Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1232
“But first let me delve back a little into the past of this glorious West, into the history of the ranges. You cowboys of the ‘lone prairee,’ who have stood endless watches in the dead of night, under the white stars, in sleet and rain and sand, in bitter cold and the hot blast of summer, who have ridden from the Rio Grande to the Black Hills, from the big river to this last and greatest cattle-range, who have slept nine out of every ten nights on the hard ground of plain or desert or upland or mesa, who know the West as none but the Indians know it, perhaps you still do not know the West. You know its romance but do not think of its history; you know its cruelty but you do not consider its destiny. And to have you see this to-night, its past and its future, its greatness and your own greatness, is the main purpose of my address to you.
“That Old Trail down there crossing my rancho: to you it is a half-mile lane of furrows, so poor a trail that you choose to ride your horses aside, so bleak and waterless and ghastly a road that you hate to put a horse to it. Well, my friends, that Old Trail connects three civilizations to this wild and primitive range. It is the main artery of the West. Over it men have toiled in blood for three hundred years.
“The white man’s love of gold, gain, power, adventure accounts for the Old Trail. Spaniards were the first to set their mailed feet upon the plains of America — the intrepid conquistadores. Alvar Nunez de Vaca. You cowboys, if you know your Spanish, should like that name, for Alvar Nunez means Cow’s Head. I daresay Laigs Mason will call some of you Alvar Nunez from this day. In 1528 de Vaca started from Florida with many men, but before they went far his party was reduced to three companions. They were lost for eight years before they met men of their own race on the Mexican border. They were the first white men on earth to see what they called ‘the hump-backed cow,’ no other than your old pest, the American bison — the buffalo. Can you imagine these ragged and miserable Spaniards wandering along, suddenly to be confronted by the huge, shaggy, black and tawny buffalo? Gentlemen, surely that was a tremendous moment.
“The Spaniard Mendoza, a Governor of Mexico, fired by stories of fabulous gold, sent men out to verify de Vaca’s claim. They found some pueblos on the Rio Grande, but they augmented this into the ‘Seven Cities of Cibolo,’ the El Dorado of the Spaniards. Coronado was sent with three hundred Spaniards, all of high degree, and eight hundred Indians. It was a great retinue doomed to failure. They rode and walked, starved and died of thirst, fought the savages, but they never found Cibolo. Coronado was the first to see the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. He left the first horses that ever roamed the Great Plains.
“Next came the Spanish friars, the wonderful padres who marched’ not for gold or gain, but to plant their religion in the minds of the savages. In 1591 De Sota got as far north as the Zuni pueblos. In 1598 four hundred Spaniards under Onate left Mexico with many wagons and thousands of cattle. It was through Onate that our Santa Fe was established in 1609. Then began the early days of the Old Trail. The Spaniards wanted to be let alone. But they had to have a market to buy and sell. In 1690 the French-Canadians, the fur hunters, began to edge into New Mexico. With the trappers, marching west with their pack-mules, laden with whisky, guns, beads, bright goods to trade to the Indians, the Santa Fe Trail became known to the world — our Old Trail down there along the Cimarron and the Cottonwood. The fur trade expanded. The trappers were friendly with the Indians. There was no war. Americans began to mingle with the French. The era of the great fur trade lasted for nearly a hundred years.... My friends, there will be trappers here at my party to-night. Ask one of the white-haired old fellows to tell you what the trade was when he took to it as a boy. That must have been a grand free life. It used to thrill me to sit beside Kit Carson, when I was a child, and listen to his stories. Still Carson only knew of that magnificent early day from the old trappers who had seen some of it. When Carson ran away West as a boy, the plains were black with millions of buffalo and thousands of wild horses.
“After the dwindling fur hunters came the Forty-Niners, the gold seekers, streaming across the plains for the bonanzas in California. They, next to our thoughtless government, incurred the hostility of the Pawnees, the Utes, the Comanches, the Arapahoes; the Apaches, of all our Western tribes. And scalps of the white men dried in the sun on the wigwams of the Indians.
“Next came the freighters and the day of the caravan. The wagon-trains! The canvas-covered prairie-schooners! They hauled supplies to the forts and to Santa Fe, to Taos, to Las Vegas. But Santa Fe was their great objective.
“Most of you here to-night have seen Buff Belmet, the scout and caravan-leader, who hauls from Las Animas and the end of the advancing railroad. Think, my cowboys, of that trail of steel! You are responsible for that. No Santa Fe line would ever have been built but for cattle. The rails march on. Next spring they reach Raton. In a few years they will reach Santa Fe. That indeed will be the end of the Old Trail.
“Buff Belmet told me the story of his life. It is marvellous.
In 1855, when he was eleven years old, he left Independence in a caravan with his father and mother. Before he had travelled half-way to Dodge, he had lost his mother, and he was driving one of the great ships of the plains. The romance and adventure of the caravans made Belmet a scout. His father was killed, as were his old friends and comrades; he was wounded countless times, but bore a charmed life. His childhood sweetheart was lost to him for years, and that added to his hatred of the red man. But Buff found his sweetheart a few years ago, in 1869, the year that Carson died — found her still young, beautiful, faithful.
“Following the freighters with their mile-long caravans came the pioneers, the settlers. The end of the Civil War spilled a horde of ruined Southerners, of rebels, of outcasts from the East, of fugitives, wanderers, criminals, adventurers — and the day of the desperado was at hand.
“Then, my cowboys — the cattle herds! You all know that story. The Trail Drivers from Texas, with their unparalleled heroism that made my father’s native state an empire. Hundreds of thousands of cattle up from the Rio Grande — herd on the heels of herd — ten miles a day over grass and rock and sand, across the Texas rivers, often in flood, fighting Indians, rustlers, drought and heat, the icy blizzards, the electric storms, on and on and on to Dodge and Abilene! Oh, my cowboy friends, grasp the truth of that day to your bosoms! It was great. Britt was a Trail Driver. Frayne has ridden the Chisholm Trail. They will tell you as I cannot.
“1867,’68,’69,’70,’71,’72,’73 and this year of our Lord 1874 — and we have a million’ cattle grazing from the Cimarron to the Pecos. No law! Rustlers raiding every day and more coming. Cowboy outfits betraying their bosses. They are leagued with the rustlers. Many have quit work to take up the profitable stealing. Stock buyers from the East meet the cowboys at the railroad — and ask no questions. There are dishonest officers in the government post. They buy beef for the reservation Indians. They pay five and ten dollars a head — and ask no questions. What do you suppose the government pays them a head?
“Thus is ushered in the day of the rustler. He flourishes on all ranges, but he will be freest, boldest, bloodiest, richest — and therefore last longest on this New Mexican range. This is Britt’s prophecy. It was my father’s. It is now mine.
“To conclude now, my cowboys. This then is the situation to-day along the Old Trail. To meet it Britt has gathered together the wildest outfit possible in the West. You come from all points except further west. I doubt if there is one of you who could not cut a notch on his gun if you were that kind. I’d hate to know all you are guilty of. Some of you are — or think you are — lady killers! — I don’t need to be told that. My state of feeling toward you all is not easy to define. In some way, I think I — I love every single one of you. My grandfather built this home. He had a hundred vaqueros on this hacienda. My father loved his ‘Rowdies of the Saddle.’
“Once upon a time there was a good King. He gathered an outfit of great fighters and put them to noble tasks — to redressing human wrongs in his dominion, to driving out or killing the robber barons who oppressed the weak. I am bold to hope, to pray that my outfit of fighters will deserve my name for them — Knights of the Range. I beseech you — do not imagine I ask this for myself. But also for the other ranchers in this beautiful and wild valley, for the poor settlers and their children, for our good neighbours, the Mexicans. But mostly, for the West — our West — and because it is something great to do.
“From this night you are free as the wolves out there. You will have no restraint. You can drink, gamble, fight, kill — if you must. Your wages will be doubled, and those of you who are alive and with me after this rustler-war is ended, will be given an interest in my business, or helped to start one of your own. — Only I ask you, I pray you, don’t break out and take undue advantage of your freedom. Try to see your importance in this vast, incomprehensible movement westward. Don Carlos’ Rancho is only a speck on this range. Try to be proud of your place. Try to be serious about it. Oh, I know that what you are now is solely because of the life of the frontier. You may have been bad, but you are not to blame. You could not be good, tame, gentle — all that women like in men — and make this range habitable. Lesser cattle outfits will take their cue from you.... And so I dare to believe you will earn — the name I have — bestowed upon you...”
Holly’s voice failed at the very end. She sat down in a breathless silence. To her amaze, the cowboys sat like stone images. Then Brazos jumped up with a yell that rang from the rafters, and the others followed suit. For a few moments pandemonium reigned.
When the noise had died down Britt stood up, to tap lightly on the table. Instantly all the eager taut faces turned his way.
“Miss Holly, an’ gentlemen,” he began, in the dry drawl that presaged something inimical in motive or word, and he transfixed his men with those bright and twinkling eyes. “We have with us to-night a boy who is in a class by himself. In an ootfit which contains many bad hombres, an’ which hasn’t one thet is not a great rider an’ roper an’ gunner, this boy stands oot conspicuously, not only fer these qualities, but fer many others, prominent among them bein’ his gift of gab. He has been known to talk cowboys deaf an’ dumb. I know of one instance, back in Texas, where he talked a sheriff oot of arrestin’ him.... An’ thet, gentlemen, is shore talkin’.... Gawd only knows the misery among girls this boy’s silver tongue has wrought.
... Wal, it behooves me on introducin’ this paragon among riders of the range to prepare you, no doubt, fer a speech thet never was made before, an’ never will be again.... Friends.... Brazos Keene!”
A short, sharp roar rang around the table. Holly punctuated it with her high, sweet trill of delight.
Holly calculated that everyone present, except herself, had entertained the idea that Britt had Frayne in mind. Certainly Brazos himself was the most surprised cowboy who ever had gotten himself inadvertently or otherwise into an awful predicament. Obviously he had never made that kind of speech in his life. His homely face turned as red as a beet and then as white as a sheet. He sustained a more violent shock throughout his lithe frame than if someone had shot at him from behind.
“My — Gawd!” he gulped, his face beginning to work, and he fixed eyes of agony upon Holly. “Cap cain’t — mean me!”
“Indeed yes, Brazos,” replied Holly, beaming upon him. “Aw! — No!” groaned the cowboy, turning to his faithful partner. But before Laigs could betray him, which the devilish grin on his face surely presaged, the other cowboys called with the caustic and trenchant originality and wit characteristic of them.
“Come mon, you curly-haired darlin’ of the range.”
“Brazos — who ever heerd of you afeared to talk?”
“Cowboy, you’re the talker of this ootfit.”
“We’re sure expectin’ Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech to be skinned to a frazzle.”
“Fork yore hoss, pard, an’ rustle.”
“Brazos, you sho only gotta be yo own self.”
“You grande senor.”
“Brazos, you might as well warm up, ‘cause Conchita is here to-night, an’ thet black-eyed little dame is shore layin’ fer you.”
This from Skylark about finished Brazos, whose expression was that of an innocent cowboy against whom a diabolical plot had been concocted. More cutting remarks were forthcoming, and then Laigs Mason had his say.
“Pard, the honour of the ootfit is at stake. Who’d ever think thet Brazos Keene had lost his wits.... Wal, if you can’t talk, sing ‘Lone Prairee’!”
Brazos, goaded to desperation, again appealed to Holly.
“Shore, it’s a low-down trick,” he said, huskily. “Aw, Holly, say yu wasn’t in with them?”
“No, Brazos,” she replied, earnestly. “I’m absolutely innocent. But now I’m thrilled to death. Show them, Brazos.”
“Gawd help this heah ootfit from now on,” replied Brazos, as if he were destiny itself.
CHAPTER VII
BRAZOS’ ESCAPE FROM his chair and rise to his lofty height were as remarkable as they were funny. There might have been a rope around his neck, tight over one of the rough-hewn rafters above, and hauled upon by some of these grinning imps who revelled in his anguish. He came away so heavily that he might have been glued to his seat.
Once upon his feet he had to look at his hostess, and then upon his gleeful and expectant comrades. It was Holly’s conjecture that he did not see any of them clearly. Brazos’ remarkable eyes were round, bewildered, starting from his head, and his face baffled description.
He bowed low to Holly, then jerkily to the others.
“Our — Lady,” he began, in a hoarse whisper, “an yu — fellas... Yu — we — I... Yu-all join — me-all join yu... this orful occasion — I mean grand — in honour of pack of hound-dawgs... yu — we... er, my...”
As Brazos floundered hopelessly for more words there came suddenly from under the table a solid cracking thud. Holly did not need to be told that Laigs had kicked Brazos on the shin. She nearly choked trying to contain her dignity. Brazos’ breath puffed. His expression of fright and distress changed to a physical distortion of acute pain.
“Aggh!” he yelled.
“Fer Gawd’s sake, pard, be yoreself,” burst out Laigs, with a passion of loyalty. His love for and pride in Brazos had transcended even the cowboy passion for fun.
His importunity reacted with subtle and incredible power upon Brazos.
“Aw!” groaned Brazos, “shore yu had to pick oot my burn laig.” Then he stood erect to face them all differently. Holly sustained a deep and poignant thrill in the surety that Brazos would find himself.
“Fun is fun, boys, an’ yu’ve had it at my expense. But I savvy thet Miss. Holly gave us this supper fer more’n a good time. It must hev took lots of study to read up all thet aboot the Spaniards, an’ those thet come after.... Fer me, pards, the Old Trail will hev a different meartin’. An’ range-ridin’ a bigger job. An’ belongin’ to Holly Ripple’s ootfit aboot as close to heaven as I ever expect to get.
“Pards, my folks was fine old Texas stock. I never had much schoolin’ — yu know how hard it is for me to write my name — an’ I run away from home ‘cause I was jest no good. All thet a cowboy can do except gettin’ himself killed I’ve done. But, so help me Gawd, never since I run away till this heah minnit, hev I had any thought of a cowboy havin’ respect fer his callin’. It sort of seeped through my thick haid — the real an’ strong reason why Our Lady is callin’ to us so sweet an’ earnest. An’ it dug deep into me, boys. Heaven knows we air an ignorant lot, ‘cept in case of Frayne, an’ mebbe Skylark, who shows human intelligence sometimes. But to find oot — an”specially from Holly Ripple, daughter of a great Southerner, and the great Don Valverde, thet what we air is what the range made us an’ what she needs — why, fellars, there ain’t words enough, leastways not in my dictionary, to tell how savin’ an’ upliftin’ thet is.
“An’ so, cowboys, heah’s where Brazos Keene lays his cairds down as never before in no game. My pards of Texas Pan Handle days air daid. Since then I never had one ‘cept Laigs heah. Yu all know why I took on Renn Frayne.... Wal, heah’s where I take yu-all on. My pards! When a Texan makes a pard of a nigger somethin’ big has happened. I’m sinkin’ race prejudice an’ all thet other damn selfish rot. We’ve got a common cause, men.... I never was in an ootfit thet didn’t hev a disorganizer, an’ a rustler or two, an’ a mean gun-toter who ached to try you oot.
“Wal, if I’ve been any one of these things, after to-night I’ll never be no more. Yu-all know yore inside thoughts an’ feelin’s. Yu shore can see Miss Holly’s wonderful offer to yu. An’ none of yu is such an ignoramus as not to see now the wuth of the cowboy to the West. But if any one of yu — or two of yu — or three should double-cross Our Lady an’ disgrace her ootfit — they’ll have to draw on me — an’ Laigs heah — an’ shore our latest pard, Renn Frayne.”
Amid stamping and vociferous applause Brazos sat down, white and rapt of face. When the uproar subsided Holly leaned to Brazos.
“Oh, Brazos,” she whispered, with agitation. “I knew you would not fail. You were splendid.”
Suddenly Holly became aware that Frayne had touched her hand. She turned, quick and vibrant.
“May I speak?” he asked, with his slight smile.
“Oh! — I would be delighted...
Frayne stood up, striking of form and face, piercing-eyed and stern. There would be no humour from this outlaw. He bowed to Holly.
“Miss Ripple, our gracious and lovely hostess, Our Lady, as Brazos so truly said, on behalf of all of us I thank you for this hospitality, and particularly for your magnificent and generous spirit.”
