picketed to a rickety, barbed-wire fence, and the men pitched the tent close by, cooked, and went to bed early. Seldom had been so much care taken to prevent my getting wound up in the rope so I couldn't eat or lie down. In the morning there was a surprise for everybody. S' help me Balaam! if there wasn't a circus, then I never saw one. We donks were completely tangled in the dismantled wire fence, and cutting up capers to beat a side-show. I kept my eye peeled on the tent door for an hour. Finally Pod came out, took in the situation at a glance, and then sat down on a cactus, for less than a fraction of a second, to laugh.
I was proud of the rôle I played in that matinée. There I was, with a fence post wired to each of my legs, which raised my feet off the ground, walking about on veritable stilts, and close behind me followed Cheese and Skates with a post yoking their necks together, like oxen, while Damfino was rolling over and over, unmindful of the cacti, as if our extraordinary sport were for her special entertainment. We were quiet, until Cheese suddenly opened his mouth and brayed with glee. I told him to shut up. Says I, "Pod will think we got in this fix on purpose, and give us Hail Columbia."
Pod looked worried. He said he wondered how they could dismount that giraffe--meaning me, no doubt--without breaking his legs. I didn't feel comfortable so far above the earth, the atmosphere was chilly, and the rarified air made me dizzy; but that remark frightened me. The trick was, at last, accomplished. Coonskin held my fore-stilts, while Pod braced his feet, and with a violent push threw me over on my side on a pile of blankets and pillows. Well, let me tell you, my donkey friends, it required two hours to free us from the fence-posts and wire. After that, both men busied themselves like Red Cross Nurses. (Skates said they were cross nurses of some sort), and bandaged up our cuts and scratches, then, after breakfast, they saddled and packed us for the day's journey. I never want another experience like that.
On Thursday night, I think (I ate up Pod's only calendar), we again wandered from the trail, and about two o'clock camped near a cottonwood tree which seemed to indicate we were near water. Although I was awfully dry, I had to wait till morning. It was pleasant to be lulled to sleep by the rustling of leaves (and it was consoling to know something besides us donks had to rustle), yet there we were in the boundless desert. Don's barking awoke us early. A ranchman rode up and said we would find plenty of water yonder at the well, the only water for many miles around; then he rode away.
There was one long row of cottonwood trees hundreds of feet apart, stretching for a mile or two across the desert, as if planted by birds fifty years ago.
Pod took us empty donks and canteens over to the well. That was the novelest thing I ever saw; and the water was the coolest I ever tasted. An iron wheel turned in a cog and drove a piston-rod down a deep well, the power being furnished by a meek-looking horse which walked round the pump in circus fashion, thinking he was the whole show, and pulled a sort of walking-beam that turned the cog-wheel. There the ranchman and his big small boy rode every morning many miles from home to pump water for their cattle, which ate (they evidently had eaten everything in sight) during the day, and chewed their cud at night in the cottonwood shade.
That morning, when several miles nearer our goal, a stiff wind introduced itself and increased in velocity until such speed was attained that the men had to stop traveling and tie the whole outfit to the picket-pins driven in the ground. That gale beat the tornado on the shore of Lake Erie, and the cyclone near Sterling. We donks had to lie down with our backs to the wind, for Damfino, not thinking, lay the other way at first, and the wind blew into her mouth so fast she swelled up twice her natural size. She was so full of air that she arose and turned around, before being able to lie down again.
Pod said it was a good time to write his letter for the paper. So he hitched his shoulders to ropes tied to picket-pins about five feet apart, and sat in a camp-stool, and, facing the gale, laid his writing pad on the wind, and finished his article in fine style.
When I asked him how the wind could be so strong as to brace up both the pad and his story, he said he was writing in a lighter vein than usual.
We were in sight of Brighton next morning when a strange accident happened to Pod. We were approaching a field of grain on an irrigated ranch when, suddenly, he was struck on the head by a mastodon grasshopper and knocked senseless out of the saddle. At once Don chased the creature and headed him off, while Coonskin lassoed him and bound him on Damfino. We took the wonder to Denver. There Pod put the thing in a bottle of alcohol, but it hadn't been there more than a half hour when it kicked out the bottom, and almost upset a street car in trying to escape. Again the grasshopper was captured, then poisoned and skinned, and the bones were expressed to the Smithsonian Museum.
About one o'clock we left the line of the B. & M. railroad, and cut across the plain six miles to the Union Pacific, which we had left on the previous week. Then we began to descend into the verdant valley of the Platte. Great fields of grain waved in the breeze on either hand. The song of the reaper was cheering, the glistening snow on the distant Rockies, cooling.
At last our caravan ambled into Brighton. It impressed me as a pretty town; after crossing a two hundred mile desert, I was in condition to compliment any sort of a place. That night we traveled ten miles and camped near the Nine Mile House, where, next morning, we were disappointed not to obtain breakfast.
Beautiful, far-famed Denver loomed up on the distant plain. The smoke from her smelters curled on high, a dusky sign of prosperity. We breakfasted three miles nearer the city, and at two P. M. our picturesque outfit strode up Seventeenth street and anchored in front of the Albany Hotel. Denver at last!