Dreams

: THE RAWHIDE
: Arizona Nights

Although the paper was a year old, Senor Johnson in due time received

an answer from Kansas. A correspondence ensued. Senor Johnson

enshrined above the big fireplace the photograph of a woman. Before

this he used to stand for hours at a time slowly constructing in his

mind what he had hitherto lacked--an ideal of woman and of home. This

ideal he used sometimes to express to himself and to the ironical Jed.


< r /> "It must sure be nice to have a little woman waitin' for you when you

come in off'n the desert."



Or: "Now, a woman would have them windows just blooming with flowers

and white curtains and such truck."



Or: "I bet that Sang would get a wiggle on him with his little old

cleaning duds if he had a woman ahold of his jerk line."



Slowly he reconstructed his life, the life of the ranch, in terms of

this hypothesised feminine influence. Then matters came to an

understanding, Senor Johnson had sent his own portrait. Estrella Sands

wrote back that she adored big black beards, but she was afraid of him,

he had such a fascinating bad eye: no woman could resist him. Senor

Johnson at once took things for granted, sent on to Kansas a

preposterous sum of "expense" money and a railroad ticket, and raided

Goodrich's store at Willets, a hundred miles away, for all manner of

gaudy carpets, silverware, fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen,

and gimcracks for the adornment of the ranch house. Furthermore, he

offered wages more than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young

Irish girl, named Susie O'Toole, to come out as housekeeper, decorator,

boss of Sang and another Chinaman, and companion to Mrs. Johnson when

she should arrive.



Furthermore, he laid off from the range work Brent Palmer, the most

skilful man with horses, and set him to "gentling" a beautiful little

sorrel. A sidesaddle had arrived from El Paso. It was "centre fire,"

which is to say it had but the single horsehair cinch, broad,

tasselled, very genteel in its suggestion of pleasure use only. Brent

could be seen at all times of day, cantering here and there on the

sorrel, a blanket tied around his waist to simulate the long riding

skirt. He carried also a sulky and evil gleam in his eye, warning

against undue levity.



Jed Parker watched these various proceedings sardonically.



Once, the baby light of innocence blue in his eye, he inquired if he

would be required to dress for dinner.



"If so," he went on, "I'll have my man brush up my low-necked clothes."



But Senor Johnson refused to be baited.



"Go on, Jed," said he; "you know you ain't got clothes enough to dust a

fiddle."



The Senor was happy these days. He showed it by an unwonted joviality

of spirit, by a slight but evident unbending of his Spanish dignity.

No longer did the splendour of the desert fill him with a vague

yearning and uneasiness. He looked upon it confidently, noting its

various phases with care, rejoicing in each new development of colour

and light, of form and illusion, storing them away in his memory so

that their recurrence should find him prepared to recognise and explain

them. For soon he would have someone by his side with whom to

appreciate them. In that sharing he could see the reason for them, the

reason for their strange bitter-sweet effects on the human soul.



One evening he leaned on the corral fence, looking toward the Dragoons.

The sun had set behind them. Gigantic they loomed against the western

light. From their summits, like an aureola, radiated the splendour of

the dust-moted air, this evening a deep umber. A faint reflection of

it fell across the desert, glorifying the reaches of its nothingness.



"I'll take her out on an evening like this," quoth Senor Johnson to

himself, "and I'll make her keep her eyes on the ground till we get

right up by Running Bear Knob, and then I'll let her look up all to

once. And she'll surely enjoy this life. I bet she never saw a steer

roped in her life. She can ride with me every day out over the range

and I'll show her the busting and the branding and that band of

antelope over by the Tall Windmill. I'll teach her to shoot, too. And

we can make little pack trips off in the hills when she gets too

hot--up there by Deerskin Meadows 'mongst the high peaks."



He mused, turning over in his mind a new picture of his own life, aims,

and pursuits as modified by the sympathetic and understanding

companionship of a woman. He pictured himself as he must seem to her

in his different pursuits. The picturesqueness pleased him. The

simple, direct vanity of the man--the wholesome vanity of a

straightforward nature--awakened to preen its feathers before the idea

of the mate.



The shadows fell. Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star. The

plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid lands, showed

ghostly. Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit adobe, leaned his

elbows on the rail in silent company with his chief. He, too, looked

abroad. His mind's eye saw what his body's eye had always told him

were the insistent notes--the alkali, the cactus, the sage, the

mesquite, the lava, the choking dust, the blinding beat, the burning

thirst. He sighed in the dim half recollection of past days.



"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.



But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the great

glory of the desert.



"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course! Why shouldn't

she?"