“‘Yes, but see here,’ says Bill. And he took off the shoes, and there was his other shoes underneath. He got a pair that fit, right away. Nobody else did.”
Such initiative otherwise applied might well make a captain of industry of him, were it not that Bill is typical of his kind, his creed “for to admire an’ for to see, for to behold this world so wide.” Free and foot loose they will be, rejecting the bondage of routine that makes of a resourceful man, as they all are, a captain of industry. The world is their playground, not their schoolroom. Independent they will be of discipline.
“Aren’t you afraid of losing your job?” we asked a guide who confided some act of insubordination.
“Well, I come here looking for a job,” he answered.
As Bill put it, in his rhythmic way,—“The Lord put me on earth to eat and sleep and ride the ponies, and I ain’t figurin’ on doin’ nothin’ else.”
And he finished, “There’s just three things in the world I care about,—my hawss, and my rope and my hat.”
The genius of the west lies, I think, in its power of objectiveness. The east is subjective. When an easterner tells a story, he locates himself emotionally with much concern. He may be vague as to time and place, but you know his moods and impressions with subtle exactness. Every westerner I ever knew begins his first sentence of a story with his location and objective. Then he adds dates and follows with an anecdote of bare facts, untinged by his emotions. His audience fills in the chinks with what he does not say. For example, a guide, telling of a trip, might say——
“I was headed north over Eagle Pass with an outfit of geologists in a northwest storm. The animals had just come in from winter feedin’ the day before. My top-hawss had went lame on me, and I had to borrow a cayuse from an Indian. I had a pack outfit of burros and was drivin’ three empties that give out on us. We was short of grub, and twenty miles to make to the trader’s. The dudes had wore setfasts on their hawsses, and when I ast them could they kinder trot along, the ladies would hit their saddles with a little whip and say ‘gittap, hawsie.’”
Only bald facts are told in that narrative, mainly unintelligible unless you know what the facts connote. Told to a fellow guide they bring forth nods of silent sympathy. Many experiences of the same sort help him to see the huddled, inexpert figures of saddle-sore dudes, some clad piecemeal, some in the extreme of appropriateness. He knows the exasperating slowness of horses drained of the last ounce of endurance. He, too, has tried to urge on a miscellaneous collection of tired horses, burros and dudes, all wandering in different directions, at differing gaits. He knows the self-respecting guide’s chagrin at losing the pride of his life,—his top-horse, and he knows the condition of Indian cayuses at the end of winter. He has felt unutterable disgust at having to ride a hack. He knows the necessity of keeping patient and courteous under irritation, and the responsibility of getting his party of tenderfeet over a bad divide in a storm with night coming and food scarce, when a slight mishap may accumulate more serious disasters. He knows how weary burros wander in circles so persistently that the most patient guide,—and all guides are patient, they have to be,—wants to murder them brutally. And the sickening scrape of girths on raw, bleeding sores, requiring tender care after treatment of weeks. He knows every party has its foolish, ineffectual members who tire the first mile out, and after that sink into limp dejection, remarking plaintively and often, “This horse is no good,” as they give him a light flick which hits leather or saddle roll, but never the horse, and kick at him without touching him. And geologists! One or two, he knows, can ride and camp and are as good as the guides, but others will want to stop the outfit on the worst spot in the trail, and nearly cause a stampede gathering rocks which the guide must secure to the already overweighty pack.
