I Married a Ranger

by Dama Margaret Smith

I was hangin' 'round the town, and I didn't have a dime.
I was out of work and loafin' all the time.
When up stepped a man, and he said, "I suppose
You're a bronco-buster. I can tell by your clothes."
Well, I thought that I was, and I told him the same.
I asked him if he had any bad ones to tame?
"I have an old pony what knows how to buck;
At stacking up cowboys he has all the luck."'
I asked him what'd he pay if I was to stay
And ride his old pony around for a day.
"I'll give you ten dollars;" I said, "That's my chance,"
Throwed my saddle in the buckboard and headed for the ranch.
Got up next morning, and right after chuck
Went down to the corral to see that pony buck.
He was standin' in the corner, standin' all alone——
That pig-eyed pony, a strawberry roan!
Little pin ears that were red at the tip;
The X-Y-Z was stamped on his hip.
Narrow in the chest, with a scar on his jaw,
What all goes with an old outlaw!
First came the bridle, then there was a fight;
But I throwed on my saddle and screwed it down tight,
Stepped to his middle, feelin' mighty fine,
Said: "Out of the way, boys, watch him unwind!"
Well, I guess Old Roaney sure unwound;
Didn't spend much of his time on the ground!
Went up in the East, come down in the West——
Stickin' to his middle, I was doin' my best!
He went in the air with his belly to the sun
The old sun-fishin' son-of-a-gun!
Lost both the stirrups and I lost my hat
Reached for the horn, blinder than a bat.
Then Old Roaney gently slid into high,
Left me sittin' on nothin' but the sky.
There ain't no cowboy who is alive
Can ride Old Roaney when he makes his high dive!

When the piano player stopped and Frank struck a few soft chords on his guitar I knew they were getting sentimental. Pretty soon someone would begin to hum: "When the dew is on the rose, and the world is all repose." ... Those rangers lived close to danger and hardships every day, but they had more real sentiment in their makeup than any type of men I know. Maybe it's because women are so scarce around them that they hold all womanhood in high regard. Most of them dreamed of a home and wife and children, but few of them felt they had a right to ask a woman to share their primitive mode of living. They might not jump up to retrieve a dropped handkerchief, or stand at attention when a woman entered a room, but in their hearts they had a deep respect for every woman that showed herself worthy.

Now and then, a certain son of Scotland, Major Hunter Clarkson, dropped in. He was a real musician, and while I sewed and the Chief smoked he treated us to an hour of true melody. He used to play the bagpipes at home with his four brothers, he said, and he admitted that at times the racket they made jarred his mother's china from the shelves!

He had served with the British forces in Egypt, and if he could have known how interested we were in his experiences, he would have given us more than a bare hint of the scenes that were enacted during the defense of the Dardanelles and the entrance into Jerusalem.

One night he was telling us something about the habits of the Turks they fought, when the telephone rang and interrupted the narrative, which was never finished. The Chief had to go and investigate an attempted suicide.

It seemed that a lad under twenty, in Cleveland, had seen on a movie screen a picture of Grand Canyon. He tucked that vision away somewhere in his distorted brain, and when he had his next quarrel with his mother he gathered together all his worldly wealth and invested it in a ticket to Grand Canyon. There he intended to end his troubles, and make his mother sorry she hadn't sewed on a button the instant he had asked her to! That was a touching scene he pictured to himself—his heart-broken mother weeping with remorse because her son had jumped into the Canyon.

But! When he reached the Rim and looked over, it was a long way to the bottom, and there were sharp rocks there. Perhaps no one would ever find him, and what's the use of killing one's self if nobody knows about it? Something desperate had to be done, however, so he shot himself where he fancied his heart was located (he hit his stomach, which was a pretty close guess) with a cheap pistol he carried, hurled the gun into the Canyon, and started walking back to Headquarters. He met Ranger Winess making a patrol and reported to him that he had committed suicide! Rangers West and Winess took care of him through the night, with Nurse Catti's supervision, and the next day the Chief took him to Flagstaff, where the bullet was removed and he was returned to his mother a sadder and a wiser boy.

There is some mysterious power about the Canyon that seems to make it impossible for a person to face the gorge and throw himself into it.

A young man, immensely wealthy, brought his fiancée to the Canyon for a day's outing. At Williams, where they had lunch, he proposed that she go on to the Coast with him, but she refused, saying that she thought it was not the thing to do, since her mother expected her back home that night. He laughed and scribbled something on a paper which he tucked carelessly into a pocket of his overcoat. They went on to the Canyon and joined a party that walked out beyond Powell's Monument. He walked up to the Rim and stared into the depths, then turned facing his sweetheart. "Take my picture," he shouted; and while she bent over the kodak, he uttered a prayer, threw his arms up, and leaped backward into the Canyon. He had not been able to face it and destroy the life God had given him. Hours later rangers recovered his body, and in his pocket found the paper on which he had written: "You wouldn't go with me to Los Angeles, so it's goodbye!"

Ranger West came in one day and told me that there was a lot of sickness among the children at an Indian encampment a few miles from Headquarters. I rode out with him to see what was the matter and found that whooping-cough was rampant. For some reason, even though it was a very severe winter, the Supai Indians had come up from their home in Havasu Canyon, "Land of the Sky-Blue Water," made famous by Cadman, and were camped among the trees on a hillside. The barefoot women and dirty children were quite friendly, but the lazy, filthy bucks would have been insolent had I been alone. They lolled in the "hewas," brush huts daubed with mud, while the women dragged in wood and the children filled sacks with snow to melt for drinking purposes. To be sure they didn't waste any of it in washing themselves.