第57章 LAW AND ORDER(1)

I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas.At a sheep ranch where I had sojourned many years ago, I stopped for a week.

And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at hand, which happened to be that of dipping the sheep.

Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it deserves a word of itself.A vast iron cauldron with half the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils furiously.

Into that is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches' broth is strong enough to scorch the third arm of Palladino herself.

Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are caught by their hind legs and flung into the compound.After being thoroughly ducked by means of a forked pole in the hands of a gentleman detailed for that purpose, they are allowed to clamber up an incline into a corral and dry or die, as the state of their constitutions may decree.If you ever caught an able-bodied, two-year-old mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 volts of kicking that he can send though your arm seventeen times before you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he may die instead of dry.

But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby _charco_ after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our muscle-racking labours.The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought from the _morral_ on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon.

Mr.Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his force of Mexican _trabajadores_.

While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses' hoofs behind us.Bud's six-shooter lay in its scabbard ten feet away from his hand.He paid not the slightest heed to the approaching horseman.This attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the old-time custom that I marvelled.Instinctively I turned to inspect the possible foe that menaced us in the rear.I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peaceably along the road by the _arroyo_.

Bud noticed my precautionary movement and smiled sarcastically and sorrowfully.

"You've been away too long," said he."You don't need to look around any more when anybody gallops up behind you in this state, unless something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable to be only a bunch of tracts or a petition to sign against the trusts.I never looked at that _hombre_ that rode by; but I'll bet a quart of sheep dip that he's some double-dyed son of a popgun out rounding up prohibition votes.""Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly."Law and order is the rule now in the South and the Southwest."I caught a cold gleam from Bud's pale blue eyes.

"Not that I --" I began, hastily.

"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly."You know better.You've lived here before.Law and order, you say? Twenty years ago we had 'em here.

We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican ticket.But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state.

Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but make laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state.I re ckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws.Me, I'm for the old days when law and order meant what they said.A law was a law, and a order was a order.""But --" I began.

"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling, to describe to you a case of genuine law and order that I knew of once in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a six-shooter instead of a supreme court.

"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run from the Nueces to the Rio Grande.In them days, as you know, there was cattle barons and cattle kings.The difference was this: when a cattleman went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper reporters and only give them the number of cattle he actually owned, they wrote him up for a baron.When he bought 'em champagne wine and added in the amount of cattle he had stole, they called him a king.

"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses.And down to the king's ranch comes one day a bunch of these Oriental people from New York or Kansas City or thereabouts.Luke was detailed with a squad to ride about with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning when they was coming, and drive the deer out of their way.Among the bunch was a black-eyed girl that wore a number two shoe.That's all I noticed about her.But Luke must have seen more, for he married her one day before the _caballard_ started back, and went over on Canada Verde and set up a ranch of his own.I'm skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose, because Inever saw or wanted to see any of it.And Luke takes me along with him because we was old friends and I handled cattle to suit him.

"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it -- but three years afterward there was a boy kid stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's ranch.I never had no use for kids; but it seems they did.And I'm skipping over much what followed until one day out to the ranch drives in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs.Summers's friends from the East -- a sister or so and two or three men.One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one looked like nothing; and the other one had on corkscrew pants and spoke in a tone of voice.I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.