The Round-Up: A Romance of Arizona; Novelized from Edmund Day's Melodrama Read online

  CHAPTER II

  The Heart of a Girl

  Jim Allen was the sole owner and proprietor of Allen Hacienda. Hisranch, the Bar One, stretched for miles up and down the SweetwaterValley. Bounded on the east and west by the foot-hills, the tract wasone of the garden spots of Arizona. Southward lay the Sweetwater Ranch,owned by Jack Payson. Northward was the home ranch of the Lazy K, anIshmaelitish outfit, ever at petty war with the other settlers in thedistrict. It was a miscellaneous and constantly changing crowd,recruited from rustlers from Wyoming, gamblers from California,half-breed outlaws from the Indian Territory; in short, "bad men" fromevery section of the Western country. They had a special grudgeagainst Allen and Payson, whom they held to be accountable for thesudden disappearance, about a year before, of their leader, Buck McKee,a half-breed from the Cherokee Strip. However, no other leader hadarisen equal to that masterful spirit, and their enmity expresseditself only in such petty depredations as changing brands on straycattle from the Bar One and Sweetwater Ranches, and the slitting of thetongues of young calves, so that they would be unable to feed properly,and, as a result, be disowned by their mothers, whereupon the Lazy Koutfit would slap its brand on them as mavericks.

  Allen was a Kentuckian who had served in the Confederate Army as one ofMorgan's raiders, and so had received, by popular brevet, the title ofcolonel. At the close of the war he had come to Arizona with his youngwife, Josephine, and had founded a home on the Sweetwater. He was nowone of the cattle barons of the great Southwest. Prosperity had notspoiled him. Careless in his attire, cordial in his manner, he was aman who was loved and respected by his men, from the newest tenderfootto the veteran of the bunkhouse. His wife, however, was not so highlyregarded, for she had never been able to recognize changes in time orlocation and so was in perpetual conflict with her environment. Sheattempted to make the free and independent cowboys of the Arizonaplains "stand around" like the house servants of the KentuckyBluegrass; and she persisted in the effort to manage her husband by thefeminine artifice of weeping. In days of her youth and beauty this hadbeen very effective, but now that these had passed, it was productiveonly of good-humored raillery from him, and mirth from the bystanders.

  "No wonder Jim has the finest ranch in Arizony," the cowboys were wontto say, "with Josephine a irrigatin' it all the time."

  Allen Hacienda was certainly a garden spot in that desert country. Thebuilding was of the old Mexican style, an architecture found, bycenturies of experience, to be suited best to the climate and thematerials of the land. The house was only one story in height. Therooms and outbuildings sprawled over a wide expanse of ground. Thewalls were of native stone and adobe clay; over them clamberedgrape-vines. In front of the home Mrs. Allen had planted a garden. A'dobe wall cut off the house from the corral and the bunk-house. Aheavy girder spanned the distance from the low roof to the top of thebarrier. Latticework, supporting a grape-vine, formed, with a girder, agateway through which one could catch from the piazza a view of asecond cultivated plot. Palms and flowering cacti added color and lifeto the near prospect. Through the arbor a glimpse of the TortillaMountains, forty miles away, held the eye. The Sweetwater, its pathacross the plains outlined by the trees fringing its banks, flowed pastthe ranch. Yucca palms and sahuaroes threw a scanty shade over thegarden.

  Shortly after the arrival of the Allens in Arizona they were blessedwith a daughter, the first white child born in that region. Theywaited for a Protestant clergyman to come along before christening her,and, as such visits were few and far between, the child was beginningto talk before she received a name. From a "cunning" habit she had ofrepeating last words of questions put to her, her father provisionallydubbed her Echo, which name, when the preacher came, he insisted uponher retaining.

  As Echo grew older, in order that she might have a companion, ColonelAllen went to Kentucky and brought back with him a little orphan girl,who was a distant relative of his wife. Polly Hope her name was, andPolly Hope she insisted on remaining, though the Allens would gladlyhave adopted her.

  Colonel Allen trained the girls in all the craft of the plains, just asif they were boys. He taught them to ride astride, to shoot, to ropecattle. They accompanied him everywhere he went, cantering on broncosby the side of his Kentucky thoroughbred. Merry, dark-eyed,black-haired Echo always rode upon the off side, and saucy Polly, withgolden curls, blue eyes, and tip-tilted nose, upon the near. Theex-Confederate soldier dubbed them, in military style, his "right andleft wings." As the three would "make a raid" upon Florence, thecounty town, the inhabitants did not need to look out of doors toascertain who were coming, for the merriment of the little girls gavesufficient indication. "Here comes Jim Allen ridin' like thedestroyin' angel," said young Sheriff Hoover, on one of theseoccasions, "I know him by the rustlin' of his 'wings.'"

  The household was again increased a few years later by the generousresponse of the Allens to an appeal from a Children's Aid Society in anEastern city to give a home to two orphaned brothers, Richard andHenry Lane. "Dick" and "Buddy" (shortened in time to Bud), as theywere called, being taken young, quickly adapted themselves to their newenvironment, and by the time they arrived at manhood had provedthemselves the equals of any cowboy on the range in horsemanship andkindred accomplishments. Dick, the elder brother, was a steady,reliable fellow, modest as he was brave, and remarkably quick-wittedand resourceful in emergencies. He gave his confidence over readily tohis fellows, but if he ever found himself deceived, withdrew itabsolutely. It was probably this last characteristic that attracted tohim Echo Allen's especial regard, for it was also her distinguishingtrait. "You have got to act square with Echo," her father was wont tosay, "for if you don't you'll never make it square with her afterward."

  Bud was a generous-hearted, impetuous boy, who responded warmly toaffection. He repaid his elder brother's protecting care with a loyaltythat knew no bounds. The Colonel, who was a strict disciplinarian,frequently punished him in his boyhood for wayward acts, and the littlefellow made no resistance--only sobbed in deep penitence. Once,however, when Uncle Jim, as the boys and Polly called him, feltcompelled to apply to rod to Dick--unjustly, as it afterwardappeared--Bud burst into a tempest of passionate tears, and, leapingupon the Colonel's back, clung there clawing and striking like awildcat until Allen was forced to let Dick go. It is shrewdlyindicative of the Colonel's character that not only did he refrain frompunishing Bud on that occasion, but, when floggings were subsequentlydue the little fellow, laid on the rod less heavily out of regard forthe loyalty to his brother he had then displayed.

  This attack also won the admiration of Polly Hope, who was something ofa spitfire herself. A little jealous of Dick for the chief place heheld in Bud's affection, she openly claimed the younger brother as hersweetheart, and attempted to constitute him her knight--though withrepeated discouragements, for Bud was a bashful lad, and, though he hada true affection for the girl, boylike concealed it by a show ofindifference.

  The tender relations of these boys and girls persisted naturally intoyoung manhood and womanhood. No word of love passed between Dick andEcho until that time when the "nesting impulse," the desire to have ahome of his own, prompted the young man to go out into the world andwin his fortune. For a year he had acted as foreman of the Allenranch, working in neighborly cooperation with Jack Payson, ofSweetwater Ranch, a man of about his own age. The two young men becamethe closest of comrades. When the fever of adventure seized upon Lane,and he became dissatisfied with the plodding career of a wage-earner,Payson insisted on mortgaging Sweetwater Ranch for three thousanddollars and in lending Dick the money for a year's prospecting in themountains of Sonora, Mexico, in search of a fabulous rich "Lost Mine ofthe Aztecs."

  Traditions of lost mines are plentiful in Arizona and northern Mexico.First taken up by the Spanish invaders of three hundred years ago fromthe native Indians, they have been passed down to each subsequentinflux of white men. The directions are always vague. The inquirercannot pin his in
formant down to any definite data. Over the mountainsalways lies the road. Hundreds of lives have been sacrificed, andcruelty unparalleled practised upon innocent men women, and children,by gold-seekers in their lust for conquest. Prosperous Indian villageshave been laid waste, and whole bands of adventurers have gone into thedesert in the search of these mines, never to return.

  When the time for Lane's departure came Echo wept at the thought oflosing for so long a time the close companion of her childhood and thesympathetic confidant of her youthful thoughts and aspirations. Dick,in whom friendship for Echo had long before ripened into consciouslove, took her tears as evidence that she was similarly affected towardhim, and he allowed all the suppressed passion of his nature full ventin a declaration of love. The girl was deeply moved by this revelationof the heart of a strong man made tender as a woman's by a powercentering in her own humble self, and, being utterly without experienceof the emotion even in its protective form of calf-love, which is thevarioloid of the genuine infection, she imagined through sheer sympathythat she shared his passion. So she assented with maidenly reserve tohis plea that she promise to marry him when he should return andprovide a home for her. Her more cautious mother secured amodification of this pledge by limiting the time that Echo should waitfor him to one year. If at the expiration of that period Lane did notreturn to claim her promise, or did not write making satisfactoryarrangements for continuance of the engagement, Echo was to beconsidered free to marry whom she chose.

  Soon after Lane's departure Mrs. Allen persuaded the Colonel to sendEcho east to a New England finishing-school for girls, where her motherhoped that her budding love for Lane might be nipped in the frigidatmosphere of intellectual culture, if not, indeed, supplanted by asaving interest in young men in general, and, perhaps, in someparticular scion of a blue-blooded Boston family.

  The plan succeeded in part only. The companionship of herschoolfellows, her music and art-lessons, her books (during the limitedperiods allotted to serious study and reading), and, above all, herattrition at receptions with another order of men than that she hadknown in the rough, uncultured West, occupied her mind so fully thatpoor Dick Lane, who was putting a thought of Echo Allen in every blowof his pick, received only the scraps of her attention.

  Dick had few opportunities to mail a letter, and none of them forreceiving one. Unpractised in writing, his epistolary compositionswere crude in the extreme, being wholly confined to bald statements offact. Had he been as tender on paper as he was in his words andaccents when he kissed away her tears at parting, her regard for himwould have had fuel to feed on and might have kindled into genuinelove. As it was, she was forced to admit that, in comparison, with thebrilliant university men with whom she conversed, Dick Lane,intellectually, was as quartz to diamond.

  On the other band, she contrasted Dick in the essential point ofmanliness most favorably with the male butterflies of society thathovered around her. What one of them was so essentially chivalrous asthe Western man; so modest, so self-sacrificing, so brave and resoluteand resourceful? Dick Lane, or Jack Payson, for that matter, in allsave the adventitious points of education and culture was the highertype of manhood, and Jack, at least, if not poor Dick, could hold hisown in mental and artistic perception with the brightest, most culturedof Harvard graduates.

  At the end of the year she came back home to await Dick's return fromthe wilds of Mexico. There was great anxiety about his safety, forGeronimo, attacked by Crook in the Apache stronghold of the TontoBasin, had escaped to the mountains of northwestern Mexico with hisband of fierce Chiricahuas.

  Now Dick Lane had not been heard from in this region. When he neithermade appearance nor sent a message upon the day appointed for hisreturn, his brother, Bud, was for setting out instantly to find him andrescue him if he were in difficulties.

  Then it was that Echo Allen discovered the true nature of her affectionfor her lover, that it was sisterly regard, differing only in degree,but not in kind, from that which she felt for his brother. She joinedwith Polly in opposing Bud's going, urging his recklessness as areason. "You are certain to be killed," she said, "and I cannot loseyou both." Jack Payson, for whom Bud was working, then came forwardand offered to accompany him, and keep him with bounds. Again therewas a revelation of her heart Echo, and one that terrified her with asense of disloyalty. It was Jack she really loved, noble, chivalric,wonderful Jack Payson, whom, with a Southern intensity of feeling, shehad unconsciously come to regard as her standard of all that makes formanhood. Plausible objections could not be urged against hissacrificing himself for his friend. With an irresistible impulse shecast herself upon his breast and said: "I cannot BEAR to see you go."

  Payson gently disengaged her arms.

  "I must, Echo. It is what Dick would do for me if I were in his place."

  However, while Payson and Bud were preparing for their departure, BuckMcKee appeared in the region and reported that Dick Lane had beenkilled by the Apaches. He told with convincing details of how he hadmet Lane as each was returning from a successful prospecting trip inthe Ghost Range, and how they had sunk their differences in standingtogether against an attack of the Indians. He extolled Dick's bravery,relating how, severely wounded, he had stood off the savages to enablehimself to escape.

  When he handed over Dick's watch to Echo--for he had learned on hisreturn that she was betrothed to Lane--as a last token from her lover,no doubt remained in the minds of his hearers of the truth of hisstory, and Payson and Bud Lane gave up their purposed expedition.

  The owner of Sweetwater Ranch, while accepting McKee's account, couldnot wholly forget the half-breed's former evil reputation, and wasreserved in his reception of the advances of the ex-rustler who wasanxious to curry favor. Warm-hearted, impulsive Bud, however, whosefraternal loyalty had increased under his bereavement to the supremepassion of life, took the insinuating half-breed into the achingvacancy made by his brother's death. The two became boon companions,to the great detriment of the younger man's morals. McKee had plentyof money which he spent liberally, gambling and carousing in companywith Bud. Polly was wild with indignation at her sweetheart'sdesertion, and savagely upbraided him for his conduct whenever theymet, which may be inferred, grew less and less frequently. It was inrevenge she made advances to another man who long "loved her from afar."

  This was William Henry Harrison Hoover, sheriff of the county, known as"Slim" Hoover by the humorous propensity of men on the range to givenicknames on the principle of contraries, for he was fattest man inPinal County. Slim was one of those fleshy men who have nerves ofsteel and muscles of iron. A round, boyish face, twinkling blue eyes,flaming red hair gave him an appearance entirely at variance with hispersonality. A vein of sentiment made him all the more lovable. Hisassociates--ranchers, men of the plains, soldiers, and the owners andfrequenters of the frontier barroom--respected him greatly.

  "He's square as Slim" was the best recommendation ever given of a manin that region.

  Pinal County settlers had made Slim sheriff term after term because hewas the one citizen supremely fitted for the place. He had ridden therange and "busted" broncos before election. After it he huntedwrong-doers. Right was right and wrong was wrong to him. There was noshading in the meaning. All he asked of men was to ride fast, shootstraight, and deal squarely in any game. He admitted that murder,horse-stealing, and branding another man's calves were subjects for theunwritten law. But in his code this law meant death only after a fairtrial, with neighbors for a jury. He was not scrupulous that a judgeshould be present. His duties were ended when he brought in hisprisoner.

  Hoover's rule had been marked by the taming of bad men in Florence, anda truce declared in the guerrilla warfare between the cattlemen and thesheepmen on the range.

  Slim's seemingly superfluous flesh was really of great advantage tohim: it served as a mask for his remarkable athletic abilities, and solulled the outlaws with whom he had to deal into a false sense ofsuperiority and security. />
  Slow and lethargic in his ordinary movements, in an emergency he wasquick as a panther, never failing to get the drop on his man.

  Furthermore, his fat exerted a beneficial influence on his character inkeeping him humble-minded. Being the most popular man in the county,he would probably have been swollen with vanity had there been anyspace left vacant for it in his huge frame. He was especially admiredby the women, but was at ease only in the company of those who weremarried. It was his fate to see the few girls of the region, withevery one of whom, by turns, he was in love, grow up to marry each someless diffident wooer.

  "Dangnation take it!" he used to say, "I don't git up enough spunk tocut a heifer out o' the herd until somebody else has roped her andslapped his brand onto her. Talk about too many irons in the fire,why, I've only got one, and it's het up red all the time waitin' ferthe right chanct to use it; but some how I never git it out o' thecoals. Hell! what's the use, anyhow? Nobody loves a fat man."

  Slim was inordinately puffed up by Polly's preference of him, which sheshowed by all sorts of feminine tyrannies, and he was forcedcontinually to slap his huge paunch to remind himself of what heconsidered his disabling deformity. "Miss Polly," he wouldapostrophize the absent lady, "you don't know what a volcano ofseethin' fiery love this here mountain of flesh is that your walkin'over. Some day I'll erupt, and jest eternally calcify you, if youdon't look out!"

  The sheriff took no stock in Buck McKee's professed reformation, andwas greatly worried over the influence he had acquired over Bud Lane,who had before this been Slim's protege. Accordingly, he readilyconspired with her to break off the relations between the former outlawand the young horse-wrangler, but thus far had met with no success.

  Payson, feeling himself absolved by the death of Dick Lane from allobligations to his friend, began openly to woo Echo Allen, but withoutpresuming upon the revelation of her love for him which she had made athis proposition to go into the desert to Lane's rescue. She respondedto his courteous advances as frankly and naturally as a bud opens tothe gentle wooing of the April sun. Softened by her grief for Dick asfor a departed brother, as the flower is by the morning dew, the petalsof her affection opened and laid bare her heart of purest gold. Thegentle, diffident girl expanded into a glorious woman, conscious of herpowers, and proud and happy that she was fulfilling the highestfunction of womanhood, that of loving and aiding with her love a nobleman.

  Jack Payson, however, failed to get the proper credit for this suddenflowering of Echo's beauty and charm. These were ascribed to heryear's schooling in the East, and her proud mother was offended by theway in which she accepted the young ranchman's advances. "You holdyourself too cheap," she said. "It is at least due to the memory ofpoor Dick Lane" (whom, now that he was safely dead, she idealized as atype of perfect manhood) "that you make Jack wait as long as you didhim." When Payson reasonably objected to this delay by pointing out hewas fully able to support a wife, as Lane had not been, and proposed,with Echo's assent, six months as the limit of waiting, Mrs. Allenresorted to her expedient--tears.

  "BOO-HOO! you are going to take away my only daughter!"

  The Colonel, however, though he had loved Dick as if he were his ownson, was delighted to the bottom of his hospitable soul that it was aman not already in the family circle who was to marry Echo, especiallywhen he was a royal fellow like Jack Payson; so he arranged acompromise between the time proposed by Mrs. Allen and that desired bythe lovers, and the date of the wedding was fixed nine months ahead.

  "It will fall in June," said the old fellow, who knew exactly how tohandle his fractious wife; "the month when swell folks back in the Eastdo all their hitchin' up. Why, come to think of it, it was the verymonth I ran off with you in, though I didn't know, then that we waselopin' so strictly accordin' to the Book of Etikwet."