CHAPTER III
THE PEOPLE AND THE PLACE
They warmed me through, and then another old soldier named Redmond tookme up to show me where I lived. We clambered up narrow boxed stairs thatturned three ways; we walked down a narrow passage; turned to the right;walked down another narrow passage, climbed three steps to open a door;promptly climbed three steps down again; crossed a screened-in bridge toanother wing; ducked through a passageway, and so arrived. The ranchhouse was like that. Parts of it were built out on stilts. Five or sixbig cottonwood trees grew right up through the verandahs, and spread outover the roof of the house. There are all sorts of places where you hangcoats, or stack guns, or store shells, or find unexpected books;passageways leading to outdoor upstairs screened porches, cubby holesand the like. And whenever you imagine the house must be quite full ofguests, they can always discover to you yet another bedroom. It may, atthe last, be a very tiny bedroom, with space enough only for a singlebed and not much else; and you may get to it only by way of out ofdoors; and it may be already fairly well occupied by wooden decoys andshotgun shells, but there it is, guests and guests after you thought thehouse must be full.
Belonging and appertaining unto the house were several fixtures. One ofthese was old Charley, the Chinese cook. He had been there twenty-fiveyears. In that time he had learned perfect English, acquired our kind ofa sense of humour, come to a complete theoretical understanding of howto run a ranch and all the people on it, and taught Pollymckittrick whatshe knew.
Pollymckittrick was the bereaved widow of the noble pair of yellow andgreen parrots Noah selected for his ark. At least I think she was thatold. She was certainly very wise in both Oriental and Occidental wisdom.Her chief accomplishments, other than those customary to parrots, werethe ability to spell, and to sing English songs. "After the Ball" and"Daisy Bell" were her favourites, rendered with occasional junglevariations. She considered Charley her only real friend, though shetolerated some others. Pollymckittrick was a product of artificialcivilization. No call of the wild in hers! She preferred her cage,gilded or otherwise. Each afternoon the cage was placed out on the lawnso Pollymckittrick could have her sun bath. One day a big redtail hawksailed by. Pollymckittrick fell backward off her perch, flat on herback. The sorrowing family gathered to observe this extraordinary caseof heart failure. After an interval Pollymckittrick unfilmed one yelloweye.
"Po--o--or Pollymckittrick!" she remarked.
At the sight of that hawk Pollymckittrick had fainted!
The third institution having to do with the house was undoubtedlyRedmond. Redmond was another of the old soldiers who had in their agesought out their beloved General. Redmond was a sort of all-round man.He built the fires very early in the morning; and he did your boots andhunting clothes, got out the decoys, plucked the ducks, saw to theshells, fed the dogs, and was always on hand at arrival and departure tolend a helping hand. He dwelt in a square room in the windmill towertogether with a black cat and all the newspapers in the world. The cathe alternately allowed the most extraordinary liberties or disciplinedrigorously. On the latter occasions he invariably seized the animal andhurled it bodily through the open window. The cat took the long fallquite calmly, and immediately clambered back up the outside stairwaythat led to the room. The newspapers he read, and clipped therefromitems of the most diverse nature to which he deprecatingly invitedattention. Once in so often a strange martial fervour would obsess him.Then the family, awakened in the early dawn, would groan and turn over,realizing that its rest was for that morning permanently shattered. Theold man had hoisted his colours over the windmill tower, and now in afrenzy of fervour was marching around and around the tower beating thelong roll on his drum. After one such outbreak he would be his ordinary,humble, quiet, obliging, almost deprecating self for another month orso. The ranch people took it philosophically.
The fourth institution was Nobo. Nobo was a Japanese woman who bossedthe General. She was a square-built person of forty or so who had alsobeen with the family unknown years. Her capabilities were undoubted; asalso her faith in them. The hostess depended on her a good deal; and atthe same time chafed mildly under her calm assumption that she knewperfectly what the situation demanded. The General took her dominationamusedly. To be sure nobody was likely to fool much with the General.His vast good nature had way down beneath it something that on occasioncould be stern. Nobo could and would tell the General what clothes towear, and when to change them, and such matters; but she never venturedto inhibit the General's ideas as to going forth in rains, or drivingwhere he everlastingly dod-blistered pleased, or words to that effect,across country in his magnificently rattletrap surrey, although sheoften looked very anxious. For she adored the General. But we all didthat.
As though the heavy curtain of fog had been laid upon the land expresslythat I might get my first impressions of the ranch in due order, aboutnoon the weather cleared. Even while we ate lunch, the sun came out.After the meal we went forth to see what we could see.
The ranch was situated in the middle of a vast plain around three sidesof which rose a grand amphitheatre of mountains. The nearest of them wassome thirty miles away, yet ordinarily, in this clear, dry, Westernatmosphere they were always imminent. Over their eastern ramparts thesun rose to look upon a chill and frosty world; behind their westernbarriers the sun withdrew, leaving soft air, purple shadows, and theflight of dim, far wildfowl across a saffron sky. To the north was onlydistance and the fading of the blue of the heavens to the pearl gray ofthe horizon.
So much if one stepped immediately beyond the ranch itself. The plainswere broad. Here and there the flatness broke in a long, low line ofcottonwoods marking the winding course of a slough or trace of subsoilwater. Mesquite lay in dark patches; sagebrush; the green ofpasture-land periodically overflowed by the irrigation water. Nearer athome were occasional great white oaks, or haystacks bigger than a house,and shaped like one.
To the distant eye the ranch was a grove of trees. Cottonwoods andeucalyptus had been planted and had thriven mightily on the abundantartesian water. We have already noticed the six or eight great treesgrowing fairly up through the house. On the outskirts lay also a fruitorchard of several hundred acres. Opposite the house, and separated fromit by a cedar hedge, was a commodious and attractive bungalow for theforeman. Beyond him were the bunk house, cook houses, blacksmith shops,and the like.
We started our tour of inspection by examining and commenting gravelyupon the dormant rose garden and equally dormant grape arbour. Throughthis we came to the big wire corrals in which were kept the dogs. Here Imet old Ben.
Old Ben was not very old; but he was different from young Ben. He was apointer of the old-fashioned, stocky-built, enduring type common--andserviceable--before our bench-show experts began to breed for speed,fineness, small size--and lack of stamina. Ben proved in the event to bea good all-round dog. He combined the attributes of pointer, cockerspaniel, and retriever. In other words, he would hunt quail in theorthodox fashion; or he would rustle into the mesquite thorns for thepurpose of flushing them out to us; or he would swim anywhere any numberof times to bring out ducks. To be sure he occasionally got a littlemixed. At times he might try to flush quail in the open, instead ofstanding them; or would attempt to retrieve some perfectly livelyspecimens. Then Ben needed a licking; and generally got it. He lacked inhis work some of the finish and style of the dogs we used after grousein Michigan, but he was a good all-round dog for the work. Furthermore,he was most pleasant personally.
Next door to him lived the dachshunds.
The dachshunds were a marvel, a nuisance, a bone of contention, ananomaly, an accident, and a farce. They happened because somebody hadonce given the hostess a pair of them. I do not believe she caredparticularly for them; but she is good natured, and the ranch is large,and they are rather amusing. At the time of my first visit the originalpair had multiplied. Gazing on that yardful of imbecile-looking canines,my admiration for Noah's wisdom increased; he certainly needed no morethan
a pair to restock the earth. Redmond claimed there were twenty-twoof them, though nobody else pretended to have been able to disentanglethem enough for a census. They were all light brown in colour; and theaggregation reminded me of a rather disentangled bunch of angle-worms.They lived in a large enclosure; and emerged therefrom only undersupervision, for they considered chickens and young pigs their especialprey. The Captain looked upon them with exasperated tolerance; Redmondwith affection; the hostess, I think, with a good deal of thepartisanship inspired not so much by liking as by the necessity ofdefending them against ridicule; and the rest of the world with amusedexpectation as to what they would do next. The Captain was continuallyuttering half-serious threats as to the different kinds of sudden deathhe was going to inflict on the whole useless, bandylegged, snipe-nosed,waggle-eared----
The best comment was offered last year by the chauffeur of theautomobile. After gazing on the phenomenon of their extraordinary buildfor some moments he remarked thoughtfully:
"Those dogs have a mighty long wheel base!"
For some reason unknown two of the dachshunds have been elevated fromthe ranks, and have house privileges. Their names are respectively Peteand Pup. They hate each other, and have sensitive dispositions. It tookme just four years to learn to tell them apart. I believe Pete has aslightly projecting short rib on his left side--or is it Pup? It wasfatal to mistake.
"Hullo, Pup!" I would cry to one jovially.
"G--r--r--r--!" would remark the dog, retiring under the sofa. Thus Iwould know it was Pete. The worst of it was that said Pete's feelingswere thereby lacerated so deeply that I was not forgiven all the rest ofthat day.
Beyond the dogs lay a noble enclosure so large that it would have beensubdivided into building lots had it been anywhere else. It wasinhabited by all sorts of fowl, hundreds of them, of all varieties.There were chickens, turkeys, geese, and a flock of ducks. The Captainpointed out the Rouen ducks, almost exactly like the wild mallards.
"Those are my live decoys," said he.
For the accommodation of this multitude were cities of nest houses,roost houses, and the like. Huge structures elevated on poles swarmedwith doves. A duck pond even had been provided for its proper denizens.
Thus we reached the southernmost outpost of our quadrangle, and turnedto the west, where an ancient Chinaman and an assistant cultivatedminutely and painstakingly a beautiful vegetable garden. Tiny irrigationstreams ran here and there, fitted with miniature water locks. Strangeand foreign bamboo mattings, withes, and poles performed strange andforeign functions. The gardener, brown and old and wrinkled, his cuewound neatly beneath his tremendous, woven-straw umbrella of a hat,possessing no English, no emotion, no single ray of the sort ofintelligence required to penetrate into our Occidental world, bent overhis work. When we passed, he did not look up. He dwelt in a shed. Atleast, such it proved to be, when examined with the cold eye ofanalysis. In impression it was ancient, exotic, Mongolian, the abode ofone of a mysterious and venerable race, a bit of foreign country. Bywhat precise means this was accomplished it would be difficult to say.It is a fact well known to all Californians that a Chinaman can with nomore extensive properties than a few pieces of red paper, a partition, adingy curtain, and a varnished duck transform utterly an Americantenement into a Chinese pagoda.
Thence we passed through a wicket and came to the abode of hogs. Theydotted the landscape into the far distance, rooting about to find whatthey could; they lay in wallows; they heaped themselves along fences;they snorted and splashed in sundry shallow pools; a good half mile ofmaternal hogs occupied a row of kennels from which the various progenyissued forth between the bars. I cannot say I am much interested inhogs, but even I could dimly comprehend the Captain's attitude ofswollen pride. They were clean, and black, and more nearly approximatedthe absurd hog advertisements than I had believed possible. You know thekind I mean; an almost exact rectangle on four short legs.
In the middle distance stood a long, narrow, thatched roof supported onpoles. Beneath this, the Captain told me, were the beehives. They provedlater to be in charge of a mild-eyed religious fanatic who believed theworld to be flat.
We took a cursory glance at a barn filled to the brim with prunes; andthe gushing, beautiful artesian well; at the men's quarters; theblacksmith shop, and all the rest. So we rounded the circle and came tothe most important single feature of the ranch--the quarters for thehorses.
A very long, deep shed, open on all sides, contained a double row ofmangers facing each other, and divided into stalls. Here stood and werefed the working horses. By that I mean not only the mule and horseteams, but also the utility driving teams and the saddle horses used bythe cowboys. Between each two stalls was a heavy pillar supporting theroof, and well supplied with facilities for hanging up the harness andequipments. As is usual in California, the sides and ends were open tothe air; and the floor was simply the earth well bedded.
But over against this shed stood a big barn of the Eastern type. Herewere the private equipments.
The Captain is a horseman. He breeds polo ponies after a formula of hisown; and so successfully that many of them cross the Atlantic. On theranch are always several hundred head of beautiful animals; and ofthese the best are kept up for the use of the Captain and his friends.We looked at them in their clean, commodious stalls; we inspected theharness and saddle room, glistening and satiny with polished metal andwell-oiled leather; we examined the half dozen or so of vehicles of alldescriptions. The hostess told with relish of her one attempt to bestylish.
"We had such beautiful horses," said she, "that I thought we ought tohave something to go with them, so I sent up to the city for mybrougham. It made a very neat turnout; and Tom was as proud of it as Iwas, but when it came to a question of proper garb for Tom I ran upagainst a deadlock. Tom refused point blank to wear a livery or anythingapproaching a livery. He was perfectly respectful about it; but herefused. Well, I drove around all that winter, when the weather was bad,in a well-appointed brougham drawn by a good team in a proper harness;and on the box sat a lean-faced cow puncher in sombrero, redhandkerchief, and blue jeans!"
Tom led forth the horses one after the other--Kingmaker, the Fiddler,Pittapat, and the others. We spent a delightful two hours. The sundropped; the shadows lengthened. From the fields the men began to comein. They drove the wagons and hay ricks into the spacious enclosure, andset leisurely about the task of caring for their animals. Chinese andJapanese drifted from the orchards, and began to manipulate thegrindstone on their pruning knives. Presently a cowboy jogged in, hisspurs and bit jingling. From the cook house a bell began to clang.
We turned back to the house. Before going in I faced the west. The skyhad turned a light green full of lucence. The minor sounds of the ranchnear by seemed to be surrounded by a sea of silence outside. Singlesounds came very clearly across it. And behind everything, after a fewmoments, I made out a queer, monotonous background of half-croakingcalling. For some time this puzzled me. Then at last my gropingrecollection came to my assistance. I was hearing the calling of myriadsof snow geese.