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Page 6
The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace and
quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the noisy camps
of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned the work
of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and unflagging approval
than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man Ellison. No visit by a
royal personage to a humble woodchopper or peasant could have been
received with more flattering thankfulness and joy.
On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam
Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his brown
paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch afforded, and
added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played so expertly on
his guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great lord, the Kiowa
brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter, and
food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him mildly;
mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but scarce equalled the sweet
melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all his world.
While old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of sheep on his
mile-an-hour pony, and while the Kiowa took his siesta in the burning
sunshine at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking what
a happy world he lived in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in
life it is to give entertainment and pleasure. Here he had food and
lodging as good as he had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care or
exertion or strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the
sixteenth repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial
giving. Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a
castle in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his
blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly 'frolic through the yard;
a covey of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file,
twenty yards away; a _paisano_ bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop
upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its' long tail.
In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque face grew fat
and almost smiling. The troubadour was at the end of his wanderings.
Old man Ellison was his own _vaciero_. That means that he supplied his
sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labours instead of
hiring a _vaciero_. On small ranches it is often done.
One morning he started for the camp of Incarnacion Felipe de la Cruz y
Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week's usual rations of
brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail from
old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King James,
mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.
King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it because it
seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his
majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza in
San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the
loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in southwest
Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more noise he
made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always the
quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a low voice who turns
out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in this story such is not
the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a large, loudmouthed
rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue eyes sitting quietly in
a corner, and you will see something doing in the corner every time.
King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce, two-hundred-pound
sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October strawberry, and with two
horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for eyes. On that day he wore
a flannel shirt that was tan-coloured, with the exception of certain large
areas which were darkened by transudations due to the summer sun. There
seemed to be other clothing and garnishings about him, such as brown duck
trousers stuffed into immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers;
and a shotgun laid across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of
cartridges shining in it -- but your mind skidded off such accessories;
what held your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used
for eyes.
This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you count
up in the baron's favour that he was sixty-five and weighed ninety-eight
pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he (the baron) had a
hankering for the _vita simplex_ and had no gun with him and wouldn't
have' used it if he had, you can't censure him if I tell you that the
smiles with which the troubadour had filled his wrinkles went out of them
and left them plain wrinkles again. But he was not the kind of baron that
flies from danger. He reined in the mile-an-hour pony (no difficult
feat), and saluted the formidable monarch.
King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old
snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?" said he. "What
right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"
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