O. Henry

               The Last of the Troubadours





   Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from 
the Rancho Altito at the end of a three-months' visit. It is not to be 
expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits 
yellow-streaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, 
the big Negro man cook, had never been able to make good biscuits. 
Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been 
forced to fly from his cuisine, after only a six-weeks' 
sojourn.
   On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and 
slightly tempered by the patient forgiveness of a connoisseur who 
cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his 
saddle-cinches, looped his stake-rope and hung it to his saddle-horn, 
tied his slicker and coat on the cantle, and looped his quirt on his 
right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men, 
women, children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employés, dogs, 
and casual callers were grouped in the "gallery" of the ranch house, 
all with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the 
coming of Sam Galloway to any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers 
Frio and Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused mourning 
and distress.
   And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind 
elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a wicked flea, Sam tenderly and 
carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and 
coat. The guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the 
significance of it, it explains Sam.
   Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know 
about the troubadours. The encyclopædia says they flourished 
between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they 
flourished doesn't seem clear-you may be pretty sure it wasn't a 
sword: maybe it was a fiddlebow, or a forkful of spaghetti, or a 
lady's scarf. Anyhow, Sam Galloway was one of 'em.
   Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the 
expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his 
pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is 
not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had 
often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden by a guitar player instead of 
a rollicking, cussing, all-wool cowboy. No man is a hero to his 
saddle-horse. And even an escalator in a department store might be 
excused for tripping up a troubadour.
   Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you 
memorise and the card tricks you study and that little piece on the 
piano-how does it go?-ti-tum-te-tum-ti-tum-those little Arabian Ten 
Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your 
rich Aunt Jane. You should know that omnœ personœ in tres 
partes divisœ sunt, namely: Barons, Troubadours, and Workers. 
Barons have no inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers 
have no time: so I know you must be a Troubadour, and that you will 
understand Sam Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, 
or paint, we are only troubadours; so let us make the worst of it.
   The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of 
Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel sixteen miles south-
eastward. Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league 
of delicate, sweet flowerets made fragrant the gently undulating 
prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth; wool-white clouds 
flying in from the Mexican Gulf hindered the direct rays of the April 
sun. Sam sang songs as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked 
some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus crowned, 
the long-faced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and, 
judging by his countenance, seemed to think of Beatrice.
   Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to the sheep ranch of 
old man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch seemed to him desirable just 
then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument, 
competition, confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon 
old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his ranch; but he knew he 
would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The 
Workers in the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron 
sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall. There ladies 
smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers 
bring boars' heads and flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his 
carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.
   Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often 
heard praises of Sam Galloway from other ranchmen who had been 
complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour 
for his own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was 
the Last of the Barons. Of course, Bulwer-Lytton lived too early to 
know him, or he wouldn't have conferred that soubriquet upon Warwick. 
In life it is the duty and the function of the Baron to provide work 
for the Workers and lodging and shelter for the Troubadours.
   Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellow-white 
beard and a face lined and seamed by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch 
was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the 
lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a 
Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed 
coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3000 sheep, which he ran on 
two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased 
nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language 
would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. 
Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what 
illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have 
been written the day on which a troubadour-a troubadour who, according 
to the encyclopædia, should have flourished between the eleventh 
and the thirteenth centuries-drew rein at the gates of his baronial 
castle!
   Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he 
saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to 
greet him.
   "Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over 
and see you awhile. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They 
ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."
   "Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see 
you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to as 
out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome. 
'Light. I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen-shall I bring out a 
feed for your hoss?"
   "Oats for him?" said Sam derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a 
pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition. 
I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you 
don't mind."
   I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth 
centuries did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously 
as their parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. 
The Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong. 
Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's 
weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he 
had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant 
meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight 
far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere 
that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him 
a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his 
tours of the ranches.
   After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took 
out his guitar. Not by way of payment, mind you-neither Sam Galloway 
nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the 
late Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the 
esteemed but often obscure Mother Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his 
supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, 
and then sing for Art's sake.
   Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and 
between thirty and forty songs. He by no means stopped there. He could 
talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And 
he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could 
sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him, for I am drawing a 
portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will 
allow.
   I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive 
beyond the power of imagination to conceive. He wore an ultramarine-
blue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearl-grey, exaggerated 
sort of shoe-string, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable 
high-heeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a Mexican straw sombrero.
   That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under 
the hackberry trees. They lighted cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily 
touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird, 
melancholy, minor-keyed canciones that he had learned from the 
Mexican sheep herders and vaqueros. One, in particular, charmed 
and soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of 
the sheep herders, beginning "Huile, huile, palomita," which 
being translated means, "Fly, fly, little dove." Sam sang it for old 
man Ellison many times that evening.
   The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace 
and quiet and appreciation there, such as he had not found in the 
noisy camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have 
crowned the work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and 
unflagging approval than that bestowed upon his efforts by old man 
Ellison. No visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or 
peasant could have been received with more flattering thankfulness and 
joy.
   On a cool, canvas-covered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees 
Sam Galloway passed the greater part of his time. There he rolled his 
brown paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch 
afforded, and added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played 
so expertly on his guitar. To him, as a slave ministering to a great 
lord, the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the 
brush shelter, and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs 
fanned him mildly; mocking-birds at morn and eve competed with but 
scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness 
seemed to fill all his world. While old man Ellison was pottering 
among his flocks of sheep on his mile-an-hour pony, and while the 
Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the 
kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking what a happy world he lived 
in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in life it is to give 
entertainment and pleasure. Here he had food and lodging as good as he 
had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care or exertion or 
strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the sixteenth 
repetition of a song or a story was as keen as at its initial giving. 
Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle 
in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, 
little brown cottontails would shyly frolic through the yard; a covey 
of white-topknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty 
yards away; a paisano bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would 
hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping flourishes of its long 
tail. In the eighty-acre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque 
face grew fat and almost smiling. The troubadour was at the end of his 
wanderings.
   Old man Ellison was his own vaciero. That means that he 
supplied his sheep camps with wood, water, and rations by his own 
labours instead of hiring a vaciero. On small ranches it is 
often done. One morning he started for the camp of Incarnación 
Felipe de la Cruz y Monte Piedras (one of his sheep herders) with the 
week's usual rations of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two 
miles away on the trail from old Fort Ewing, he met, face to face, a 
terrible being called King James, mounted on a fiery, prancing, 
Kentucky-bred horse. King James's real name was James King; but people 
reversed it because it seemed to fit him better, and also because it 
seemed to please his majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman 
between the Alamo plaza in San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in 
Brownsville. Also he was the loudest and most offensive bully and 
braggart and bad man in south-west Texas. And he always made good 
whenever he bragged; and the more noise he made the more dangerous he 
was. In the story papers it is always the quiet, mild-mannered man 
with light-blue eyes and a low voice who turns out to be really 
dangerous; but in real life and in this story such is not the case. 
Give me my choice between assaulting a large, loud-mouthed rough-
houser and an inoffensive stranger with blue eyes sitting quietly in a 
corner, and you will see something doing in the corner every time.
   King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce, two-
hundred-pound, sunburned, blond man, as pink as an October strawberry, 
and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for eyes. On 
that day he wore a flannel shirt that was tan-coloured, with the 
exception of certain large areas which were darkened by transudations 
due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing and 
garnishings about him, such as brown duck trousers stuffed into 
immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shot-gun 
laid across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges 
shining in it-but your mind skidded off such accessories; what held 
your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for 
eyes.
   This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when 
you count up in the baron's favour that he was sixty-five and weighed 
ninety-eight pounds and had heard of King James's record, and that he 
(the baron) had a hankering for the vita simplex and had no gun 
with him and wouldn't have used it if he had, you can't censure him if 
I tell you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his 
wrinkles went out of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he 
was not the kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined in the 
mile-an-hour pony (no difficult feat) and saluted the formidable 
monarch.
   King James expressed himself with royal directness.
   "You're that old snoozer that's running sheep on this range, ain't 
you?" said he. "What right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, 
or lease any?"
   "I have two sections leased from the state," said old man Ellison 
mildly.
   "Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired 
yesterday; and I had a man at the land office on the minute to take it 
up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got 
to git. Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any 
room in it for snoozers. This range you've got your sheep on is mine. 
I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a 
sheep inside of it when it's done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a 
week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men 
over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if 
I find you here at the same time this is what you'll get."
   King James patted the breech of his shot-gun warningly.
   Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnación. He sighed 
many times, and the wrinkles in his face grew deeper. Rumours that the 
old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of Free 
Grass was in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating upon 
his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of growing; the 
price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the 
storekeeper at Frio City, at whose store he bought his ranch supplies, 
was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut 
him off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him 
by the terrible King James was a crusher.
   When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam 
Galloway lying on his cot, propped against a roll of blankets and wool 
sacks, fingering his guitar.
   "Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called cheerfully. "You rolled 
in early this evening. I been trying a new twist on the Spanish 
Fandango to-day. I just about got it. Here's how she goes-listen."
   "That's fine, that's mighty fine," said old man Ellison, sitting on 
the kitchen step and rubbing his white, Scotch-terrier whiskers. "I 
reckon you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far as 
the roads are cut out."
   "Oh, I don't know," said Sam reflectively. "But I certainly do get 
there on variations. I guess I can handle anything in five flats about 
as well as any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle Ben-
ain't you feeling right well this evening?"
   "Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out, 
let's have that Mexican piece that starts off with `Huile, huile, 
palomita.' It seems that that song always kind of soothes and 
comforts me after I've been riding far or anything bothers me."
   "Why, seguramente, señor," said Sam. "I'll hit her up 
for you as often as you like. And before I forget about it, Uncle Ben, 
you want to jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're 
just a little bit strong."
   A man sixty-five years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by a 
complication of disasters, cannot successfully and continuously 
dissemble. Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in 
others around him-because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next 
day, Sam again questioned the old man about his air of sadness and 
abstraction. Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James's 
threats and orders and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared to 
have marked him for their own. The troubadour took the news 
thoughtfully. He had heard much about King James.
   On the third day of the seven days of grace allowed him by the 
autocrat of the range, old man Ellison drove his buckboard to Frio 
City to fetch some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard 
but not implacable. He divided the old man's order by two, and let him 
have a little more time. One article secured was a new fine ham for 
the pleasure of the troubadour.
   Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King 
James riding into town. His majesty could never look anything but 
fierce and menacing, but to-day his slits of eyes appeared to be a 
little wider than they usually were.
   "Good day," said the king gruffly. "I've been wanting to see you. I 
hear it said by a cowman from Sandy yesterday that you was from 
Jackson County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that's a 
fact."
   "Born there," said old man Ellison, "and raised there till I was 
twenty-one."
   "This man says." went on King James, "that he thinks you was 
related to the Jackson County Reeveses. Was he right?"
   "Aunt Caroline Reeves," said the old man, "was my half-sister."
   "She was my aunt," said King James. "I run away from home when I 
was sixteen. Now let's re-talk over some things that we discussed a 
few days ago. They call me a bad man; and they're only half right. 
There's plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their 
increase for a long time to come. Aunt Caroline used to cut out sheep 
in cake dough and bake 'em for me. You keep your sheep where they are, 
and use all the range you want. How's your finances?" The old man 
related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint and candour.
   "She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket-I'm speaking 
of Aunt Caroline," said King James. "I'm going over to Frio City to-
day, and I'll ride back by your ranch to-morrow. I'll draw $2000 out 
of the bank there and bring it over to you; and I'll tell Bradshaw to 
let you have everything you want on credit. You are bound to have 
heard the old saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and 
Kings would stick closer by each other than chestnut burrs. Well, I'm 
a King yet whenever I run across a Reeves. So you look out for me 
along about sundown to-morrow, and don't worry about nothing. 
Shouldn't wonder if the dry spell don't kill out the young grass."
   Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles 
filled out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by the magic of kinship and 
the good that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been 
removed.
   On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His 
guitar hung by its buckskin string to a hackberry limb, moaning as the 
gulf breeze blew across its masterless strings.
   The Kiowa endeavoured to explain. "Sam, he catch pony," said he, 
"and say he ride to Frio City. What for no can damn sabe. Say he come 
back to-night. Maybe so. That all."
   As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. 
He pastured his pony and went into the house, his spurs jingling 
martially.
   Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of 
before-supper coffee. He looked contented and pleased.
   "Hello, Sam," said he, "I'm darned glad to see ye back. I don't 
know how I managed to get along on this ranch, anyhow, before ye 
dropped in to cheer things up. I'll bet ye've been skylarking around 
with some of them Frio City gals, now, that's kept ye so late."
   And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam's face and saw 
that the minstrel had changed to the man of action.
   And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison's six-
shooter, that the latter had left behind him when he drove to town, we 
may well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays 
down the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It 
is not the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold skill of Aramis nor the 
iron wrist of Porthos that we have to fear-it is the Gascon's fury-the 
wild and unacademic attack of the troubadour-the sword of D'Artagnan.
   "I done it," said Sam. "I went over to Frio City to do it. I 
couldn't let him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben. I met him in 
Summer's saloon. I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that 
nobody else heard. He reached for his gun first-half-a-dozen fellows 
saw him do it-but I got mine unlimbered first. Three doses I gave him-
right around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of 'em. 
He won't bother you no more."
   "This-is-King-James-you speak-of?" asked old man Ellison, while he 
sipped his coffee.
   "You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the 
witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of 
course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but 
there was four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He 
won't bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close 
them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as I 
do must kind of limber a fellow's trigger finger up a little, don't 
you think, Uncle Ben?"
   Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the 
spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.
   "Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a 
tremulous hand, "would you mind getting the guitar and playing that 
`Huile, huile, palomita,' piece once or twice? It always seems 
to be kind of soothing and comforting when a man's tired and fagged 
out."
   There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is 
wrong. It should have been called "The Last of the Barons." There 
never will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem 
that the jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled 
blows of the pickaxes and trip-hammers of all the Workers in the 
world.