Eugene Rhodes - Stepsons of Light

Along with snakes, centipedes, little yellow bobcats, whisky, poker, maybe a beef or two – there were other features worthy of note. Each man had to be cook, housekeeper, hunter, laundryman, shoemaker, blacksmith, bookkeeper, purchasing agent, miner, mason, nurse, doctor, gravedigger, interpreter, surveyor, tailor, jailor, judge, jury and sheriff. Having no sea handy, he was seldom a sailorman.

A man who could do these things well enough to make them work might be illiterate, but he couldn’t be ignorant, not on a bet. It wasn’t possible. He knew too much. He had to do his own thinking. There was no one else to do it for him. And he could not be wretched. He was too busy. “We may be poor sinners, but we’re not miserable” – that was a favorite saying. When they brought in supplies or when they packed for a long trip, they learned foresight and imagination. A right good college, the frontier; there are many who are proud of that degree.

It is easy to be hospitable, kindly and free-hearted in a thinly settled country; it is your turn next, you know generosity from both sides; the Golden Rule has no chance to get rusty. So they were pleasant and friendly people. They learned coöperation by making wagon roads together, by making dams and big irrigation ditches, and from the round-ups. They lived in the open air, and their work was hard, they had health; there were endless difficulties to overcome; happiness had a long start and the pursuit was merry.

There was one other great advantage – hope. They had much to hope for. Almost everything. They wished three great wishes: Water for the fields, safety from floods, a way to the outside world. To-day the thick and tangled bosques are cleared to smiling farms, linked by a shining network of ditches. The floods are impounded at Engle Dam, and held there for man’s uses. A great irrigation canal keeps high and wide, with just fall enough to move the water; each foot saved of high level means added miles of reclaimed land under the ditch. To a stranger’s eye the water of that ditch runs clearly uphill. To hold that high level the main ditch, which is first taken out to serve the west side, crosses the Rio Grande on a high flume to Derry; curves high and winding about the wide farm lands of Garfield valley; is siphoned under the river for Hatch and Rodey, and then is siphoned once again to the east side, to break out in the sunlight for the use of Rincon Valley. Rough and crooked is made smooth and straight; safe bridge and easy grade, a modern highway follows up the valley, with a brave firefly twinkling by night, to join the great National Trail at Engle Dam. This is what they dreamed amid sand and thorn – and their dreams have all come true. Now who can say which was better, the hoping or the having?

It was pleasant enough, at least, on this day of hoping. Stargazer shuffled by farm and farm, and turned aside at last to where, with ax and pick and team and tackle, a big man was grubbing up mesquite roots. Unheeded, for the big man wrought sturdily, Charlie rode close; elbow on saddlehorn, chin on hand, he watched the work with mingled interest and pity.

“There,” he said, and shuddered – “there, but for the grace of God, goes Charlie See!”

The big man straightened up and held a hand to his aching back. His face was brown and his hair was red, his eyes were big and blue and merry, and his big, homely, honest mouth was one broad grin.

“Why, if it ain’t Nubbins! Welcome, little stranger! Hunting saddle horses – again?”

“Why, no, Big Boy – I’m not. Not this time.”

Big Boy rubbed the bridge of his nose, disconcerted. “You always was before. Not horses? Well, well! What say we go a-visitin’, then?” He squinted at the low sun. “I’ll call this a day, and we’ll mosey right home to my little old shack, and wolf down a few eggs and such. Then we’ll wash our hands and faces right good, catch us up some fresh horses out of the pasture, and terrapin up the road a stretch. Bully big moonlight night.” He began unhooking his team.

“Fine! I just love to ride. Only came about fifty miles to-day, too.”

“I was thinkin’ some of droppin’ in on old man Fenderson. I ain’t been over there since last night. Coalie! You, Zip! Ged-dap!”

“Mr. Adam Forbes,” said Charlie, “I’ve got you by the foot!”

“Now if you was wishful of any relaxations,” said Adam after supper, “you might side me up in the feet hills to-morrow, prospectin’.”

“I might,” said Charlie; “and then again I mightn’t. Don’t you go and bet on it.”

Adam stropped his razor. “You know there’s three cañons headin’ off from MacCleod’s Tank Park? And the farthest one, that big, steep, rough, wide, long, high, ugly, sandy, deep gash that runs anti-gogglin’ north, splittin’ off these spindlin’ little hills from the main Caballo and Big Timber Mountain – ever been through that? ’Pache Cañon, we call it – though we got no license to.”

“Part way,” said Charlie. Then his voice lit up with animation. “Say, Big Chump, that’s it! Them warty little hills here – that’s what makes us look down on you folks the way we do. And here I thought all along it was because you was splay-foot farmers, and unfortunate, you know, that way like all nesters is. But blamed if I don’t think it was them hills, all the time. We got regular old he-mountains, we have. But these here little old squatty hills clutterin’ up your back yard – why, Adam, they ain’t respectable, them hills ain’t – squanderin’ round where a body might stub his toe on ’em, any time. You ought to pile ’em up, Adam. They look plumb shiftless.”

“That listens real good to me. You got more brains than people say.” Adam scraped tranquilly at cheek and chin, necessitating an occasional pause in his speech. “Now you can see for yourself how plumb foolish and futile a little runt of a man seems to a people that ain’t never been stunted.”

“‘Seems’ is a right good word,” said Charlie. He blew out a smoke ring. “You sure picked the very word you wanted, that time. I didn’t think you had sense enough.”

Adam passed an appraising finger tip over his brown cheek; he stirred up fresh lather.

“Yes,” he said musingly, “a little sawed off sliver like you sure does look right comical to a full-grown man. Like me. Or Hob Lull.” He paused, brush in air, to regard his guest benignantly. “I wonder if girls feel that way too? Miss Lyn Dyer, now? Lull, he hangs round there right smart – and he’s a fine, big, upstanding man.” He lathered his face and rubbed it in. “First off, I fixed to assassinate him quiet, from behind. You know them two girls don’t hardly know where they do live – always together, Harkey’s house or Fenderson’s. So I mistrusted, natural enough, that ’twas Miss Edith he was waitin’ on. But I was mistook. Just in time to save his life from my bloody and brutal designs he began tolling Miss Lyn to one side to look at sunsets and books and such, givin’ me a chance to buzz Miss Edith alone. Good thing for him. That’s why I’m lettin’ you tag along to-night – you can entertain Pete Harkey and Ma Fenderson and the old man, so’s they won’t pester me and Hobby.”

“Like fun I will! If you fellows had any decent feeling at all you’d both of you clear out and give me a chance.”

“Now, deary, you hadn’t ought to talk like that – indeed you hadn’t!” protested Adam. “You plumb distress me. You ought to declare yourself, feller. I’d always hate it if I was to slay you, and then find out I’d been meddlin’ with Hobby Lull’s private affairs. I’d hate that – I sure would!”

“Well now, there’s no use of your askin’ me for advice.” Charlie’s eyebrows shrugged, and so did his shoulders. “You’ll have to decide these things for yourself. Say, you mangy, moth-eaten, slab-sided, long, lousy, lop-eared parallelopipedon, are you goin’ to be all night dollin’ up? Let’s ride!”