Yonder gleam of white, low down on the far side, under that pine-scattered mountain, is Hope Station, whence we take our departure at noon.
CHAPTER VII. ANIMAS VALLEY.—I.
"Well, there's Animas Valley, the 'rustlers' home,' where Curly Bill and all those boys used to lie up, when they had been sousing it to the 'enlightened citizen' a little too freely. There's the boss ranch in New Mexico! There's where the cattle graze, and graze, and graze upon a thousand hills, and go around laughing to think how much better off they are than other cattle, and saying to one another: 'Cows!' or 'bull, old pard!' or 'steers,' as the case may be, 'ain't we struck it big, eh? ain't we just eternally heeled?' There 're all kinds of grasses for them to eat, and if they don't like one they can take another. And there are big waters, and little waters, and all sorts, and they please themselves. And there are cable roads, and elevators, always running, to save them climbing up the steep places, and in warm weather every cow is provided with a canteen and a parasol. And Sundays you can see them taking their Bibles and campstools under their arms, and going off to sit down in the shade, and read to their calves; and when they want to know anything, why, they just come and ask old Murray or me. And ... and ... and if you think that I'm trying to boost the place up because it belongs to us, or if you think that it isn't all true what I'm telling you now, why, go ahead and call me an old mud-turtle, and say so at once. You don't mind how disrespectfully you speak to me, I know that."
Don Cabeza, the speaker, had checked the horses, and the light spring waggon we were sitting in was poised on the summit of a down grade, at the mouth of a mountain pass we had just emerged from. A great valley lay below us, varying in breadth from twelve to twenty miles. Afar off to the right a mirage lake stretched its silver sheen across one end of it; the other was thirty-five miles away on the Mexican border, and, since the valley curved, was out of sight. To the left lay Animas Peak and the conjoining mountains; before us the rugged hills that separated us from the San Simon valley; and behind these loomed up the favourite highway, betwixt Mexico and the States, of the hostile Apaches—the wild Chiricaua range, whose naked crests glittered in the sunlight, above a confusion of scarped cliffs and jagged pinnacles, and lakes of purple shadow. Below, the broad valley bottom—flat here,
"Gleamed like a praying carpet at the foot
Of those divinest altars,"
and was dotted by the small adobe buildings that marked Horse Springs, Granite Tanks, Russian Bill's Place, the Cunningham Place, and a few other such spots, towards which (for it was midday), small squads of cattle marched stolidly down to water from the foot-hills and the "draws," in single file, save where a calf trotted by its mother's side.
Four years have elapsed since the reader and I left Don Cabeza waving adieu to us in the streets of Magdalena. Then he was mining. Now he is a cattle king, with ranges, and ranges, and ranches, and ranches, and managers under him, and cow-boys under them, and under them again, cattle on a thousand hills, more or less. For the old style and title of Don Cabeza (by which he was known in Sonora) the cow-punchers of New Mexico have substituted that of "The Colonel." But nothing else about him is changed. He is the same old Cabeza, the soul of good nature and geniality, the most delightful of companions. Animas Valley, which we were now visiting, was one of the ranges under his control.