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                         ALAMO RANCH

                   _A Story of New Mexico_

                   BY SARAH WARNER BROOKS

    Author of "My Fire Opal," "The Search of Ceres," etc.

    CAMBRIDGE
    PRIVATELY PRINTED
    MCMIII

    UNIVERSITY PRESS. JOHN WILSON

    AND SON. CAMBRIDGE. U.S.A.


                     TO LEON

    _Across the silence that between us stays,
      Speak! I should hear it from God's outmost sun,
    Above Earth's noise of idle blame and praise,--
      The longed-for whisper of thy dear "Well done!"_




[Illustration: ALAMO RANCH]




ALAMO RANCH

_A STORY OF NEW MEXICO_




CHAPTER I


It is autumn; and the last week in November. In New Mexico, this land of
sunshine, the season is now as kindly as in the early weeks of our
Northern September.

To-day the sky is one cloudless arch of sapphire! The light breeze
scarce ruffles a leaf of the tall alamo, the name tree of this ranch.
Here any holding bigger than a kitchen garden is known as a ranch. The
alamo, Spanish for poplar, lends here and there its scant, stiff shade
to this roomy adobe dwelling, with its warm southern frontage and
half-detached wings. Behind the house irregular out-buildings are
scattered about.

A commodious corral, now the distinguished residence of six fine Jersey
cows, lies between the house and the orchard,--a not over-flourishing
collection of peach, apricot, and plum trees.

Here and there may be seen wide patches of kitchen garden, carefully
intersected by irrigating ditches.

Near and afar, wide alfalfa fields with their stiff aftermath stretch
away to the very rim of the mesa, where the cotton-tail makes his home,
and sage-brush and mesquite strike root in the meagre soil. Cones of
alfalfa hay stacked here and there outline themselves like giant
beehives against the soft blue sky; and over all lies the sunny silence
of a cloudless afternoon with its smiling westering sun.

Basking in this grateful warmth, their splint arm-chairs idly tilted
against the house-front, the boarders look with sated invalid eyes upon
this gracious landscape.

Alamo Ranch is a health resort. In this thin, dry air of Mesilla Valley,
high above the sea level, the consumptive finds his Eldorado. Hither,
year by year, come these foredoomed children of men to fight for breath,
putting into this struggle more noble heroism and praiseworthy courage
than sometimes goes to victory in battle-fields.

Of these combatants some are still buoyed by the hope of recovery;
others are but hopeless mortals, with the single sad choice of eking out
existence far from friends and home, or returning to native skies, there
to throw up hands in despair and succumb to the foe.

Sixteen miles away the Organ Mountains--seeming, in this wonderfully
clear atmosphere, within but a stone's throw--loom superbly against the
cloudless sky; great hills of sand are these, surmounted by tall,
serrated peaks of bare rock, and now taking on their afternoon array in
the ever-changing light, rare marvels of shifting color,--amethyst and
violet, rosy pink, creamy gold, and dusky purple.

The El Paso range rises sombrely on the gray distance, and on every hand
detached sugar-loaf peaks lend their magnificence to the grand
mesa-range that cordons the Mesilla Valley.

And now, out on the mesa, at first but a speck between the loungers on
the piazza and the distant mountain view, a single pedestrian, an
invalid sportsman, comes in sight. As he nears the ranch with the slowed
step of fatigue, he is heartening himself by the way with a song. When
the listeners hear the familiar tune,--it is "Home, Sweet Home,"--one of
them rallying his meagre wind whistles a faint accompaniment to the
chorus. It is not a success; and with a mirthless laugh, the whistler
abandons his poor attempt, and, with the big lump in his throat swelling
to a sob, rises from his chair and goes dejectedly in. A sympathetic
chord thrills along the tilted piazza chairs.

The discomfited whistler is but newly arrived at Alamo; and his feeble
step and weary, hollow cough predict that the poor fellow's journey will
not take him back to the "Sweet Home" of the song, but rather to the
uncharted country.

And now the invalid sportsman steps cheerily on the piazza.

"Here, you lazy folks," mocks he, holding high his well-filled game-bag,
"behold the pigeon stew for your supper!" And good-naturedly hailing a
Mexican chore-boy, lazily propped by a neighboring poplar trunk, he
cries, "Catch!" and deftly tossing him the game (pigeons from the mesa)
goes in to put away his gun. When later he returns to the piazza, bathed
and refreshed, it is as if, in a room dim-lit by tallow candles, the gas
had suddenly been turned on to a big chandelier.

Seating himself in the vacant arm-chair, he fills a briar-wood pipe.
Some of the loungers do likewise; and now, while they smoke and chat,
look at the new-comer, Leonard Starr. Though not robust, he has the
substantial mien and bearing of one who finds it good to live, and makes
those about him also find it good. It is not long before most of these
dispirited loungers are laughing at his lively stories and sallies, and
cheerily matching them with their own.

Well is it for this troublous world of ours that some of its children
are "born to turn the sunny side of things to human eyes."




CHAPTER II


It is the middle of December; the Alamo boarders are now well arrived.

First and foremost, Mr. John Morehouse--the one lion of the ranch--makes
his bow. He is conspicuous for his able research in Archaeology, and
among his fellow boarders is familiarly known as "the Antiquary."

Mr. Morehouse has come to New Mexico in the interest of science; he is
not, however, a mere dry-as-dust collector of knowledge, and is very
much inclined to unbend himself to the lighter moods and pursuits of his
less scholarly fellow-men.

This well-groomed, handsome man of forty is James Morley of Bangor.

He has come to try this healing air for a slight, but persistent, lung
affection.

Mr. Morley is known to be a man of means, with all the advantages thus
implied; but all the same, he is given to railing at most things under
the sun; hence by the boarders he is surreptitiously dubbed "the
Grumbler." Mr. Morley's growl is a foregone conclusion, and one may
safely reckon on his bark; but as for his bite, it is simply nowhere.

Already he has manifested a most considerate kindness for this gray-eyed
little lady from Marblehead, Miss Mattie Norcross,--a sweet-mannered,
quiet gentlewoman, who is currently reported as scant of filthy lucre,
and hence compelled to content herself with a cramped, inexpensive
bedroom for herself and her invalid sister, who has one hopelessly
diseased lung. This cheery-faced Irishman, who with his shy little wife
is, for a stubborn bronchial trouble, making the grand tour of the
world's health resorts, and is now trying New Mexico, is, strange as it
may seem, a Methodist minister. His name is Patrick Haley. It may be
said of Mr. Haley that he has the genial temperament indigenous to Green
Erin, and he has already won golden opinions at Alamo Ranch by the
considerate brevity of his grace before meat.

Among the invalids attended by their wives are Mr. Bixbee, from Ohio,
and Mr. Fairlee, from New York City.

Mr. Bixbee has been bidden by his medical dictator to repair his damaged
vitality by rest and nourishing food. It is predicted that this
surfeited "lunger," in escaping his Scylla of consumption, bids fair to
strand upon the Charybdis of liver complaint, since Mrs. Bixbee, in her
wifely zeal, not only plies him all day long with lunches, but makes
night hideous by the administration of raw eggs throughout its drowsy
hours.

Mr. Roger Smith, an over-worked Harvard athlete, is taking as a
restorative a lazy winter in this restful land. He has also other irons
in the fire, of which, later, we shall hear more. Roger Smith is known
in Boston society as one having heaps of money, but badly off for
pedigree. All the same, he is, in manner and appearance, a gentleman,
and has distinctly the hall-mark of Beacon Hill. He is here known as the
"Harvard man."

Also, among the sound-lunged invalids, is Mr. Harry Warren, a brilliant
Chicago journalist. Mr. Warren is taking a vacation in Mesilla Valley,
where he is said to be collecting material for future articles, and
possibly for a book.

The Browns have also two table-boarders from Boston,--Miss Paulina
Hemmenshaw and her beautiful niece, Louise, a superbly healthy brunette.
Their friend, Mr. Henry Hilton, during an absence abroad, has lent for
the winter to these ladies his toy ranch, with its aesthetically
fashioned dwelling-house.

The Hemmenshaws dine and sup at Alamo Ranch, and the aunt, a
cooking-school graduate, is known to make at Hilton Ranch for herself
and niece wonderful blazer breakfasts, consisting mainly of dishes
new-fangled of name, and eminently trying to mortal digestion. There
are, besides, some half-dozen male lungers unaccompanied by friends; and
two impecunious invalids to whom the kind-hearted landlord, George
Brown, allows bed and board in return for light-choring about the ranch.
These latter are democratically counted in with the dining-room
boarders.

Leon Starr, by common consent the "star boarder" of Alamo Ranch, has
already been presented to the reader. He has taken the large
two-windowed room on the ground-floor commanding a glorious view of the
distant Organ Mountains. After getting his breath in this unaccustomed
altitude, Leon's next care has been for the depressed lungers who daily
gather on the boarding-house piazza and wonder if life is still worth
living. To get them outside themselves by cheery good-fellowship, to
perform for them little homely services, not much in the telling, but
making their lives a world easier, has been a part of his method for
uplifting their general tone.

Of an inventive turn of mind, and an amateur mechanic, he has brought
with him a tiny tool chest; and it soon becomes the family habit to look
to Leon Starr for general miscellaneous tinkering, as the mending of
door and trunk locks, the regulating watches and clocks, the adjustment
of the bedevilled sewing-machine of their good landlady, and the
restoration of harmonious working to all disgruntled mechanical gear,
from garret to cellar. He it is who, on rainy days, manufactures denim
clothes-bags for clumsy-fingered fellows; who fashions from common canes
gathered on banks of irrigating ditches, photo-frames for everybody, and
shows them how to arrange the long cane tassels with decorative effect
above door and window, and how to soften the glare of kerosene lamps by
making for them relieving shades of rose- paper.

Pessimistic indeed is that lunger who, succumbing to the charm of this
gracious nature, does not feel the cheery lift in his heavy atmosphere.

From the landlord and his wife, both worn by the strain of doing their
best for chronically discontented people, down to Fang Lee, the Chinese
chef, Dennis Kearney, the table-waiter, the over-worked Mexican
house-maids, and the two native chore-boys--one and all rise up to call
the star boarder blessed.

Out on the mesa the air is finer and brighter than on the lower plane of
the ranch, and full of the life and stir of moving things,--quail,
rabbits, and doves.

Leon had at first found the thin air of this altitude somewhat
difficult; but since time and use have accustomed his lungs to these
novel atmospheric conditions, shooting on the mesa has become a part of
his daily programme, and his quail, rabbits, and pigeons prove a
toothsome contribution to the already excellent ranch table.

A small, shy Mexican herd-boy, pasturing his lean goats on the mesa,
gradually makes friends with the tall, kindly sportsman. As they have
between them but these two mutually intelligible words, _bueno_ (good)
and _mucho calor_ (very warm), their conversation is circumscribed. Kind
deeds are, however, more to the point than words, and go without the
saying; and when Leon instructed the ragged herd-boy in the use of his
bow, and made and weighted his arrows for him, he _understood_, and
became his devoted henchman, following in his path all through the
week-day tramps, and on Sundays coming to the ranch with clean face and
hands to adore his fetich, and watch, with admiring eyes, his novel
works and ways.




CHAPTER III


After a protracted interval of tranquil sunshine, a stormy wind came
blustering from the west, bringing to Mesilla Valley, in its wintry
train, sunless days, light flurries of snow, and general dreariness.

The boarders, weather-bound and dull, grew sullenly mutinous; and on the
third of these stormy days, gathering in the ranch parlor after the
mid-day meal, their discontent found vent in banning right and left this
"land of sun, silence, and adobe."

"Beastly weather!" muttered the Grumbler, drawing into the stove with a
discontented shiver.

"A precious sample, this, of your fine climate, Brown," jeered Bixbee,
turning mockingly to the disheartened landlord, who, reckless of
expense, commanded of the chore-boy fresh relays of fuel, and
incontinently crammed the parlor air-tight, already red-hot.

"I say, fellows," drolled the Harvard man, "let's make tracks for
Boston, and round up the winter with furnace heat and unlimited water
privileges, as the house-broker has it."

"And with cut-throat plumbers thrown in," suggested the Grumbler with a
malicious grin.

"See here, you folks, draw it mild," laughed the star boarder, crossing
the room with a finger between the leaves of a volume which he had been
reading by the dim afternoon light of this lowering day. "Here, now, is
something that fits your case to a T. Let me read you how they doctored
your complaint in these parts, aeons before you were born."

"Anything for a change," muttered Bixbee, and, with the general consent,
Leon read the following:

"'When the people came out of the cold, dark womb of the underworld,
then the great sun rose in the heavens. In it dwelt Payatuma, making his
circuit of the world in a day and a night. He saw that the day was light
and warm, the night dark and cold. Hence there needed to be both summer
and winter people.

"'He accordingly apportioned some of each to every tribe and clan, and
thus it is down to the present day. Then those above (that is, the
Sun-father and the Moon-mother), mindful lest the people on their long
journey to the appointed abiding-place succumb to weariness and fall by
the way, made for them a koshare, a delight-maker. His body was painted
in diagonal sections of black and white, and his head, in lieu of the
regulation feather-decorations, was fantastically arrayed in withered
corn-leaves.

"'This koshare began at once to dance and tumble. Then the people
laughed, and were glad. And ever from that day, in their wanderings in
search of a satisfactory settling-place in the solid centre of the big
weary world, the koshare led them bravely and well.

"'He it was who danced and jested to make happiness among the people.
His it was to smile on the planted maize till it sprouted and flowered
in the fertile bottoms, to beam joyously on the growing fruit, that it
might ripen in its season.

"'From that day there have been delight-makers in all the Pueblo tribes.
The koshare became in time with them an organization, as the
Free-masons, or the Knights of Pythias, with us. This necessity, we are
told, arose from the fact that among the Pueblos there were summer
people who enjoy the sunshine, and winter people,--people who
determinedly prefer to live in the dark and cold.'

"Is it not so," said Leon, turning down a leaf and closing his book,
"with every people on the face of the earth?

"Is not the 'delight-maker,'--the koshare,--under various names and
guises, still in demand? It has struck me," continued he, looking
quizzically at this disgruntled assemblage, "that the koshare might be
an acceptable addition to our despondent circle."

"Amen!" fervently responded the Methodist minister.

"Right you are," said the Harvard man. "Write me as one who approves the
koshare!"

"Yes! yes!" eagerly exclaimed approving voices. "Let us have the koshare
here and at once!"

"A capital move," said Miss Paulina Hemmenshaw (born and reared in the
climatic belt of clubdom, and regent of a Chapter of Daughters of the
Revolution). "Let us have a Koshare Club."

"Good!" echoed Mrs. Fair