Alamo Ranch.

by Sarah Warner Brooks.

CHAPTER I

It is autumn; and the last week in November. In New Mexico, this land of sunshine, the season is now as kindly as in the early weeks of our Northern September.

To-day the sky is one cloudless arch of sapphire! The light breeze scarce ruffles a leaf of the tall alamo, the name tree of this ranch.

Here any holding bigger than a kitchen garden is known as a ranch. The alamo, Spanish for poplar, lends here and there its scant, stiff shade to this roomy adobe dwelling, with its warm southern frontage and half-detached wings. Behind the house irregular out-buildings are scattered about.

A commodious corral, now the distinguished residence of six fine Jersey cows, lies between the house and the orchard,--a not over-flourishing collection of peach, apricot, and plum trees.

Here and there may be seen wide patches of kitchen garden, carefully intersected by irrigating ditches.

Near and afar, wide alfalfa fields with their stiff aftermath stretch away to the very rim of the mesa, where the cotton-tail makes his home, and sage-brush and mesquite strike root in the meagre soil. Cones of alfalfa hay stacked here and there outline themselves like giant beehives against the soft blue sky; and over all lies the sunny silence of a cloudless afternoon with its smiling westering sun.

Basking in this grateful warmth, their splint arm-chairs idly tilted against the house-front, the boarders look with sated invalid eyes upon this gracious landscape.

Alamo Ranch is a health resort. In this thin, dry air of Mesilla Valley, high above the sea level, the consumptive finds his Eldorado. Hither, year by year, come these foredoomed children of men to fight for breath, putting into this struggle more n.o.ble heroism and praiseworthy courage than sometimes goes to victory in battle-fields.

Of these combatants some are still buoyed by the hope of recovery; others are but hopeless mortals, with the single sad choice of eking out existence far from friends and home, or returning to native skies, there to throw up hands in despair and succ.u.mb to the foe.

Sixteen miles away the Organ Mountains--seeming, in this wonderfully clear atmosphere, within but a stone's throw--loom superbly against the cloudless sky; great hills of sand are these, surmounted by tall, serrated peaks of bare rock, and now taking on their afternoon array in the ever-changing light, rare marvels of shifting color,--amethyst and violet, rosy pink, creamy gold, and dusky purple.

The El Paso range rises sombrely on the gray distance, and on every hand detached sugar-loaf peaks lend their magnificence to the grand mesa-range that cordons the Mesilla Valley.

And now, out on the mesa, at first but a speck between the loungers on the piazza and the distant mountain view, a single pedestrian, an invalid sportsman, comes in sight. As he nears the ranch with the slowed step of fatigue, he is heartening himself by the way with a song. When the listeners hear the familiar tune,--it is "Home, Sweet Home,"--one of them rallying his meagre wind whistles a faint accompaniment to the chorus. It is not a success; and with a mirthless laugh, the whistler abandons his poor attempt, and, with the big lump in his throat swelling to a sob, rises from his chair and goes dejectedly in. A sympathetic chord thrills along the tilted piazza chairs.

The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the uncharted country.

And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.

"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag, "behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a Mexican ch.o.r.e-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa) goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.

Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe.

Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat, look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and cheerily matching them with their own.

Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."

CHAPTER II

It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.

First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse--the one lion of the ranch--makes his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archaeology, and among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."

Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his less scholarly fellow-men.

This well-groomed, handsome man of forty is James Morley of Bangor.

He has come to try this healing air for a slight, but persistent, lung affection.

Mr. Morley is known to be a man of means, with all the advantages thus implied; but all the same, he is given to railing at most things under the sun; hence by the boarders he is surrept.i.tiously dubbed "the Grumbler." Mr. Morley's growl is a foregone conclusion, and one may safely reckon on his bark; but as for his bite, it is simply nowhere.

Already he has manifested a most considerate kindness for this gray-eyed little lady from Marblehead, Miss Mattie Norcross,--a sweet-mannered, quiet gentlewoman, who is currently reported as scant of filthy lucre, and hence compelled to content herself with a cramped, inexpensive bedroom for herself and her invalid sister, who has one hopelessly diseased lung. This cheery-faced Irishman, who with his shy little wife is, for a stubborn bronchial trouble, making the grand tour of the world's health resorts, and is now trying New Mexico, is, strange as it may seem, a Methodist minister. His name is Patrick Haley. It may be said of Mr. Haley that he has the genial temperament indigenous to Green Erin, and he has already won golden opinions at Alamo Ranch by the considerate brevity of his grace before meat.

Among the invalids attended by their wives are Mr. Bixbee, from Ohio, and Mr. Fairlee, from New York City.

Mr. Bixbee has been bidden by his medical dictator to repair his damaged vitality by rest and nourishing food. It is predicted that this surfeited "lunger," in escaping his Scylla of consumption, bids fair to strand upon the Charybdis of liver complaint, since Mrs. Bixbee, in her wifely zeal, not only plies him all day long with lunches, but makes night hideous by the administration of raw eggs throughout its drowsy hours.

Mr. Roger Smith, an over-worked Harvard athlete, is taking as a restorative a lazy winter in this restful land. He has also other irons in the fire, of which, later, we shall hear more. Roger Smith is known in Boston society as one having heaps of money, but badly off for pedigree. All the same, he is, in manner and appearance, a gentleman, and has distinctly the hall-mark of Beacon Hill. He is here known as the "Harvard man."

Also, among the sound-lunged invalids, is Mr. Harry Warren, a brilliant Chicago journalist. Mr. Warren is taking a vacation in Mesilla Valley, where he is said to be collecting material for future articles, and possibly for a book.

The Browns have also two table-boarders from Boston,--Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw and her beautiful niece, Louise, a superbly healthy brunette.

Their friend, Mr. Henry Hilton, during an absence abroad, has lent for the winter to these ladies his toy ranch, with its aesthetically fashioned dwelling-house.

The Hemmenshaws dine and sup at Alamo Ranch, and the aunt, a cooking-school graduate, is known to make at Hilton Ranch for herself and niece wonderful blazer breakfasts, consisting mainly of dishes new-fangled of name, and eminently trying to mortal digestion. There are, besides, some half-dozen male lungers unaccompanied by friends; and two impecunious invalids to whom the kind-hearted landlord, George Brown, allows bed and board in return for light-choring about the ranch.

These latter are democratically counted in with the dining-room boarders.

Leon Starr, by common consent the "star boarder" of Alamo Ranch, has already been presented to the reader. He has taken the large two-windowed room on the ground-floor commanding a glorious view of the distant Organ Mountains. After getting his breath in this unaccustomed alt.i.tude, Leon's next care has been for the depressed lungers who daily gather on the boarding-house piazza and wonder if life is still worth living. To get them outside themselves by cheery good-fellowship, to perform for them little homely services, not much in the telling, but making their lives a world easier, has been a part of his method for uplifting their general tone.

Of an inventive turn of mind, and an amateur mechanic, he has brought with him a tiny tool chest; and it soon becomes the family habit to look to Leon Starr for general miscellaneous tinkering, as the mending of door and trunk locks, the regulating watches and clocks, the adjustment of the bedevilled sewing-machine of their good landlady, and the restoration of harmonious working to all disgruntled mechanical gear, from garret to cellar. He it is who, on rainy days, manufactures denim clothes-bags for clumsy-fingered fellows; who fashions from common canes gathered on banks of irrigating ditches, photo-frames for everybody, and shows them how to arrange the long cane ta.s.sels with decorative effect above door and window, and how to soften the glare of kerosene lamps by making for them relieving shades of rose-colored paper.

Pessimistic indeed is that lunger who, succ.u.mbing to the charm of this gracious nature, does not feel the cheery lift in his heavy atmosphere.

From the landlord and his wife, both worn by the strain of doing their best for chronically discontented people, down to Fang Lee, the Chinese chef, Dennis Kearney, the table-waiter, the over-worked Mexican house-maids, and the two native ch.o.r.e-boys--one and all rise up to call the star boarder blessed.

Out on the mesa the air is finer and brighter than on the lower plane of the ranch, and full of the life and stir of moving things,--quail, rabbits, and doves.

Leon had at first found the thin air of this alt.i.tude somewhat difficult; but since time and use have accustomed his lungs to these novel atmospheric conditions, shooting on the mesa has become a part of his daily programme, and his quail, rabbits, and pigeons prove a toothsome contribution to the already excellent ranch table.

A small, shy Mexican herd-boy, pasturing his lean goats on the mesa, gradually makes friends with the tall, kindly sportsman. As they have between them but these two mutually intelligible words, _bueno_ (good) and _mucho calor_ (very warm), their conversation is circ.u.mscribed. Kind deeds are, however, more to the point than words, and go without the saying; and when Leon instructed the ragged herd-boy in the use of his bow, and made and weighted his arrows for him, he _understood_, and became his devoted henchman, following in his path all through the week-day tramps, and on Sundays coming to the ranch with clean face and hands to adore his fetich, and watch, with admiring eyes, his novel works and ways.

CHAPTER III

After a protracted interval of tranquil sunshine, a stormy wind came bl.u.s.tering from the west, bringing to Mesilla Valley, in its wintry train, sunless days, light flurries of snow, and general dreariness.

The boarders, weather-bound and dull, grew sullenly mutinous; and on the third of these stormy days, gathering in the ranch parlor after the mid-day meal, their discontent found vent in banning right and left this "land of sun, silence, and adobe."