“Anyone who ever spoke of the ‘peace and quiet of ranch life’ lived in New York and dreamed about it. In twenty-four hours I have discovered that we have an ex-convict for a trusted cook, and have received as guests a man with his wife and resident affinity. We have had a surprise party and I have danced with all the blemished characters the country boasts of, until six o’clock in the morning of the Sabbath day, with never a qualm of conscience. What do you suppose has become of my moral standards?”
Owen was amused. He asked me, quizzically, what I thought they would be by the end of a year.
“Mercy!” I replied, “at the rate they are being overthrown, there won’t be enough left to consider, unless”—I thought a moment—“unless I can reconstruct a more enduring set from parts of the old.”
III—THE ROOT CELLAR
“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The phrase kept haunting me all through these first days when everything was so new and strange. I almost felt as though I had passed into a new phase of existence.
Except for Owen, there was no point of contact between the world of cities and people I had just left and this land of cattle and cow-punchers, bounded by the sky-rimmed hills. In Owen, however, the East and the West did meet. He understood and belonged to both and adapted himself as easily to the one as to the other. Wearing his derby, he belonged to the life of the East; in his broad-brimmed Stetson, he was a living part of the West.
The compelling reality of this new life affected me deeply. Non-essentials counted for nothing. There were no artificial problems or values.
No one in the country cared who you might have been or who you were. The Mayflower and Plymouth Rock meant nothing here. It would be thought you were speaking of some garden flowers or some breed of chickens.
The one thing of vital importance was what you were—how you adjusted yourself to meet conditions as you found them, and how nearly you reached, or how far you fell below their measure of man or woman.
I felt as though up to this time I had been in life’s kindergarten, but that I had now entered into its school, and I realized that only as I passed the given tests should I succeed.