USA > California > Sonoma County > Casa Grande : a California pastoral > Part 2
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"I don't care what you can pay. You asked what I'd take. You know now, don't ye?"
"I know what you ask. But now that you must give up this land-move off-"
"We're not going to give up this land," inter- rupted the widow, "so there's no use talking. We might sell, if we could get a fair price. You nor nobody else '11 put us off-not so long as we can shoot." She changed the arm encircling the post.
"I bought and paid for this land," he said, ignor- ing the threat.
"I don't know what you've bought, nor what you've stolen, nor what you'd like to steal. This is my place. We've lived here eight years-more than the law requires to get title." She stepped back and leaned against the house, as if she had finished.
Her caller was persistent. He rode nearer and asked why they didn't get title.
"Wait till they settle that Aguas Frias grant," she answered.
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"You saw the surveyors," he insisted, "running the lines of the Aguas Frias on the other side of this valley-those lines take in your land."
"Yes; we saw men driving stakes over there. I pulled 'em up. No surveyors can survey us out of here !"
He suggested that they buy his title.
She contemptuously answered that she wouldn't buy what was already hers.
"My dear woman," he continued, in great per- plexity, "can't you understand that the Government never intended this land for settlement until after the grant lines had been established? You're a squat- ter-always have been-never had any right here, never could nor can get title. I-"
"Why didn't some one find that out before?" she interrupted. "We've been here long enough!"
He saw what a useless mission he had undertaken ; he would make a last offer, and go. "I'm simply repeating the decision made by the court a few weeks since," he said, quietly, in conclusion. "I don't pro- pose to take any advantage of you, but this is my land. I'll buy your improvements and anything you
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don't want to take away, rather than make further trouble; or I'll sell the land at two dollars an acre."
The girl stepped resolutely to the front of the porch, and the caller saw that his errand was not yet ended. "See here, Mr. Miller," she indignantly ex- claimed, "maw's had her say ; I'll have mine. Even if maw's willing to sell, we ain't. We-the boys and me-have something to say. We've worked and grubbed and saved on this place till we've as much interest as any one, and we won't sell; neither will we buy-it's ours !"
"That's for you to decide," he answered, indif- ferently.
"We don't want to sell, and you can't put us off !" "Oh, come now, Miss Clark-"
"My name's Belle," she interrupted; "it's good enough for me!"
"I beg your pardon, Belle." He looked kindly at her. "I didn't come to discuss what I can do, nor what you can do. I want to pay you for your im- provements, or I want pay for my land. When I must put you off, I shall apply to the court for a writ of ejectment and let the sheriff execute it."
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"We'll defy the court, and the sheriff, too," she wrathfully answered. "We'll band together, and then see what kind of a fight we'll make. The sheriff won't bother a handful of settlers 'way out here in Dry Creek. Not much. Nobody round here's going to fight us ; we're all in the same fix !"
"I didn't know that women could be so childish, so unreasonable," exclaimed Miller, in disgust. He dismounted, readjusted the saddle-blanket and took Peggy by the bit. She had grown restless and would no longer stand to his command.
"We're not unreasonable," defiantly answered Belle. "It's our home, and we want it. We've dragged around from one place to another till we're sick of moving."
"Why did you move here, anyway?" he impa- tiently demanded.
"It was the only place we could find," she an- swered, rather more gently than she had yet spoken. "We've lived in Missouri, in Kentucky, in Tennes- see, in Utah, and now here. We crossed the plains in '50, starting from Southern, Utah. When we reached Los Angeles everything had been sold to
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take us through. We lived six months in 'Frisco, and when we had saved enough to buy an outfit we started to find land." She threw back a heavy braid of wavy hair and pressed her hand to her forehead.
"We crossed over to Oakland," she continued, "and drove up the bay-shore to Benicia; all the way it was Spanish grants-no Government land-every- thing held in the name of grants by rich land-grab- bers. I believe now that not half were grants-just lies to keep poor people like us off the land and turn it over to cattle and horses." Indignation made her pause again.
"It was the same this side the bay. All the good land was grant. Grant, grant, morning, noon and night. Do you wonder that we are sick of the name?"
The ranchero looked up in surprise. She was growing confidential-asking his opinion. Only nineteen ! Her mind was mature for her years, but her pearly complexion under its hue of tan, the scar- let lips and clear, hazel eyes, bespoke youth-vivid, glowing youth.
"We heard of this little valley at last, out here be-
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yond the reach of grants." She spoke absently, the memory of their trip still vivid. "It was in May when we came. After the sand and mud of 'Frisco, Dry Creek was a garden. We all said, 'Here's the place for a home,' and here we settled. We've worked and fought and saved to make it what it is. Our dead father-" Her voice failed, and she mutely pointed to a little picket-fenced enclosure, the green of sweetbriars massed in it pink with blos- soms. She looked shamefaced that, in her excite- ment, he had caught her yielding to an emotion for her dead, and went on evenly again: "Now you come and claim this for your land. I say you're a liar, you're a thief-just like those other land-grab- bers, from Oakland to Cloverdale."
The girl had made an eloquent plea for posses- sion; not by voice alone, but by lips, eyes, by her youth, by every curve of a figure moulded in unre- strained activity. It was not enough that hands and arms had emphasised her speech, but all the yielding lines from throat to foot had rippled in the swing of earnestness. If her coarse, almost masculine gar- ments failed to hide feminine graces, what symmetry
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might not a modish gown on her reveal, what per- sonal charms might not a more conventional garb disclose ?
The man's resolution weakened before the charm of intense, unconscious womanliness. Emotion, when aroused, does not reason, and that was what he was facing. To an undeveloped nature like Belle's what difference is right or wrong when feel- ing stirs? Here were their home, their fireside, the resting-place of their dead, all worth dying for. The pity of it was that the administration of public lands had been lax and incompetent. His reflections sug- gested one more question.
"Did your father ever ask a lawyer about the right to locate here?"
"Yes," answered the girl, eager to vindicate their possession. "Judge Aiken told him this land was outside the grant boundaries open to settlers."
"And," added her mother, anxious that nothing should be forgotten, "he went to the Land Office in 'Frisco, and they told him the land was outside the grant, and Government land."
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"Did he file a claim on it, then?" asked Miller, a new interest in his tones.
"No," reluctantly answered the girl. "He wanted to, but they told him they couldn't take his money till the Aguas Frias had been-something," she vaguely concluded.
"Been confirmed?" suggested her questioner.
"Yes. Till the ranch had been confirmed.
The ranchero's anticipations fell again. These
people had had premonitions of a conflict when the time came to perfect title to their claims. The prob- abilities had evidently been intelligently discussed. He still felt justified in his determination to recover his rights, but not quite so resolute in enforcing them. He need but look about him to see what this home-building had been to the family, and especially to the girl, whose feminine touches showed every- where. The house, partly shaded by spreading oaks ; the garden; the old hound, stiff and rheumatic, loll- ing in the sun ; the flock of noisy, scratching fowls- told of home love and contentment, appealing forci- bly to like sentiments in the man's nature.
Even if Miller's mission had been thus far inef-
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fectual, his call on these neighbours had at least pro- moted a better understanding. He knew more of the motives at the base of the girl's antagonism to his coming on the range; and she, too, now realised that the new master of Aguas Frias had some justifica- tion for claiming the land in Dry Creek. She began to appreciate that, after all, he was human, and something in his blue eyes-was it admiration of her ?- gave a new interest to his face.
The young people were indulging in somewhat personal reveries, when Tom, the older of the two sons, and younger than Belle, rode into the yard. Across the withers of his horse was a dead stag, a rifle lying on the deer's body. He came nearer to the group and sat looking questioningly at Miller. Belle stepped from the porch and told her brother that Mr. Miller had come to put them off the land.
The hazel eyes of the slim, wiry youth of seven- teen flashed, and his sallow skin grew darker. Lift- ing his rifle with shaking fingers, he swung toward the caller, and suddenly asked him if he were armed.
Miller stepped quite close to his challenger and
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confronted him with a costume devoid of the slight- est trace of warfare.
"I'll shoot you like a skunk," said the boy, "if you come here again. I'd do it now, only I ain't shoot- ing unarmed men."
The unarmed man smiled good-naturedly. His manner was neither reckless nor indifferent, but quietly alert, as if he knew his danger and was pre- pared to meet it. He still held Peggy by the bit, and the mare sniffed suspiciously at Tom's mount and the dead deer, and laid back her ears protest- ingly. Her master placed his free hand quietly on the other horse's neck and, looking Tom in the eye, slowly said :
"Do you think that shooting will settle this mat- ter, my boy ? My title is a public record, and it can be changed only with my consent or a decree of court. One court has already decreed that this land is mine, and I want it. I'm willing to pay for your improvements and your stock and your implements, but I want the land, or I want pay for it."
"Where did you get this land?" asked Tom, with rising voice. "You stole it. You're a thief, a grab-
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ber, and you think you can come here and scare us off. You can't! There's somebody besides women in this family. Try to put us off, and see. I'll shoot the first man that sets foot here, whether it'll settle anything or not !"
"What's the matter with you all?" asked a drawl- ing voice. Wash, the youngest of the family, had slouched up unnoticed, and stood behind them, his rifle over his shoulder, a pair of jack-rabbits in hand. He was fourteen, stoop-shouldered, even-tempered, and as slow of speech as the others were quick.
His sister regarded him with irritation, caused, apparently, by his easy curiosity when the others were boiling with resentment. "Matter enough," she assured the youngster. "Miller wants to put us off our land-claims it's his."
"Will he give us anything to move?" shrewdly asked the newcomer.
"For the improvements," answered Belle.
"Going to take it?"
"We're going to fight. We'll never get off alive!" "You hear me," drawled the boy, "and sell. No use fighting."
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"No use anything, if we were all like you, Wash Clark." The girl's eyes snapped and her cheeks showed deep colouring. She walked back to the porch, and turned at the stone step. "You're a cow- ard. You wouldn't fight a jack-rabbit unless you had a gun."
"Yes," replied the boy, with placid unconcern, "I'll fight if there's anything to gain. I'll not fight windmills, though."
"Windmills !" exclaimed Belle. Words failed her for the moment.
The man who was an unwilling observer of this attempt at family discipline relaxed the tension of the last minute or two. The old humourous light again played in his eyes, and he wondered what the boy knew about Don Quixote. The girl evidently was not equal to Wash's slow emotions, nor his droll fancy. The prospect of a tragedy was rapidly be- coming farcical.
"Who's fighting windmills?" asked Belle, at last.
"The fellow that fights Government lines," said her brother. "I've been thinking about him ever
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since the surveyors put the stakes over there. The land must be his."
"That was the decision of court the other day," explained Miller. "You heard it."
"Why," asked the boy, addressing Miller, "did you get this land? I thought you bought the valleys of the Aguas Frias and the Calabezas." He was facing the man, his rough, tanned hands resting on the muzzle of his gun, its butt on the ground. There was an expression on his face of wise curiosity.
The owner of Aguas Frias was pleased to have an opportunity to explain how the eastern boundary of his ranch became involved, and he briefly told the boy why he had been obliged to accept Dry Creek Valley in lieu of the more desirable Calabezas lands.
"It's all a lie," said Belle, joining the group. "You wanted this land for your stock, and if the Govern- ment has put it inside your lines, it's because you've bought us out. But you'll never live to call it yours. When we move off, you'll never move on!"
The girl was getting beside herself ; so was Peggy. The mare lunged on the bit, tried to rear out of her master's grasp, and run from the discord evident in
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tone, if not in word. The man, too, was ready to go, and was steadying himself for a leap to the sad- dle, when Tom again called to him:
"Get out of here quick, John Miller, before I put a ball through you." The boy's voice was pitched high, and he waved the rifle threateningly.
As soon as Peggy felt Miller's weight in the sad- dle she darted for the opening in the fence. He brought her back to the angry group and turned to Belle as the virtual head of the family. In his glance was a fire she had never seen, and instinctively she drew back. She knew that he had reached the end of his patience and that his will was masterful.
"I didn't come to make trouble," he said, gently. "I'll leave. Don't work yourselves into unnecessary passion. I've been fair and neighbourly. Now I'll turn you over to the sheriff. Shoot him."
The caller swayed in his seat, and that gave the mare her cue. She bounded for the bars and cleared them with a leap. When on the trail she increased her speed, crossing the brook in two strides, and stretched away up the hillside in the direction from which they had come a little while before.
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The widow, watching the horse and rider disap- pear up the trail, remarked that he leaped their fences as if they already had no right there.
"I want to hear a fop like him talk about turning us over to the sheriff," scornfully observed Tom, throwing the stag on the ground and dismounting. "Look at the bit of pigskin he calls a saddle! Look at the pipe-stem legs of his mare! I've a notion to follow him and show him how to ride."
"Don't," said Belle, drily, walking up to the deer.
Her brother sharply faced her, and wanted to know why not.
"You saw him clear the bars? You saw him cross the brook?" The girl nodded wisely. "The horse that can follow him don't happen to be on this range-to-day-nor in the country."
CHAPTER III
MY SOUL HAD FAILED ME
B AILEY closely followed Miller's fruitless expe- dition to Dry Creek. Before the master of Casa Grande made his final cast the sheriff had been given an opportunity to see the squatters, and his interview failed in its purpose quite as dismally as the one first attempted by the ranchero. The friend of the settlers, the man who knew them well, who had grown up among them, cheerfully set out this morn- ing on his self-appointed mission. He now was riding from defeat toward Casa Grande, stoop- shouldered and depressed.
Along the grassy trail the horse stepped alertly to the jangle of little bells on heavy roweled spurs. The soil was warm with the fever of reproduction, and through the heavens fleecy clouds strayed lazily, now and then crossing the sun. The god of day
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was in his holy temple, and the earth gave prodi- gally both praise and perfume. The joy of it all, however, did not gladden the approaching rider, for duty, grim and resolute, threatened his undoing.
The Clarks had refused, with childlike consis- tency, either to buy Miller's title or sell their im- provements. Others of the squatters proved quite as unreasonable. Both propositions had been dis- cussed by the colony, and the decision reached was unanimous. The next move would require force, armed force, and perhaps bloodshed. What, then, would become of the sheriff's day dreams?
Bailey's plan of life, on its domestic side, included Belle. He never had consulted her, except in fancy, when through lonely watches her spirit waited with his. He was not imaginative, and he had not deemed it necessary to make a confidante of the girl. She long ago must have seen that he favoured her, and that was sufficient. His purpose had seemed natural and reasonable until to-day, when a woman's whim unseated him. Through the gray dawn of his court- ship he had been herding phantoms, soft figures moving as if alive; but in the light of sudden defeat
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those uncertain forms had taken shape-bleak rocks and gnarled stumps beside a lonely and unfamiliar trail, rotting logs on the uplands, and clumps of brush in the gullies.
To get back again into the dawning; to feel that his plan of life would develop as he had dreamed of it! He never had thought of putting her love to the test; there had been no need for it. But this morn- ing the test unconsciously had been thrust upon her, and it shocked him to discover how small a place he filled in her regard. He had taken too much for granted, and he harshly condemned the serenity of his assumption that all he need do was ask and she would yield the utmost he required of her.
He realised, at last, that she must be won, and his first impulse was to temporise with duty. If he ejected the squatters, he would forfeit her friend- ship, and that of her family; it was inevitable, and a way must be found to avoid the issue for the time. Always before he had done his duty unfalteringly ; it had been simply a matter of dollars and cents and the demands of office. Now he felt in his obligation the sting of personal interest, and he wavered under
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an appalling prospect of loss, unable to realise that he never could hold a woman's esteem unless he pre- served self-respect.
The horseman roused from his moody reverie when he saw just below him, farther down the slope, the red-tiled roof of Casa Grande. Among clustering oaks and madroños, the house, a hollow square, stood rugged and unpretentious, typical of the man who had chosen it as his dwelling-place. There was an air about it of comfort and prosperity, stirring in the sheriff a quite unreasonable feeling of resent- ment. Yet some one must bear the blame of his still-smarting discomfiture, and was it not on Miller' account that he had sallied forth this morning?
Bailey's train of thought changed and his irrita- tion deepened. Everything turned for the ranchero's advancement. The road he travelled was wide and smooth, while other men must dig and hew and blast. The sheriff would not be another instrument insuring progress for him to whom success was easy. The officer of the court, in dispossessing the squat- ters, would see the law executed with justice to all;
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his oath required that; petty quarrels of neighbours must be adjusted without his aid.
The rider moved petulantly in his saddle, and his mount instinctively broke to a canter, to be suddenly pulled up to a walk again. As they came nearer the dwelling Bailey could see a bell on the old watch- tower rising from the centre of the hollow square. While he gazed, a rope tightened, and the bell turned over, clanging the noon hour. Many years that sound had echoed martially in the wooded foothills, and to what purpose? Now it summoned tired and hungry men to rest and refreshment, waking, for the first time, a sense of homeliness. Even the sad- dle-horses had learned the meaning of it, and whin- nied responsively.
Bailey did not care to eat ; the tolling melody from the tower did not stir his appetite, but it brought to his imagination the old cook, who, day after day, faithfully rang the summons. A lesson was in that solitary character. However much the man that was hesitating might despise the Mexican race and all spirits kindred to it, he realised with almost sav- age resentment that in Manuel, who now served
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cheerfully, although he once had been served, there was no faltering in duty.
As the visitor came nearer, the sound of hoofs on the road leading to the stable told the inmates of Casa Grande that a stranger was approaching. The range horses were barefooted; their tread on the well-worn thoroughfare fell muffled and shuffling, easily distinguished from the solid ring of shod hoofs. Gyp, the tawny collie, and Manuel appeared at the open front door, the dog to bark her welcome and leap to the muzzle of the sheriff's horse, the man to wave greeting.
In the stable Miller was filling mangers. He looked smilingly at the visitor and continued his task, pitching hay with the ease of a trained labourer. Bailey watched furtively, and wondered at the pleas- ure his host took in menial tasks he could well afford to hire the doing of. The motive must be more com- pelling than sordidness, for Miller's disposition was generous. The caller's sluggish perception caught at the idea of duty, a vague suggestion as yet, but one that grew steadily in his mind. He turned alertly at last, took his welcome as a matter of
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course, as the host had done, stripped saddle and bridle from his mount, and tied the animal in a stall. Primitive souls need few words to determine the quality of hospitality.
'A's the two friends stepped from the building, the vaqueros galloped up, shouting and cutting boyish capers. They had earned an hour's rest, and they took it strenuously, as they took work. Close at their heels were the dogs, almost human in their understanding of the riders' moods and purposes. To the clamour of the men was added the yelping of the pack, never too weary to respond to the humour of their adored masters. While never too weary to respond, they sometimes were too footsore, and then they must be tied up until bleeding soles could be renewed again. Even they had duties to perform, in spite of bodily discomfort, and to their credit it was that Aguas Frias was kept quite free from four- footed prowlers.
Miller carried a forkful of hay which he put in Peggy's box-stall, opening to the courtyard. The mare's head was out of the open upper half of her door, and she whinnied and laid back her ears, giving
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to her intelligent countenance an aspect of harmless viciousness entirely ignored by her master. After he had petted her and smoothed her glossy neck, she must lower her velvety muzzle to the caresses of the collie, which often came to visit the comfortable prisoner.
By the side of Peggy's box was the deserted stall of Mad Anthony Wayne, the monarch of the cow herd. The old fellow was not idle these days, for his domain was wide and his cares many. He was a courageous fighter, bulk and strength making him formidable. Never yet had invading hoof or claw, after giving battle to the bull, emerged alive from conflict. He was the pride of every man of them, an unconscious hero placing duty above even life itself.
Wherever the sheriff turned, a lesson of duty chal- lenged him. Like the wave to a sturdy swimmer, it was plunged into and buffeted here with resolute strokes. No holding back nor complaining, but each allotment was cheerfully undertaken and carried to the end, thus adding to the comfort and prosperity characteristic of Aguas Frias.
·
Seven men surrounded the dining-table in the
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centre of the big living-room and dropped into places, with a cover or two to spare, and from the heaping platter of stew a savoury vapour rose appe- tisingly. The vaqueros took their meals seriously, as they did all things that came to them, without dis- cussion, and refused to linger over even their pleas- ures.
Behind the company, in silent expectancy, ranged the dogs, enviously watching every motion of knife and fork-their dinner, a feast or a famine, depend- ing on what remained. There was little promise of many basketfuls, but they stealthily eyed the cook now and then, as if with faith in his ability to add to the fragments. When the meal was eaten, the inevitable box of tobacco appeared, and cigarettes were rolled and lighted.
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