Chapter 1 – The Beginning of it

Chapter 1

The Beginning of it

If you would glimpse the savage which normally lies asleep, thank God, in most of us, you have only to do this thing of which I shall tell you, and from some safe sanctuary where leaden couriers may not bear prematurely the tidings of man’s debasement, watch the world below. You may see civilization swing back with a snap to savagery and worse—because savagery enlightened by the civilization of centuries is a deadly thing to let loose among men. Our savage forebears were but superior animals groping laboriously after economic security and a social condition that would yield most prolifically the fruit of all the world’s desire, happiness; to-day, when we swing back to something akin to savagery, we do it for lust of gain, like our forebears, but we do it wittingly. So, if you would look upon the unlovely spectacle of civilized men turned savage, and see them toil painfully back to lawful living, you have but to do this:

Seek a spot remote from the great centers of our vaunted civilization, where Nature, in a wanton gold-revel of her own, has sprinkled her river beds with the shining dust, hidden it away under ledges, buried it in deep canyons in playful miserliness and salved with its potent glow the time-scars upon the cheeks of her gaunt mountains. You have but to find a tiny bit of Nature’s gold, fling it in the face of civilization and raise the hunting cry. Then, from that safe sanctuary which you have chosen, you may look your fill upon the awakening of the primitive in man; see him throw off civilization as a sleeper flings aside the cloak that has covered him; watch the savages fight, whom your gold has conjured.

They will come, those savages; straight as the arrow flies they will come, though mountains and deserts and hurrying rivers bar their way. And the plodding, law-abiding citizens who kiss their wives and hold close their babies and fling hasty, comforting words over their shoulders to tottering old mothers when they go to answer the hunting call—they will be your savages when the gold lust grips them. And the towns they build of their greed will be but the nucleus of all the crime let loose upon the land. There will be men among your savages; men in whom the finer stuff outweighs the grossness and the greed. But to save their lives and that thing they prize more than life or gold, and call by the name of honor or friendship or justice—that thing which is the essence of all the fineness in their natures—to save that and their lives they also must fight, like savages who would destroy them.

There was a little, straggling hamlet born of the Mission which the padres founded among the sand hills beside a great, uneasy stretch of water which a dreamer might liken to a naughty child that had run away from its mother, the ocean, through a little gateway which the land left open by chance and was hiding there among the hills, listening to the calling of the surf voice by night, out there beyond the gate, and lying sullen and still when mother ocean sent the fog and the tides a-seeking; a truant child that played by itself and danced little wave dances which it had learned of its mother ages agone, and laughed up at the hills that smiled down upon it.

The padres thought mostly of the savages who lived upon the land, and strove earnestly to teach them the lessons which, sandal-shod, with crucifix to point the way, they had marched up from the south to set before these children of the wild. Also came ships, searching for that truant ocean-child, the bay, of which men had heard; and so the hamlet was born of civilization.

Came afterwards noblemen from Spain, with parchments upon which the king himself had set his seal. Mile upon mile, they chose the land that pleased them best; and by virtue of the king’s word called it their own. They drove cattle up from the south to feed upon the hills and in the valleys. They brought beautiful wives and set them a-queening it over spacious homes which they built of clay and native wood and furnished with the luxuries they brought with them in the ships. They reared lovely daughters and strong, hot-blooded sons; and they grew rich in cattle and in contentment, in this paradise which Nature had set apart for her own playground and which the zeal of the padres had found and claimed in the name of God and their king.

The hamlet beside the bay was small, but it received the ships and the goods they brought and bartered for tallow and hides; and although the place numbered less than a thousand souls, it was large enough to please the dons who dwelt like the patriarchs of old in the valleys.

Then Chance, that sardonic jester who loves best to thwart the dearest desires of men and warp the destiny of nations, became piqued at the peace and the plenty in the land which lay around the bay. Chance, knowing well how best and quickest to let savagery loose upon the land, plucked a handful of gold from the breast of Nature, held it aloft that all the world might be made mad by the gleam of it, and raised the hunting call.

Chance also it was that took the trails of two adventurous young fellows whose ears had caught her cry of “Good hunting” and set their faces westward from the plains of Texas; but here her jest was kindly. The young fellows took the trail together and were content. Together they heard the hunting call and went seeking the gold that was luring thousands across the deserts; together they dug for it, found it, shared it when all was done. Together they heeded the warning of falling leaf and chilling night winds, and with buckskin bags comfortably heavy went down the mountain trail to San Francisco, that ugly, moiling center of the savagery, to idle through the winter.

Here, because of certain traits which led each man to seek the thing that pleased him best, the trail forked for a time. One was caught in the turgid whirlpool which was the sporting element of the town, and would not leave it. Him the games and the women and the fighting drew irresistibly. The other sickened of the place, and one day when all the grassy hillsides shone with the golden glow of poppies to prove that spring was near, almost emptied a bag of gold because he had seen and fancied a white horse which a drunken Spaniard from the San Joaquin was riding up and down the narrow strip of sand which was a street, showing off alike his horsemanship and his drunkenness. The horse he bought, and the outfit, from the silver-trimmed saddle and bridle to the rawhide riata hanging coiled upon one side of the narrow fork and the ivory-handled Colt’s revolver tucked snugly in its holster upon the other side. Pleased as a child over a Christmas stocking, he straightway mounted the beautiful beast and galloped away to the south, still led by Chance, the jester.

He returned in a week, enamored alike of his horse and of the ranch he had discovered. He was going back, he said. There were cattle by the thousands—and he was a cattleman, from the top of his white sombrero to the tips of his calfskin boots, for all he had bent his back laboriously all summer over a hole in the ground, and had idled in town since Thanksgiving. He was a cowboy (vaquero was the name they used in those pleasant valleys) and so was his friend. And he had found a cowboy’s paradise, and a welcome which a king could not cavil at. Would Jack stake himself to a horse and outfit, and come to Palo Alto till the snow was well out of the mountains and they could go back to their mine?

Jack blew three small smoke-rings with nice precision, watched them float and fade while he thought of a certain girl who had lately smiled upon him—and in return had got smile for smile—and said he guessed he’d stick to town life for a while.

“Old Don Andres Picardo’s a prince,” argued Dade, “and he’s got a rancho that’s a paradise on earth. Likes us gringos—which is more than most of ’em do—and said his house and all he’s got is half mine, and nothing but the honor’s all his. You know the Spaniards; seems like Texas, down there. I told him I had a partner, and he said he’d be doubly honored if it pleased my partner to sleep under his poor roof—red tiles, by the way, and not so poor!—and sit at his table. One of the ‘fine old families,’ they are, Jack. I came back after you and my traps.”

“That fellow you bought the white caballo from got shot that same night,” Jack observed irrelevantly. “He was weeping all over me part of the evening, because he’d sold the horse and you had pulled out so he couldn’t buy him back. Then he came into Billy Wilson’s place and sat into a game at the table next to mine; and some kind of a quarrel started. He’d overlooked that gun on the saddle, it seems, and so he only had a knife. He whipped it out, first pass, but a bullet got him in the heart. The fellow that did it—” Jack blew two more rings and watched them absently—”the Committee rounded him up and took him out to the oak, next morning. Trial took about fifteen minutes, all told. They had him hung, in their own minds, before the greaser quit kicking. I know the man shot in self-defense; I saw the Spaniard pull his knife and start for him with blood in his eye. But some of the Committee had it in for Sandy, and so—it was adios for him, poor devil. They murdered him in cold blood. I told them so, too. I told them—”

“Yes, I haven’t the slightest doubt of that!” Dade flung away a half-smoked cigarette and agitatedly began to roll another one. “That’s one reason why I want you to come down to Palo Alto, Jack. You know how things are going here, lately; and Perkins hates you since you took the part of that peon he was beating up,—and, by the way, I saw that same Injun at Don Andres’ rancho. Now that Perkins is Captain, you’ll get into trouble if you hang around this burg without some one to hold you down. This ain’t any place for a man that’s got your temper and tongue. Say, I heard of a horse—”

“No, you don’t! You can’t lead me out like that, old boy. I’m all right; Bill Wilson and I are pretty good friends; and Bill’s almost as high a card as the Committee, if it ever came to a show-down. But it won’t. I’m not a fool; I didn’t quarrel with them, honest. They had me up for a witness and I told the truth—which didn’t happen to jibe with the verdict they meant to give. The Captain as good as said so, and I just pleasantly and kindly told him that in my opinion Sandy was a better man than any one of ’em. That’s all there was to it. The Captain excused me from the witness chair, and I walked out of the tent. And we’re friendly enough when we meet; so you needn’t worry about me.”

“Better come, anyway,” urged Dade, though he was not hopeful of winning his way.

Jack shook his head. “No, I don’t want anything of country life just yet. I had all the splendid solitude my system needs, this last summer. You like it; you’re a kind of a lone rider anyway. You never did mix well. You go back and honor Don Andres with your presence—and he is honored. If the old devil only knew it! Maybe, later on—So you like your new horse, huh? What you going to call him?”

Dade grinned a little. “Remember that picture in Shakespeare of ‘White Surry’? Or it was in Shakespeare till you tore it out to start a fire, that wet night; remember? The arch in his neck, and all? I hadn’t gone a mile on him till I was calling him Surry; and say, Jack, he’s a wonder! Come out and take a look at him. Can’t be more than four years old, and gentle as a kitten. That poor devil knew how to train a horse, even if he didn’t have any sense about whisky. I’ll bet money couldn’t have touched him if the man had been sober.”

He stopped in the doorway and looked up and down the street with open disgust. “Come on down to Picardo’s, Jack; what the deuce is there here to hold you? How a man that knows horses and the range, can stand for this—” he waved a gloved hand at the squalid street—”is something I can’t understand. To me, it’s like hell with the lid off. What’s holding you anyway? Another señorita?”

“I’m making more money here lately than I did in the mine.” Jack evaded smoothly. “I won a lot last night. Whee-ee! Say, you played in some luck yourself, old man, when you bought that outfit. That saddle and bridle’s worth all you paid for the whole thing. White Surry, eh? He has got a neck—and, Lord, look at those legs!”

“Climb on and try him out once!” invited Dade guilefully. If he could stir the horseman’s blood in Jack’s veins, he thought he might get him away from town.

“Haven’t time right now, Dade. I promised to meet a friend—”

Dade shrugged his shoulders and painstakingly smoothed the hair tassel which dangled from the browband. The Spaniard had owned a fine eye for effect when he chose jet black trappings for Surry, who was white to his shining hoofs.

“All right; I’ll put him in somewhere till after dinner. Then I’m going to pull out again. I can’t stand this hell-pot of a town—not after the Picardo hacienda.”

“I wonder,” grinned Jack slyly, “if there isn’t a señorita at Palo Alto?”

He got no answer of any sort. Dade was combing with his fingers the crinkled mane which fell to the very chest of his new horse, and if he heard he made no betraying sign.