Lippincotts Magazine, October 1885

Lippincott's Magazine, October
1885

Project Gutenberg's Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885, by Various
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Title: Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885
Author: Various
Release Date: December 29, 2004 [EBook #14509]
Language: English
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LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
_OCTOBER, 1885_.
ON A TEXAS SHEEP-RANCH.
I.
There are words which have careers as well as men, or, perhaps it may
be more happily said, as well as women. Mere words breathed on by
Fancy, and sent forth not so much to serve man's ordinary colloquial
uses, apparently, as to fascinate his mind, have their debuts. their

season, their vogue, and finally a period in which it is really too bad if
they have not the consolation of reflecting upon their conquests; for
conquests they certainly have. The great captivators--the Cleopatras of
the vocabulary--one easily recognizes; but besides these there is a host
of small flirts and every-day coquettes, whom one hardly suspects till
they have a little carried him away. Almost every one remembers how
in this light company he first came across the little word ranch. It had
in its youth distinctly the cachet of the verbal flying squadron, the
"nameless something," the oenanthic whiff which flies to the head.
There are signs that its best days as a word are now over, and in
contemplating it at present one has a vision of a passee brunette, in the
costume of Fifine at the Fair, solacing herself with thoughts of early
triumphs. "Would a farm have served?" she murmurs. "Would a
plantation, an orange-grove, have satisfied the desperate young man?
No, no; he must have his ranch! There was no charm could soothe his
melancholy, and wring for him the public bosom, save mine."
I made this reflection during a period of incarceration in a
sleeping-car,--a form of confinement which, like any other, throws the
prisoner considerably on his fancy; and a vision somewhat like the
above smoothed for a moment the pillow of an "upper berth," and
pleased better than the negro porter. Half a dozen of those days of too
many paper novels, of too much tobacco, of too little else, followed
each other with the sameness of so many raw oysters. Then there came
a chill night of wide moonlit vacuity passed on the prairie by the side of
the driver of a "jumper,"--a driver who slumbered, happy man!--and at
peep of dawn I found myself standing, stiff and shivering, in a certain
little Texas town. A much-soiled, white little street, a bit of
greenish-yellow, treeless plain soft in the morning mist, a rosy fringe at
the edge of the sky,--it was of these things, together with a disagreeable
sense of imponderability of body from the cold and sleepless ride, that I
was vaguely aware as the jumper--rigorous vehicle!--disappeared round
a corner. Frontier towns are not lovely, and the death-like peace which
seemed properly to accompany the chalky pallor of the buildings was
somewhat uncanny; but it proved to be only what sleep can do for a
village with railroad influences one hundred miles away. We entered
boldly the adobe before which we had been dropped, and found a
genial landlord in an impromptu costume justified by the hour, an

inn-album of quite cosmopolitan range of inscriptions, and a breakfast
for which a week of traveller's fare had amply fortified the spirit.
The village was the chief, indeed, wellnigh the only, town of a great
west-by-north county, in which Rhode Island would be lost and
Massachusetts find elbow-room. It was an irregular little bunch of
buildings gathered along an arterial street which, after a run of three
hundred yards or so, broke to pieces and scattered its dispersed shanties
about a high, barren plain. It stood on the steep bank of a little river,
and over against it, on a naked hill, was Uncle Sam's military
village,--a fort by courtesy,--where, when not sleeping, black soldiers
and white strolled about in the warm sun. When the little street was
fairly awake, it presented a very lively appearance and had the air of
doing a great deal of business. The wan houses emitted their occupants,
and numerous pink-faced riders, in leathers and broad hats, poured in
from all sides, and, tying their heavily-accoutred ponies, disappeared
into the shops with a sort of bow-legged waddle, like sailors ashore.
Off his horse, the cow-boy is frankly awkward. Purchases made, they
departed with a rush, filling the glare