O. Henry

                      Hearts and Crosses

BALDY WOODS REACHED for the bottle, and got it. Whenever Baldy went 
for anything he usually - but this is not Baldy's story. He poured out 
a third drink that was larger by a finger than the first and second. 
Baldy was in consultation; and the consultee is worthy of his hire.
   `I'd be king if I was you,' said Baldy, so positively that his 
holster creaked and his spurs rattled.
   Webb Yeager pushed back his flat-brimmed Stetson; and made further 
disorder in his straw-coloured hair. The tonsorial recourse being 
without avail, he followed the liquid example of the more resourceful 
Baldy.
`If a man marries a queen, it oughtn't to make him a two-spot,' 
declared Webb, epitomizing his grievances.
   `Sure not,' said Baldy, sympathetic, still thirsty, and genuinely 
solicitous concerning the relative value of the cards. `By rights 
you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal. The cards have 
been stacked on you. I'll tell you what you are, Webb Yeager.'
   `What?' asked Webb, with a hopeful look in his pale blue eyes. 
   `You're a prince consort.'
   `Go easy,' said Webb, `I never blackguarded you none.'
   `It's a title,' explained Baldy, `up among the picture cards; but 
it don't take no tricks I'll tell you, Webb. It's a brand they've got 
for certain animals in Europe. Say that you or me or one of them Dutch 
dukes marries in a royal family. Well, by and by our wife gets to be 
queen. Are we king? Not in a million years. At the coronation 
ceremonies we march between little casino and the Ninth Grand 
Custodian of the Royal Hall Bedchamber. The only use we are is to 
appear in photographs, and accept the responsibility for the heir-
apparent That ain't any square deal. Yes, sir, Webb, you're a prince 
consort; and if I was you, I'd start a interregnum or a habeas corpus 
or somethin'; and I'd be king if I had to turn from the bottom of the 
deck.'
   Baldy emptied his glass to the ratification of his Warwick pose.    
   `Baldy,' said Webb solemnly, `me and you punched cows in the same 
outfit for years. We been runnin' on the same range, and ridin' the 
same trails since we was boys. I wouldn't talk about my family affairs 
to nobody but you. You was line-rider on the Nopalito Ranch when I 
married Santa McAllister. I was foreman then; but what am I now? I 
don't amount to a knot in a stake rope.'
   `When old McAllister was the cattle king of West Texas,' continued 
Baldy with Satanic sweetness, `you was some tallow. You had as much to 
say on the ranch as he did.'
   `I did,' admitted Webb, `up to the time he found out I was tryin' 
to get my rope over Santa's head. Then he kept me out on the range as 
far from the ranch-house as he could. When the old man died they 
commenced to call Santa the "cattle queen." I'm boss of the cattle - 
that's all. She 'tends to all the business; she handles all the money; 
I can't sell even a beef steer to a party of campers, myself. Santa's 
the "queen"; and I'm Mr. Nobody.'
   `I'd be king if I was you,' repeated Baldy Woods, the royalist. 
`When a man marries a queen he ought to grade up with her - on ~e hoof 
- dressed - dried - corned - any old way from the chaparral to the 
packing-house. Lots of folks thinks it's f~mny, Webb, that you don't 
have the say-so on the Nopalito. I ain't reflectin' none on Miz Yeager 
- she's the finest little lady between the Rio Grande and next 
Christmas - but a man ought to be boss of his own camp.'
   The smooth, brown face of Yeager lengthened to a mask of wounded 
melancholy. With that expression, and his rumpled yellow hair and 
guileless blue eyes, he might have been likened to a schoolboy whose 
leadership had been usurped by a youngster of superior strength. But 
his active and sinewy seventy-two inches, and his girded revolvers 
forbade the comparison.
   `What was that you called me, Baldy?' he asked. `What kind of a 
concert was it?'
   `A "consort," ' corrected Baldy - `a "prince consort." It's a kind 
of short-card pseudonym. You come in sort of between Jack-high and a 
four-card flush.'
   Webb Yeager sighed, and gathered the strap of his Winchester 
scabbard from the floor.
   `I'm ridin' back to the ranch to-day,' he said half heartedly. 
`I've got to start a bunch of beeves for San Antone in the morning.'   
   `I'm your company as far as Dry Lake,' announced Baldy. `I've
got a round-up camp on the San Marcos cuttin' out two-yearolds.'
   The two companeros mounted their ponies and trotted away 
from the little railroad settlement, where they had foregathered in 
the thirsty morning.
   At Dry Lake, where their routes diverged, they reined up for a 
parting cigarette. For miles they had ridden in silence save for the 
soft drurn of the ponies' hoofs on the matted mesquite grass, and the 
rattle of the chaparral against their wooden stirrups. But in Texas 
discourse is seldom continuous. You may fill in a mile, a meal, and a 
murder between your paragraphs without detriment to your thesis. So, 
without apology, Webb offered an addendum to the conversation that had 
begun ten miles away.
   `You remember, yourself, Baldy, that there was a time when Santa 
wasn't quite so independent. You remember the days when old McAllister 
was keepin' us apart, and how she used to send me the sign tliat she 
wanted to see me? Old man Mac promised to make me look like a colander 
if I ever come in gunshot of the ranch. You remember the sign she used 
to send, Baldy - the heart with a cross inside of it?'
   `Me?' cried Baldy, with intoxicated archness. `You old 
sugarstealing coyote! Don't I remember. Why, you dad-blamed old long-
horned turtle-dove, the boys in camp was all cognoscious about them 
hiroglyphs. The "gizzard and crossbones" we used to call it. We used 
to see 'em on truck that was sent out from the ranch. They was marked 
in charcoal on the sacks of four and in lead pencil on the newspapers. 
I see one of 'em once chalked on the back of a new cook that old man 
McAllister sent out from the ranch - danged if I didn't.'
   `Santa's father,' explained Webb gently, `got her to promise that 
she wouldn't write to me or send me any word. That heart-andcross sign 
was her scheme. Whenever she wanted to see me in particular she 
managed to put that mark on somethin' at the ranch that she knew I'd 
see. And I never laid eyes on it but what I burnt the wind for the 
ranch the same night. I used to see her in that coma mott back of the 
little horse corral.'
   `We knowed it,' chanted Baldy; `but we never let on. We was all for 
you. We knowed why you always kept that fast paint in camp. And when 
we see that gizzard and crossbones figured out on the truck from the 
ranch we knowed old Pinto was going to eat up miles that night instead 
of grass. You remember Scurry - that educated horse-wrangler we had - 
the college fellow that tangle-foot drove to the range? Whenever 
Scurry saw that come-meet-yourhoney brand on anything from the ranch, 
he'd wave his hand like that, and say, "Our friend Lee Andrews will 
again swim the Hell's point to-night."'
   `The last time Santa sent me the sign,' said Webb, `was once when 
she was sick. I noticed it as soon as I hit camp, and I galloped Pinto 
forty mile that night. She wasn't at the coma mott. I went to the 
house; and old McAllister met me at the door. "Did you come here to 
get killed?" says he; "I'll disoblige you for once. I just started a 
Mexican to bring you. Santa wants you. Go in that room and see her. 
And then come out here and see me."
   `Santa was lyin' in bed pretty sick. But she gives out a kind of a 
smile, and her hand and mine lock horns, and I sets down by the bed - 
mud and spurs and chaps and all. "I've heard you ridin' across the 
grass for hours, Webb," she says. "I was sure you'd come. You saw the 
sign?" she whispers. "The minute I hit camp," says I. "'Twas marked on 
the bag of potatoes and onions." "They're always together," says she, 
soft like - "always together in life." "They go well together," I 
says, "in a stew." "I mean hearts and crosses," says Santa. "Our sign 
- to love and to suffer - that's what they mean."
   `And there was old Doc Musgrove amusin' himself with whisky
and a palm-leaf fan. And by and by Santa goes to sleep; and Doc feels
her forehead; and he says to me: "You're not such a bad febrifuge
But you'd better slide out now; for the diagnosis don't call for you 
in regular doses. The little lady'll be all right when she wakes up."
   `I seen old McAllister outside. "She's asleep," says I. "And now
you can start in with your colander work. Take your time; for I
left my gun on my saddle-horn."
   `Old Mac laughs, and he says to me: "Pumpin' lead into the best
ranch-boss in West Texas don't seem to me good business policy.
I don't know where I could get as good a one. It's the son-in-law
idea, Webb, that makes me admire for to use you as a target. You
am't my idea for a member of the family. But I can use you on the
Nopalito if you'll keep outside of a radius with the ranchhouse in
the middle of it. You go upstairs and lay down on a cot, and when
you get some sleep we'll talk it over." '
   Baldy Woods pulled down his hat, and uncurled his leg from his
saddle-horn. Webb shortened his rein, and his pony danced, anx-
ious to be off. The two men shook hands with Western ceremony.
   `Adios, Baldy,' said Webb, `I'm glad I seen you and had this talk.'
   With a pounding rush that sounded like the rise of a covey of
quail, the riders sped away toward different points of the compass.
A hundred yards on his route Baldy reined in on the top of a bare
knoll, and emitted a yell. He swayed on his horse; had he been on
foot, the earth would have risen and conquered him; but in the
saddle he was a master of equilibrium, and laughed at whisky, and
despised the centre of gravity.
   Webb turned in his saddle at the signal.
   `If I was you,' came Baldy's strident and perverting tones, `I'd be
king!'
   At eight o'clock on the following morning Bud Turner rolled
from his saddle in front of the Nopalito ranch-house, and stumbled 
with whizzing rowels towards the gallery. Bud was in charge of the 
bunch of beef cattle that was to strike the trail that morning
for San Antonio. Mrs. Yeager was on the gallery watering a cluster
of hyacinths growing in a red earthenware jar.
   `King' McAllister had bequeathed to his daughter many of his
strong characteristics - his resolution, his gay courage, his 
contumacious self reliance, his pride as a reigning monarch of hoofs 
and horns. Allegro and fortissimo had been McAllister's tempo and 
tone. In Santa they survived, transposed to the feminine key. 
Substantially, she preserved the image of the mother who had been 
summoned to wander in other and less fmite green pastures long before 
the waxing herds of kine had conferred royalty upon the house. She had 
her mother's slim, strong figure and grave, soft prettiness that 
relieved in her the severity of the imperious McAIlister eve and the 
McAllister air of royal independence.
   Webb stood on one end of the gallery giving orders to two or three 
sub-bosses of various camps and outfits who had ridden in for 
instructions.
   ''Morning,' said Bud briefly. `Where do you want them beeves to go 
in town - to Barber's, as usual?'
   Now, to answer that had been the prerogative of the queen. All the 
reins of business - buying, selling, and banking - had been held by 
her capable fingers. The handling of the cattle had been entrusted 
fully to her husband. In the days of `King' McAllister Santa had been 
his secretary and helper; and she had continued her work with wisdom 
and profit. But before she could reply, the prince consort spake up 
with calm decision 
   `You drive that bunch to Zimmerman and Nesbit's pens; I spoke to 
Zimmerman about it some time ago.'   Bud turned on his high boot-
heels.
   `Wait!' called Santa quickly. She looked at her husband with 
surprise in her steady grey eyes.
   `Why, what do you mean, Webb?' she asked, with a small wrinkle 
gathering between her brows. `I never deal with Zimmerman and Nesbit. 
Barber has handled every head of stock from this ranch in that market 
for five years. I'm not going to take the business out of his hands.' 
She faced Bud Turner. `Deliver those cattle to Barber,' she concluded 
positively.
   Bud gazed impartially at the water-jar hanging on the gallery, 
stood on his other leg, and chewed a mesquite leaf.
   `I want this bunch of beeves to go to Zimmerman and Nesbit,' said 
Webb, with a frosty light in his blue eyes.
   `Nonsense,' said Santa impatiently. `You'd better start on, Bud, so 
as to noon at the Litde Elm water-hole. Tell Barber we'll have another 
lot of culls ready in about a month.'
   Bud allowed a hesitating eye to steal upward and meet Webb's. Webb 
saw apology in his look, and fancied he saw commiseration. 
   `You deliver them cattle,' he said grimly, `to -'
   `Barber,' finished Santa sharply. `Let that settle it. Is there 
anything else you are waiting for, Bud?'
   `No, m'm,' said Bud. But before going he lingered while a cow's 
tail could have switched thrice; for man is man's ally; and even the 
Philistines must have blushed when they took Samson in the way they 
did.
   `You hear your boss!' cried Webb sardonically. He took off his hat, 
and bowed until it touched the floor before his wife.
   `Webb,' said Santa rebukingly, `you're acting mighty foolish 
today.'
   `Court fool, your Majesty,' said Webb, in his slow tones, which had 
changed their quality. `What else can you expect? Let me tell you. I 
was a man before I married a cattle queen. What am I now? The 
laughing-stock of the camps. I'll be a man again.' Santa looked at him 
closely.
   `Don't be unreasonable, Webb,' she said calmly. `You haven't been 
slighted in any way. Do I ever interfere in your management of the 
catde? I know the business side of the ranch much better than you do. 
I learned it from Dad. Be sensible.'
   `Kingdoms and queendoms,' said Webb, `don't suit me unless I am in 
the pictures, too. I punch the cattle and you wear the crown. ;r; All 
right. I'd rather be High Lord Chancellor of a cow-camp than ~~a,;:,. 
the eight-spot in a queen-high flush. It's your ranch; and Barber gets 
the beeves.'
   Webb's horse was tied to the rack. He walked into the house and 
brought out his roll of blankets that he never took with him except on 
long rides, and his `slicker,' and his longest stake rope of plaited 
raw-hide. These he began to tie deliberately upon his saddle. Santa, a 
little pale, followed him.
   Webb swung up into the saddle. His serious, smooth face was without 
expression, except for a stubborn light that smouldered in his eyes.
   `There's a herd of cows and calves,' said he, `near the Hondo 
Water-hole on the Frio that ought to be moved away from timber. Lobos 
have killed three of the calves. I forgot to leave orders. You'd 
better tell Simms to attend to it.'
   Santa laid a hand on ~the horse's bridle, and looked her husband in 
the eye.
   `Are you going to leave me, Webb?' she asked quietly. 
   `I am going to be a man again,' he answered.
   `I wish you success in a praiseworthy attempt,' she said, with a 
sudden coldness. She turned and walked directly into the house. 
   Webb Yeager rode to the south-east as straight as the topography of 
West Texas permitted. And when he reached the horizon he might have 
ridden on into blue space as far as knowledge of him on the Nopalito 
went. And the days, with Sundays at their head, formed into hebdomadal 
squads; and the weeks, captained by the full moon, closed ranks into 
menstrual companies carrying `Tempus fugit' on their banners; and the 
months marched on toward the vast camp-ground of the years; but Webb 
Yeager came no more to the dominions of his queen.
   One day a being named Bartholomew, a sheepman - and therefore of 
little account - from the lower Rio Grande country, rode in sight of 
the Nopalito ranch-house and felt hunger assail him. Ex consuetudine 
he was soon seated at the midday dining-table of that hospitable 
kingdom. Talk like water gushed from him: he might have been smitten 
with Aaron's rod - that is your gentle shepherd when an audience is 
vouchsafed him whose ears are not overgrown with wool.
   `Missis Yeager,' he babbled, `I see a man the other day on the 
Rancho Seco down in Hidalgo County by your name - Webb Yeager was his. 
He'd just been engaged as manager. He was a tall, light-haired man, 
not saying . much. Maybe he was some kin of yours, do you think?'
   `A husband.' said Santa cordially. `The Seco has done well. Mr. 
Yeager is one of the best stockmen in the West.'
   The dropping out of a prince consort rarely disorganizes a 
monarchy. Queen Santa had appointed as mayordomo of the ranch a trusty 
subject, named Ramsay, who had been one of her father's faithful 
vassals. And there was scarcely a ripple on the Nopalito ranch save 
when the gulf breeze created undulations in the grass of its wide 
acres.
   For several years the Nopalito had been making experiments with an 
English breed of cattle that looked down with aristocratic contempt 
upon the Texas long-horns. The experiments were found satisfactory; 
and a pasture had been set apart for the bluebloods. The fame of them 
had gone forth into the chaparral and pear as far as men ride in 
saddles. Other ranches woke up, rubbed their eyes, and looked with new 
dissatisfacaon upon the longhorns.
   As a consequence, one day a sunburued, capable, silk-kerchiefed, 
nonchalant youth, garnished with revolvers, and attended by three 
Mexican vaqueros, alighted at the Nopalito ranch and presented the 
following business-like epistle to the queen thereof 

   `Mrs. Yeager - The Nopalito Ranch 

DEAR MADAM 
   `I am instructed by the owners of the Rancho Seco to purchase 100 
head of two and three-year-old cows of the Sussex breed owned by you. 
If you can fill the order please deliver the cattle to the bearer; and 
a cheque will be forwarded to you at once.

                    `Respectfully, 
                          WEBSTER YEAGER,
                             `Manager the Rancho Seco.'

   Business is business, even - very scantily did it escape being 
written `especially' - in a kingdom.
   That night the 100 head of cattle were driven up from the pasture 
and penned in a corral near the ranch-house for delivery in the 
morning.
   When night closed down and the house was still, did Santa Yeager 
throw herself down, clasping that formal note to her bosom, weeping, 
and calling out a name that pride (either in one or the other) had 
kept from her lips many a day? Or did she file the letter in her 
business way, retaining her royal balance and strength?
   Wonder, if you will; but royalty is sacred; and there is a veil. 
But this much you shall learn -
   At midnight Santa slipped softly out of the ranchhouse, clothed
in something dark and plain. She paused for a moment under the live-
oak tree. The prairies were somewhat dim, and the moonlight was pale 
orange, diluted with particles of an impalpable flying mist. But the 
mock-bird whistled on every bough of vantage; leagues of flowers 
scented the air; and a kindergarten of little shadowy rabbits leaped 
and played in an open space near by. Santa turned her face to the 
south-east and threw three kisses thither-ward; for there was none to 
see.
   Then she sped silently to the blacksmith-shop, fifty yards away;
and what she did there can only be surmised. But the forge glowed
red; and there was a faint hammering such as Cupid might make
when he sharpens his arrow-points.
   Later she came forth with a queer-shaped, handled thing in one
hand, and a portable furnace, sueh as are seen in branding-camps,
in the other. To the corral where the Sussex cattle were penned
she sped with these things swiftly in the moonlight.
   She opened the gate and slipped inside the corral. The Sussex
cattle were mostly a dark red. But among this bunch was one that
was milky white - notable among the others.
   And now Santa shook from her shoulder something that we had not 
seen before - a rope lasso. She freed the loop of it, coiling the 
length in her left hand, and plunged into the thick of the cattle.
   The white cow was her object. She swung the lasso, which caught one 
horn and slipped off. The next throw encircled the forefeet and the 
animal fell heavily. Santa made for it like a panther; but it 
scrambled up and dashed against her, knocking her over like a blade of 
grass.
   Again she made the cast, while the aroused cattle milled around the 
four sides of the corral in a plunging mass. This throw was fair; the 
white cow came to earth again; and before it could rise Santa had made 
the lasso fast around a post of the corral with a swift and simple 
knot, and had leaped upon the cow again with the raw-hide hobbles.
   In one minute the feet of the animal were tied (no recordbreaking 
deed) and Santa leaned against the corral for the same space of time, 
panting and lax.
   And then she ran swifdy to her furnace at the gate and brought the 
branding-iron, queerly-shaped and white-hot.
   The bellow of the outraged white cow, as the iron was applied, 
should have stirred the slumbering auricular nerves and consciences of 
the near-by subjects of the Nopalito, but it did not. And it was amid 
the deepest nocturnal silence that Santa ran like a lapwing back to 
the ranch-house and there fell upon a cot and sobbed - sobbed as 
though queens had hearts as simple ranchmen's wives have, and as 
though she would gladly make kings of prince consorts, should they 
ride back again from over the hills and far away.
   In the morning the capable revolvered youth and his vaqueros set 
forth, driving the bunch of Sussex cattle across the prairies to the 
Rancho Seco. Ninety miles it was; a six days' journey, grazing and 
watering the animals on the way.
   The beasts arrived at Rancho Seco one evening at dusk; and were 
received and counted by the foreman of the ranch.
   The next morning at eight o'clock a horseman loped out of the brush 
to the Nopalito ranch-house. He dismounted stiflly, and strode, with 
whizzing spurs, to the house. His horse gave a great sigh and swayed 
foam-streaked, with down-drooping head and closed eyes.
   But waste not your pity upon Belshazzar, the flea-bitten sorrel. 
To-day, in Nopalito horse pasture he survives, pampered, beloved, 
unridden, cherished record-holder of long-distance rides.
   The horseman stumbled into the house. Two arms fell around his 
neck, and someone cried out in the voice of woman and queen alike:    
   `Webb - oh, Webb!'
   `I was a skunk,' said Webb Yeager. 
   `Hush,' said Santa, `did you see it?' 
   `I saw it,' said Webb.
   What they meant God knows; and you shall know, if you rightly read 
the primer of events.
   `Be the cattle-queen,' said Webb; `and overlook it if you can. I 
was a mangy, sheep-stealing coyote.'
   `Hush!' said Santa again, laying her fingers upon his mouth. 
`There's no queen here. Do you know who I am? I am Santa Yeager, First 
Lady of the Bedchamber. Come here.'
   She dragged him from the gallery into the room to the right. ~ 
There stood a cradle with an infant in it - a red, ribald, 
unintelligible, babbling, beautiful infant, sputtering at life in an 
unseemly manner.
   `There's no queen on this ranch,' said Santa again. `Look at the 
king. He's got your eyes, Webb. Down on your knees and look at His 
Highness.'
   But jingling rowels sounded on the gallery, and Bud Turner stumbled 
there again with the same query that he had brought lacking a few 
days, a year ago.
   "Morning. Them beeves is just turned out on the trail. Shall I ' 
drive 'em to Barber's, or -'
   He saw Webb and stopped open-mouthed. 
   `Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!' shrieked the king in his cradle, beating the 
air with his fists.
   `You hear your boss, Bud,' said Webb Yeager, with a broad grin - 
just as he had said a year ago.
   And that is all, except that when old man Quinn, owner of the 
Rancho Seco, went out to look over the herd of Sussex cattle that he 
had bought from the Nopalito ranch, he asked his new manager -
   `What's the Nopalito ranch brand, Wilson?' `X Bar Y,' said Wilson.
   `I thought so,' said Quinn. `But look at that white heifer there; 
she's got another brand - a heart with a cross inside of it. What 
brand is that?'