Members of the Family

Members of the Family

When this October comes, twenty years will be sped since the author of these Western tales sat down one evening to begin his first tale of the West, andwill you forgive him a preamble of gossip, of retrospection? Time steps in between the now that is and the then that was with a vengeance; it blocks the way for us all; we cannot go back. When the old corner, the old place, the old house, wear the remembered look, beckon to the memory as if to say, No change here! then verily is the change worst, the shell most empty, the cheat well-nigh too piercing. In a certain garden I used to plunder in 1866, the smell to-day of warm, dusty strawberries.... But did we admit to our companionship ghosts only, what would living be? I continue to eat strawberries. As for smells, theyre worse than old melodies, I think. Lately I was the sport of one. My train was trundling over the plainsa true train of the past, half freight, half passenger, cars of an obsolete build, big smoke-stack on the archaic engine, stops for meals, inveterate news-boy with bad candy, bad novels, bad bananasa dear old horrible train, when magic was suddenly wrought. It came in{8} through the open window, its wand touched me, and the evoked spirits rose. With closed eyes I saw them once more, standing there out in the alkali, the antelope by scores and hundreds, only a little way off, a sort of color between cinnamon and amber in the morning sun, transparent and phantom-like, with pale legs. Only a little way off. Eyes closed, I watched them, as in 1885 with open ones I beheld them first from the train. Now they were running; I saw the bobbing dots of their white receding rears, and through me passed the ghost of that first thrill at first seeing antelope yesterdayit seemed yesterday: only a little way off. I opened my eyes; there was the train as it ought to look, there were the plains, the alkali, the dry gullies, the mounds, the flats, the enormous sunlight, the virgin air like the first five measures of Lohengrinbut where were the antelope? So natural did everything continue to look, surely they must be just over that next rise! No; over the one beyond that? No; only a little, little way off, but gone for evermore! And magic smote me once again through the window. Thousands of cattle were there, with horsemen. Were they not there? Not over the next rise? No; gone for evermore. What was this magic that came in through the window? The smell of the sage-brush. After several years it was greeting me again. All day long it breathed a welcome and a sigh, as if the desert whispered: Yes, I look as if I were here;{9} but I am a ghost, too, theres no coming back. All day long the whiffs of sage-brush conjured old sights before me, till my heart ran over with homesickness for what was no more, and the desert seemed to whisper: Its not I youre seeking, youre straining your eyes to see yourself,you as you were in your early twenties, with your illusion that I, the happy hunting-ground of your young irresponsibility, was going to be permanent. You must shut your eyes to see yourself and me and the antelope as we all used to be. Why, if Adam and Eve had evaded the angel and got back into the garden, do you think they would have found it the same after Cain and Abel? Thus moralized the desert, and I thought, How many things we have to shut our eyes to see! Permanent! Living men, not very old yet, have seen the Indian on the war-path, the buffalo stopping the train, the cow-boy driving his cattle, the herder watching his sheep, the government irrigation dam, and the automobilehave seen every one of these slides which progress puts for a moment into its magic-lantern and removes to replace with a new one. The final tale in this book could not possibly have happened in the day of the first tale, although scarcely twenty years separate the new, present Wyoming from that cow-boy Wyoming which then flourished so boisterously, and is now like the antelope. Steam and electricity make short work of epochs. We{10} dont know how many centuries the Indian and the buffalo enjoyed before the trapper and pioneer arrived. These latter had fifty or sixty good years of it, pushing westward until no west was left to push to; a little beyond Ogden in 1869, the driving of that golden spike which riveted the rails between New York and San Francisco, rang out the old, rang in the new, and progress began to work its magic-lantern faster. The soldier of the frontier, the frontier postgone; the cattle-rangegone; the sheep episode just come, yet going already, or at any rate already mixed, diluted, with the farm, the truck garden, the poultry yard, the wife, the telephone, the summer boarder, and the Victor playing the latest Broadway records in valleys where the august wilderness reigned silentyesterday. The nomadic, bachelor West is over, the housed, married West is established. This rush of change, this speed we live at everywhere (only faster in some places than in others) has led some one to remark sententiously that when a Western baby is born, it immediately makes its will, while when a New York baby is born, it merely applies for a divorce. But what changes can ever efface that early vision which began with the antelope? Wyoming burst upon the tenderfoot resplendent, like all the story-books, like Cooper and Irving and Parkman come true again; here, actually going on, was that something which the boy runs away{11} from school to find, that land safe and far from Monday morning, nine oclock, and the spelling-book; here was Saturday eternal, where you slept out-of-doors, hunted big animals, rode a horse, roped steers, and wore deadly weapons. Make no mistake: fire-arms were at times practical and imperative, but this was not the whole reason for sporting them on your hip; you had escaped from civilizations school-room, an air never breathed before filled your lungs, and you were become one large shout of joy. College-boy, farm-boy, street-boy, this West melted you all down to the same first principles. Were you seeking fortune? Perhaps, incidentally, but money was not the point; you had escaped from school. This holiday was leavened by hard bodily work, manly deeds, and deeds heroic, and beneath all the bright brave ripple moved the ground-swell of tragedy. Something of promise, also, was in the air, promise of a democracy which the East had missed: ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 56717
Author: Wister, Owen
Release Date: Mar 10, 2018
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Illustrator: Dunn, Harvey, 1884-1952