An Idyl of the 'HT'

by Alfred Henry Lewis

 

AN IDYL OF THE “HT”^[1]

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It is sunset at the HT ranch.

Four or five cowboys sit gloomily about, outside the ranch house, awaiting supper.

The Mexican cook has just begun his fragrant task, so a half-hour must elapse before these Arabs are fed.

Their ponies are turned into the wire pasture, their big Colorado saddles repose astride the low pale fence which surrounds the house, and it is evident that their riding is over for the day.

Why are they gloomy? Not a boy of them can tell. One is from Princeton, too. They have been partners and companeros and “worked” the HT cattle together for months, and nothing ever came in misunderstanding or cloud. The ranch house is their home, and theirs has been the unity of brothers.

A week ago a pretty girl, the daughter of one of the owners, came to the ranch from the East. She was protected in this venture by an old and gnarled aunt, watchful as a ferret; sour as a lime. Not that the pretty girl needs watching; she is indeed in every move propriety's climax. No soft or dulcet reason woos her to the West; she comes on no love errand. She is elegantly and profoundly tired of the East, that is all, and longs for western air and western sights. She has been at the HT ranch a week and the boys have met her, every one. The meeting or meetings were marked by awkwardness as to the boys, utter indifference as to the pretty girl. She met them as she met the ponies, cows, horned toads, and others animals, domestic and indigenous to Eastern New Mexico. While every cowboy was blushingly conscious of her, she was purely and serenely guiltless of giving him a thought.

Before this pretty girl came the boys were friends and the calm tenor of their relations with each other had never a ripple. She was not there a day before each drew himself insensibly from the others, and a vague hostility shone dimly in their eyes. It was the instinct of the fighting male animal aroused by the presence of the pretty girl. She, however, proceeded on her daily way, sweetly unconscious of the sentiments she awakened.

Men are mere animals; women are, too, for that matter, but they are very different animals from men. The effort the race makes to be other, better, or different than beasts fails. It always failed; it will always fail. Civilization—culture—is the veriest veneer and famously thin. A year on the plains cracks this veneer—this shell—and leaves the animal exposed. This is by the expanding growth of all that is animal in a man; these attributes of the physical being fed and pampered by a plains existence.

The dark, vague, impalpable differences which cut off each of these creatures from his fellows and inspired him with an unreasoning and unmeasurable hate had grown with the brief week of their existence. A philosopher would look for trouble soon on the HT.

“What did you go take my saddle for, yesterday, Bill?” said Jack Moore to a boy by the name of Bill Watkins.

“'Cause I allows I'll ride it some,” said Watkins. “Thought it might like to carry a high-grade cow-puncher, once.”

“Well, don't take it no more,” said Moore, moodily, ignoring the gay insolence in the reply. “Leastwise, don't come a-takin' of it an' sayin' nothin'. You can palaver Americano, can't you? When you aims to ride my saddle agin, ask for it; if you can't talk, make signs, an' if you can't make signs, shake a bush, but don't go to Injunin' off no saddle of mine no more.”

“Whatever do you allow is liable to happen if I takes it agin to-morry?” inquired Bill in high scorn.

Bill was of a more vivacious temper than Moore.

“You takes it agin an' I mingles with you a whole lot. mighty prompt,” replied Moore in a tone of obstinate injury.

These boys were brothers in affection before that pretty girl came, and either would have gone afoot all day to lend his saddle to the other. Going afoot, too, is the last thing, let me assure you, a cowboy will do.

“Well, don't you fail to mingle none,” said Bill, with cheerful ferocity, “on account of its being me. I crosses the trail of the short-horn like you, over on the Panhandle onct, an' puts him in the fire an' has' plenty of fun with him.”

“Stop the play now, right yere,” said Tom Rawlins, the HT range boss, who was sitting close at hand. “You all spring trouble 'round yere an' I'll be in it. Whatever's the matter with all you people, anyway? You're like a passel of sore-'head' dogs for more'n a week now. You're shorely too many for me to sabe, an' I cl'ar gives you up.”

The boys started some grumbling reply, but the cook called them to supper just then, and, one animalism becoming overshadowed by another, they forgot their rancor and vague animosities in thoughts of supplying their hunger. Toward the last of the repast Rawlins arose, and going to another room began overlooking some entries in the ranch books.

The pretty girl did not eat at the ranch table. She had little banquets in her own room. Just then, she was in her room and began singing in a low tone some tender little love song that seemed born of a sigh and a tear. The boys at supper heard her, and their resentment of each other's existence began again to flame in their breasts and burn deeply in their eyes. None of these savages was in the least degree in love with the pretty girl, either. They might have become so, all or any of them.

The singing went on in a cooing, soft way that did not bring you the words—only the music.

“What I says about my saddle awhile back, I means,” said Moore, finally, turning a dark look on Watkins.

“See yere!” said Watkins in an exasperated tone—he was as vicious as Moore—“if you're p'intin' out for a war jig with me, don't fool 'round none for reasons, but jest let 'er roll. Come a-runnin', an' don't bother none with ceremony.”

“A man don't have to have no reasons for crawlin' you none,” said Moore. “You're fair game, you are. Any one's licensed to chase you 'round jest for fun an' exercise.”

“You can gamble,” said Watkins, confidently, “any man as chases me 'round much will regard it as a thrillin' pastime. He won't get fat at it, none whatever.”

“As you all seems to feel that a-way,” said Moore, “I'll step out an' shoot with you right now.”

“Well, I'll shore go you,” said Watkins.

They arose and stepped out at the door. It was gathering dark, but it was light enough to shoot by.

The other cowboys followed in silence. Not one said a word in comment or interference. They were grave and serious, but passive. It is not good form to interfere with other people's duels in the Southwest. The pretty girl was still singing, and the strains fell softly on the ears of the cowboys. Every one, whether onlooker or principal, felt inspired with a licking pleased anticipation of the blood to be soon set flowing. Nothing was said of distance. They separated to about forty paces and turned to face each other. Each wore his “Colt's 45,” the loosely-buckled belt letting it rest low down on the right hip. Each threw down his big hat and stood at apparent ease, with his thumbs caught in the pistol belt.

“Shall you give the word, or me?” said Moore.

“You give it,” said Watkins. “It'll be a funny passage in American history if you get your artillery to the front any sooner than I do, then.”

“Be you ready?” asked Jack.

“Shore.”

“Then—go!”

“Bang! bang! bang! bang!” went both pistols together, and with a rapidity not to be counted. Moore got a crease in his left shoulder—a mere wound to the flesh—and Watkins fell with a bullet in his side. Rawlins, the range boss, came running out. He understood all at a look. Hastily examining Moore, he discovered that his hurt was nothing serious. The others carried Watkins into the house.

“Take my pony, saddled at the fence, Jack,” said Rawlins, “and pull your freight. This yere man's goin' to die.”

“Which I shorely hopes he does,” said Jack, bitterly. “I'll go, though. I ain't got no use for none of these yere he-shorthorns around the HT.”

So he took Rawlins's pony, and when he stopped riding in the morning it was no marvel that the poor pony hung his head dejectedly, while his flanks steamed and quivered. He was almost one hundred miles from his last corn, and cooled his nervous muzzle as he took his morning drink in the Rio Pecos, a stream far to the west of the HT.

******

“Some shooting scrape about their saddles, miss; that's all.” So reported Rawlins to the pretty girl.

“Isn't it horrible!” shuddered the pretty girl in reply.

The next morning the pretty girl and her gnarled and twisted aunt paid the injured Watkins a visit. This sight so affected the other three cowboys that they at once saddled, and rode away to the northwest to work some cattle over on the Ocate Mesa. They intended to be gone three months. They looked black and forbidding as they galloped away.

“It's a pity Jack Moore ain't no better pistol shot,” said one, as the picture of the pretty girl visiting the wounded Watkins arose in his mind.

“That's whatever,” assented the others.

The pretty girl was full of sympathy for the stricken Watkins. It occurred to her, too, that his profile was clear and handsome. He was certainly very pale, and this stirred the depths of her feminine nature. She and her aunt came to see the invalid every day. Once the pretty girl said she would bring him a book to read and while away the hours, which seemed shod with lead.

“I can't read,” said Watkins, in a tone of deepest shame. “I never learned. I should like to read, too, but there's no one to teach me. So that settles that,” and the rascal expressed a deep sigh.

Watkins lied. It was he who was the Princeton man. He said afterward that this lie was the only real good work he ever did in his life.

So the pretty girl came every day and gave Watkins a reading lesson, while the gnarled aunt read a book and watched them through the open door.

“By the way,” said Watkins one day, “where's Moore?”

“Why?” asked the range boss,to whom the question was put.

“You tell him,” said Watkins, his eyes beginning to gather rage, “that when I get out I'll be lookin' for him with something besides a field glass.”

“Oh, no!” said the pretty girl, rising and coming toward his couch. Her tone showed great disturbance and fear at the thought

As he gazed at her, the look changed in his eyes. Hate for Moore gave place to something else.

“No,” he said at last. “Tell him it's all right, Rawlins.”

The pretty girl thought him very noble.

Watkins was out in five weeks and could go about the ranch. One night Rawlins thought he heard a pony in the yard and arose to remedy the matter. As he stepped out a couple passed him in the moonlight. It was Watkins and the pretty girl. The caitiff's arm was around her.

1. A. H. Lewis (Dan Quin):Kansas City Star