Part 24 (1/2)

Henry had an actual place in mind for the setting of this story. We are told four paragraphs below that this point on the Frio is about 20 miles from the Nueces River. Later we are told that the Arroyo Hondo is near the Lone Wolf Crossing. Hondo Creek enters the Frio in Frio County 5 miles from Pearsall (about 75 miles southwest of San Antonio).

At that location the Frio and the Nueces are about 20 miles apart.]

[FOOTNOTE 66: mescal--a drug-containing liquor made by distilling fermented agave cactus]

One day the adjutant-general of the State, who is, _ex offico_, commander of the ranger forces, wrote some sarcastic lines to Captain Duval of Company X, stationed at Laredo, relative to the serene and undisturbed existence led by murderers and desperadoes in the said captain's territory.

The captain turned the colour of brick dust under his tan, and forwarded the letter, after adding a few comments, per ranger Private Bill Adamson, to ranger Lieutenant Sandridge, camped at a water hole on the Nueces with a squad of five men in preservation of law and order.

Lieutenant Sandridge turned a beautiful _couleur de rose_ through his ordinary strawberry complexion, tucked the letter in his hip pocket, and chewed off the ends of his gamboge moustache.

The next morning he saddled his horse and rode alone to the Mexican settlement at the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, twenty miles away.

Six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet as a deacon, dangerous as a machine gun, Sandridge moved among the _Jacales_, patiently seeking news of the Cisco Kid.

Far more than the law, the Mexicans dreaded the cold and certain vengeance of the lone rider that the ranger sought. It had been one of the Kid's pastimes to shoot Mexicans ”to see them kick”: if he demanded from them moribund Terpsich.o.r.ean feats, simply that he might be entertained, what terrible and extreme penalties would be certain to follow should they anger him! One and all they lounged with upturned palms and shrugging shoulders, filling the air with ”_quien sabes_” [67] and denials of the Kid's acquaintance.

[FOOTNOTE 67: quien sabe--(Spanish) who knows?]

But there was a man named Fink who kept a store at the Crossing--a man of many nationalities, tongues, interests, and ways of thinking.

”No use to ask them Mexicans,” he said to Sandridge. ”They're afraid to tell. This _hombre_ they call the Kid--Goodall is his name, ain't it?--he's been in my store once or twice. I have an idea you might run across him at--but I guess I don't keer to say, myself. I'm two seconds later in pulling a gun than I used to be, and the difference is worth thinking about. But this Kid's got a half-Mexican girl at the Crossing that he comes to see. She lives in that _jacal_ a hundred yards down the arroyo at the edge of the pear. Maybe she--no, I don't suppose she would, but that _jacal_ would be a good place to watch, anyway.”

Sandridge rode down to the _jacal_ of Perez. The sun was low, and the broad shade of the great pear thicket already covered the gra.s.s-thatched hut. The goats were enclosed for the night in a brush corral near by. A few kids walked the top of it, nibbling the chaparral leaves. The old Mexican lay upon a blanket on the gra.s.s, already in a stupor from his mescal, and dreaming, perhaps, of the nights when he and Pizarro touched gla.s.ses to their New World fortunes--so old his wrinkled face seemed to proclaim him to be. And in the door of the _jacal_ stood Tonia. And Lieutenant Sandridge sat in his saddle staring at her like a gannet [68] agape at a sailorman.

[FOOTNOTE 68: gannet--a large sea bird]

The Cisco Kid was a vain person, as all eminent and successful a.s.sa.s.sins are, and his bosom would have been ruffled had he known that at a simple exchange of glances two persons, in whose minds he had been looming large, suddenly abandoned (at least for the time) all thought of him.

Never before had Tonia seen such a man as this. He seemed to be made of suns.h.i.+ne and blood-red tissue and clear weather. He seemed to illuminate the shadow of the pear when he smiled, as though the sun were rising again. The men she had known had been small and dark. Even the Kid, in spite of his achievements, was a stripling no larger than herself, with black, straight hair and a cold, marble face that chilled the noonday.

As for Tonia, though she sends description to the poorhouse, let her make a millionaire of your fancy. Her blue-black hair, smoothly divided in the middle and bound close to her head, and her large eyes full of the Latin melancholy, gave her the Madonna touch. Her motions and air spoke of the concealed fire and the desire to charm that she had inherited from the _gitanas_ [69] of the Basque province. As for the humming-bird part of her, that dwelt in her heart; you could not perceive it unless her bright red skirt and dark blue blouse gave you a symbolic hint of the vagarious bird.

[FOOTNOTE 69: gitanas--(Spanish) gypsies]

The newly lighted sun-G.o.d asked for a drink of water. Tonia brought it from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter. Sandridge considered it necessary to dismount so as to lessen the trouble of her ministrations.

I play no spy; nor do I a.s.sume to master the thoughts of any human heart; but I a.s.sert, by the chronicler's right, that before a quarter of an hour had sped, Sandridge was teaching her how to plaint a six-strand rawhide stake-rope [70], and Tonia had explained to him that were it not for her little English book that the peripatetic _padre_ had given her and the little crippled _chivo_ [71], that she fed from a bottle, she would be very, very lonely indeed.

[FOOTNOTE 70: plait . . . stake-rope--O. Henry probably learned this skill or at least saw it practiced during the two years he spent on South Texas ranches.]

[FOOTNOTE 71: chivo--(Spanish) goat]

Which leads to a suspicion that the Kid's fences needed repairing, and that the adjutant-general's sarcasm had fallen upon unproductive soil.

In his camp by the water hole Lieutenant Sandridge announced and reiterated his intention of either causing the Cisco Kid to nibble the black loam of the Frio country prairies or of haling him before a judge and jury. That sounded business-like. Twice a week he rode over to the Lone Wolf Crossing of the Frio, and directed Tonia's slim, slightly lemon-tinted fingers among the intricacies of the slowly growing lariata. A six-strand plait is hard to learn and easy to teach.

The ranger knew that he might find the Kid there at any visit. He kept his armament ready, and had a frequent eye for the pear thicket at the rear of the _jacal_. Thus he might bring down the kite and the humming-bird with one stone.

While the sunny-haired ornithologist was pursuing his studies the Cisco Kid was also attending to his professional duties. He moodily shot up a saloon in a small cow village on Quintana Creek [72], killed the town marshal (plugging him neatly in the centre of his tin badge), and then rode away, morose and unsatisfied. No true artist is uplifted by shooting an aged man carrying an old-style .38 bulldog.