A TEXAN EPISODE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 10, 7 March 1891, Page 2

A TEXAN EPISODE.

A® WAS spending Christmas at Dos Hermanns' -r sheep rancli in southern Texas. It was a big jt'll Si? ranch in a beautiful country. £JI 5"" 1 Fine open valleys and draws, and cosey C sheltered hollows, clothed with rich mesquite grass and the various little weeds that the dainty and fastidious sheep loves, were Hanked and buttressed by low, conical, or humpy, flattopped Egyptian looking hills. The plains, too, were only a couple of miles to the northward, and looking from them toward these pyramidal hills, with the everlasting silence about, and the sunlight lying softly over all the landscape’s face, with its brooding loveliness, its majestic serenity and repose, seemed to wear a significance, a smile of inscrutable meaning, like that of Egypt, but lacking the awe, the dread that Egypt inspires. The house—a large and comfortable one for this almost semi-tropical region of tents and two or three-roomed boxhouses—was full and running over, and a half dozen young fellows were camped in a little hollow close by ; the weather was delightful, fairly meriting the adjective superb ; one day followed another, warm, soft, brilliant, the air dry, crisp and bracing, like the brightest and best of October weather in the middle states.

The boys hail worked hard all day long on the 23rd, when we arrived, rigging rings, making lances, and arranging seats for a grand tournament on Christmas eve ; everybody was tired, and by mutual consent we went to bed early to be ready for the next day’s festivities. When the contestants all rode up and saluted, my eye was at once caught by two figures that came from a tent a little apart from the general camp in the draw. One was a big, fair Saxon, six feet two or three inches in height, with his fair skin burned to a uniform dark red, from which a pair of fine, honest eyes looked out with ■startling blueness. His features were of a singularly large and regular mould, with a throat and chin so beautiful, a mouth so heavy yet correct, and a nose so high between the eyes that it gave him a slightly bucolic look, like ancient Apollo. His proportions were more fine and just than you would often see in so big a man ; he carried his head and shoulders magnificently, and his bearing in the saddle was (past criticism. Beside him rode a boy of about twenty. He was of ordinary size, slightly but strongly built, had a pale, olive face, great black eyes and clustering, dark hair. It was a face that somehow appealed to you. Although so full now of life and spirit, it had a suggestion of keen sensitiveness, of hidden ■capacity for suffering. He was on an uncommonly fine and spirited black pony ; his saddle was of superb and ornate Mexican workmanship, and a big white sombrero, glittering with silver, shaded the splendid eyes. While they paused in front of us I saw him look among the spectators as though seeking some one, then an electric smile passed over his face, he raised the big hat and touched a knot of red ribbon •on the side of it. I looked up and saw Louie, the pretty seventeen-year-old daughter of the house, blushing and bowing, and I smiled to myself. • Who are they ?’ I asked Mrs Flint, and she replied quite as if I had indicated them. ‘ 0, David and ’ ‘ Goliath,’ I interrupted. ‘ No, indeed, David and Jonathan. The tall one is Paul Melton, a young sheep man over on Live Oak, and the boy is his inseparable, a sort of protege, and a partner, I believe in a small way. ‘ Mark used to drink and gamble, I think, and young Melton got hold of him, straightened him up, and has held ■on to him ever since. They are always together ; you never see one without the other.’ Mark —I don’t believe I ever knew his other name — •carried off the most rings and rode up glowing with victory, t<* crown Louie queen of love and beauty. As I looked away from the pretty picture, I saw the blonde giant standing near in a studiously unconcerned attitude, but with an expression of affectionate pride on his great frank face. After this we had a general display of horsemanship and a great deal of sky larking. There is no finer sight to my mind, than a troop of wellmounted men ; there is nothing arouses my enthusiasm and admiration more than fine riding. This is true of a single horseman, and the enthusiasm and enjoyment increases in a geometrical progression with the number of horsemen engaged. Heie there were twelve or fifteen, among the best riders I have ever seen, all mounted on fine and well-trained horses. It is very easy to talk about picking up handkerchiefs and quarters from the ground, leaping on and off a horse, or hanging on one side of him and firing under his neck, all the while going at full gallop, but there are not so many, even among thorough-going cow men, who can perform these feats, as is supposed. However, there were several in the party that could perform all these and many more to admiration ; there was no poor or even mediocre work. Young Melton’s riding was something magnificent. He sat like a tower on his strong iron gray, and as he came sweeping down the track the impression of force and power was tremendous, overwhelming—he was like an embodied thunderbolt. He bore down upon two fellows who were racing, ran the gray between them, grasped right and left and went on with a man in each ann while the two horses sprang away with empty saddles. Everybody applauded loudly: * Melt’s scooped the whole race. Hurrah for Melt ?’ ‘ What’d ye leave the horses for, Melt?’ But the boy’s was a very form for the eyes of young love to linger on. The spare young outline, the lithe springing grace, the light alertness and vigour, and fearlessness ! He seemed a glowing incarnation of youth and love and valour. Whether he bent forward or back, twisted sideways or sat erect, he seemed just poised in the saddle ; every movement, every attitude charmed and satisfied the eye with its perfection of unstudied grace, like the something ineffable in the slant of a bird’s wing, the turn of its glossy head, or the glance of its quick, bright eye. The big fellow rode as finely as a man could tide, but there was something more than horsemanship in the boy’s riding. We danced that night to the peculiar and beautiful Mexican music. A harp, a viol and two violins, played by Mexicans who were musicians all the time and shearers in the season, comprised our orchestra. We had the Golondrina. La I‘alonia and soft dreamy waltzes with their

singular intervals piercing, sweetness and unexpected and tender accompaniments. I saw my boy waltzing with Louie. They came past me once and both young faces were flushed and bright with smiles. Presently they passed again—walking—and on Mark’s face was the shadow that somehow I had felt a prescience of from the first. The light was gone from his eyes, the colour and smile ftom his lips. Louie was chattering gayly and laughing up at him, but he looked past her, with a look of fierce pain in the great black eyes, at a young man, a new comer, on the other side of the room. * Come and look at the tables,’ whispered Mrs Flint. We went out, and in running about, helping, arranging and devising, I forgot the boy for a time. Presently I slipped out on to a side verandah to cool my heated face % moment in the soft and chilly air. The full moon, the great white Texas moon, rode almost up to midheaven, pouring its Hood of white radiance down through the silent and crystal air. It was like the sublimation, the apotheosis of daylight; the beauty, lustrous effulgence, without the harsh or unlovely details. Almost simultaneously with my opening the door two men rushed together just in front of me with knives in their hands, and the next instant the towering form of young Melton dashed noiselessly on to the porch. He plucked them apart as though they had been two kittens, held the stranger in his right hand, fairly shaking the knife from his grasp, and pushed Mark gently, but hastily, toward me, against me, and through the open door. ‘ Don’t Melt, don’t,’ said the boy, ‘ one of us has got—’ ‘ Wait with him till I come back,’ said young Melton, and away he went, carrying the other fellow, like a rat, by the back of the neck. Mark turned on me a look of agonised desperation, a face drawn and blanched and blackened almost beyond recognition, all the beauty and softness struck out of it; the great lustrous eyes blazing, the fine sensitive features quivering fiercely. I slipped my arm through his and we walked silently up and down the silent hallway. I could hear his heavy, gasping breath. I could feel his heart leap and his frame tremble and was still striving to think of some word to say that might soften the savage thrust it must have been that tore him so, when Melton came up, and with a grasp of his hand and a kindly look from his blue eyes, drew Mark away. ‘ Hullo ! Where’s Jake Shackelfoid !’ called someone, just as the pair went through the gate. ‘ O, I sent Lum home with him. He’d got too much and was noisy,’ I heard Melton rejoin in a lower key. After they had left the crowd behind I saw Melton’s great arm thrown across the boy's shoulders, and was sure I heard a choking sob. An hour later I saw them at supper, and I do not think the others found anything amiss ; but to me there was visible a fleeting but frequent shadow on the boy’s face, and a pathetic solicitude and concern in his big friend’s manner. The next day, which was Chiistmas, the men went bearhunting up a very wild and rocky canyon, while such of us women folk as liked to ride and were fond of sport set off to find a certain wild cat that held forth in a low bluff some six or eight miles away across the plains. Mr Melton was our guide and protector, while Mark was dragged away by the bear hunters. As we rode home in the late afternoon, full of scratches and glory, with a big cat skin and a tiny, snarling puff of a kitten as trophies, Mr Melton and I got far ahead of the. others, and this is the story of Mark’s troubles as he told it to me. *His folks moved out to Espeianza, a couple of miles above my sheep camp, about four years ago. They were New England people. Everybody hated the old man on sight. He was a mean, close fisted, cold-blooded, snaky sort of fellow. His wife was a warm-hearted woman, but she hadn’t much sense. She ran the house, and him, too, though, when it came to the pinch. ‘ One day the old man, who was abusing Mark, was so outrageous and insulting, and called him such vile names, that the boy went and got down a gun to shoot him. His mother screamed, and threw her arms around him and held him. I reckon she was wild with terror, but she took Mark off and told him how she was not his mother. His own mother was a poor, pretty young servant girl she had had in the first years of her marriage, and whose ignoiance and youth her husband had wronged. The girl had died and she had raised and loved Mark as her own. ‘ Now 7, there was a nice thing for a sixteen-year-old boy to have to bear. He came down to my camp the next morning and told me about it. He sat about like some poor dumb creature that’s been one half killed by a bad shot. It must be so, he said, for this fellow, Jake Shackelford, that came out with them and was afterward discharged by his father, had told some other people. * I was awfully rushed with shearing, and before I knew it the boy was gone. He never was home again, but went up to Esperanza and got a place in a lumber yard. • He made some awful bad plays, and no wonder. He got drunk and got to running with a gang of pretty rough men. But the old lady always loved him ; she wrote to him, and finally went up to Esperanza, bought him an outfit and sent him over to east Texas to school. He was away two years. He hadn’t been back a month, keeping books in Esperanza, when he saw Louie Flint, whom Jake Shackelford was crazy in love with. Anybody would love the boy ; of course Louie preferred him, so Shackelford, like the low dog he is, went about telling his tale, and the next 1 heard of Mark he was all broke up and drinking again. * I went up and got him to go down to my ranch with me. He’s been with me ever since. I’ve got a bunch of cattle and he has charge of them. He never drinks, nor gambles, nor swears ; he’s got lots of courage, and he’s all life and go; but there is something like a woman about him that makes him more to me than any brother could ever be. • Can’t he ride the prettiest you ever saw ? . That saddle and sombrero of his are both premiums he won at roping contests and tournaments. He—’ We were within half a mile of the house, with one or two rises and dips between it and ourselves. Suddenly a shot rang out on the still air, then another. My companion started, beckoned me, stuck spurs into his horse and launched forward like an avalanene. 1 followed as fast as I could, but I was fully five minutes behind him as I rode over the last lise. There, in the hollow was a group of men, standing in the full glory of aprairiesunset, thegoldensplendourallabout and upon thefn. In the midst knelt young Melton beside Mark's motionless foim. Maik’s head was upon bis aim. 1 rode

up and dismounted. The big tears were running down his face as he tried to staunch the bleeding of a great wound in the boy’s breast. ‘O, Mark ! O, Mark !’ he said. In a moment later the fathomless eyes unclosed and gazed long and calmly into the west, then turned suddenly toward Melton with a look in their lambent depths, which I can never forget. ‘ Melt, I’m glad,’he said ; then after a pause, * It’s better.’ The look of yearning love and trust slowly faded from his eyes; then a mist clouded their splendour, he turned bis cheek upon Melt s arm and breathed no more. Four men rode up on steaming horses. ‘ Where is he?’ said Melton, rising and struggling with his sobs. * He turned and fired on us, and we shot him,’ said Mr Flint;. ‘ Bennett’s bringing his body in.’