"Well, I studied over the thing a good deal, and I finally came to this conclusion: Those girls were not bad; they were simply curious. They led such narrow, cramped lives that there was nothing for their active brains to feed on, so they naturally turned to the most interesting thing at hand, themselves, their physical selves. A superabundance of vitality overshadowed their small mental equipment. In the absence of suitable entertainment the physical part of their being had fatally asserted itself. Ignorant of consequences, they sinned innocently. I felt sorry for them, and during the rest of my stay there, I tried to give them some glimpses of a more intellectual life.
"Well," continued Charles, "I stayed in that hell over a year, then left and went to the Lonsdale ranch. There we did not use the barn to sleep in; each man had a bunk to himself in the bunk-house. The interior of the bunk-house was decorated with several choice works of art, one representing three young ladies, in abbreviated costumes, enjoying wine and cigarettes; another showed several men lifting from the water the nude form of a beautiful young woman who had committed suicide; while a third was an exciting picture of a jealous woman, in a much torn garment, holding a pistol to the head of her faithless lover. Some pictures of Fitzsimmons, Jeffries, and Sharkey also adorned the walls. Much time was spent in the evenings discussing the various merits and demerits of the pugilists. I was often surprised at the able and exhaustive manner in which they would handle the subject, and showed some remarkable ability in treating of the qualities of the prize fighting gentlemen. If the same amount of brain power had been turned in other directions, how useful to their country those men might have become. I do not wish to convey the idea that they were always handling such great and momentous topics as the fighting qualities of those noted gentlemen. Very often, by way of variation, they would talk of those feminine types of beauty which appeared so conspicuously in the Police Gazette and the Sporting Times.
"It was astonishing the amount of information they displayed concerning women, what retentive memories they had, and how very familiar they were with the subject of woman, her ways, and her sex nature. Their mental horizon was bounded on the north by the affairs of the ranch, on the east by the boss and his domestic concerns, on the south by woman as manifested by the various phases of her sexual nature, and on the west by the gentry of the prize ring. Within these boundaries was their mental world, their minds never reaching out and beyond these subjects.
"The reading matter on the table was the sensational weekly papers.
"I remember one Sunday to my surprise I saw one of the men reading a book. On looking at the title, it read: 'The Life of Rattlesnake Pete,' and another man had a book lying on his blankets, entitled 'The Adventures of Coyote Bill.' Gambling was their favorite pastime. It was one round of card playing nights and Sundays. When I first went to work on the Lonsdale ranch, the boss put me to cutting oak wood. After I had been at work awhile, he came along and told me that I did not hold the handle of my axe right. The next day he found fault with me for the way I used a cross-cut saw. A week later I was piling brush to burn, and the way I laid the brush did not suit him. He was everlastingly blowing about himself and telling how he did things. I did not seem to be able to do anything right. One night after supper we had all assembled in the bunk-house, when Parsons said: 'I tell you boys, hell went pop this morning. Plaisted gave the boss hell because he commenced to growl at him for the way he held the lines. Plaisted told him he was the greatest old crank that ever run a ranch, and that the devil himself couldn't suit him. He left the team right in the field and called for his money. I tell you the boss's face was as red as a beet. He had to give Simmons six dollars a month more to take the team.'
"Hendricks said, 'I gave the boss a piece of my mind this morning when I tried to open the gate leading into the garden. It is a rod long, and as heavy as hell; the whole weight was on the ground. I told him any man that had such a gate as that on his ranch never ought to own a ranch. I said, 'Why in the devil don't you get some hinges and hang your gates?' Ambrose spoke up, and said, 'Sometimes the boss seems pleasant enough, but he does like to find fault and tell you what big things he has done. To hear him talk you would think that his ranch was the only ranch that was worth anything. He told his visitors to-day that his place would pay the interest on one hundred thousand dollars. You know, boys, it wouldn't sell for twelve thousand.'
"Parsons said: 'The boss has been growling at me ever since I have been with him, but I pay no attention to him. He thinks if you don't do a thing as he does, you don't do it right, and any idea that does not originate in his brain is not worth anything. To hear him talking to that lady visiting here to-day you would think he was a perfect man living on a model ranch.' I will never forget how mad Hendricks was with the boss one Saturday evening. We had just come from supper when Hendricks lit his pipe and gave vent to his feelings, as follows: 'If I had had a four-year-old club at the supper table to-night, I felt so boiling mad that I would have knocked hell out of him. To hear him go on a nagging and fault-finding with that little woman of his. There she has been a-working hard all day, set three good meals, doing the churning and all the housework besides; and all she gets for her patient labor is a growl.' 'Yes,' said another man, 'she has been working like a slave all the week and to-morrow is Sunday, and it will be to her just the same as any other day.' Hendricks said: 'The boss thinks more of his old plugs than he does of his wife. See what care he takes of his horses. One lot is resting while the other lot is working; then those that have been working are put in the pasture, and those that have been resting are put to work. But he never seems to think that poor worn-out woman of his needs a rest and change.'
"Parsons added: 'That is not the worst of it. His wife is a cook-stove slave, and a wash and butter-making machine. It does not matter how tired she is or otherwise physically unfit, he demands his marital privileges as a right, regardless of her wishes or protests. I know it is a fact, for he brags about it.' Parsons continued: 'When a boy I used to hear preachers talk about hell, and I could not see what was the use of sending millions and billions of people to eternal torments, so I thought there ought to be no such place as hell; but if there is a hell, then I think the boss deserves to go there.'
"An intelligent young man from the East by the name of Travers joined in the conversation by saying: 'When I was a boy I remember how serious my good father felt because he thought a neighbor had died without his sins being forgiven, and had gone to hell. At that time the word hell used to have some meaning on the minds of the people, and produced on my mind a feeling of fear and awe. But how different it is now. If a minister was to preach now about all wicked people going to hell, it would produce no more effect on their minds than water on a duck's back, for the word hell is now a spent thunderbolt, used uselessly by the mouths of so many. It may be well for theologians to know (if any of them believe in hell as preached) whether or not they have got through discussing hell; their views have no weight whatever on the minds of the masses, for they are all the time making light, fun, and sport of the word hell.' 'That's so,' joined in the men, and they all laughed.
"I had been at the Lonsdale ranch about three or four months when I received your letter asking me to return home."