Stories of the Foot-hills Part 14

"Some folks don' lak wahn," he said amiably. "Ah lak it var' well mahse'f. Ah ga.s.s he al's tell var' big lies, Mist' Barrd'n."

The girl turned away, still grasping her father's arm. Then she came back, with a sudden and somewhat bewildering accession of civility.

"Addyoce," she said, bowing loftily toward the senora. The plume in her hat had turned in the afternoon breeze, and curved forward, giving her a slightly martial aspect.

"Addyoce, Mr. Gonsallies. We're much obliged,--ain't we, pappy?

Addyoce."

Ricardo touched his sombrero. "Good-evenin', mees," he said in his soft, leisurely voice; "good-evenin', senor."

When the last ruffle of Miss Starkweather's green "polonay" had disappeared around the corner of the adobe house, the senora drifted slowly across the dooryard in her voluminous pink drapery, and sat down beside her son. There was a thin stratum of curiosity away down in her Latin soul. What had Ricardo done to make the senorita so very angry?

She was angry, was she not?

Oh, yes, she was very angry, but Ricardo had done nothing. Senor Barden had sold her father ten acres of wine-grapes, and the old man did not like wine; he liked raisins. Santa Maria! Did he mean to eat ten acres of raisins? He need not drink his wine; he could sell it. But the senorita was very angry; she would probably kill Senor Barden. She had said she would kill him with a very long pole--ten feet. Ricardo would not care much if she did. Senor Barden had called him a greaser. But as for a man who did not like wine--caramba!

II.

Parker Lowe's government claim was a fractional section, triangular in shape, with its base on the grant line of Rancho la Laguna, and its apex high up on the mountain-side. Parker's cabin was perched upon the highest point, at the mouth of the canon, in a patch of unconquerable boulders. Other government settlers were wont to remark the remoteness of his residence from the tillable part of his claim, but Parker remained loyal to his own fireside.

"It's a sightly place," he a.s.serted, "and nigh to the water, and it ain't no furder goin' down to work than it would be comin' up fer a drink, besides bein' down-grade. I lay out to quit workin' some o' these days, but I don't never lay out to quit drinkin'."

This latter determination on Parker's part had come to be pretty well understood, and the former would have obtained ready credence except for the fact that one cannot very well quit what he has never begun. Without risking the injustice of the statement that Parker was lazy, it is perhaps safe to say that he belonged by nature to the leisure cla.s.s, and doubtless felt the accident of his birth even more keenly than the man of unquenchable industry who finds himself born to wealth and idleness. "Holdin' down a claim" had proved an occupation as well adapted to his tastes as anything that had ever fallen to his lot, and his bachelor establishment among the boulders was managed with an economy of labor, and a resultant of physical comfort, hitherto unknown in the annals of housekeeping. The house itself was of unsurfaced redwood, battened with lath to keep out the winter rain. The furniture consisted of a wide shelf upon which he slept, two narrower ones which held the tin cans containing his pantry stores, a bench, a table which "let down" against the wall by means of leathern hinges when not in use, a rusty stove, and a much-mended wooden chair. From numerous nails in the wall smoky ends of bacon were suspended by their original hempen strings, and the size of the grease-spot below testified to the length of the "side" which Parker had carried in a barley sack from Barney Wilson's store at Elsmore, five miles away on the other side of the lake. Parker surveyed these mural decorations with deep, inward satisfaction not untinged with patriotism.

"There wa'n't many folks right here when I filed on to this claim," he had been known to remark, "an' I may have trouble provin' up. But if the Register of the General Land-Office wants to come an' take a look, he c'n figger up from them ends o' bacon just about how long I've lived here, an' satisfy himself that I've acted fair with the gover'ment, which I've aimed to do, besides makin' all these improvements."

The improvements referred to were hardly such as an artist would have so designated, but Parker surveyed them with taste and conscience void of offense. The redwood shanty; a dozen orange-trees, rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng in size and number by reason of neglect and gophers; a clump of slender, smoky eucalypti; a patch of perennial tomato-vines; and a few acres of what Barney Wilson called "veteran barley,"--it having been sown once, and having "volunteered" ever since,--const.i.tuted those additions to the value of the land, if not to the landscape, upon which Parker based his homestead rights.

Since the Laguna Ranch had been subdivided, and settlers had increased, and especially since Eben Starkweather had bought the Slater place, and Ida Starkweather had invaded the foot-hills with her vigorous, self-reliant, breezy personality, Parker had been contemplating further improvements in his domicile--improvements which, in moments of flattered hope, a.s.sumed the dignity of a lean-to, a rocking-chair, and a box-spring mattress. The dreams which had led him to a consideration of this domestic expansion he had confided to no one but Mose Doolittle, who had a small stock-ranch high up on the mountain, and who found Parker's cabin a convenient resting-place on his journeys up and down the trail.

"I tell ye," he had said to Mose, "that girl is no slouch. Her pa is an infant in arms, a babe an' a suckling, beside her. Her ma is sickly; one o' your chronics. Idy runs the ranch. I set here of evenin's, an' watch 'em through this yer field-gla.s.s. She slams around that place like a house a-fire. It's inspirin' to see her. Give me a woman that makes things hum, ever-ee time!"

"Somebody said she had a h.e.l.l of a temper," ventured Mose, willing to be the recipient of further confidences.

"Somebody lied. She's got s.p.u.n.k. When she catches anybody in a mean trick she don't quote poetry to 'im; she gives 'im the straight goods.

Some folks call that temper. I call it sand. There'll be a picnic when she gets hold o' Barden!"

Parker raised the field-gla.s.s again, and leveled it on the Starkweather homestead.

"There's the infant now, grubbin' greasewood. He's a crank o' the first water; you'd ought to hear 'im talk. He went through the war, an' he's short one lung, an' he's got the asmy so bad he breathes like a squeaky windmill, an' he won't apply fer a pension because he says he was awful sickly when he enlisted, an' he thinks goin' South an' campin' out saved his life. That's what I call lettin' yer 'magination run away with ye."

"What does Idy think about it?" queried Mose innocently.

"Idy stands up fer her pa; that's what I like about 'er. I like a woman that'll back a man up, right er wrong; it's proper an' female. It's what made me take a s.h.i.+ne to 'er."

"You wouldn't want her to back Barden up." Mose made the suggestion preoccupiedly, with his eyes discreetly wandering over the landscape, as if he had suddenly missed some accustomed feature of it.

Parker lowered the gla.s.s and glanced at him suspiciously. "No, sir-ee!

If there's any backin' done there, Barden'll do it. She'll make 'im crawfish out o' sight when she ketches 'im. That's another thing I like about 'er; she'll stand up fer a feller; that is, fer any feller that b'longs to 'er--that is, I mean, fer a feller she b'longs to."

Mose got up and turned around, and brushed the burr-clover from his overalls.

"Well, I guess I must be movin'," he said, with a highly artificial yawn. "Come here, you Muggins!" he called to his burro, which had strayed into the alfilaria. "Give me an invite to the weddin', Parker.

I'll send you a fresh cow if you do."

Parker held the gla.s.s between his knees, and looked down at it with gratified embarra.s.sment.

"There's a good deal to be gone through with yet, Mose," he said dubiously. "I set up here with this yer field-gla.s.s, workin' myself up to it, an' then I go down there, an' she comes at me so brash I get all rattled, an' come home 'thout 'complis.h.i.+n' anythin'. But I'll make it yet," he added, with renewed cheerfulness. "She sewed a b.u.t.ton on fer me t' other day. Now, between ourselves, Mose, don't ye think that's kind o' hopeful?"

Hopeful! Mose would say it was final. No girl had ever sewed a b.u.t.ton on for him. When one did, he would propose to her on the spot. He wondered what Parker was thinking of not to seize such an opportunity.

"That's what I had ought to 'a' done," acknowledged Parker, shaking his head ruefully. "Yes, sir; that's what I'd ought to 'a' done. I had ought to 'a' seized that opportunity an' pressed my suit."

"That's the idea, Park," said his companion gravely, as he bestrode Muggins, and jerked the small dejected creature out into the trail.

"You'd ought to 'a' pressed your suit; there's nothin' a woman likes better 'n pressin' your suit. Whoop-la, Muggins!"

Some time after Mose had disappeared up the canon, Parker heard a loud echoing laugh. He turned his head to listen, and then raised the gla.s.s and leveled it on Starkweather's ranch.

"I thought at first that was Idy," he said to himself, "but it wa'n't.

She 's got a cheerful disposition, but I don't believe she'd laugh that a-way when she's a-learnin' a bull calf to drink; that ain't what I call a laughin' job. Jeemineezer! don't she hold that cantankerous little buzzard's head down pretty. Whoa there, Calamity! don't you back into the chicken corral. That's right, Idy, jam his head into the bucket, an'

set down on it--you're a daisy!"

III.

On the strength of Mose's friendly encouragement, Parker betook himself next day to where Eben Starkweather was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g greasewood roots, and moved about sociably from one hillock to another while his neighbor worked. Nothing but the ardor of unspoken love would have reconciled Parker to the exertion involved, for Eben worked briskly, in spite of his singularity of lung and the disadvantages of "asmy," and the greasewood was not very thick on the ground he had been clearing. The grotesque gnarled roots were collected in little heaps, like piles of discarded heathen images, and Eben hacked about among them, a very mild-mannered but determined iconoclast.

"I'll have to keep at it pretty studdy," he explained apologetically to his visitor, "fer they say we're like enough not to have any more rain, and I'm calc'latin' to grub out the vineyard before the ground hardens up."

"Goin' to yank them vines all out, are ye?"

"That's the calc'lation."

Parker clasped one knee, and whetted his knife on the toe of his boot reflectively.

"'Pears to me ye might sell off that vineyard, an' buy a strip t' other side of ye, an' set out muscats."

"I couldn't sell that vineyard," said Eben. He had laid down his axe, and was wiping his forehead nervously with an old silk handkerchief.

"Oh, I reckon ye could," said Parker easily; "ye got the whole place pretty reasonable."

The little man's bearded mouth twitched. When he spoke, his voice was high and strained.

"I'd jest as soon keep a saloon; I'd jest as soon sell wine to a man after it's made as before it's made." He wiped the moist inner band of his hat, and then dropped his handkerchief into it, and put it on his head. Parker could see his grimy hand tremble. "I didn't know what I was buyin'," he went on, picking up his axe, "but I'd know what I was sellin'."

Parker glanced at him as he fell to work. He was a crooked little man, and one shoulder was higher than the other; there was nothing aggressive in his manner. He had turned away as if he did not care to argue, did not care even for a response. Perhaps no man on earth had less ability to comprehend a timid soul lashed by conscience than Parker Lowe. "The h.e.l.l!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed under his breath. Then he sat still a moment, and drew a map of his claim, and the adjoining subdivision, on the ground between his feet. The affectionate way in which the Starkweather ranch line joined his own seemed suggestive.

"It 'pears to me," he broke out judicially, "that ye could argue this thing out better 'n ye do. Now, if I was in your place, 'pears to me I'd look at it this a-way. There's a heap o' churches in Ameriky, an', if I remember right, they mostly use wine for communion. I hain't purtook for some time myself, but I guess I've got it right. Now all the wine that could be made out o' them grapes o' yourn wouldn't s'ply half the churches in this country, not to mention Europe an' Asie, an' Afriky; an' as long as that's the case, I don't see as you're called on to _know_ that your wine's used fer anything but religious purposes. Of course you can conjure up all sorts o' turrible things about gettin'

drunk an' cavin' round, but that's what I call lettin' yer 'magination run away with ye."