Elbert turned on the lights. Over the back of the chair he was sitting on, was a blanket of Indian red. There were framed Western drawings on the wall, paintings of rodeo and round-up, lonely cattlemen, bison, longhorns, desert and mountain scenes; and in among his books, pasted in an old ledger, was his collection of Indian pictures—heads of all the tribes, famous braves and medicine men—from cigarette, gum, candy packages—no end to the lengths he had gone to get the lot together. He looked back upon the time when the bronzed head of Red Cloud, of the Nez Perces, was the noblest countenance he had ever gazed upon.
A tall, cool person, Elbert could hardly remember ever being really tired. He was practically a stranger to all stimulants and dwelt altogether unaware in a calm that made nervous people either envious at once or hopeless altogether. His steady, homely hands were of that considerable size as to appear empty most of the time, and his blue eyes were so steady and cool that any one undertaking to go against his will, felt a surge of fatigue and irritation at the outset.
Elbert had been pondering a good deal of late on what sort of stuff he was made of. When he read of some hero’s exploits in a newspaper, he asked himself could he have done that. And when he heard of some great suffering or privation of explorers, he wondered how he would have acted, had he been along. But it was the Southwest that perennially and persistently called. He moved to his phonograph, and picked out a book of records from the shelf below. The one he wanted wasn’t there; in fact, he found it still in the machine, from a solitary performance of last evening—a Mexican record. He set it going now and a man’s announcement in Spanish preceded the music, something about ‘Paquita Conesa, tonadillera española, la mas famosa en Mexico y Sudamerica—’
... His favorite record. The song was ‘La Paloma.’ It always seemed to Elbert as if Señorita Paquita were singing in the open air. He smiled at a secret thought that always came to him, too—that the words of the song were carved out of starlight.
‘Cuando sali de la Habana,
Valgame Dios—’
Up from the street, at the end of the song, reached his ears the tiresome sweep and swish of tires and carbureters, and from the drawing-room, Nancy’s singing voice. Her young man would be standing beside the piano at this time, his waxen hair brushed back. Elbert smiled wistfully. ‘Thirty years late.’
II
AT HEASLEP’S RANCH
From Kansas City, he sent his first letter back, regretting to leave home without talking it over further, but there didn’t seem to be any use. Possibly there wasn’t any more West, he allowed, but he had to go out and see. He hopped off the train at Tucson and heard of a stage that ran south toward the Border. That sounded right, and he walked three blocks with his bags to perceive—no jehu with long flicking lash, but a chauffeur, the stage being a motor-bus.
Elbert couldn’t appreciate the scenery. Yes, there was a big ranch down yonder, the driver said. Yes, there was cattle. Irrigation and alfalfa had reclaimed this waste stuff. Some cows presently appeared wearing an ‘HCO’ brand.