The western Avernus

Front matter

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Preface

On re-issuing this book, which was originally published in 1887, I may perhaps be excused for making some remarks as to its character and reception. In the first place, I would have it understood that what was true, let us say, of Winnipeg in 1884, needs now to be mentally revised by the reader. For things Transatlantic change marvellously even in a few short months, and since the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, on which I myself worked when it was still unfinished, the cities within its influence have altered beyond recognition. But this is only true of inhabited places, for not even a railroad can harm the infinite beauty of the mountains in British Columbia.

Though this volume is usually spoken of as a book of travel, I myself prefer to regard it as autobiography, seeing that it contains few references to spots not now well within the range of the mere tourist. It is primarily the story of peculiar personal experience, which many have endured but few recorded ; and if it have any value

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it is that of the experience rather than that of any impression of any place.

Since my return, having been led to wander in the Avernus of literature, where I was received by the Shades not without courtesy, certain, who occupy the position of censors, have, in season and out of season, suggested that my later work by no means reached the level of this. In some ways I cannot but agree with them, for it is the record of actual striving which in its essence has a positive value denied to the impersonal narrative or to a work of the imagination. I lived and did some necessary work in the world's rougher service. The rest is no more than a by-product ; I do not plume myself on it, nor do I greatly regret the lack of keener appreciation.

But I have been urged again and again to repeat the experiment of going berserk in some far-off and savage country ; it has been suggested, openly and by implication, that misery, hardship, and starvation were needed before I brought forth the best fruits ; and many have endeavoured to persuade me to leave the difficult, if by no means giddy, height to which I have climbed with so much labour, for the purpose of affording them sport in the arena. I am reminded of Tertullian, who, in his treatise De Spectaculis, promised

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the elect a rarer joy than the earth affords when, looking from the golden bar of heaven, they watch their enemies frying in the pit. But now, as a man no longer altogether young, and with youthful endurance passed from me, I object to be butchered to make a critic's holiday. It is sufficient for me if this volume renews its youth for a season, and more than sufficient if its record warn the unwary who are solicitous of adventure, but ignorant of the calls that will be made upon them. It may discourage some, but those whom it renders fearful are not of the brotherhood of wanderers, nor truly of the race which should inherit the earth.

MORLEY ROBERTS.

Contents

CHAP.

i. In Texas

ii. Bull-Punching

Chapter I

The wide prairie of North-west Texas, with Nature's sweet breath bearing faint odours of spring flowers, was around me ; a plain of few scant trees or smaller brush, with here and there a rounded hill that emphasised the breadth of level land, and again the general surface broken, by quiet creeks and winter rain, into hollow canons beneath me, and beyond them once more the gentle roll of grassy prairie, and hills again. I looked around me and I was alone ; and yet not wholly solitary, for about me strayed a band of sheep, grazing the sweet grasses that were so green when near, and showed a faint tinge of purple or delicate blue afar off. I was a Texas sheep-herder. A month before I had walked the crowded desolation of unnatural London.

My life had been one of many changes. From the North of England to the wide brown plains of sunburnt Australia ; from her again to the furrows of the ocean for many months of seaman's toil and danger ; then England's greatest city and life, irksome and delightful by turns in her maze and prison ; then ill-health, with A I all its melancholy train, and sudden feverish resolution to shake from myself the chains I began to loathe.

And it was thus I came to Texas, the land of revolution and rude romance, and pistol arbitration, whither my brother had long preceded me — a land of horses, cattle, and sheep, of cotton and corn, a land of refuge for many crimes, and for those tired and weary even as I was. So outward civilisation was gone, and it was with strange feelings of delight that I entered a new country to commence a new career, although I was aware that there would inevitably be much labour and perhaps much suffering for me.

I came into a Texas town by no means greatly different from other American towns that I had seen and passed through in my swift flight south and west from the Atlantic seaboard, save that all around it was open unfenced prairie, with no fertile farms or houses to indicate that a town was near at hand. But I found, to my surprise, that Colorado City was cold on that spring morning of 1884, and I was unprepared for it, for I thought myself far enough south to demand as my right perpetual warmth and sunshine ; and it was only when I learnt that I stood on a plateau two thousand feet above the sea-level that the cold did not seem unnatural. My impressions of the town and its people were favourable. There were many men walking round the streets dressed in wide-brimmed hats, leather leggings with fringe adornments, and long boots with large spurs rattling as they went. They were mostly tall and strong, and I noticed with interest the look of calm assurance about many of them, as if they had said to themselves : ' I am a man, distinctly a man, nobody dares insult me ; if any one does, there will be a funeral — and not mine.'

Then the ordinary citizens of the place seemed ordinary citizens, in nowise remarkable, and, as far as I could see, neither they nor the others, who were, as I soon discovered, the much-talked-of cow-boys, wore knives or revolvers.

In fact my impressions were exactly what they should not have been, according to Bret Harte. From him I had taken my notions of Western America, and I had constructed an ideal in the air, in which red-shirted miners, pistolling cow-boys, reckless stagedrivers, gentlemanly gamblers, and self-sacrificing women figured in a kind of kaleidoscopic harlequinade, ending up in a snow-storm or the smoke of a gunpowder massacre. And I was disappointed ; but I must not be unjust to a favourite author of mine, for I owed it to my own imagination.

My brother was living in this town, and it was with very little difficulty that I discovered him. We shook hands and sat down, running through our different experiences. I detailed my disgust of London and the life I had led there. He gave discouraging accounts of Texas, averring that the water was vile, that ' fever and ague ' were common, that it was too hot in summer and too cold in winter. I learnt from him that almost everybody in town carried revolvers concealed under his coat-tails or inside his waistcoat, and that people were occasionally shot in spite of the peaceful look of the place. Nevertheless, there was little danger for a man who was in the habit of minding his own business, who was not a drinker and quarrelsome, and did not frequent gambling-houses and saloons. I vowed I would go into none of them, and promptly broke it when I went down town with my brother to get clothes such as Texans wear, for he himself took me into one and introduced me to a gentlemanly gambler, who might have stepped bodily out of the story of ' Poker Flat ' — a Georgian dark and slim, with long hair, dressed in black, amiable-looking, and a quiet desperado if need were.

I changed my apparel under Cecil's advice and appeared in the streets in a very wide-brimmed grey felt hat and long boots reaching to my knees, and then, when I was ' civilised,' as he declared, we went to his boarding-house, and he introduced me to a circle of Texan working men. I made myself at home, and sat quietly listening to the talk about the war — a subject the Southerner is never weary of — of desperadoes, of cattle, and of sheep. Cecil and I held a council of two as to what was to be done. I wanted to work on a sheep or cattle ranche, as I had learnt the ways of these in Australia, and, although he had not ever followed that business himself, he agreed to go with me if we could obtain such work. A few days afterwards we left the city in the waggon of a sheep owner, hired to do the work of herders for 25 dols., or about £$, a month.

So I once more dwelt under canvas, living a pastoral life, cooking rude meals in the open air on the open prairies, forty long miles to the northward of the town. And we went to work, building sheep ' corrals ' or pens of heaped, thorny mesquite brush, bringing in firewood, cutting it, putting up tents — for my part glad to be so far from men in that sweet fresh air, for I began to feel alive, volitional, not dead and most basely mechanical as at home in England.

We were in camp on the border of the creek that ran by us with sluggish flow, as if it lacked the energy to go straight forward. In front of us, to the south, was a semicircle of bluffs, up which one had to climb to gain the open prairie, that stretched out green and grey as far as eye could reach. Beneath the bluffs was a level with thin mesquite trees, and on the banks of the creek a few cotton woods, and beyond it another level with thicker brush, and then a mass of broken, watercut land, formed into small fantastic canons that bit deep into the red earth, and clay, and gravel, that lay beneath.

I led a busy life — up before sunrise, in after sundown. Then we sat round the camp-fire, smoking and talking. Our boss was an Englishman, one Jones, fair and pleasant ; with him another fatter, ruddier Englishman, young, bumptious, and green withal, but no bad companion. Beside them a Mexican, long-haired, with glittering dark eyes under the shade of his big sombrero, small and active, taciturn for want of English. I could have warranted him a talker had we known his own sweet tongue. But my Spanish was limited to a few oaths — Caramba ! — with some others terrible to be translated, and Don Quixote in the original has yet to be mastered. Then another herder, myself, and Cecil. Decidedly, England was in the ascendant, and our

Spaniard looked on dumbly in contemplation, as his lithe fingers rolled cigarettes one after another in the yellow Mexican paper, dipping into his little linen bag for the dry tobacco.

At daylight breakfast, after a wash in the creek. Bacon and bread and coffee, morning, noon, and night, with rare mutton and beans, red and white, cooked with grease and greasy. Then I went to the corrals and let out my sheep and their lambs, the oldest skipping merrily and the little new-born ones tottering weakly and baaing piteously, while the anxious mothers watched their offspring, turning round to lick them, looking at me suspiciously the while.

With them I spent day after day on the prairie in almost utter solitude, save for the gentle animals I held in charge. These would scatter out and fleck the green prairie with white of wool, browsing on brush and sweet grass, while the lambs played round them, taking tentative doubtful bites at the grass, as if not yet assured that anything but milk was good for them, or stood sucking or lay asleep ; sometimes waking suddenly with a loud baa of surprise to find themselves in such a strange wide world, and then rushing motherwards for milk, butting with persistence the patient ewes, who moved along gently after other uncropped grasses. And at ten o'clock, when the sun grew fierce, they would take their noon-time's siesta, lying down under the scant shade of mesquites or the few rocks at the end of the bluffs that ran down to the creek. They slept and woke, got up one at a time, walking round, and then lay down again. And I picked a shady tree myself, taking all the shade, not through selfishness, but they yielded it to me for fear. I ate my little lunch, and drank water from the round tin flask encased in canvas that I bore over my shoulder, and smoked a peaceful pipe, and read a book I had brought out with me, or dreamed of things that had been, and of things not yet to be. And birds came round, perching on the woolly backs of sheep — birds of blue and birds of red, some with sweet songs. And from the shelter of low thick brush or tufts of heavier grass peeped a silvery-skinned snake with beady eyes, drawing back on seeing me. Or a little soft-furred cotton-tail rabbit whisked from one bush to another, throwing up his tuft of a tail and showing the white patch of under-fur that gives him his name, gleaming like cotton from the bursting pod, And that yonder ? It was a jack-rabbit, a hare, long-legged, quick-running ; but then he went slowly, and sat up and looked at me as if he were a prairie dog of yonder town of quaint, brown, sleek-furred marmots, whose cry is like that of chattering angry birds. But Mr. Jack Rabbit swerved aside suddenly. The sheep would not frighten him, and I was as quiet as the windless tree I sat under. It was a snake, not silver, but brown and diamonded that scared him. But he saw me, and slipped under the rock, and lay there, making a strange noise, new to me but unmistakable. He was a rattlesnake. Then maybe I would go a little way from my herd and see an antelope on the distant prairie, and between me and the deer, a sly, slinking coyote, swift-footed and cunning, a howler at nights, making a whole chorus by himself ;

by quick change of key persuading the awakened shepherd that there was a band of them on the bluff in the moonlight looking down hungrily on the corralled and guarded sheep.

Day by day this pastoral life went on, not all as sweet as an idyll, yet with some content. But my brother fell ill, and went back to town, and I was left to my own experience, which grew by contact with my Texan neighbours, with whom I got along pleasantly, as I was fast relapsing into primitive barbarism. I read little, and the noon I spent in contemplation, or observation of the denizens of the prairie, and at night the hour before sleep was spent in smoking and chatter, and grumbling at the sameness of the cookery.

I herded through all April, but in the beginning of May I began to grow very weary of the work, and begged Jones to give me something else to do, no matter what, so that I was not compelled to act dog to his sheep any more. I was evidently unfit for a herder, for the task grew harder instead of easier. At last my ' boss ' went into town and brought out another man, and released me. I went to corral-building, and woodchopping, and to preparations for shearing, which would soon be ; and as I then had Sunday free, I used to go fishing for cat-fish in the creek, and caught more often demoniacal mud turtles, which I unhooked with much fear of their snappish jaws. And one Sunday I slew a great rattlesnake nearly five feet long, as thick as my fore-arm. At the end of his tail, as he lay half coiled up, was a cloud — strange, undiscernible — the loud rattles in fierce, quick vibration. I went into a state of instinctive animal fury, and killed him with a branch wrenched from a mesquite, regardless of the sharp thorns that made my hands bleed.

Our days and nights now grew warmer with advancing summer, which passed across the prairie and left it barer and brown, and doubtless made the dull sheep remember, if remember they can, past shearings of other years' fleeces and quick coolness. And shearingtime came on apace, for there were no more sudden ' northers ' that came from the frozen north, that knows no early spring, to make us shiver in our sleep and awake in early morning cursing the climate.

So, when our preparations were complete, the wooltable set up in the corral, the wool-boxes for tying the soft fleeces ready, the posts and cross pieces erected for the canvas shelter to keep the glaring noon sun from the backs and bared necks of the stooping shearers, Jones went round and summoned the ' boys ' to start to work. And our camp took a livelier aspect with its Texan youngsters. The English element was in the minority. Then the ' boss ' went to town for more shearers, and came back with a band of Mexicans, who looked at the white men sulkily, thinking, no doubt, that there would not be so much money to be made, as they were not to have ' las boregas ' to themselves. Among them was an Indian, a dark-skinned Chickasaw, who spoke a little English, and confided to me that he thought very little of the Mexicans. These were finer men, though, than my little wizened Indian — tall, some of them, with easy motion, dark eyes, dark hair, over which the inevitable sombrero of wide shade, with vast

The Western Averxus

complications of plaited adornments around it, making it look heavy and cumbersome.

Next day shearing began. The sheep huddled together in the corral bleating for their lambs, or ran to and fro for those left outside. Under the rude festoons and curves of canvas, the wooden platform, with a few sheep in front, and on the board itself seven Mexicans, and the Chickasaw, and four Texan boys bending over the sheep. The sharp click-click of the moving, devouring shears of sharp steel, and the fair fleece, white and pure, falling back over the outer unclean wool yet unshorn. The last cut, and the loosed fleecebearer, uncloaked and naked, runs shaking itself into the crowding others, wondering ' if it be I,' and another is dragged unwillingly by the hind leg from its companions, while the parted fleece goes in a bundle of softness to the table, to be tied and tossed to the man who treads down the wool in the suspended woolsack, for we are primitive here and have no press. The clean new boards underneath us grow black, and every splinter has its lock of wool. There is wool everywhere, and the taste and smell of it ; we are greasy with the grease of it, and hurt fingers smart with it, some little revenge for the pain the sheep have for careless cuts, that run red blood on the divided fleece.

And night-time came, and the sheep stood in the corral hungry, wishing the vile yearly business ^was over. And when we got up next morning there was not a Mexican to be seen. They had disappeared in the night, doubtless angry that there were white men to divide the profits with them. Jones ' cavorted ' round somewhat, abusing Mexicans generally, swore he would have no more to do with them, and went for more white men. I sheared among these in order to learn this noble pastoral art, as I wished to learn everything else, for no man knows when his knowledge may be useful and even necessary to him. So we had none of ' los Mexicanos,' with their fearful oaths, among us, and no Chickasaws or Choctaws. And for two days the shearing went well ; then came a cold day, congealing the grease in the wool until it clogged the shears. One man, the boaster of the crowd, left, as he said, because the sheep were too hard to shear ; as we said, because he was irritated that a boy sheared eighty while he got through no more than fifty. Then, as Jones was away, my fat ruddy young countryman had charge, and, being unaccustomed to authority and lacking tact, quarrelled with one, which led to all the rest leaving. So the patient sheep were not yet shorn. Jones came back to find things at a standstill, and being a good-tempered man, only swore a little at white men. But the shearing had to be done, and the vow about Mexicans had to be recanted. The wagon went into town, and in two days eleven more Mexicans came out, better men and better shearers than our first band. The captain — el capitan — was a broad-shouldered, lithe-waisted man, quick, keen, black, and comely ; with him a one-armed shearer, a great surprise to me, whose first movements on the board I watched with interest. He and the captain sheared in company, and between them made more money than any other two — made it shearing and gambling as well, for the maimed man was an adept at

ii the cards, handling them with a rapidity and dexterity many of his two-handed companions envied and suffered from. I still sheared with them, but not regularly, for sometimes I tied wool, and sometimes pressed it, and even occasionally herded again. I found them friendly, and at night they sang melancholy Mexican love-songs or gambled with the light of a solitary candle, crowding together in one small tent, while I sat amongst them, rolling up cigarettes, as they did, catching a few words of their talk ; or I left them and sat by the fire with Jones and the other herders, and perhaps a stray cow-boy who came to sleep at our camp, or some of the young sons of our near neighbours ; and in their conversation I got the relish of a new dish that tickled my civilised palate strangely. The flash of humour, the ready rough repartee that permitted no answer, tumbling one to the ground like a sudden tightening lasso dropped over head and shoulders, were like single-stick play after rapier and dagger, hard but harmless.

And at last shearing was over, and my Mexican friends took their money, doubtless resolving to get drunk and gamble in town, and make up for the labour through which they had gone ; and I began to think of going too, for I had heard from my brother in far northern Minnesota, and he asked me to come if it were possible. I was ready enough to go, for it did not seem to me that I was as well as I should be. Perhaps the alkali water was doing me no good, and I should feel better doubtless in the more bracing northern air, drinking the purer streams that ran from Minnesota's

MEXICANS GAMBLING.

[to face p. 12.

lakes and sweet-scented pine-woods. I would leave Texas behind me, and the open prairie and its sheep and bands of long-horned cattle, its chattering prairie dogs and howling coyotes, and prowling cougars, and try another country.

But before I could get away there were many things to do, and some things to suffer — notably a storm one night, a surprise to me, for it seemed that the wind blew calmly on the high plateau, using its energy in ceaseless breezes, not in sudden destructive cyclonic convulsion. But one day the breeze failed. The clouds came up from all quarters, opening and shutting, closing in the blue, dark and thunderous with pallid leaden edges. We sat in our camp, not thinking greatly about the matter, for so many threatened storms had blown over. But presently Jones got up, and went across the creek to the house, remarking that he thought we should have rain. The young Englishman soon followed, leaving me with Alexander, a Californian herder, and Bill, a Missourian.

Presently we heard thunder, and a few heavy drops of rain fell. We left the fire, and went into the big tent and sat down. Then there was a low roar of wind, and the rush of rain came with the wind and struck the tent, that bellied in and strained like a sail at sea. One moment of suspense, and, before we could move, the tent was fiat on top of us, and the howl of the gale and the pattering of rain so tremendous that we could not hear ourselves shouting. One by one we crawled out, and in a moment were drenched to the skin. Our oilskins were under the tent ; it was utterly impossible to get them. The force of the wind was so great that I could not stand upright, and the rain, coming level on it, blinded me if I tried to look to windward. The lightning, too, was fearful, and the thunder seemed right over and round me. In the dark I got separated from my companions, and crawled on my hands and knees to a small mesquite and held on to it, while every blast bent it down right over me. After a while I grew tired of staying there, and in a little lull I made a bolt for the end of the corral, which was a stone wall. Here I got some shelter, though I was afraid that the whole wall might blow over on me. As it was, some of the top stones were dislodged. So I stood up and leaned on it, with my face towards the wind and my broad-brimmed hat over my eyes to keep the sharp sting of the rain off. In front of me were the sheep, and leaning over the wall I could touch them ; yet such was the darkness that I could see nothing till the lightning came, and then they stood out before me a mass of white wool, with the lightning glistening on their eyeballs for a momentary space. Then darkness. In one flash I could see Alexander under one mesquite, and, twenty yards from him, Bill under another. I shouted to them, but the wind carried my voice away. Here I stayed for two hours. Then the wind began to lull and the lightning to grow more distant ; so, plucking up courage, and waiting for lightning to give me my direction, I walked over to Alexander, and then all three got together again. I wanted them to come over to the house, for we could go round by the road without crossing the creek, which here ran in a horse-

H shoe. Alexander said he would come, for he did not want to be wet all night without any sleep, but we could not persuade Bill. No, he wasn't going to get lost on the prairie such a night as that ; he knew where he was, and that was something. So we left him. It took us more than an hour to go less than a mile, for it was still blowing and raining hard, and the lightning was even yet vivid enough to blind us. Once we got off the road, but I managed to find it again, and about one o'clock we came to the house, where Jones and Harris laughed at the wretched figures we cut. However, we got out blankets, and, throwing off our wet clothes, we soon forgot the storm. Next morning the creek was full to its banks, and rising yet. We found Bill at the camp, still wet through, though he had managed to find some dry matches and light a fire. Both tents were down. The provisions in the smaller one were all wet and much damage done. Still it was well nothing worse happened. I do not think I shall ever forget that night in Texas.

Three days afterwards, when Jones began to haul his wool to town, I went in with him and Colonel Taylor, his next neighbour, who was hauling for him. It took a day and a half to get to Colorado, and during the first day I killed seven rattlesnakes and two others.

On getting near to town we began to see signs of the damage done by the storm. We were on the banks of the Lone Wolf Creek, that runs into the Colorado River. The waters had run out on the prairie on both sides and swept the grass fiat. Against every tree was a bunch of drifted bush and grasses, while here and there I saw a poor little prairie owl or prairie dog, or a snake, strangled by the water or struck by blown branches. In town, houses had been washed away bodily, going down the creek, and others had been turned round on the wooden blocks beneath them. The whole place wore a dishevelled, disarranged look, as if some mischievous giant had been through it, making sport for himself. It was the severest gale ever known in North-west Texas.