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Page 5
Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often heard
praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been complimented by
his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour for his own humble
barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was the Last of the Barons.
Of course, Mr. Bulwer-Lytton lived too early to know him, or he wouldn't
have conferred that sobriquet upon Warwick. In life it is the duty and
the function of the Baron to provide work for the Workers and lodging and
shelter for the Troubadours.
Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white beard
and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch was a
little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the lonesomest
part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a Kiowa Indian man
cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed coyote chained to a
fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two sections of leased
land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor owned. Three or four
times a year some one who spoke his language would ride up to his gate and
exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those were red-letter days to old man
Ellison. Then in what illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated
capitals must have been written the day on which a troubadour -- - a
troubadour who, according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished
between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries - -- drew rein at the
gates of his baronial castle!
Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he saw
Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to greet
him.
"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over and
see you a while. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They ought
to make good grazing for your spring lambs."
"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see you,
Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to as
out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome. 'Light.
I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen -- - shall I bring out a feed
for your hoss?"
"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a pig
now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition. I'll
just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don't mind."
I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries did
Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their
parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The Kiowa's
biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong. Ineradicable
hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's weather-tanned
face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he had stumbled upon
pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant meal, a host whom his
lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight far beyond the merits of
the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that his sensitive soul at that
time craved united to confer upon him a satisfaction and luxurious ease
that he had seldom found on his tours of the ranches.
After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took out
his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you -- neither Sam Galloway nor
any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late Tommy
Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the esteemed but
often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his supper. No true
troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, and then sing for
Art's sake.
Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and between
thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could talk
through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he never
sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit. I am
strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a portrait as well
as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.
I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive beyond
the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an ultramarine-blue woollen
shirt laced down the front with a pearl-gray, exaggerated sort of
shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable high-heeled
boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw sombrero.
That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under the
hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily
touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird, melancholy,
minor-keyed _canciones_ that he had learned from the Mexican sheep herders
and _vaqueros_. One, in particular, charmed and soothed the soul of the
lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the sheep herders, beginning:
"_Huile, huile, palomita_," which being translated means, "Fly, fly,
little dove." Sam sang it for old man Ellison many times that evening.
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