I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and . At a sheep where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I into the business at hand, which happened to be that of dipping the sheep.
Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron cauldron with half the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils furiously. Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to and until the witches' is strong enough to the third arm of Palladino herself.
Then this concentrated is mixed in a long, deep with cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their legs and flung into the compound. After being ducked by means of a forked pole in the hands of a gentleman for that purpose, they are allowed to clamber up an incline into a corral and dry or die, as the state of their constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an able-bodied, two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 of kicking that he can send though your arm seventeen times before you can him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he may die instead of dry.
But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby charco after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the morral on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon. Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his force of Mexican trabajadores.
While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses' behind us. Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard ten feet away from his hand. He paid not the slightest to the approaching horseman. This attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the old-time custom that I . I turned to inspect the possible that menaced us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, peaceably along the road by the .
Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled and sorrowfully.
"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look around any more when anybody up behind you in this state, unless something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable to be only a bunch of or a petition to sign against the trusts. I never looked at that hombre that rode by; but I'll bet a quart of sheep dip that he's some double-dyed son of a popgun out rounding up votes."
"Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly. "Law and order is the rule now in the South and the Southwest."
I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.
"Not that I—" I began, hastily.
"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly. "You know better. You've lived here before. Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we had 'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican ticket. But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but make laws against oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old days when law and order meant what they said. A law was a law, and a order was a order."
"But—" I began.
"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling, to describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of once in the times when cases was in the of a six-shooter instead of a court.
"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In them days, as you know, there was cattle and cattle kings. The difference was this: when a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper reporters and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned, they wrote him up for a . When he bought 'em wine and added in the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.
"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a to ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning when they was coming, and drive the deer out of their way. Among the bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That's all I noticed about her. But Luke must have seen more, for he married her one day before the caballard started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up a ranch of his own. I'm skipping over the stuff on purpose, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me along with him because we was old friends and I handled cattle to suit him.
"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it—but three years there was a boy kid stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's ranch. I never had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I'm skipping over much what followed until one day out to the ranch drives in and buckboards a lot of Mrs. Summers's friends from the East—a sister or so and two or three men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one looked like nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and in a tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.
"I'm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides up to the ranch house to get some orders about a drove of beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at the rack, not wishing to on private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders to some of his Mexican hands, and they go and up and vehicles; and soon out comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two or three men. But two of the two or three men carries between 'em the corkscrew man who spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the . And they all might have been seen wending their way away.
"'Bud,' says Luke to me, 'I want you to fix up a little and go up to San Antone with me.'
"'Let me get on my Mexican spurs,' says I, 'and I'm your company.'
"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the International, and hits San Antone in the morning. After breakfast Luke me straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room and talk and then come out.
"'Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers,' says the lawyer. 'I'll acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts to-day; and the matter will be put through as as possible. Law and order in this state as swift and sure as any in the country.'
"'I'll wait for the decree if it won't take over half an hour,' says Luke.
"'Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. 'Law must take its course. Come back day after to-morrow at half-past nine.'
"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded document. And Luke writes him out a check.
"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the size of a kitchen door on it and says:
"'Decree of ab-so-lute divorce with cus-to-dy of the child.'
"'Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,' says I, 'it looks to me like a split. Couldn't the lawyer man have made it a strike for you?'
"'Bud,' says he, in a pained style, 'that child is the one thing I have to live for. She may go; but the boy is mine!—think of it—I have cus-to-dy of the child.'
"'All right,' says I. 'If it's the law, let's by it. But I think,' says I, 'that Judge Simmons might have used exemplary , or whatever is the legal term, in our case.'
"You see, I wasn't much into the desirableness of having infants around a ranch, except the kind that feed themselves and sell for so much on the when they grow up. But Luke was struck with that sort of foolishness that I never could understand. All the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me the sum and substance of it. 'Cus-to-dy of the child, Bud,' says he. 'Don't forget it—cus-to-dy of the child.'
"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court , nolle prossed, and remanded for trial. Mrs. Summers and the kid was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San Antone she had a team and lit out for the nearest station with her trunks and the youngster.
"Luke takes out his decree once more and reads off its .
"'It ain't possible, Bud,' says he, 'for this to be. It's contrary to law and order. It's wrote as plain as day here—"Cus-to-dy of the child."'
"'There is what you might call a human leaning,' says I, 'toward smashing 'em both—not to mention the child.'
"'Judge Simmons,' goes on Luke, 'is a incorporated officer of the law. She can't take the boy away. He belongs to me by passed and approved by the state of Texas.'
"'And he's removed from the of mandamuses,' says I, 'by the unearthly statutes of female partiality. Let us praise the Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies—' I begins; but I see Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse and starts back again for the station.
"He come back two weeks afterward, not saying much.
"'We can't get the trail,' says he; 'but we've done all the telegraphing that the wires'll stand, and we've got these city they call detectives on the . In the meantime, Bud,' says he, 'we'll round up them cows on Brush , and wait for the law to take its course.'"
"And after that we never to , as you might say.
"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was made sheriff of Mojada County. He made me his office deputy. Now, don't get in your mind no wrong of a office deputy doing sums in a book or letters in a cider press. In them days his job was to watch the back windows so nobody didn't plug the sheriff in the rear while he was adding up at his desk in front. And in them days I had qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada County, and schoolbooks, and all the whiskey you wanted, and the Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels from the school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and order instead of and such as disfigure our umpire state to-day. We had our office at Bildad, the county seat, from which we emerged on necessary occasions to whatever fracases and unrest that might occur in our jurisdiction.
"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff, I want to give you an idea of how the law was respected in them days. Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men in the world. He never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments of justice and mercy inculcated into his system. If a respectable citizen shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the express car, and Luke ever got hold of him, he'd give the guilty party such a reprimand and a cussin' out that he'd probable never do it again. But once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a wire fence, or otherwise the peace and of Mojada County, Luke and me would be on 'em with habeas corpuses and smokeless powder and all the modern inventions of and .
"We certainly had our county on a basis of . I've known persons of Eastern classification with little caps and buttoned-up shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at the railroad station without being shot at or even roped and drug about by the citizens of the town.
"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of training me to succeed him when he went out of office. He was always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What he wanted to do was to build a yellow house with lattice-work under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard. The one main thing in his mind seemed to be the yard.
"'Bud,' he says to me, 'by instinct and sentiment I'm a . I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be when I get out of office.'
"'What kind of a contractor?' says I. 'It sounds like a kind of a business to me. You ain't going to haul cement or establish branches or work on a railroad, are you?'
"'You don't understand,' says Luke. 'I'm tired of space and horizons and territory and distances and things like that. What I want is reasonable . I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills,' says Luke.
"That's the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he'd had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I wondered how, with his ideas of yards and chickens and notions of lattice-work, he'd seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn't a man you could ask about such things as he didn't refer to in his own conversation.
"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I've read in books about men that was disappointed in these and fine-haired and high-collared affairs with ladies truck of that kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures, or sheep, or science, or teaching school—something to make 'em forget. Well, I guess that was the way wit............