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402 THE
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(Continued from Page 371.)
1 smiled inwardiy, but Mayfield was
staring at Benito with wide-open eyes.
At this moment, however, the trapper,
naving ridden with us nearly half a day,
stopped, saying in his earlier and more
compassionate tone: "Sure, and this is
the crist, an' yez'll be seein* the Sapio
Ranch before it's time fer the doosk;
yez'd ought to be there in the foorst
starlight. Troost to yez oiyes, an' lave
the ponies to their sinses, an' yez'll
be coomin' opp all roight. Don't be talkin'
this whLnst yez be coomin' to the
cow tails. Good luck to yez both!"
And then with hearty handshakes and
renewed assurances of gratitude we parted
from our host and guide, feeling that
we had at least broken even with luck
up to that point.
"That old Irish chap is a sure-enough
Christian," feelingly observed Mayfield
as we rode far away from Benito into
the western shadows of Sapio.
"I must say, Mayfield," I returned,
"that in many things he has acted much
like one, and I should like to believe
him one, if I could, in spite of the
steady flow of brandy down his neck,
and the steady flow out of it of that
stream of profanity, and those tall and
wholly unnecessary lies."
"You forget, Penn," objected Mayfield,
"that you are no longer in Tennessee.
You mustn't expect to find things out
here as thev are haelr there Ponnle
don't always have the same ways, you
know. 1 reckon it will seem all right
to us when we get used to it. If we are
going to be cowboys, we may as well
take up with it at the start."
"Perhaps so," I said; "but it's an understanding
between us, Mayfield, isn't
it, that we are not to get clean off?"
"That's the way I understand it,
Penn," he replied. "We want to go
back to Tennessee some day, especially
if we get rich. But I was just wondering
how long a Tennessee resolution
could stand against the life at Sapio
" Ranch, if that old Jew aeent's storv is
true; and I reckon it is, for the books
we read all say the cowboy life is tough,
and that nearly every cow puncher has
left his record with a sherifT somewhere."
"But our records are all right," I said.
"We mustn't get too familiar with those
fellows at Sapio."
"Perhaps we can manage that, Penn;
I don't know. But did you notice this
morning," said Mayfield, going off into
an abstraction, "that the whole plain
was noaung with cobwebs?"
"Yes," I replied, "I observed it; but
what of it?"
"What do you suppose those webs
were hung on?"
"I don't know," I answered, "unless
it wna on the stars."
PRESBYTERIAN OF THE SO
Inotsatio
Ty Horace M. Du'Bose.
"Perhaps so," lie returned; "but where
are they now?" he continued alter the
manner of a professional dialectician.
"I suppose they have looped themselves
back over the stars," 1 replied,
catching the spirit of half levity, "and
that they will come promptly down with
the dew in the morning."
"Not a bit of it," was the rejoinder;
"they are not nearly so well laid up.
In fact, they are laid out for good. The
wind has whipped every one of them
to shreds. It may sound much like
preaching, but I'm thinking, Penn, that
you'll have to hook your resolutions to
something higher up than the stars if
you keep 'em swinging in the face of
the gale that I expect to find blowing all
around the Sapio shanties. That old
Jew gave me an understanding of things
that goes a little beyond even the worst
I had expected. We are not going to
find it a Tpnncaeoo QnnHow-enh^i
Penn."
"I am prepared to find it as you say,
Mayfield; but I trust that we have really
fixed our resolutions to something higher
than even the stars," I replied with
an assurance of tone which I am afraid
my state of feeling did not wholly support.
"We'll see," was the only response
which this protest provoked from my
companion.
Here we were, almost in sight of Sapio
Ranch, where we had signed ourselves to
become cowboys; and yet, so far as concerned
our knowledge of what was to be
done, and the relation we were to assume,
we would as well have been on the
way 10 a consuisnip in Astianti or the
Fiji Islands. We had each a lair supply
of native wit, a tolerably good country
college training, and had both been professedly
religious at home. It was the
consciousness of the moderate measure
of each of these that made us feel that
we had no right to aspire to overmuch in
life. It also left us doubtful at points
where we should have been resolute.
The western side of the Sapio was far
more pleasing than the eastern. Although
the Rio Hondo rises on the eastern
slope, it works its sinuous course to
the south, breaks through a pass and
waters an enticing and fertile valley on
the west. This side of the mountain is
gashed with numerous narrow canyons,
through which small tributaries of the
Hondo tinkled and bubbled and left a
wealth of herbage and a luxuriance of
trpp crnu'th that imado oaph Hnu vol* ?
pent-in paradise. The valley was by no
means great in width, but it was plentifully
watered and was naturally a region
to which cattle men and herders
would look in a time when the range
was absolutely free to the first comers.
Five and thirty years ago the ranches
tributary to it were the very best in all
UTH. March 30, 1910.
IkAMCH
the West. 1 know not what civilization
has done during these five and thirty
years, but at the time of our advent the
whole region was a picture of romantic
beauty and wild isolation. There were
many corals within a radius of forty
miles of the base of the range. The
Sapio Ranch, to which we steered our
course, was nearest the mountain, and
was also the choicest location in the
valley. There were reported to be uncounted
thousands of cattle on the
neighboring ranges. It was a veritable
kingdom of cow tails.
After spurring briskly for an hour or
so down the slope, we found that the
trail fell into one of the downward-winding
canyons which I have described. The
delicious air which floated up through
the leafy vistas cooled our faces and
cheered our spirits, the gurgling waters
made us think of homo "?
.V-, Uiiu a 1CW sung
birds which flitted across the narrow
spaces seemed like friends come to
cheer us in our doubtful way. We allowed
our ponies' to nip the long,
luscious grasses as they picked their
way down the sometimes declivitous
trail. In some places the rock walls of
the gorges took on fantastic shapes,
soaring high above our heads. Often the
slant beams of the sun were shut out,
and we were treated to a panorama of
changing and pleasing colors laid on
rock and sky. Often we saw a grayling
or a rainbow trout flash out of a pellucid
pool where a bowlder had arrested and
eddied the foaming runlet. At one of
these bowlders we stopped and spread
our afternoon lunch on the face of the
rock, dressing our strips of jerked beef
with tender cresses which we gathered
at the edge of the pool.
nn>
iuudii over, we stretched out full
length under a dwarf pine for a few
moments of rest. A sense of deepest
satisfaction possessed me.
"Mayfleld," I said, "if the ravens would
only bring me food here, I believe I
should call it a settlement."
"It would be a snap," he said. But as
our faith was not equal to the raven
commissariat, and as we realized that
there were yet many miles of journeybefore
us, we were soon again in the
saddle spurring valleyward. A dozen
miles carried us far beyond the limits of
our walled and miniature Eden, and out
again into the gray desert of sand heaps
and sagebrush, where, amid a now
familiar Hesniotinn **
,?HV?Mi^vii, nc attw ine sun sst?
the twilight deepen, and then the murk
of night fall about us like a curtain.
Both our tired beasts and our tired bodies
admonished us that we must abandon
the hope of reaching Sapio Ranch
that night. We also fully distrusted our
ability to keep the trail even in a clear
starlight. We accordingly lassoed our
ponies, fed them a few handfuls of chops