Aunt Huldah: Proprietor of the Wagon-Tire House and Genial Philosopher of the Cattle Country

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Preface

The whole story of Huldah Sarvice and her life in the cattle country of the West is a plea for the better understanding of a little understood, and now vanishing, class.

The desperado — ^who, after all, is a man like yourselves, gentlemen, pleased by what pleases you, saddened by what you find depressing, chasing with your own eagerness your own phantom, happiness — ^has long been regarded as an animal allied to man, but belonging to a variation of the species.

These characters are, as Huldah herself continually calls them, "pore babies, pore little ign'ant chiren. Ef they knowed better they'd do better," urges this gentle monitor. And she concludes: "Law, yes! they must be punished — a. child has ter be spanked sometimes ; but they ain't no joy in punishin' 'em."

The literary material drawn from our Western cattle country has heretofore concerned itself almost wholly with the strenuous aspect of that life. But reflection must show that where there

PREFACE

are men and women, birth and death, the cooking and the eating of three meals in each twenty-four hours, the resigning of the body to that glimpse of Nirvana which we call sleep, the rising from it to greet a new day and a new round of petty happenings, there must be much of the simple domestic life common to all mankind.

If the readers of this book shall be brought to feel that a man may keep a saloon, be a gambler, ' and, remaining reprehensible in these particulars, have commendable and lovable qualities; that even a stage-robber may have his virtues, its author will be content.

The stream rises, the stream falls — a stream. You, who are its surface, may continue to cry out upon the dregs that they are vile ; yet both go to make the stream, and each must partake of the nature of the other.

As for Huldah — ^and many another like her — the pastoral West builds no monuments as yet; and it is hoped that this account of her good works may in some measure fill the lack.

The Authors.

Chapter I

Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud ... for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.

—Isaiah.

Blowout had almost blown itself out. There was a sandy wind patrolling its streets and paths that kept all living things out of them.

Aunt Huldah Sarvice came to the door of the little frame shack where she kept an eating-house, dubbed by the cowboys the Wagon-Tire House, because of her custom of pounding on a wagon-tire, instead of a gong, to call her boarders to meals. Aunt Huldah was frankly wiping her eyes.

"She's gone, pore soul," she said, in reply to

B the inquiry of a freckled-faced twelve-year-old girl who came hurrying up the straggling street with a small lard-bucket in her hand.

''Dead, Aunt Huldy?" asked the child, in a hushed, awed voice.

The woman nodded.

"She's been dead 'bout ten minutes. I was afeared she'd go before you got back. Did you send the word to Miz' Carter ?"

"Yes'm. Billy said she was comin' in town to-day, anyhow, an' he'd let her know."

The child was inside the house now, imtying her slat sunbonnet, and setting away the precious pail of milk which had come too late for the invalid, but which must be preserved for the baby. She sheered abruptly from the bed where the covered figure lay, to the cradle in which the baby slept. Edging down the sheet with tender stealth, she looked fondly at its tiny dimpled prettiness.

"Oh, Aunt Huldy! It's oum now, ain't it? Of course, I ain't glad that its pore ma is dead ; but if she had to die, w'y, it's good that 'twas here, where we could get the baby for ourn, ain't it ?"

From the bed, where she was preparing the mother for her last appearance in the world, Aunt Huldah replied.

"Narcissy," she said softly — ^the girl knew that when her full name was used something serious.

and probably something disappointing, was coming — ^**Narcissy, honey, 'twas the baby that I sent to Miz' Carter about. I don't feel that 'twould be right fer us to keep him, ef we can do better fer him. And Miz' Carter, she's rich, you know, and childless — ef a childless person ever could be called rich," she added in an undertone. Huldah Sarvice was, herself, a childless woman> though she would have laughed you to scorn if you had told her so. Widowed ere she was twenty-five, having seen her two little children drowned with her husband, while she stood helpless to save, she had turned her one talent to account and ever since kept a humble eating-house in one little town or another of the Texas cattle country. In the remote frontier communities of that day — it was in the early eighties — no provision was made for children orphaned by death or desertion. These are so few in proportion to the population, that some ranchman's wife is usually found willing to take care of them. But to Aunt Huldah, keeping always some sort of stopping-place known as the Wagon-Tire House, wherever she set up her belongings, such children naturally came. There had been many beside her present brood of six. Narcissa, the eldest, was her dependence — ^ pathetic, old-faced little soul, as capable as one of the child-mothers in a tenement district. Aunt Huldah could have found a home for Narcissa "any day in the week/* as she phrased it; but it would have been as a servant, and she had offended several influential persons by briefly refusing this.

The other children had been sent out of the house with Gess and Tell, the twins, because Aunt Huldah thought them too young to look upon that mystery of rebirth which we fear under the name of death.

The little girl was silent so long that Aunt Huldah — ^her mind far afield with this poor mother who had left the baby and gone upon her last journey — ^had forgotten all about her.

"Aunt Huldy," the child said suddenly, "it's just like Troy Gilbert said : you go and hunt up homes for all the pretty children, an' the nice children, an' you jest keep the old ugly ones — ^like me — that nobody'll have."

"Did Troy Gilbert say that?" asked Aunt Huldah, turning a startled face over her shoulder. "Well, he ought to be ashamed of hisself !"

"Oh, I wasn't mad," Sissy replied. "I know I'm ugly ; it was true. And he said that he was willin' to give money — ^him an' all the boys — ^to help keep up your Orphants' Home, as he called it ; but he swan he didn't want to be supportin' a museum of freaks."

"Well, I'll speak to Troy about that 1"

"Aunt Huldy, Aunt Huldy!'' the little girl burst out passionately, "don't give the baby away ! They's only six of us ; an' I can work as good as a growed woman. Gess an' Tell — ^they — they's good-hearted, really — ^an' they're goin' to learn to work. 'An* don't you remember how little Ally takes keer of the baby — oh, don't give him away I'*

Three months before this day, the woman on the bed had been left by her husband— deserted, everybody said, except Huldah Sarvice. He took two boys on with him, and left the woman, who was too ill to travel in a wagon. She had been a welcome guest to Huldah, though her presence and her illness well-nigh broke up the business of the eating-house, and though there was little money to pay board with, even at first ; and none at all when the husband failed to send back any word.

So far from dwelling upon this feature of the case, Huldah had only been indignant that she let the husband and father take the two boys away with him,

"A pore, do-less, shiftless creature," she used to mourn, shaking her head. "I doubt not he's got hisself and both them chil'en drownded or injured up some way. I wish't I'd a-held on to the boys while I had a-holt of 'em. He wasn't fitten to raise 'em, anyhow."

Aunt Huldah's orphans usually reflected her own generous disposition. When the baby was bom, and the children were brought in to view the tiny addition to their group, Gess and Tell, whose full names were Gessner and Tellfair Hudson, and who always echoed each other's sentiments, regarded it with dubious approval.

'Gee, ain't it r^d !" objected Gess. ^Reckon it's sunburnt," Tell added.

Where'd it come from, Aunt Huldy?" asked little Romance, plaintively.

"The angels brung it," Huldah replied smilingly, rocking the little bundle gently in her big motherly lap.

"Oh, Aunt Huldy— for us? Did they bringed it for us ?" asked excitable little Alabama. "We're going to keep it, ain't we ? I can take care of it. I can rock it. You ner Sissy won't need to leave off your work none 'cause 'bout the baby — my babyT And she danced up and down delightedly, bending forward to peep close into the little face. f "Ask the angels to take it back," Romance muttered. "We don't want it — ^they's enough of us here, now."

This was the one sensitive^ difficult child of all her brood — its one aristocrat. His father, Romance Ewing, was an elegant and high-bred man who had earned an unenviable reputation for unscrupulous methods and dare-devil bravery, during a brief residence in Emerald. One week after the death of his beautiful young wife, Ewing brought the boy to the .Wagon-Tire House. There was little* said ; the father was a man distraught, as much at the thought of leaving his child, as at the recent loss of his wife.

I trust him to you, Mrs. Sarvice," he told her. IVe had a run of hard luck recently; this" — presenting two ten-dollar bills and a five — "this is all I have on hand. It goes for one month, and I'll send more from my next stopping-place."

"Twenty-five dollars a month is more than Til use fer him, Ewing," Huldah suggested.

"That's all right," the man answered, "give him everything he wants, and spend anything that's over on the other children."

"Why not take him along?"

"I can't take a child where Fm going. It wouldn't be safe for him."

"Nor fer you," Huldah interrupted gently. "Why not stay here with him fer a while? He needs you — ^an' you need him. Not that I ain't jest proud to keep him ; but why not stay — fer a while?"

A spasm contracted Rome Ewing's handsome delicate-featured face.

"No. It's the chance of a lifetime, this — ^this thing I'm going into down in Mexico. I'll come out of it a rich man— or I'll not come out at all. If I don't, you'll— you'll— "

"I'll deal by the boy as if he was my own," Huldah supplied.

Remittances from Ewing had ceased after three months. Huldah might, more than once, have placed the child in a home; but dared not. She told those who asked about him that, if she raised him to be a good boy twelve years old, she'd give him up ( it was her custom thus to crucify her heart, for the good of the children), but that for the present she would trust no one with him save herself.

She straightened up from the bed and its quiet sleeper with a long sigh.

"Sissy, you go down to Galindro's and tell him to make that there coffin jest like he promised it to me. And then you go by the store and the post-office and tell 'em Miz' Lane is dead, and that your Aunt Huldy is goin* to try to have a sort of funeral. They won't be nobody much to come, and I reckon I'll have to manage the preacher's part best I kin; but a funeral we are goin' to have fer the pore soul 'fore she's laid away."

Narcissa, humbly aware that honors to the dead came before her own feelings, put by the question of the future ownership of that dear baby, donned the slat sunbonnet once more and went forth.

Later in the afternoon the sound of voices raised in a hymn might have been heard in the little shack, a rusty wisp of something black was upon the door-knob — "The nighest thing to crape that I had about," Huldah had said — and later still a hack with the seats removed carried all that was left of the bab/s mother to its last resting-place.

. The service was hardly over when Mrs. Carter, for whom Aunt Huldah had sent, arrived. She was the wife of a rich ranchman, and she had asked for Narcissa oftener than anybody else, Huldah shrewdly suspected, because she found it well-nigh impossible in that country to keep servants. She hesitated a little at the door, then observing, "Oh, the funeral's over, is it? Well, I'm glad — ^I hate funerals," entered.

Huldah led her visitor from the porch, where most of the children were gathered listening to these rather unsuitable remarks, into the room lo HULDAH

where the three-months-old baby, freshly washed and dressed, lay on Narcissa's lap.

"Is that the child ? Billy said you hoped I'd take the child — ^he thought that was what you wanted to see me about"

She bent over and began examining the baby as one does some inanimate object that one is about to purchase. His infant majesty resented this by setting up a sturdy howl.

"Oh, my goodness! Is that the way it behaves?" cried Mrs. Carter, backing off. "I couldn't have it about if it's going to make a noise like that. Major Carter must have a quiet house. Is it — has it got any teeth ?" — ^in exactly the tone the purchaser of a horse might use to inquire, "What are his gaits ? Has he any vices ?"

"He ain't an *it,' ma'am," said Narcissa, solemnly. "He's a boy.'*

"A boy!" echoed Mrs. Carter. "And you don't know anything of the parents, except that they were movers, and that the man deserted the woman here !"

"No, ma'am, I p'intedly do not know that much," Huldah replied. "They wasn't movers, as the sayin' goes — ^not tramps, I mean. They was jest goin' from one place to another. An' I ain't never heard from that there feller that he deserted his wife. An' tell I do, I shall believe

ORPHANTS II

that somethings happened to him, or to them two boys o' his'n, which I ought to 'a' kep' instead o' lettin' him take."

"My goodness gracious, Mrs. Sarvice! How you can speak of taking more children into this little shanty, crowded as it is with everybody's young-ones, and you run to death to try to support them — "

Huldah Sarvice laid a swift hand upon the lady's sleeve.

"Please, ma'am, I'll have to trouble you not to speak thataway before my chiren. The house ain't one bit too small f er 'em ; an' I ain't run to death lookin' after 'em."

"Oh, well, if you'd let me take both"— a strange look flashed over her face, and she managed an uneasy little laugh — "these two seem to belong in a pair ; and since you don't find the work here at all heavy, I should think you could spare Narcissa," There was a note of positive entreaty in Mrs. Carter's voice.

"For a servant ? No'm, I don't keep an employment agency," Huldah replied.

"And I don't keep an orphan-asylum," Mrs. Carter answered in anger, gathering up her gloves and parasol. "I don't keep a refuge for heaven knows whose brats ! Narcissa — ^"

Tlease, ma'am, I'm 'dopted here," broke in

«i

Sissy's plaintive voice. "I couldn't be sent away to nobody. Aunt Huldy says I'm 'dopted here."

Mrs. Carter was rustling toward the door, her trailing skirts gathered in one hand.

"Well, ma'am, that's jest as ye think best, of course," Huldah assented, following her out. "Ef I had thp riches the good Lord has given to you, I don't know of anything on earth I'd as lief do with 'em as keep an orphans' home. It's what I do with sech riches as God thinks best fer me to have; but ef I had your portion, of course I could keep a bigger one."

Mrs. Carter turned back at the door. She looked long into the patient, seamed old face fronting her, where the cheeks, like winter apples, were so rosy below those fine gray eyes that had always the brightness of tears in them.

"I suppose you do a lot of good, Mrs. Sarvice," she said, "but you made me mad just now. I don't think it does any good to make people mad."

She was fumbling in her purse as she spoke. Now she brought out a coin and laid it in Huldah's ready hand.

"There! I'm sorry I spoke as I did; but I can't take the baby — ^without Narcissa. It might turn out bad. Goodness knows what blood it's got ; and I do think that you might let me have

Narcissa." She looked keenly in Huldah's face. Seeing the "No" that was so evident there, she said sharply: "Well, good-by."

As she moved down the street, trim and dainty in her ruffled organdie, the lace-covered parasol above her flowery hat, Huldah looked after her, then opened her hand and gazed upon the coin in its palm. It was a quarter.

Chapter II

•* Nay, ril put on a hodden grey And seek until I find him ; And when I see that fause, fause knight It's with a chain Til bind him."

It was the next day after the poor little funeral that there rode up to the shack-door, where hung the burnished wagon-tire, a tall, fair-haired, finelooking fellow who hailed cheerily, "Hello, Aunt Huldyl"

This was Troy Gilbert, sheriff of the county. Aunt Huldy's boy he had been, since, a lad of fourteen fresh from the East, he came out to Texas to be a cowboy. He had boarded with her when in off the range, and she mended his socks, washed his clothes and kept the dust brushed off the pure gold of his boyish character. Now, as Huldah came out, the big fellow greeted her heartily. Reaching down from the saddle, he first shook her hand, and then patted her head fondly.

'*How are you, Aunt Huldy? How you

Narcissa." She looked keenly in Huldah*s face. Seeing the "No" that was so evident there, she said sharply: "Well, good-by."

As she moved down the street, trim and dainty in her ruffled organdie, the lace-covered parasol above her flowery hat, Huldah looked after her, then opened her hand and gazed upon the coin in its palm. It was a quarter.

They were always lost. She spent much time searching for them while they rode jauntily upon the top of her gray head. When discovered there, and jerked reprovingly down, she would look at the beholder, one glass somewhat below her right eye and the other hopelessly above the left, and inquire with comic severity : "What kind o' person do you reckon them there spectacle-makers think I am ? Do you reckon they think I've got one eye in my forrud and t'other in my left cheekbone?"

This time Gilbert laughed and, with a little poke in the air toward his old friend's grizzled mop, and "They're on your head, as usual^ Aunt Huldy," proceeded to read:

"Cedar Grove, Georgia.

"Mr. Troy Gilbert, Sheriff,

"Blowout, Wild Horse County, Texas. ^^Dear Sir —

"I write you to inquire of a man by the name of Robert Irenus Patterson. He is my good-fornothing, worthless husband. He was never any manner of account in the world to me, and he finally left me more than a year ago. I have been searching for him ever since. Recently I had information that he was somewhere in Wild Horse County, probably in Blowout. I understand that you are a decent man and a good sheriff, and I suppose you will aid me in this matter.

"The man is about middling height, sort of light complected, with straggling hair and mustache, goes kind of limpy, though he ain't really lame, and he isn't no earthly manner of account. The only mark I know of that you can tell him by is that he has had a felon on the first finger of his left hand, and it left the finger sort of marked. It is twisted at the end so that it looks like something's bill—"

"'Like something's bill'!" reiterated Gilbert. "Did you ever in your life hear such a description as that ? Tike something's bill/ " he repeated and roared joyfully.

Continuing, he read : "I am leaving for Blowout on Tuesday's train. Shall probably arrive there the following Monday on the stage. I shall expect you to find some decent place for me to board, and to assist me in the search.

"Yours respect.,

"LucERiA Patterson."

When Gilbert had finished reading the letter, he glanced from the written sheet down at Aunt Huldah. She stood gazing up in open-mouthed wonder, and now ejaculated, "Well, I'll be whipped ! What on earth a woman that can see through a man like that wants to chase after him fer — w'y, Gib, what do you reckon she wants of him?"

"Well, we don't know. Aunt Huldy; she may want to eat him up when she gits a-holt of him. She may want to jest wear him out. I reckon we ain't got no concern with that. The man's her husband, and I suppose she's got the right — ^the legal right — to git a-holt of him if she kin, and to settle with him her own way. You bet I don't marry none."

Huldah merely snorted. . Huldah's snorts might mean a great deal.

Gilbert came to the practical question at issue.

"I thought I'd bring her here to you. Aunt Huldy, to board," he said. "You need a boarder now, don't you?"

"Law yes, honey ! I need boarders bad enougH — so bad 'at I reckon I've got to take this here fierce, husband-chasin' lady from Georgia."

"Well, I'll fetch her over this evening, if she comes on the stage," said Gilbert, "and if she don't, I'll be in myself, anyhow. So long 1" And he rode away.

Huldah stood a moment gazing after him, the pleasant look on her face that this big fellow's presence always called there. Then she turned and went back into the Wagon-Tire House shaking her head, smiling quizzically, and murmuring something to herself about the woman who pursued a husband she so despised.

That afternoon Gilbert came, walking beside the lady from Georgia, carrying a large valise and a small satchel. Aunt Huldah was out at the moment, so Gilbert seated his companion, and himself stood, sombrero in hand, waiting.

The lady from Georgia, having sat down, surveyed the small topsy-turvy room with disfavor. Sis, dish-cloth in hand, peeped in from the kitchen; Gess and Tell were popping up at the windows occasionally with a muffled whoop. Little Ally, in her usual position at the cradle's foot, was rocking the baby, while Romey fretfully entreated her to come away from the presence of the big intruder and play with him.

*'Is this here the only ho-tel in town?" the Georgia woman inquired abruptly.

The sheriff grinned broadly.

**This ain't a hotel at all," he explained. "We boys most generally call it Aunt Huldy's Orphans' Home ; but it's the only place in town just now. Kansas Charlie did run a — hm-m, you might say, a tavern, over at the 'dobe ; but he got run out of town a week ago, and nobody's opened up his shack for business since. We're a-goin' to get Aunt Huldy in over there ; but at present this little orphans' home o' hers is the best place there is for a lady like you."

"Orphans' home!" echoed the lady from Georgia. "Did you think I was an orphan?"

Huldah came in at this point. Looking kindly upon the seeker after an errant husband, she found her to be exactly as she had imagined — a woman who had once been pretty in a delicate way, who was still pretty, indeed, had her small features not been drawn and stiffened into a vinegar-like sourness, suggesting a hardness and resentment against her kind that was adamantine. Her very presence was a whine.

"Well, ma'am," Huldah began in her cheery voice, "and how do you like Blowout? Reckon you'll be contented here fer a spell ?"

The other was not quite ready with her accusations ; but she began that catechism which makes the resident of a town feel that the new-comer lays the responsibility for any shortcomings with him, and vaguely implies that he has the town for sale, and that the speaker is a much desired and rather unwilling prospective purchaser thereof.

^How many churches you got ?" 'Jest one, thank God!" Huldah replied fervently. It was not clear whether she thanked her Creator that there was but one church, or that there was any church at all.

"Which kind— Methodist, Baptist, or what?" inquired the lady from Georgia, with a severe eye upon Huldah's unblushing countenance.

*'I reckon it's *what'," Huldah replied genially. '^We managed to git up a little frame shack last year.'* (She did not mention that she herself raised most of the money, dragooned old Pod Beeler into donating the planks, and stood guard over the boys while they worked upon the structure.)

"We got up a small kind of a church buildin' last year, and we're mighty proud when anybody will come along an' give us the word o' God in it. We have some very happy times with our little old church— ef it is a *what' ; an' I used to hold the Sunday-school thar' reg'lar, till I had the baby to take keer of."

"Hm-m!" sniffed the lady from Georgia; "I couldn't think of attendin' any church but my own."

"Couldn't?" echoed Huldah. "Wal, to me Christianity's jest like 'east : you can't raise bread without 'east; you can't lift up folks without God's grace. But when you have got that, I ain't a bit particular which kind. Some doctrines is like hop 'east; they'll stand a heap o' knockin' round an' keerless handlin'. Some's like salt risin' — you got to coddle 'em powerful. Some's dry 'east that keeps a good many years, and some you've got to use, or the goodness'll all fizz out of it. But when you've raised the bread with any one of 'em — really raised it — and it ain't sour and it ain't soggy, w'y, where in goodness' name is the use o' fussin' 'bout which brand of 'east you used ?"

"Well, I give up other churches when I j'ined my own. When a body j'ines the church they have got to give up a heap. I give up all manner of sinful pleasures — "

"And I suppose pretty much all pleasures is sinful?" interposed Huldah.

"Certainly they air," responded the lady from Georgia, looking at the other with suspicion. "I give up all manner of sinful pleasures, and I had a heap of 'em — dancing, fiddling, going to parties and balls, dressing gay and having admiration and sech. A Christian has got to give up — "

"I think you air a mighty pore arithmeticker," interposed Huldah, kindly. "My understandin' of God's word is that when you air scekin' the kingdom of the Lord, everything else you want, an' everything that's good fer you, is a-goin' to be added unto you. Here you've sot and told us a string o' things as long as from here to the Chinaman's wash-house, to prove to me that them *at seeks the kingdom o' the Lord is a-goin' to have everything they want, an' everything 'at's pleasant, substracted from 'em. Tell you, Miz' Patterson, you're a mighty pore arithmeticker. Dassent go to anybody's church, and ain't goin' to let none of 'em come to yours — ^"

"I give them all up when I j'ined my church," repeated the new-comer. "They are welcome to turn me from their doors. I don't expect them to want me. I certainly ain't goin' to pester them."

"Wal," returned Huldah, "I don't want it never laid up ag'in me that I made the religion of Christ so ugly I turned folks away from it. I don't believe you really want to, neither. You're jest tired and outdone and kinder in a bad humor all the time about — about other things. Come on, Miz' Patterson, and let me show you to your room. It's mighty pore, but it's the best there is to be had, I reckon, in Blowout."

When Huldah had taken the lady from Georgia to the little board room assigned her, she returned to find Gilbert standing on the porch fanning himself with his sombrero.