The Complete Short Stories. O. Hooper Henry

the noise of hippopotamuses frolicking at their bath. From the trees hung garlands and massive pendants of the melancholy grey moss of the South. Indeed, the Cibolo ranch-house seemed more of the South than of the West. It looked as if old “Kiowa” Truesdell might have brought it with him from the lowlands of Mississippi when he came to Texas with his rifle in the hollow of his arm in ‘55.

      But, though he did not bring the family mansion, Truesdell did bring something in the way of a family inheritance that was more lasting than brick or stone. He brought one end of the Truesdell-Curtis family feud. And when a Curtis bought the Rancho de los Olmos, sixteen miles from the Cibolo, there were lively times on the pear flats and in the chaparral thickets off the Southwest. In those days Truesdell cleaned the brush of many a wolf and tiger cat and Mexican lion; and one or two Curtises fell heirs to notches on his rifle stock. Also he buried a brother with a Curtis bullet in him on the bank of the lake at Cibolo. And then the Kiowa Indians made their last raid upon the ranches between the Frio and the Rio Grande, and Truesdell at the head of his rangers rid the earth of them to the last brave, earning his sobriquet. Then came prosperity in the form of waxing herds and broadening lands. And then old age and bitterness, when he sat, with his great mane of hair as white as the Spanish-dagger blossoms and his fierce, pale-blue eyes, on the shaded gallery at Cibolo, growling like the pumas that he had slain. He snapped his fingers at old age; the bitter taste to life did not come from that. The cup that stuck at his lips was that his only son Ransom wanted to marry a Curtis, the last youthful survivor of the other end of the feud.

      *

      For a while the only sounds to be heard at the store were the rattling of the tin spoons and the gurgling intake of the juicy fruits by the cowpunchers, the stamping of the grazing ponies, and the singing of a doleful song by Sam as he contentedly brushed his stiff auburn hair for the twentieth time that day before a crinkly mirror.

      From the door of the store could be seen the irregular, sloping stretch of prairie to the south, with its reaches of light-green, billowy mesquite flats in the lower places, and its rises crowned with nearly black masses of short chaparral. Through the mesquite flat wound the ranch road that, five miles away, flowed into the old government trail to San Antonio. The sun was so low that the gentlest elevation cast its grey shadow miles into the green-gold sea of sunshine.

      That evening ears were quicker than eyes.

      The Mexican held up a tawny finger to still the scraping of tin against tin.

      “One waggeen,” said he, “cross dthe Arroyo Hondo. Ah hear dthe wheel. Verree rockee place, dthe Hondo.”

      “You’ve got good ears, Gregorio,” said Mustang Taylor. “I never heard nothin’ but the songbird in the bush and the zephyr skallyhootin’ across the peaceful dell.”

      In ten minutes Taylor remarked: “I see the dust of a wagon risin’ right above the fur end of the flat.”

      “You have verree good eyes, senor,” said Gregorio, smiling.

      Two miles away they saw a faint cloud dimming the green ripples of the mesquites. In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses’ hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket, whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy.

      From the jacals came a cry of: “El Amo! El Amo!” Four Mexican youths raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of greeting and delight.

      Ranse Truesdell, driving, threw the reins to the ground and laughed.

      “It’s under the wagon sheet, boys,” he said. “I know what you’re waiting for. If Sam lets it run out again we’ll use those yellow shoes of his for a target. There’s two cases. Pull ’em out and light up. I know you all want a smoke.”

      After striking dry country Ranse had removed the wagon sheet from the bows and thrown it over the goods in the wagon. Six pair of hasty hands dragged it off and grabbled beneath the sacks and blankets for the cases of tobacco.

      Long Collins, tobacco messenger from the San Gabriel outfit, who rode with the longest stirrups west of the Mississippi, delved with an arm like the tongue of a wagon. He caught something harder than a blanket and pulled out a fearful thing — a shapeless, muddy bunch of leather tied together with wire and twine. From its ragged end, like the head and claws of a disturbed turtle, protruded human toes.

      “Who-ee!” yelled Long Collins. “Ranse, are you a-packin’ around of corpuses? Here’s a — howlin’ grasshoppers!”

      Up from his long slumber popped Curly, like some vile worm from its burrow. He clawed his way out and sat blinking like a disreputable, drunken owl. His face was as bluish-red and puffed and seamed and cross-lined as the cheapest round steak of the butcher. His eyes were swollen slits; his nose a pickled beet; his hair would have made the wildest thatch of a Jack-in-the-box look like the satin poll of a Cleo de Merode. The rest of him was scarecrow done to the life.

      Ranse jumped down from his seat and looked at his strange cargo with wide-open eyes.

      “Here, you maverick, what are you doing in my wagon? How did you get in there?”

      The punchers gathered around in delight. For the time they had forgotten tobacco.

      Curly looked around him slowly in every direction. He snarled like a Scotch terrier through his ragged beard.

      “Where is this?” he rasped through his parched throat. “It’s a damn farm in an old field. What’d you bring me here for — say? Did I say I wanted to come here? What are you Reubs rubberin’ at — hey? G’wan or I’ll punch some of yer faces.”

      “Drag him out, Collins,” said Ranse.

      Curly took a slide and felt the ground rise up and collide with his shoulder blades. He got up and sat on the steps of the store shivering from outraged nerves, hugging his knees and sneering. Taylor lifted out a case of tobacco and wrenched off its top. Six cigarettes began to glow, bringing peace and forgiveness to Sam.

      “How’d you come in my wagon?” repeated Ranse, this time in a voice that drew a reply.

      Curly recognised the tone. He had heard it used by freight brakemen and large persons in blue carrying clubs.

      “Me?” he growled. “Oh, was you talkin’ to me? Why, I was on my way to the Menger, but my valet had forgot to pack my pyjamas. So I crawled into that wagon in the wagon-yard — see? I never told you to bring me out to this bloomin’ farm — see?”

      “What is it, Mustang?” asked Poky Rodgers, almost forgetting to smoke in his ecstasy. “What do it live on?”

      “It’s a galliwampus, Poky,” said Mustang. “It’s the thing that hollers ‘williwalloo’ up in ellum trees in the low grounds of nights. I don’t know if it bites.”

      “No, it ain’t, Mustang,” volunteered Long Collins. “Them galliwampuses has fins on their backs, and eighteen toes. This here is a hicklesnifter. It lives under the ground and eats cherries. Don’t stand so close to it. It wipes out villages with one stroke of its prehensile tail.”

      Sam, the cosmopolite, who called bartenders in San Antone by their first name, stood in the door. He was a better zoologist.

      “Well, ain’t that a Willie for your whiskers?” he commented. “Where’d you dig up the hobo, Ranse? Goin’ to make an auditorium for inbreviates out of the ranch?”

      “Say,” said Curly, from whose panoplied breast all shafts of wit fell blunted. “Any of you kiddin’ guys got a drink on you? Have your fun. Say, I’ve been hittin’ the stuff till I don’t know straight up.”

      He turned to Ranse. “Say, you shanghaied me on your d — d old prairie schooner — did I tell you to drive me to a farm? I want a drink. I’m goin’ all to little pieces. What’s doin’?”

      Ranse saw that the tramp’s nerves were racking him. He despatched one of the Mexican boys to the ranch-house for a