Bransford of Rainbow Range.

by Eugene Manlove Rhodes.

BRANSFORD IN ARCADIA

PROLOGUE

I

The long fall round-up was over. The wagon, homeward bound, made camp for the last night out at the Sinks of Lost River. Most of the men, worn with threescore night-guards, were buried under their tarps in the deep sleep of the weary; sound as that of the just, and much more common.

By the low campfire a few yet lingered: old-timers, iron men, whose wiry and seasoned strength was toil-proof--and Leo Ballinger, for whom youth, excitement and unsated novelty served in lieu of fitness.

The "firelighters," working the wide range again from Ancho to Hueco, from the Mal Pais to Glencoe, fell silent now, to mark an unstaled miracle.

The cl.u.s.tered lights of Rainbow's End shone redly, near and low. Beyond, above, dominant, the black, unbroken bulk of Rainbow Range shut out the east. The clear-cut crest mellowed to luminous curves, feathery with far-off pines; the long skyline thrilled with frosty fire, glowed, sparkled--the cricket's chirp was stilled; the slow, late moon rose to a hushed and waiting world.

On the sharp crest she paused, irresolute, tiptoe, quivering, rosily aflush. Above floated a web of gossamer. She leaped up, spurning the black rim; glowed, palpitant, through that filmy lace--and all the desert throbbed with vibrant light.

Cool and sweet and fresh, from maiden leagues of clean, brown earth the desert winds made whisper in gra.s.s and fragrant shrub; yucca, mesquite and greasewood swayed--so softly, you had not known save as the long shadows courtesied and danced.

Leo flung up his hand. The air was wine to him. A year had left the desert still new and strange. "Gee!" he said eloquently.

Headlight nodded. "You're dead right on that point, son. If Christopher K. Columbus had only thought to beach his shallops on the sundown side of this here continent he might have made a name for himself. Just think how much different, hysterically, these United States----"

"_This_ United States," corrected Pringle dispa.s.sionately. Their fathers had disagreed on the same grammatical point.

Headlight scowled. "By Jings! 'That _this_ United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States,'" he quoted. "I was goin' to give you something new to exercise your talons on. You sit here every night, ridin' broncs and four-footin' steers, and never grab a horn or waste a loop, not once. Sure things ain't amusin'. Some variety and doubtful accuracy, now, would develop our guessin' gifts."

Aforesaid Smith brandished the end-gate rod. "Them speculations of yours sorter opens up of themselves. If California had been settled first the salmon would now be our national bird instead of the potato. Think of Arizona, mother of Presidents! Seat of government at Milipitas; center of population about b.u.t.te; New Jersey howlin' about Nevada trusts!" He impaled a few beef ribs and held them over the glowing embers.

"Georgia and South Carolina would be infested by cow-persons in decollete leather panties," said Jeff Bransford. "New York and Pennsylvania would be fondly turning a credulous ear to the twenty-fourth consecutive solemn promise of Statehood--with the Senator from Walla Walla urging admission of both as one mighty State with Maryland and Virginia thrown in for luck."

Headlight forgot his pique. "Wouldn't the railroads sound funny, though?

Needles and Eastern, Northern Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, Union, Western, Kansas and Central Atlantic! Earnest and continuous demand for a President from east of the Mississippi. All the prize-fights pulled off at Boston."

"Columbus done just right," said Pringle decisively. "You fellers ain't got no imagination a-tall. If this Western country'd been settled first, the maps would read: 'Northeast Territory.--Uninhabitable wilderness; region of storm and snow, roaming savages and fierce wild beasts.' When the intrepid explorer hit the big white weather he'd say, 'Little old San Diego's good enough for me!' Yes, sir!"

"Oh, well, climate alone doesn't account for the charm of this country--nor scenery," said Leo. "You feel it, but you don't know why it is."

"It sure agrees with your by-laws," observed Pringle. "You're a sight changed from the furtive behemoth you was. You'll make a hand yet. But, even now, your dimensions from east to west is plumb fascinatin'. I'd sure admire to have your picture to put in my cornfield."

"Very well, Mr. Pringle: I'll exchange photographs with you," said Leo artlessly. A smothered laugh followed this remark; uncertainty as to what horrible and unnamed use Leo would make of Pringle's pictured face appealed to these speculative minds.

"I've studied out this charm business," said Jeff. "See if I'm not right. It's because there's no habitually old men here to pattern after, to steady us, to make us ashamed of just staying boys. Now and then you hit an octagonal cuss like Wes here, that on a mere count of years and hairs might be sized up as old by the superficial observer. But if I have ever met that man more addicted with vivid nonchalance as to further continuance of educational facilities than this same Also Ran, his number has now escaped me. Really aged old people stay where they was."

"I think, myself, that what makes life so easy and congenial in these latigos and longitudes is the dearth of law and the ladies." Thus Pringle, the cynic.

A fourfold outcry ensued; indignant repudiation of the latter heresy.

Their protest rose above the customary subdued and quiet drawl of the out-of-doors man.

"But has the law no defenders?" demanded Leo. "We've got to have laws to make us behave."

"Sure thing! Likewise, 'tis the waves that make the tide come in," said Jeff. "A good law is as handy as a good pocketbook. But law, as simply such, independent of its merits, rouses no enthusiasm in my manly bosom, no more than a signboard the day after Hallowe'en. If it occurs to me in a moment of emotional sanity that the environments of the special case in hand call for a compound fracture of the statutes made and provided--for some totally different cases that happen to be called by the same name--I fall upon it with my glittering hew-gag, without no special wonder. For," he declaimed, "I am endowed by nature with certain inalienable rights, among which are the high justice, the middle, and the low!"

"And who's to be the judge of whether it's a good law or not? You?"

"Me. Me, every time. Some one must. If I let some other man make up my mind I've got to use my judgment--picking the man I follow. By organizing myself into a Permanent Committee of One to do my own thinking I take my one chance of mistakes instead of two."

"So you believe in doing evil that good may come, do you?"

"Well," said Jeff judicially, "it seems to be at least as good a proposition as doing good that evil may come of it. Why, Capricorn, there isn't one thing we call wrong, when other men do it, that hasn't been lawful, some time or other. When to break a law is to do a wrong, it's evil. When it's doing right to break a law, it's not evil. Got that? It's not wrong to keep a just law--and if it's wrong to break an unjust law I want a new dictionary with pictures of it in the back."

"But laws is useful and excitin' diversions to break up the monogamy,"

said Aforesaid. "And it's a dead easy way to build up a rep. Look at the edge I've got on you fellows. You're just supposed to be honest--but I've been proved honest, frequent!"

"Hark!" said Pringle.

A weird sound reached them--the night wrangler, beguiling his lonely vigil with song.

"Oh, the cuckoo is a pretty bird; she comes in the spring----"

"What do you s'pose that night-hawk thinks about the majesty of the law?" he said. There was a ringing note in his voice. Smith and Headlight nodded gravely; their lean, brown faces hardened.

"You haven't heard of it? Old John Taylor, daddy to yonder warbler, drifted here from the East. Wife and little girl both puny. Taylor takes up a homestead on the Feliz. He wasn't affluent none. I let him have my old paint pony, Freckles--him being knee-sprung and not up to cow-work.

To make out an unparalleled team, he got Ed Poe's Billy Bowlegs, nee Gambler, him havin' won a new name by a misunderstanding with a prairie-dog hole. Taylor paid Poe for him in work. He was a willin' old rooster, Taylor, but futile and left-handed all over.

"John, Junior, he was only thirteen. Him and the old man moseyed around like two drunk ants, fixin' up a little log house with rock chimbleys, a horse-pen and shelter, rail-fencin' of the little _vegas_ to put to crops, and so on.

"Done you good to drop in and hear 'em plan and figger. They was one happy family. How Sis Em'ly bragged about their hens layin'! In the spring we all held a bee and made their _'cequias_ for 'em. Baker, he loaned 'em a plow. They dragged big branches over the ground for a harrow. They could milk anybody's cows they was a mind to tame, and the boys took to carryin' over motherless calves for Mis' Taylor to raise.

Taylor, he done odd jobs, and they got along real well with their crops.

They went into the second winter peart as squirrels.

"But, come spring, Sis wasn't doin' well. They had the Agency doctor.

Too high up and too damp, he said. So the missus and Em'ly they went to Cruces, where Em'ly could go to school.

"That meant right smart of expense--rentin' a house and all. So the Johns they hires out. John, Junior, made his dayboo as wrangler for the Steam Pitchfork, acquirin' the obvious name of Felix.

"The old man he got a job muckin' in Organ mines. Kept his hawses in Jeff Isaack's pasture, and Sat.u.r.day nights he'd get one and slip down them eighteen miles to Cruces for Sunday with the folks.

"Well, you know, a homesteader can't be off his claim more'n six months at a time.

"I reckon if there was ever a homestead taken up in good faith 'twas the b.u.t.terbowl. They knew the land laws from A to Izzard. Even named their hound pup Boney Fido!