Waifs and Strays, etc | Page 9

ov amusement ther po' gal's got," said Sam aloud, with
a sob, which unaccustomed sound caused Mexico to shy a bit. A-livin
with a sore-headed kiote like me--a low-down skunk that ought to be
licked to death with a saddle cinch--a-cookin' and a-washin' and a-livin'
on mutton and beans and me abusin' her fur takin' a squint or two in a
little book!"
He thought of Marthy as she had been when he first met her in
Dogtown--smart, pretty, and saucy--before the sun had turned the roses
in her cheeks brown and the silence of the chaparral had tamed her
ambitions.
"Ef I ever speaks another hard word to ther little gal," muttered Sam,
"or fails in the love and affection that's coming to her in the deal, I
hopes a wildcat'll t'ar me to pieces."
He knew what he would do. He would write to Garcia & Jones, his San
Antonio merchants where he bought his supplies and sold his wool, and
have them send down a big box of novels and reading matter for
Marthy. Things were going to be different. He wondered whether a

little piano could be placed in one of the rooms of the ranch house
without the family having to move out of doors.
In nowise calculated to allay his self-reproach was the thought that
Marthy and Randy would have to pass the night alone. In spite of their
bickerings, when night came Marthy was wont to dismiss her fears of
the country, and rest her head upon Sam's strong arm with a sigh of
peaceful content and dependence. And were her fears so groundless?
Sam thought of roving, marauding Mexicans, of stealthy cougars that
sometimes invaded the ranches, of rattlesnakes, centipedes, and a dozen
possible dangers. Marthy would be frantic with fear. Randy would cry,
and call for dada to come.
Still the interminable succession of stretches of brush, cactus, and
mesquite. Hollow after hollow, slope after slope--all exactly alike --all
familiar by constant repetition, and yet all strange and new. If he could
only arrive ~somewhere.~
The straight line is Art. Nature moves in circles. A straightforward man
is more an artificial product than a diplomatist is. Men lost in the snow
travel in exact circles until they sink, exhausted, as their footprints have
attested. Also, travellers in philosophy and other mental processes
frequently wind up at their starting-point.
It was when Sam Webber was fullest of contrition and good resolves
that Mexico, with a heavy sigh, subsided from his regular, brisk trot
into a slow complacent walk. They were winding up an easy slope
covered with brush ten or twelve feet high.
"I say now, Mex," demurred Sam, "this here won't do. I know you're
plumb tired out, but we got ter git along. Oh, Lordy, ain't there no mo'
houses in the world!" He gave Mexico a smart kick with his heels.
Mexico gave a protesting grunt as if to say: "What's the use of that,
now we're so near?" He quickened his gait into a languid trot.
Rounding a great clump of black chaparral he stopped short. Sam
dropped the bridle reins and sat, looking into the back door of his own
house, not ten yards away.
Marthy, serene and comfortable, sat in her rocking-chair before the
door in the shade of the house, with her feet resting luxuriously upon
the steps. Randy, who was playing with a pair of spurs on the ground,
looked up for a moment at his father and went on spinning the rowels
and singing a little song. Marthy turned her head lazily against the back

of the chair and considered the arrivals with emotionless eyes. She held
a book in her lap with her finger holding the place.
Sam shook himself queerly, like a man coming out of a dream, and
slowly dismounted. He moistened his dry lips.
"I see you are still a-settin'," he said, "a-readin' of them billy- by-dam
yaller-back novils."
Sam had traveled round the circle and was himself again.

THE RUBBER PLANT'S STORY
We rubber plants form the connecting link between the vegetable
kingdom and the decorations of a Waldorf-Astoria scene in a Third
Avenue theatre. I haven't looked up our family tree, but I believe we
were raised by grafting a gum overshoe on to a 30-cent table d'hote
stalk of asparagus. You take a white bulldog with a Bourke Cockran air
of independence about him and a rubber plant and there you have the
fauna and flora of a flat. What the shamrock is to Ireland the rubber
plant is to the dweller in flats and furnished rooms. We get moved from
one place to another so quickly that the only way we can get our picture
taken is with a kinetoscope. We are the vagrant vine and