Sixes and Sevens | Page 6

while the Kiowa took his siesta in the

burning sunshine at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot
thinking what a happy world he lived in, and how kind it is to the ones
whose mission in life it is to give entertainment and pleasure. Here he
had food and lodging as good as he had ever longed for; absolute
immunity from care or exertion or strife; an endless welcome, and a
host whose delight at the sixteenth repetition of a song or a story was as
keen as at its initial giving. Was there ever a troubadour of old who
struck upon as royal a castle in his wanderings? While he lay thus,
meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly
'frolic through the yard; a covey of white-topknotted blue quail would
run past, in single file, twenty yards away; a paisano bird, out hunting
for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping
flourishes of its' long tail. In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony
with the Dantesque face grew fat and almost smiling. The troubadour
was at the end of his wanderings.
Old man Ellison was his own vaciero. That means that he supplied his
sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own labours instead
of hiring a vaciero. On small ranches it is often done.
One morning he started for the camp of Incarnacion Felipe de la Cruz y
Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the week's usual rations
of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail
from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King
James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, Kentucky-bred horse.
King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it because
it seemed to fit him better, and also because it seemed to please his
majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo
plaza in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he
was the loudest and most offensive bully and braggart and bad man in
southwest Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and
the more noise he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers
it is always the quiet, mild-mannered man with light blue eyes and a
low voice who turns out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in
this story such is not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a
large, loudmouthed rough-houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue

eyes sitting quietly in a corner, and you will see something doing in the
corner every time.
King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce,
two-hundred-pound sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October
strawberry, and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for
eyes. On that day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-coloured, with the
exception of certain large areas which were darkened by transudations
due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing and
garnishings about him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into
immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun
laid across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges
shining in it -- but your mind skidded off such accessories; what held
your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for eyes.
This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you
count up in the baron's favour that he was sixty-five and weighed
ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he
(the baron) had a hankering for the vita simplex and had no gun with
him and wouldn't have' used it if he had, you can't censure him if I tell
you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his wrinkles
went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he was not the
kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the mile-an-hour
pony (no difficult feat), and saluted the formidable monarch.
King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old
snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't you?" said he. "What
right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"
"I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison,
mildly.
"Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired
yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it up.
You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got to
git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any room in it
for snoozers. This range you've got