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Page 10
"No wonder Jim has the finest ranch in Arizony," the cowboys were
wont to say, "with Josephine a irrigatin' it all the time."
Allen Hacienda was certainly a garden spot in that desert
country. The building was of the old Mexican style, an
architecture found, by centuries of experience, to be suited best
to the climate and the materials of the land. The house was only
one story in height. The rooms and outbuildings sprawled over a
wide expanse of ground. The walls were of native stone and adobe
clay; over them clambered grape-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. A heavy girder spanned the
distance from the low roof to the top of the barrier.
Latticework, supporting a grape-vine, formed, with a girder, a
gateway through which one could catch from the piazza a view of a
second cultivated plot. Palms and flowering cacti added color
and life to the near prospect. Through the arbor a glimpse of
the Tortilla Mountains, forty miles away, held the eye. The
Sweetwater, its path across the plains outlined by the trees
fringing its banks, flowed past the ranch. Yucca palms and
sahuaroes threw a scanty shade over the garden.
Shortly after the arrival of the Allens in Arizona they were
blessed with a daughter, the first white child born in that
region. They waited for a Protestant clergyman to come along
before christening her, and, as such visits were few and far
between, the child was beginning to talk before she received a
name. From a "cunning" habit she had of repeating last words of
questions put to her, her father provisionally dubbed her Echo,
which name, when the preacher came, he insisted upon her
retaining.
As Echo grew older, in order that she might have a companion,
Colonel Allen 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, and Polly Hope she insisted on remaining, though
the Allens would gladly have adopted her.
Colonel Allen trained the girls in all the craft of the plains,
just as if they were boys. He taught them to ride astride, to
shoot, to rope cattle. They accompanied him everywhere he went,
cantering on broncos by the side of his Kentucky thoroughbred.
Merry, dark-eyed, black-haired Echo always rode upon the off
side, and saucy Polly, with golden curls, blue eyes, and
tip-tilted nose, upon the near. The ex-Confederate soldier
dubbed them, in military style, his "right and left wings." As
the three would "make a raid" upon Florence, the county town, the
inhabitants did not need to look out of doors to ascertain who
were coming, for the merriment of the little girls gave
sufficient indication. "Here comes Jim Allen ridin' like the
destroyin' angel," said young Sheriff Hoover, on one of these
occasions, "I know him by the rustlin' of his 'wings.'"
The household was again increased a few years later by the
generous response of the Allens to an appeal from a Children's
Aid Society in an Eastern city to give a home to two orphaned
brothers, Richard and Henry Lane. "Dick" and "Buddy" (shortened
in time to Bud), as they were called, being taken young, quickly
adapted themselves to their new environment, and by the time they
arrived at manhood had proved themselves the equals of any cowboy
on the range in horsemanship and kindred accomplishments. Dick,
the elder brother, was a steady, reliable fellow, modest as he
was brave, and remarkably quick-witted and resourceful in
emergencies. He gave his confidence over readily to his fellows,
but if he ever found himself deceived, withdrew it absolutely. It
was probably this last characteristic that attracted to him Echo
Allen's especial regard, for it was also her distinguishing
trait. "You have got to act square with Echo," her father was
wont to say, "for if you don't you'll never make it square with
her afterward."
Bud was a generous-hearted, impetuous boy, who responded warmly
to affection. He repaid his elder brother's protecting care with
a loyalty that knew no bounds. The Colonel, who was a strict
disciplinarian, frequently punished him in his boyhood for
wayward acts, and the little fellow made no resistance--only
sobbed in deep penitence. Once, however, when Uncle Jim, as the
boys and Polly called him, felt compelled to apply to rod to
Dick--unjustly, as it afterward appeared--Bud burst into a
tempest of passionate tears, and, leaping upon the Colonel's
back, clung there clawing and striking like a wildcat until Allen
was forced to let Dick go. It is shrewdly indicative of the
Colonel's character that not only did he refrain from punishing
Bud on that occasion, but, when floggings were subsequently due
the little fellow, laid on the rod less heavily out of regard for
the loyalty to his brother he had then displayed.
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