UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
The clouds would assemble daily about the summits of the Sierra Mimbres, whence come the waters of the Rio Grande. Prayers were unavailing; the morning brought the usual complement of fleecy harbingers, and by noon the hosts were marshaled in mighty platoons of black and gray; the artillery was unlimbered, the sun retreated in dismay, and the spree commenced. For two or three hours there would be a terribly sublime row up in the vicinage of the granite and dwarfed timber, that would reach down to the lower hills, and with its results set roaring the little rivulets and usually dusty arroyos, to swell the already turbid waters of the beautiful river. The daily dull monotony was wearing; I thought, more than once, that “hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” and concluded I had struck the inspiration of the proverb.
The Old Man sat on Jordan’s rugged banks, waiting for that creek to clear up so that he could indulge himself in his favorite amusement. He’d been there a week, camped out, restricted to potato and flitch diet, and had not wet a line. His fly books were an aggravation, and his split bamboo a source of misery. The evening would give promise of crystal water on the morrow, and each morning brought with it a stream of thick, yellow fluid. A trout would no more rise in it than upon the heaven-kissing hills that gathered the cause of his tribulation about their cloud-compelling peaks. The fir-crowned hills and majestic cliffs had lost their charm, the grasshopper had become a burden, and there was no more music in the roily water than in the mosquito’s song. I presume he has forgotten all about it by this time, yet my soul cried out in sympathy.
But I was better off than he. He had no John to console him with stories of leviathans caught by other rodsters “last summer.” John would scorn anything less than a three-pound trout to embellish his romances; five, six, and even nine pounds were evolved in his imagination. I took him for a Vermont Yankee, but it transpired that the Ozark Mountains claimed him for their own, without the prospect of any other place setting up a demand for him when he dies—if he ever does. He is tall and thin, has a stoop in his shoulders and slouches in his gait; his garments, such as he has, fit him—not so well as they would the clothes line; he has a Roman nose and gray eyes, he chews the fragrant “nigger head,” and his saffron-hued incisors habitually caress his nether lip. His mouth is always open, and his scraggy beard would vie in symmetry with a patch of hazel brush demoralized by a Kansas cyclone. A few days ago I wagered him a quarter that he could not close his lips and keep them so three minutes. I won the bet, but have not yet realized upon it. John is a booley, fortunately for the rest of humanity.
Becoming a little impatient at John and the periodically feculent condition of the river, I suggested to the Captain a run up to Antelope Park, twenty-five miles away, and a few casts for the denizens of certain minor tributaries to the Rio Grande. The suggestion proved agreeable to him.
The next morning after an early breakfast we mounted the buckboard, and in company with the United States mail for somewhere, a nervous driver and a pair of wild mules, we arrived at our destination before noon. Telegraphic facilities being somewhat limited, our coming had not been heralded. Our driver left us with our traps in front of a comfortable-looking house, but it required half an hour to find the landlord. We had lived long enough in the country to recognize in every house a hotel. We would have taken ourselves and belongings into the first convenient room, but that a large black dog kindly took us under his immediate supervision. It began to rain, but the dog gave no intimation whatever of inconvenience on that score; indeed, I think he rather enjoyed it. The Captain, after we had admired the dog for a quarter of an hour, slipped his hand into his hip pocket. I don’t know whether to attribute the dog’s sudden disappearance to his superior intelligence and knowledge of the ways of the country, or to the coming of the landlord. Her greeting was cordial when she hove in sight:
“Glad to see you gentlemen suppose you’ve come afishin’ didn’t know as you was comin’ or I’d a had dinner instead of bein’ out to see to them colts the last two died and I don’t propose to have no more of that kind of business not if I know myself you bet these has been tended to right and I know it they was risin’ three year and of course gettin’ too big to run loose that husband of mine run away with another woman two year ago and he come back in less’n three months for me to take him back again but I told him to pack and he did since then I’ve ran this ranche alone and propose so to do she was older than him”——