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Chapter XV · G.T.T., or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman

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  Chapter fifteen of g t Or The Wonderful Adventures of a Pullman by Edward Hale.
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  This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter fifteen. When morning
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  came, it proved that a norther had struck them in the night. But
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  it was a very gentle norther compared with what they had all read about in
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  mister Olmsted's book and in the Adventures of Phil Nolan's Friends, which just at
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  this moment was working along in Scribner's magazine. All the hurt it had done
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  anybody was that everybody had awakened at four o'clock and had pulled up his bed
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  quilt. Blankets appeared to be unknown at Tremblants, but in a cotton growing
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  country, quilts are quite as thick as any traveler will require. When breakfast
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  was ended and the ambulance came round, it proved that Fred Haydock had bought
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  a side saddle from Tremlett. That Fred's own saddle was fastened behind the ambulance.
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  So has very prettily yielded to Fred's eager request that for the first hour
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  she would ride on horseback with him. Was not it kind? In Hiram
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  Brinkerhoff to let her take his horse while he jolted in the ambulance, and
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  Fred and Hester were able to go back to that first ride so long ago
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  in the darkness of our kady. Then after an hour they took the ambulance,
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  and Effie and Hiram rode in their turn. Just as they mounted,
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  Duston pointed to the southwest horizon a drove of cattle missus abgar, and over
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  the slope three or four miles away, Effie made out a long line of
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  ants creeping in line of battle. But in half an hour the travelers had
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  neared the ants, and the ants the travelers. The ants were an army
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  half a mile from flank to flank of beautiful cattle. Oh, how Juno
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  or Minerva or Aphrodite would have quarreled for those white ones, black white,
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  red, brown, gray, mauve, ashes of roses, salmon collar,
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  pink, mottled and pied. No two oxen alike, but all with a
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  look not so strange, both of gentleness and vigor. They plodded amiably along.
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  They cropped the grass as if they had been pet lambs, or if
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  they had loitered too long. They galloped when they were touched up by impatient
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  drivers. The drivers, wild bandit looking men with Mexican hats and queer buckskin
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  leggings, rode from end to end of the troop, almost at right angles
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  with its line of march, to be sure that no ox strayed behind.
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  And so in solemn procession, the twenty hecatombs of Oxen were to march a
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  thousand miles from day to day, till they should ascend not a sacrificial altar,
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  but the trains of cars which would bear them to distant Brighton. You
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  might tie a letter for your husband on the horn of that lovely white one,
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  and he might find it at his butcher's, if he were romantic enough
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  to ask for Texan beef. So said Hiram Brinkerhoff, laughing. But even
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  in the motion of the horses he could see that missus Apgar started. What
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  had he said? She asked him, coldly, was it? Or with
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  what tone? I do not understand you, I say, said Hiram,
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  read in the face, that you could make the cattle your mail carrier to
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  your husband, to mister Abgar. Why, mister Brinkerhoff, I beg your
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  pardon. It is all over now, But you surprised me. My husband
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  has been in heaven many years. I never had a husband, but for
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  one happy month. People say it was too happy, but I do not
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  think so. And she smiled with that beautiful sad smile. Hiram Brinkerhoff was
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  still crimsoned. Dear missus Apgar, pardon me, you know, I am
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  sure you know I would not have pained you. But well, you do
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  not see. But you have spoken so much of mister Apgar of Phil.
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  You call him, I supposed mister Haydock, supposed dear old Phil, Yes,
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  said Missus Apgar, her face not losing its sweetness. Where should I
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  have been but for him? He is my husband's older brother. But dear
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  old Phil has a very charming wife of his own, and such lovely children.
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  I thought I showed you their pictures. Yes, she had showed their
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  pictures and had said they were her ne and nieces, but she had not
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  said that they were Phil's children. It was queer. They could not justify
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  it to themselves, nor in any way explain it. But there is no
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  doubt that after this contretemps and explanation, neither of the two cared to go
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  on with the other. Just then, in just the easy and confidential way
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  in which they had ridden before. As soon as missus Apgar's hour was ended,
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  she said she was a little tired, and she resumed her seat in
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  the ambulance. Fred's horse was fastened behind, and Fred took up the vacant
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  seat by Dustan. But Hiram Brinkerhoff did not propose to drive in Dustin's place,
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  as he might have done, and they kept on a broken party till
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  they came to Braunfel's. Dustan at one moment, pointed forward with his whip
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  to a great yellow square patch of who should say, how many acres on
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  a distance? Well, have they such wheat as that in your country?
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  Missus Apgar. Effie liked to hear him talk about the wonders of Texas.
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  No, indeed, said she, We have no wheat in my country.
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  But mister Dustan, not even in Texas. I think is wheat as yellow
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  as that? On the second day of May. Sure enough, Mum,
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  sure enough, it must be flowers, mum. And so it proved,
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  when, after an hour's writing, they passed through this yellow patch and found
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  themselves surrounded by forty acres of choreopsis in full bloom. But Duston had his
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  revenge upon Effie as she was frank enough to confess to him. She had
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  made a sketch involving one of these sweeps of tremendous distance, and she had
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  written in on it for use if she could ever put it in color.
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  Across a little bit of her middle distance little pond quite as blue as sky.
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  When they rode on and passed through the pond, it proved to be
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  a giant's patch of blue verbinas the exquisite clear spring of the San Marcos Rivers
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  and natural curiosity which all travelers must stop to wonder at. San Marcos itself
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  was a wonder to them because it was their first town after they had left
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  Austin. Then Braunfels, with its quaint German look mixed in with Southern traits
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  and unmistakable americanisms, would have been an interesting place to stay in. But
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  no, they held on to their journey's end this time, and at last,
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  when they were well tired, they came to the point where will Harrod
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  bad goodbye to Inas Perry, and so through fresh mesquite trees dashed on till
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  they saw all the crosses and spires of San Antonio, does anyone, by
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  good luck know who will Harrod? And in as Perry were, And in
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  San Antonio they found all that they had come for, first of all in
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  the menger house, so neat and comfortable a home. Then, when they
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  had washed and rested, such a funny walk, where no one knew an
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  inch of the way wherever they went, they came to the river. And
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  a river, as is a river, so active, so deep, so
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  green, so satisfactory every way, what funny little bathing houses can people bathe
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  in? May? It seemed as if every garden ran to the river,
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  and as if everybody had a bathing house in his garden of his own.
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  None of them had ever been in Spain, but they supposed, and were
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  perhaps right, that San Antonio looked like a little city in Spain, with
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  these narrow streets, sometimes made to give shade in summer, and with these
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  white walls almost windowless, which make the sides of the streets. Yet sometimes
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  they came to a distinctive Swiss cottage, and sometimes it was the legitimate southern
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  house, with its broad gallery. Still Spain preponderated, and the Spanish talk
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  in the streets preponderated over the German and the English. And when the four
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  stood in either of the squares, the Military Plaza, or the Cathedral Plaza,
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  or the Alamo Plaza, it was impossible to believe they were in their
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  own land. A lovely sunset and a short evening before sweet sleep avenged and
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  rubbed away the fatigue of eighty miles drive across the prairies. End of Chapter fifteen,