“You don’t tell me? So the old colonel’s got what his heart’s been pinin’ for many a year. Well, well!”
Mrs. Chadron was beside her window in her favored rocker again, less assertive of bulk in her black dress, not so florid of face, and with lines of sadness about her mouth and eyes. A fire was snapping in the chimney, for the gray sky was driving a bitter wind, and the first snowflakes of winter were straying down.
Banjo Gibson was before the fire, his ears red, his cheeks redder, just in from a brisk ride over from the post. His instruments lay beside him on the floor, and he was limbering his fingers close to the blaze.
“Yes, he’s a brigamadier now,” said he.
“Brigadier-General Landcraft,” said she, musingly, looking away into the grayness of the day; “well, maybe he deserves it. Fur as I’m concerned, he’s welcome to it, and I’m glad for Frances’ sake.”
“He’s vinegar and red pepper, that old man is! Takin’ him up both sides and down the middle, as the feller said, I reckon the colonel—or brigamadier, I guess they’ll call him now—he’s about as good as
“It was nice of you to come over and tell me the news, anyhow, Banjo; you’re always as obligin’ and thoughtful as you can be.”
“It’s always been a happiness and a pleasure, mom, and I’ve come a good many times with news, sad and joyful, to your door. But I reckon it’ll be many a long day before I come ridin’ to Alamito with news ag’in; many a long, long day.”
“What do you mean, Banjo? You ain’t goin’—”
“To Californy; startin’ from here as soon as my horse blows a spell and eats his last feed at your feed box, mom. I’ve got to make it to Meander to ketch the mornin’ train.”
“Oh, Banjo! you don’t tell me!” Tears gushed to Mrs. Chadron’s eyes, used to so much weeping now, and her lips trembled as she pressed them hard to keep back a sob. “You’re the last friend of the old times, the last face outside of this house belongin’ to the old days. When you’re gone my last friend, the very last one I care about outside of my own, ’ll be gone!”
Banjo cleared his throat unsteadily, and looked very hard at the fire for quite a spell before he spoke.
“The best of friends must part,” he said.
“Yes, they must part,” she admitted, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her voice muffled behind it.
“But they ain’t no use of me stayin’ around in this country and pinin’ for what’s gone, and starvin’ on the edge,” said Banjo, briskly. “Since you’ve sold out the cattle and the boys is all gone, scattered ever-which-ways and to Texas, and the homesteaders is comin’ into this valley as thick as blackbirds, it ain’t no place for me. I don’t mix with them kind of people, I never did. You’ve give it all up to ’em, they tell me, but this homestead, mom?”
“All but the homestead,” she sighed, her tears checked now, her eyes on the farthest hill, where she had watched the crest many and many a time for Saul to rise over it, riding home from Meander.
“You hadn’t ort to let it go,” said he, shaking his sad head.
“I couldn’t’a’held it, the lawyers and Mr. Macdonald told me that. It’s public land, Banjo, it belongs to them folks, I reckon. But we was here first!” A futile sigh, a regretful sigh, a sigh bitter with old recollections.
“I reckon that’s so, down to the bottom of it, but you folks made this country what it was, and by rights it’s yourn. Well, I stopped in to say good-bye to the old brigamadier-colonel over at the post as I come through. He tells me Alan and that little girl of hisn that stuck to him and stood up for him through thick and thin ’re goin’ to be married at Christmas time.”
“Then they’ll be leavin’, too,” she said.
“No, they’re goin’ to build on his ranch up the
“Well, well!” said she, her face brightening a little at the news.
“How’s Alan by now?”
“Up and around—he’s goin’ to leave us in the morning.”
“Frances here?” he asked.
“No, she went over home this morning—I thought maybe you met her—but she’s comin’ back for him in the morning.”
Banjo sat musing a little while. Then—
“Yes, you’ll have neighbors, mom, plenty of ’em. A colony of nesters is comin’ here, three or four hundred of ’em, they tell me, all ready to go to puttin’ up schoolhouses and go to plowin’ in the spring. And they’re goin’ to run that hell-snortin’ railroad right up this valley. I reckon it’ll cut right along here somewheres a’past your place.”
“Yes, changes’ll come, Banjo, changes is bound to come,” she sighed.
“All over this country, they say, the nesters’ll squat now wherever they want to, and nobody won’t dast to take a shot at ’em to drive ’em off of his grass. They put so much in the papers about this rustlers’ war up here that folks has got it
“Yes, the cattle days is passin’, along with the folks that was somebody in this country once. Well, Banjo, we had some good times in the old days; we can remember them. But changes will come, we must expect changes. You don’t need to pack up and go on account of that. I ain’t goin’ to leave.”
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m beginnin’ to feel tight in the chist already for lack of air.”
Both sat silent a little while. Banjo’s elbows were across his knees, his face lifted toward the window. The wind was falling, and there was a little breaking among the low clouds, baring a bit of blue sky here and there. Banjo viewed this brightening of the day with gladness.
“I guess it’s passin’,” he said, going to the window and peering round as much of the horizon as he could see, “it wasn’t nothing but a little shakin’ out of the tablecloth after breakfast.”
“I’m glad of it, for I don’t think it’s good luck to start out on a trip in a storm. That there Nola she’s out in it, too.”
“Gone up the river?”
“Yes. It beats all how she’s takin’ up with them people, and them with her. She’s even bought lumber with her own money to help some of ’em build.”
“She’s got a heart like a dove,” he sighed.
“As soft as a puddin’,” Mrs. Chadron nodded.
“But I never could git to it.” Banjo sighed again.
Mrs. Chadron shook her head, with an expression of sadness for his failure which was deeper than any words she knew.
“The loss of her pa bore down on her terrible; she’s pinin’ and grievin’ too hard for a body so young. I hear her cryin’ and moanin’ in the night sometimes, and I know it ain’t no use goin’ to her, for I’ve tried. She seems to need something more than an old woman like me can give, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe she needs a change—a change of air,” Banjo suggested, with what vague hope only himself could tell.
“Maybe, maybe she does. Well, you’re goin’ to take a change of air, anyhow, Banjo. But what’re you goin’ to do away out there amongst strangers?”
“I was out there one time, five years ago, and didn’t seem to like it then. But since I’ve stood off and thought it over, it seems to me that’s a better place for me than here, with my old friends goin’ or gone, and things changin’ this a-way. Out there around them hop and fruit ranches they have great times at night in the camps, and a man of my build can keep busy playin’ for dances. I done it before, and they took to me, right along.”
“They do everywheres, Banjo.”
“Some don’t,” he sighed, watching out of the window in the direction that Nola must come.
“She’s not likely to come back before morning—I
“Maybe it’s for the best,” said Banjo.
“I guess everything that comes to us is for the best, if we knew how to take it,” she said. “Well, you set there and be comfortable, and I’ll stir Maggie up and have her make you something nice for dinner. After that I want you to play me the old songs over before you go. Just to think I’ll never hear them songs no more breaks my heart, Banjo—plumb breaks my heart!”
As she passed Banjo she laid her hand on his head in a manner of benediction, and tears were in her eyes.
The sun was out again when they had finished lunch, coaxing autumn on into November at the peril of frosted toes. Mrs. Chadron had brightened considerably, also. Even bereavement and sorrow could not shake her fealty to chili, and now it was rewarding her by a rubbing of her old color in her face as she sat by the window and waited for Banjo to tune his instruments for the parting songs.
Her workbasket was beside her, the bright knitting-needles in the unfinished sock. It never would be completed now, she knew, but she kept it by her to cry over in the twilight hours, when thoughts of Saul came over her with their deep-harrowing pangs.
Banjo sang the touching old ballads over to her appreciative ear, watching the shadows outside, as he played, for three o’clock. That was the hour set for
Banjo put his bow in its place in the lid of the case, the rosin in its little box. But the fiddle he still held on his knee, stroking its smooth back with loving hand, as if he would soothe Mrs. Chadron’s regrets and longings and back-tugging pains by that vicarious caress. So he sat petting his instrument, and after a little she looked at him, her eyes red, and tear-streaks on her face.
“Don’t put it away just yet, Banjo,” she requested; “there’s another one I want you to sing, and that will be the last. It’s the saddest one you play—one that I couldn’t stand one time—do you remember?” Banjo remembered; he nodded. “I can stand it now, Banjo; I want to hear it now.”
Banjo drew bow again, no more words on either side, and began his song:
All o-lone and sad he left me,
But no oth-o’s bride I’ll be;
For in flow-os he bedecked me,
In tho cottage by tho sea.
When he finished, Mrs. Chadron’s head was bent upon her arm across the little workstand where her basket stood. Her shoulders were moving in piteous convulsions, but no sound of crying came from her. Banjo knew that it was the hardest kind of weeping that tears the human heart.
He put away his fiddle, and strapped the case. Then he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll have to be saddlin’ up, mom,” said he, his own voice thick, “and I’ll say adios to you now.”
“Good-bye, Banjo, and may God bless you in that country you’re goin’ to so fur away from the friends you used to know!”
Banjo’s throat moved as he gulped his sorrow. “I’ll not come back in the house, but I’ll wave you good-bye from the gate,” said he.
“I had hopes you might change your mind, Banjo,” she said, as she took his hand and held it a little while.
“If I could’a’got to somebody’s heart that I’ve pined for many a day, I would’a’changed my mind, mom. But it wasn’t to be.”
“It wasn’t to be, Banjo,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think she’ll ever marry—she’s changed, she’s so changed!”
“Well, adios to you, mom, and the best of luck.”
“Adios, Banjo, boy; good-bye!”
She waited at the window for him to pass the gate. He appeared there leading his horse, and bent to examine the girths before putting foot to the stirrup. She hoped that he was coming back, to tell her that he could not find it in his heart to go. But no; the change that was coming over the cattle country was like an unfriendly wind to the little troubadour. His way was staked into the west where new ties
Mrs. Chadron sat in her old place and watched him until he passed beyond the last hill line and out of her sight. Her last glimpse of him had been in water lines through tears. Now she reached for her basket and took out her unfinished knitting. Broken off there, like her own life it was, she thought, never to be completed as designed. The old days were done; the promise of them only partly fulfilled. She was bidding farewell to more than Banjo, parting with more than friends.
“Good-bye, Banjo,” she murmured, looking dimly toward the farthest hill; “adios!”
