Bunch Grass Part 4

Ajax beckoned me aside. We whispered together for a moment or two.

Then my brother spoke--

"We're going to lead home our colts," he said curtly; "and you can lead home yours. We shall take better care of ours after this experience. They won't be allowed to run wild in the back pasture."

"Boys--Quincey an' me----"

"Shush-h-h!" said Ajax. "That fellow out there is a long way off. I could not swear in a court of law that he is the person we take him to be. Whom he looks like we know, who he is we don't know, and we don't wish to know. So long."

We rode back to our colts.

III

PAP SPOONER

Pap Spooner was about sixty-five years old, and the greatest miser in San Lorenzo County. He lived on less than a dollar a day, and allowed the rest of his income to acc.u.mulate at the rate of one per cent, a month, compound interest.

When Ajax and I first made his acquaintance he was digging post-holes.

The day, a day in September, was uncommonly hot. I said, indiscreetly: "Mr. Spooner, why do you dig post-holes?"

With a queer glint in his small, dull grey eyes he replied, curtly: "Why are you boys a-shootin' quail--hey? 'Cause ye like to, I reckon.

Fer the same reason I like ter dig post-holes. It's jest recreation-- to me."

When we were out of earshot Ajax laughed.

"Recreation!" said my brother. "Nothing will ever recreate him. Of all the pinchers----"

"Shush-h-h!" said I. "It's too hot."

Our neighbours told many stories of Pap Spooner. Even that bland old fraud, John Jacob Dumble, admitted sorrowfully that he was no match for Pap in a horse, cattle, or pig deal; and George Leadham, the blacksmith, swore that Pap would steal milk from a blind kitten. The humorists of the village were of opinion that Heaven had helped Pap because he had helped himself so freely out of other folks' piles.

In appearance Andrew Spooner was small, thin, and wiry, with the beak of a turkey-buzzard, the complexion of an Indian, and a set of large, white, very ill-fitting false teeth, which clicked like castanets whenever the old man was excited.

Now, in California, "Pap" is a _nom de caresse_ for father. But, so far as we knew, Pap had no children; accordingly we jumped to the conclusion that Andrew Spooner got his nickname from a community who had rechristened the tallest man in our village "Shorty" and the ugliest "Beaut." The humorists knew that Pap might have been the father of the foothills, the George Was.h.i.+ngton of Paradise, but he wasn't.

Later we learned that Pap had buried a wife and child. And the child, it seems, had called him "Pap." We made the inevitable deduction that such paternal instincts as may have bloomed long ago in the miser's heart were laid in a small grave in the San Lorenzo Cemetery. Our little school-marm, Alethea-Belle Buchanan, said (without any reason): "I reckon Mr. Spooner must have thought the world of his little one."

Whereupon Ajax replied gruffly that as much could be said, doubtless, of a--vulture.

The word "vulture" happened to be pat, apart from the shape of Andrew Spooner's nose, because we were in the middle of the terrible spring which succeeded the dry year. Even now one does not care to talk about that time of drought. During the previous twelve months the relentless sun had destroyed nearly every living thing, vegetable and animal, in our county. Then, in the late fall and early winter, we had sufficient rain to start the feed on our ranges and hope in our hearts. But throughout February and March not a drop of water fell! Hills and plains lay beneath bright blue skies, into which we gazed day after day, week after week, looking for the cloud that never came. The thin blades of wheat and barley were already frizzling; the tender leaves of the orchards and vineyards turned a sickly yellow; the few cattle and horses which had survived began to fall down and die by the empty creeks and springs. And two dry years in succession meant black ruin for all of us.

For all of us in the foothills except Pap Spooner. By some mysterious instinct he had divined and made preparations for a long drought.

Being rich, with land in other counties, he was able to move his stock to green pastures. We knew that he was storing up the money sucked by the sun out of us. He was foreclosing mortgages, buying half-starved horses and steers for a song, selling hay and straw at fabulous prices. And we were reeling upon the ragged edge of bankruptcy! He, the beast of prey, the vulture, was gorging on our carrion.

Men--gaunt, hollow-eyed men--looked at him as if he were an obscene bird, looked at him with ever-increasing hate, with their fingers itching for the trigger of a gun. Pap had his weakness. He liked to babble of his own cuteness; he liked to sit upon a sugar barrel in the village store and talk of savoury viands, so to speak, and sparkling wines in the presence of fellow-citizens who lacked bread and water, particularly water.

One day, in late March, he came into the store as the sun was setting.

In such a village as ours, at such a time, the store becomes the club of the community. Misery, who loves company, spent many hours at the store. There was nothing to do on the range.

Upon this particular afternoon we had listened to a new tale of disaster. Till now, although most of us had lost stock, and many had lost land as well, we had regarded health, the rude health of man living the primal life, as an inalienable possession. Our cattle and horses were dying, but we lived. We learned that diphtheria had entered Paradise.

In those early days, before the ant.i.toxin treatment of the disease, diphtheria in Southern California was the deadliest of plagues. It attacked children for the most part, and swept them away in battalions. I have seen whole families exterminated.

And nothing, then as now, prevails against this scourge save prompt and sustained medical treatment. In Paradise we had neither doctor, nor nurse, nor drugs. San Lorenzo, the nearest town, lay twenty-six miles away.

Pap shambled in, clicking his teeth and grinning.

"Nice evenin'," he observed, taking his seat on his sugar barrel.

"Puffec'ly lovely," replied the man who had brought the evil news.

"Everything," he stretched out his lean hand,--"everything smilin' an'

gay--an' merry as a marriage bell."

Pap rubbed his talon-like hands together.

"Boys," said he, "I done first-rate this afternoon--I done first- rate. I've made money, a wad of it--and don't you forget it."

"You never allow us to forget it," said Ajax. "We all wish you would,"

he added pointedly.

"Eh?"

He stared at my brother. The other men in the store showed their teeth in a sort of pitiful, snarling grin. Each was sensible of a secret pleasure that somebody else had dared to bell the cat.

My brother continued, curtly: "This is not the time nor the place for you to buck about what you've done and whom you've done. Under the present circ.u.mstances--you're an old man--what you've left undone ought to be engrossing your attention."

"Meanin'?"

Pap had glanced furtively from face to face, reading in each rough countenance derision and contempt. The masks which the poor wear in the presence of the rich were off.

"I mean," Ajax replied, savagely--so savagely that the old man recoiled and nearly fell off the barrel--"I mean, Mr. Spooner, that the diphtheria has come to Paradise, and is likely to stay here so long as there is flesh for it to feed on."

"The diptheery?" exclaimed Pap.

Into his eyes--those dull grey eyes--flitted terror and horror. But Ajax saw nothing but what had festered so long in his own mind.

"Aye--the diphtheria! You are rich, Mr. Spooner; you can follow your cattle into a healthier country than this. My advice to you is--Get!"

The old man stared; then he slid off the barrel and shambled out of the store as little Sissy Leadham entered it. The child looked curiously at Andrew Spooner.

"What's the matter with Pap?" she asked, shrilly.

She was a pretty, tow-headed, rosy-cheeked creature, the daughter of George Leadham, a widower, who adored her. He was looking at her now with a strange light in his eyes. Not a man in the store but interpreted aright the father's glance.

"What's the matter with pore old Pap?" she demanded.

The blacksmith caught her up, kissing her face, smoothing her curls.