I Married a Ranger

by Dama Margaret Smith

Before the dinner was over a call came from the public camp ground for aid. Our party broke up, and we girls went to the assistance of a fourteen-year-old mother whose baby was ill. Bad food and ignorance had been too much for the little nameless fellow, and he died about midnight. There was a terrible electric storm raging, and rain poured down through the old tent where the baby died.

Ranger Winess carried the little body down to our house and we took the mother and followed. We put him in a dresser drawer and set to work to make clothes to bury him in. Ranger Fisk and Ranger Winess made the tiny casket, and we rummaged through our trunks for materials. A sheer dimity frock of mine that had figured in happier scenes made the shroud, and Virginia gave a silken scarf to line the coffin. Ranger Winess tacked muslin over the rough boards so it would look nicer to the young mother. There were enough of my flowers left by Dollar Mark to make a wreath, and that afternoon a piteous procession wended its way to the cemetery. And such a cemetery! Near the edge of the Canyon, a mile or so from Headquarters it lay, a bleak neglected spot in a sagebrush flat with nothing to mark the cattle-tramped graves, of which there were four. At the edge of the clearing, under a little pine, was the open grave, and while the coffin was lowered the men sang. I never heard a more lonesome sound than those men singing there over that little grave. White Mountain read the burial service.

We took the mother back to our cabin while the grave was being filled in. I used to see her walking out there each morning with a few wild flowers to put on the mound. Ranger Winess managed to ride that way and keep her in sight until she returned to the camp ground. While the blue lupine blossomed she kept the mound covered with the fragrant flowers.

Ranger Fisk had a vacation about this time, and he insisted White Mountain and I should get married while he could act as best man. So we journeyed to Flagstaff with him and were married. It seemed more like a wedding in a play than anything else. Ranger Fisk was burdened with the responsibility of the wedding-ring, license, minister's fee, and flowers for the occasion. He herded us into the clerk's office to secure the necessary papers, and the girl clerk that issued them was a stickler for form. We gave our names, our parents' names, our ages, birth-places, and previous states of servitude. I was getting ready to show her my vaccination scar, when she turned coldly critical eyes on me and asked: "Are you white?" This for a Virginian to answer was quite a blow.

We went to the minister's house, and since two witnesses were necessary, the wife was called in from her washing. She came into the parlor drying her hands on her apron, which she discarded by rolling up and tossing into a chair. Ranger Fisk produced the ring, with a flourish, at the proper moment, gave the minister his money, after all the "I do's" had been said, and the wedding was over. So we were married. No wedding march, no flower girls, no veil, no rice, no wedding breakfast. Just a solemn promise to respect each other and be faithful. Perhaps the promise meant just a little more to us because it was not smothered in pomp.

For a wedding-trip we visited the cliff dwellings in Walnut Canyon. Here, hundreds of years ago, other newly married couples had set up housekeeping and built their dreams into the walls that still tell the world that we are but newcomers on this hemisphere.

The news of our marriage reached the Canyon ahead of us, and we found our little cabin filled with our friends and their gifts. They spent a merry evening with us and as we bade them goodnight we felt that such friendship was beyond price indeed.

But after midnight! The great open spaces were literally filled with a most terrifying and ungodly racket. I heard shrieks and shots, and tin pans banging. Horrors! The cook was on another vanilla-extract jamboree!! But—drums boomed and bugles blared. Ah, of course! The Indians were on the warpath; I never entirely trusted those red devils. I looked around for a means of defense, but the Chief told me not to be alarmed—it was merely a "shivaree."

"Now, what might that be?" I inquired. I supposed he meant at least a banshee, or at the very least an Irish wake! It was, however, nothing more or less than our friends serenading us. They came inside, thirty strong; the walls of the cabin fairly bulged. They played all sorts of tricks on us, and just as they left someone dropped a handful of sulphur on top of the stove. Naturally, we went outside with our visitors to wish them "godspeed!"

"I'll never get married again; at least not in the land of the shivaree," I told White Mountain as we tried to repair the damage.