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Hidden Water

by Dane Coolidge · English · Gutenberg #29642 · 607,423 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Hidden Water

Author: Dane Coolidge

Illustrator: Maynard Dixon


        
Release date: August 9, 2009 [eBook #29642]
                Most recently updated: January 5, 2021

Language: English

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        Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HIDDEN WATER ***




Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net





[Illustration: "I never saw a sheepman yet that would fight, but you've
got to"]




HIDDEN WATER

By DANE COOLIDGE

With Four Illustrations in Color

By MAYNARD DIXON

A. L. BURT COMPANY

Publishers--New York




COPYRIGHT

A. C. McCLURG & CO.

1910

Published October 29, 1910

Second Edition, December 3, 1910

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England

All rights reserved




ILLUSTRATIONS

  "I never saw a sheepman yet that would fight, but
      you've got to"                                    _Frontispiece_
  "Put up them guns, you gawky fools! This man ain't
      going to eat ye!"                                            177
  "No!" said Kitty, "you do not love me"                           287
  Threw the sand full in his face                                  462




HIDDEN WATER




CHAPTER I

THE MOUSE


After many long, brooding days of sunshine, when the clean-cut
mountains gleamed brilliantly against the sky and the grama grass
curled slowly on its stem, the rain wind rose up suddenly out of
Papaguería and swooped down upon the desolate town of Bender, whirling
a cloud of dust before it; and the inhabitants, man and horse, took to
cover. New-born clouds, rushing out of the ruck of flying dirt, cast a
cold, damp shadow upon the earth and hurried past; white-crested
thunder-caps, piling-up above the Four Peaks, swept resolutely down to
meet them; and the storm wind, laden with the smell of greasewood and
wetted alkali, lashed the gaunt desert bushes mercilessly as it howled
across the plain. Striking the town it jumped wickedly against the old
Hotel Bender, where most of the male population had taken shelter,
buffeting its false front until the glasses tinkled and the bar
mirrors swayed dizzily from their moorings. Then with a sudden
thunder on the tin roof the flood came down, and Black Tex set up the
drinks.

It was a tall cowman just down from the Peaks who ordered the round,
and so all-embracing was his good humor that he bid every one in the
room drink with him, even a sheepman. Broad-faced and huge, with four
months' growth of hair and a thirst of the same duration, he stood at
the end of the bar, smiling radiantly, one sun-blackened hand toying
with the empty glass.

"Come up, fellers," he said, waving the other in invitation, "and
drink to Arizona. With a little more rain and good society she'd be a
holy wonder, as the Texas land boomer says down in hell." They came up
willingly, cowpunchers and sheepmen, train hands, prospectors, and the
saloon bums that Black Tex kept about to blow such ready spenders as
he, whenever they came to town. With a practised jolt of the bottle
Tex passed down the line, filling each heavy tumbler to the brim; he
poured a thin one for himself and beckoned in his roustabout to swell
the count--but still there was an empty glass. There was one man over
in the corner who had declined to drink. He sat at a disused card
table studiously thumbing over an old magazine, and as he raised his
dram the barkeeper glowered at him intolerantly.

"Well," said the big cowboy, reaching for his liquor, "here's how--and
may she rain for a week!" He shoved back his high black sombrero as he
spoke, but before he signalled the toast his eye caught the sidelong
glance of Black Tex, and he too noticed the little man in the corner.

"What's the matter?" he inquired, leaning over toward Tex and jerking
his thumb dubiously at the corner, and as the barkeeper scowled and
shrugged his shoulders he set down his glass and stared.

The stranger was a small man, for Arizona, and his delicate hands were
almost as white as a woman's; but the lines in his face were graven
deep, without effeminacy, and his slender neck was muscled like a
wrestler's. In dress he was not unlike the men about him--Texas boots,
a broad sombrero, and a canvas coat to turn the rain,--but his manner
was that of another world, a sombre, scholarly repose such as you
would look for in the reference room of the Boston Public Library; and
he crouched back in his corner like a shy, retiring mouse. For a
moment the cowman regarded him intently, as if seeking for some
exculpating infirmity; then, leaving the long line of drinkers to
chafe at the delay, he paused to pry into the matter.

"Say, partner," he began, his big mountain voice tamed down to a
masterful calm, "won't you come over and have something with us?"

There was a challenge in the words which did not escape the stranger;
he glanced up suddenly from his reading and a startled look came into
his eyes as he saw the long line of men watching him. They were large
clear eyes, almost piercing in their intentness, yet strangely
innocent and childlike. For a moment they rested upon the regal form
of the big cowboy, no less a man than Jefferson Creede, foreman of the
Dos S, and there was in them something of that silent awe and worship
which big men love to see, but when they encountered the black looks
of the multitude and the leering smile of Black Tex they lit up
suddenly with an answering glint of defiance.

"No, thank you," he said, nodding amiably to the cowman, "I don't
drink."

An incredulous murmur passed along the line, mingled with sarcastic
mutterings, but the cowman did not stir.

"Well, have a cigar, then," he suggested patiently; and the barkeeper,
eager to have it over, slapped one down on the bar and raised his
glass.

"Thank you just as much," returned the little man politely, "but I
don't smoke, either. I shall have to ask you to excuse me."

"Have a glass of milk, then," put in the barkeeper, going off into a
guffaw at the familiar jest, but the cowboy shut him up with a look.

"W'y, certainly," he said, nodding civilly to the stranger. "Come on,
fellers!" And with a flourish he raised his glass to his lips as if
tossing off the liquor at a gulp. Then with another downward flourish
he passed the whiskey into a convenient spittoon and drank his chaser
pensively, meanwhile shoving a double eagle across the bar. As Black
Tex rang it up and counted out the change Creede stuffed it into his
pocket, staring absently out the window at the downpour. Then with a
muttered word about his horse he strode out into the storm.

Deprived of their best spender, the crowd drifted back to the tables;
friendly games of coon-can sprang up; stud poker was resumed; and a
crew of railroad men, off duty, looked out at the sluicing waters and
idly wondered whether the track would go out--the usual thing in
Arizona. After the first delirium of joy at seeing it rain at all
there is an aftermath of misgiving, natural enough in a land where the
whole surface of the earth, mountain and desert, has been chopped into
ditches by the trailing feet of cattle and sheep, and most of the
grass pulled up by the roots. In such a country every gulch becomes a
watercourse almost before the dust is laid, the _arroyos_ turn to
rivers and the rivers to broad floods, drifting with trees and
wreckage. But the cattlemen and sheepmen who happened to be in Bender,
either to take on hands for the spring round-up or to ship supplies to
their shearing camps out on the desert, were not worrying about the
railroad. Whether the bridges went out or held, the grass and browse
would shoot up like beanstalks in to-morrow's magic sunshine; and even
if the Rio Salagua blocked their passage, or the shearers' tents were
beaten into the mud, there would still be feed, and feed was
everything.

But while the rain was worth a thousand dollars a minute to the
country at large, trade languished in the Hotel Bender. In a land
where a gentleman cannot take a drink without urging every one within
the sound of his voice to join in, the saloon business, while running
on an assured basis, is sure to have its dull and idle moments. Having
rung up the two dollars and a half which Jefferson Creede paid for his
last drink--the same being equivalent to one day's wages as foreman of
the Dos S outfit--Black Tex, as Mr. Brady of the Bender bar preferred
to be called, doused the glasses into a tub, turned them over to his
roustabout, and polished the cherrywood moodily. Then he drew his
eyebrows down and scowled at the little man in the corner.

In his professional career he had encountered a great many men who did
not drink, but most of them smoked, and the others would at least
take a cigar home to their friends. But here was a man who refused to
come in on a treat at all, and a poor, miserable excuse for a man he
was, too, without a word for any one. Mr. Brady's reflections on the
perversity of tenderfeet were cut short by a cold blast of air. The
door swung open, letting in a smell of wet greasewood, and an old man,
his hat dripping, stumbled in and stood swaying against the bar. His
aged sombrero, blacksmithed along the ridge with copper rivets, was
set far back on a head of long gray hair which hung in heavy strings
down his back, like an Indian's; his beard, equally long and tangled,
spread out like a chest protector across his greasy shirt, and his
fiery eyes roved furtively about the room as he motioned for a drink.
Black Tex set out the bottle negligently and stood waiting.

"Is that all?" he inquired pointedly, as the old man slopped out a
drink.

"Well, have one yourself," returned the old-timer grudgingly. Then,
realizing his breach of etiquette, he suddenly straightened up and
included the entire barroom in a comprehensive sweep of the hand.

"Come up hyar, all of yoush," he said drunkenly. "Hev a
drink--everybody--no, everybody--come up hyar, I say!" And the
graceless saloon bums dropped their cards and came trooping up
together. A few of the more self-respecting men slipped quietly out
into the card rooms; but the studious stranger, disdaining such puny
subterfuges, remained in his place, as impassive and detached as
ever.

"Hey, young man," exclaimed the old-timer jauntily, "step up hyar and
nominate yer pizen!"

He closed his invitation with an imperative gesture, but the young man
did not obey.

"No, thank you, Uncle," he replied soberly, "I don't drink."

"Well, hev a cigar, then," returned the old man, finishing out the
formula of Western hospitality, and once more Black Tex glowered down
upon this guest who was always "knocking a shingle off his sign."

"Aw, cut it out, Bill," he sneered, "that young feller don't drink ner
smoke, neither one--and he wouldn't have no truck with you, nohow!"

They drank, and the stranger dropped back into his reading unperturbed.
Once more Black Tex scrubbed the bar and scowled at him; then,
tapping peremptorily on the board with a whiskey glass, he gave way to
his just resentment.

"Hey, young feller," he said, jerking his hand arbitrarily, "come over
here. Come over here, I said--I want to talk with you!"

For a moment the man in the corner looked up in well-bred surprise;
then without attempting to argue the point he arose and made his way
to the bar.

"What's the matter with you, anyway?" demanded Brady roughly. "Are you
too good to drink with the likes of us?"

The stranger lowered his eyes before the domineering gaze of his
inquisitor and shifted his feet uneasily.

"I don't drink with anybody," he said at last. "And if you had any
other waiting-room in your hotel," he added, "I'd keep away from your
barroom altogether. As it is, maybe you wouldn't mind leaving me
alone."

At this retort, reflecting as it did upon the management, Black Tex
began to breathe heavily and sway upon his feet.

"I asked you," he roared, thumping his fist upon the bar and opening
up his eyes, "whether you are too good to drink with the likes of
us--me, f'r instance--and I want to git an answer!"

He leaned far out over the bar as if listening for the first word
before he hit him, but the stranger did not reply immediately.
Instead, with simple-minded directness he seemed to be studying on the
matter. The broad grin of the card players fell to a wondering stare
and every man leaned forward when, raising his sombre eyes from the
floor, the little man spoke.

"Why, yes," he said quietly, "I think I am."

"Yes, _what_?" yelled the barkeeper, astounded. "You think you're
what?"

"Now, say," protested the younger man. Then, apparently recognizing
the uselessness of any further evasion, he met the issue squarely.

"Well, since you crowd me to it," he cried, flaring up, "I _am_ too
good! I'm too good a man to drink when I don't want to drink--I'm too
good to accept treats when I don't stand treat! And more than that,"
he added slowly and impressively, "I'm too good to help blow that old
man, or any other man, for his money!"

He rose to his utmost height as he spoke, turning to meet the glance
of every man in the room, and as he faced them, panting, his deep eyes
glowed with a passion of conviction.

"If that is too good for this town," he said, "I'll get out of it, but
I won't drink on treats to please anybody."

The gaze of the entire assembly followed him curiously as he went back
to his corner, and Black Tex was so taken aback by this unexpected
effrontery on the part of his guest that he made no reply whatever.
Then, perceiving that his business methods had been questioned, he
drew himself up and frowned darkly.

"Hoity-toity!" he sniffed with exaggerated concern. "Who th' hell is
this, now? One of them little white-ribbon boys, fresh from the East,
I bet ye, travellin' for the W. P. S. Q. T. H'm-m--tech me not--oh
deah!" He hiked up his shoulders, twisted his head to a pose, and
shrilled his final sarcasms in the tones of a finicky old lady; but
the stranger stuck resolutely to his reading, whereupon the black
barkeeper went sullen and took a drink by himself.

Like many a good mixer, Mr. Brady of the Hotel Bender was often too
good a patron of his own bar, and at such times he developed a mean
streak, with symptoms of homicidal mania, which so far had kept the
town marshal guessing. Under these circumstances, and with the rumor
of a killing at Fort Worth to his credit, Black Tex was accustomed to
being humored in his moods, and it went hard with him to be called
down in the middle of a spectacular play, and by a rank stranger, at
that. The chair-warmers of the Hotel Bender bar therefore discreetly
ignored the unexpected rebuke of their chief and proceeded noisily
with their games, but the old man who had paid for the drinks was no
such time-server. After tucking what was left of his money back into
his overalls he balanced against the bar railing for a while and then
steered straight for the dark corner.

"Young feller," he said, leaning heavily upon the table where the
stranger was reading, "I'm old Bill Johnson, of Hell's Hip Pocket, and
I wan'er shake hands with you!"

The young man looked up quickly and the card players stopped as
suddenly in their play, for Old Man Johnson was a fighter in his cups.
But at last the stranger showed signs of friendliness. As the old man
finished speaking he rose with the decorum of the drawing-room and
extended his white hand cordially.

"I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Johnson," he said. "Won't you sit
down?"

"No," protested the old man, "I do' wanner sit down--I wanner ask you
a question." He reeled, and balanced himself against a chair. "I
wanner ask you," he continued, with drunken gravity, "on the squar',
now, did you ever drink?"

"Why, yes, Uncle," replied the younger man, smiling at the question,
"I used to take a friendly glass, once in a while--but I don't drink
now." He added the last with a finality not to be mistaken, but Mr.
Johnson of Hell's Hip Pocket was not there to urge him on.

"No, no," he protested. "You're mistaken, Mister--er--Mister--"

"Hardy," put in the little man.

"Ah yes--Hardy, eh? And a dam' good name, too. I served under a
captain by that name at old Fort Grant, thirty years ago. Waal, Hardy,
I like y'r face--you look honest--but I wanner ask you 'nuther
question--why don't you drink now, then?"

Hardy laughed indulgently, and his eyes lighted up with good humor, as
if entertaining drunken men was his ordinary diversion.

"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Johnson," he said. "If I should drink
whiskey the way you folks down here do, I'd get drunk."

"W'y sure," admitted Old Man Johnson, sinking shamelessly into a
chair. "I'm drunk now. But what's the difference?"

Noting the black glances of the barkeeper, Hardy sat down beside him
and pitched the conversation in a lower key.

"It may be all right for you, Mr. Johnson," he continued confidentially,
"and of course that's none of my business; but if I should get drunk
in this town, I'd either get into a fight and get licked, or I'd
wake up the next morning broke, and nothing to show for it but a sore
head."

"That's me!" exclaimed Old Man Johnson, slamming his battered hat on
the table, "that's me, Boy, down to the ground! I came down hyar to
buy grub f'r my ranch up in Hell's Hip Pocket, but look at me now,
drunk as a sheep-herder, and only six dollars to my name." He shook
his shaggy head and fell to muttering gloomily, while Hardy reverted
peacefully to his magazine.

After a long pause the old man raised his face from his arms and
regarded the young man searchingly.

"Say," he said, "you never told me why you refused to drink with me a
while ago."

"Well, I'll tell you," answered Hardy, honestly, "and I'm sure you'll
understand how it is with me. I never expect to take another drink as
long as I live in this country--not unless I get snake-bit. One drink
of this Arizona whiskey will make me foolish, and two will make me
drunk, I'm that light-headed. Now, if I had taken a drink with you a
minute ago I'd be considered a cheap sport if I didn't treat back,
wouldn't I? And then I'd be drunk. Yes, that's a fact. So I have to
cut it out altogether. I like you just as well, you understand, and
all these other gentlemen, but I just naturally can't do it."

"Oh, hell," protested the old man, "that's all right. Don't apologize,
Boy, whatever you do. D'yer know what I came over hyar fer?" he asked
suddenly reaching out a crabbed hand. "Well, I'll tell ye. I've be'n
lookin' f'r years f'r a white man that I c'd swear off to. Not one of
these pink-gilled preachers but a man that would shake hands with me
on the squar' and hold me to it. Now, Boy, I like you--will you shake
hands on that?"

"Sure," responded the young man soberly. "But I tell you, Uncle," he
added deprecatingly, "I just came into town to-day and I'm likely to
go out again to-morrow. Don't you think you could kind of look after
yourself while I'm gone? I've seen a lot of this swearing-off business
already, and it don't seem to amount to much anyhow unless the fellow
that swears off is willing to do all the hard work himself."

There was still a suggestion of banter in his words, but the old man
was too serious to notice it.

"Never mind, boy," he said solemnly, "I can do all the work, but I
jist had to have an honest man to swear off to."

He rose heavily to his feet, adjusted his copper-riveted hat
laboriously, and drifted slowly out the door. And with another spender
gone the Hotel Bender lapsed into a sleepy quietude. The rain hammered
fitfully on the roof; the card players droned out their bids and bets;
and Black Tex, mechanically polishing his bar, alternated successive
jolts of whiskey with ill-favored glances into the retired corner
where Mr. Hardy, supposedly of the W. P. S. Q. T., was studiously
perusing a straw-colored Eastern magazine. Then, as if to lighten the
gloom, the sun flashed out suddenly, and before the shadow of the
scudding clouds had dimmed its glory a shrill whistle from down the
track announced the belated approach of the west-bound train.
Immediately the chairs began to scrape; the stud-poker players cut for
the stakes and quit; coon-can was called off, and by the time Number
Nine slowed down for the station the entire floating population of
Bender was lined up to see her come in.

Rising head and shoulders above the crowd and well in front stood
Jefferson Creede, the foreman of the Dos S; and as a portly gentleman
in an unseasonable linen duster dropped off the Pullman he advanced,
waving his hand largely.

"Hullo, Judge!" he exclaimed, grinning jovially. "I was afraid you'd
bogged down into a washout somewhere!"

"Not at all, Jeff, not at all," responded the old gentleman, shaking
hands warmly. "Say, this is great, isn't it?" He turned his genial
smile upon the clouds and the flooded streets for a moment and then
hurried over toward the hotel.

"Well, how are things going up on the range?" he inquired, plunging
headlong into business and talking without a stop. "Nicely, nicely, I
don't doubt. I tell you, Mr. Creede, that ranch has marvellous
possibilities--marvellous! All it needs is a little patience, a little
diplomacy, you understand--_and holding on_, until we can pass this
forestry legislation. Yes, sir, while the present situation may seem a
little strained--and I don't doubt you are having a hard time--at the
same time, if we can only get along with these sheepmen--appeal to
their better nature, you understand--until we get some protection at
law, I am convinced that we can succeed yet. I want to have a long
talk with you on this subject, Jeff--man to man, you understand, and
between friends--but I hope you will reconsider your resolution to
resign, because that would just about finish us off. It isn't a matter
of money, is it, Jefferson? For while, of course, we are not making a
fortune--"

He paused and glanced up at his foreman's face, which was growing more
sullen every minute with restrained impatience.

"Well, speak out, Jeff," he said resignedly. "What is it?"

"You know dam' well what it is," burst out the tall cowboy petulantly.
"It's them sheepmen. And I want to tell you right now that no money
can hire me to run that ranch another year, not if I've got to smile
and be nice to those sons of--well, you know what kind of sons I
mean--that dog-faced Jasper Swope, for instance."

He spat vehemently at the mention of the name and led the way to a
card room in the rear of the barroom.

"Of course I'll work your cattle for you," he conceded, as he entered
the booth, "but if you want them sheepmen handled diplomatically you'd
better send up a diplomat. I'm that wore out I can't talk to 'em
except over the top of a six-shooter."

The deprecating protestations of the judge were drowned by the scuffle
of feet as the hangers-on and guests of the hotel tramped in, and in
the round of drinks that followed his presence was half forgotten. Not
being a drinking man himself, and therefore not given to the generous
practice of treating, the arrival of Judge Ware, lately retired from
the bench and now absentee owner of the Dos S Ranch, did not create
much of a furore in Bender. All Black Tex and the bunch knew was that
he was holding a conference with Jefferson Creede, and that if Jeff
was pleased with the outcome of the interview he would treat, but if
not he would probably retire to the corral and watch his horse eat
hay, openly declaring that Bender was the most God-forsaken hell-hole
north of the Mexican line--for Creede was a man of moods.

In the lull which followed the first treat, the ingratiating drummer
who had set up the drinks, charging the same to his expense account,
leaned against the bar and attempted to engage the barkeeper in
conversation, asking leading questions about business in general and
Mr. Einstein of the New York Store in particular; but Black Tex, in
spite of his position, was uncommunicative. Immediately after the
arrival of the train the little man who had called him down had
returned to the barroom and immersed himself in those wearisome
magazines which a lunger had left about the place, and, far from being
impressed with his sinister expression, had ignored his unfriendly
glances entirely. More than that, he had deserted his dark corner and
seated himself on a bench by the window from which he now looked out
upon the storm with a brooding preoccupation as sincere as it was
maddening. His large deer eyes were fixed upon the distance, and his
manner was that of a man who studies deeply upon some abstruse
problem; of a man with a past, perhaps, such as often came to those
parts, crossed in love, or hiding out from his folks.

Black Tex dismissed the drummer with an impatient gesture and was
pondering solemnly upon his grievances when a big, square-jowled cat
rushed out from behind the bar and set up a hoarse, raucous mewing.

"Ah, shet up!" growled Brady, throwing him away with his foot; but as
the cat's demands became more and more insistent the barkeeper was at
last constrained to take some notice.

"What's bitin' you?" he demanded, peering into the semi-darkness
behind the bar; and as the cat, thus encouraged, plunged recklessly in
among a lot of empty bottles, he promptly threw him out and fished up
a mouse trap, from the cage of which a slender tail was wriggling
frantically.

"Aha!" he exclaimed, advancing triumphantly into the middle of the
floor. "Look, boys, here's where we have some fun with Tom!" And as
the card players turned down their hands to watch the sport, the old
cat, scenting his prey, rose up on his hind legs and clutched at the
cage, yelling.

Grabbing him roughly by the scruff of the neck Black Tex suddenly
threw him away and opened the trap, but the frightened mouse, unaware
of his opportunity, remained huddled up in the corner.

"Come out of that," grunted the barkeeper, shaking the cage while with
his free hand he grappled the cat, and before he could let go his hold
the mouse was halfway across the room, heading for the bench where
Hardy sat.

"Ketch 'im!" roared Brady, hurling the eager cat after it, and just as
the mouse was darting down a hole Tom pinned it to the floor with his
claws.

"What'd I tell ye?" cried the barkeeper, swaggering. "That cat will
ketch 'em every time. Look at that now, will you?"

With dainty paws arched playfully, the cat pitched the mouse into the
air and sprang upon it like lightning as it darted away. Then mumbling
it with a nicely calculated bite, he bore it to the middle of the
floor and laid it down, uninjured.

"Ain't he hell, though?" inquired Tex, rolling his eyes upon the
spectators. The cat reached out cautiously and stirred it up with his
paw; and once more, as his victim dashed for its hole, he caught it
in full flight. But now the little mouse, its hair all wet and
rumpled, crouched dumbly between the feet of its captor and would not
run. Again and again the cat stirred it up, sniffing suspiciously to
make sure it was not dead; then in a last effort to tempt it he
deliberately lay over on his back and rolled, purring and closing
his eyes luxuriously, until, despite its hurts, the mouse once more
took to flight. Apparently unheeding, the cat lay inert, following
its wobbly course with half-shut eyes--then, lithe as a panther,
he leaped up and took after it. There was a rush and a scramble
against the wall, but just as he struck out his barbed claw a hand
closed over the mouse and the little man on the bench whisked it
dexterously away.

Instantly the black cat leaped into the air, clamoring for his prey,
and with a roar like a mountain bull Black Tex rushed out to
intercede.

"Put down that mouse, you freak!" he bellowed, charging across the
room. "Put 'im down, I say, or I'll break you in two!" He launched his
heavy fist as he spoke, but the little man ducked it neatly and,
stepping behind a table, stood at bay, still holding the mouse.

"Put 'im _down_, I tell you!" shouted the barkeeper, panting with
vexation. "What--you won't, eh? Well, I'll learn you!" And with a
wicked oath he drew his revolver and levelled it across the table.

"Put--down--that--mouse!" he said slowly and distinctly, but Hardy
only shook his head. Every man in the room held his breath for the
report; the poker players behind fell over tables and chairs to get
out of range; and still they stood there, the barkeeper purple, the
little man very pale, glaring at one another along the top of the
barrel. In the hollow of his hand Hardy held the mouse, which tottered
drunkenly; while the cat, still clamoring for his prize, raced about
under the table, bewildered.

"Hurry up, now," said the barkeeper warningly, "I'll give you five.
One--come on, now--two--"

At the first count the old defiance leaped back into Hardy's eyes and
he held the mouse to his bosom as a mother might shield her child; at
the second he glanced down at it, a poor crushed thing trembling as
with an ague from its wounds; then, smoothing it gently with his hand,
he pinched its life out suddenly and dropped it on the floor.

Instantly the cat pounced upon it, nosing the body eagerly, and Black
Tex burst into a storm of oaths.

"Well, dam' your heart," he yelled, raising his pistol in the air
as if about to throw the muzzle against his breast and fire.
"What--in--hell--do you mean?"

Baffled and evaded in every play the evil-eyed barkeeper suddenly
sensed a conspiracy to show him up, and instantly the realization of
his humiliation made him dangerous.

"Perhaps you figure on makin' a monkey out of me!" he suggested,
hissing snakelike through his teeth; but Hardy made no answer
whatever.

"Well, _say_ something, can't you?" snapped the badman, his
overwrought nerves jangled by the delay. "What d'ye mean by
interferin' with my cat?"

For a minute the stranger regarded him intently, his sad, far-seeing
eyes absolutely devoid of evil intent, yet baffling in their
inscrutable reserve--then he closed his lips again resolutely, as if
denying expression to some secret that lay close to his heart, turning
it with undue vehemence to the cause of those who suffer and cannot
escape.

"Well, f'r Gawd's sake," exclaimed Black Tex at last, lowering his gun
in a pet, "don't I git _no_ satisfaction--what's your _i_-dee?"

"There's too much of this cat-and-mouse business going on," answered
the little man quietly, "and I don't like it."

"Oh, you don't, eh?" echoed the barkeeper sarcastically; "well, excuse
_me_! I didn't know that." And with a bow of exaggerated politeness he
retired to his place.

"The drinks are on the house," he announced, jauntily strewing the
glasses along the bar. "Won't drink, eh? All right. But lemme tell
you, pardner," he added, wagging his head impressively, "you're goin'
to git hurt some day."




CHAPTER II

THE MAN FROM CHERRYCOW


After lashing the desert to a frazzle and finding the leaks in the
Hotel Bender, the wind from Papaguería went howling out over the mesa,
still big with rain for the Four Peaks country, and the sun came out
gloriously from behind the clouds. Already the thirsty sands had
sucked up the muddy pools of water, and the board walk which extended
the length of the street, connecting saloon with saloon and ending
with the New York Store, smoked with the steam of drying. Along the
edge of the walk, drying out their boots in the sun, the casual
residents of the town--many of them held up there by the storm--sat in
pairs and groups, talking or smoking in friendly silence. A little
apart from the rest, for such as he are a long time making friends in
Arizona, Rufus Hardy sat leaning against a post, gazing gloomily out
across the desert. For a quiet, retiring young man, interested in good
literature and bearing malice toward no one, his day in the Bender
barroom had been eventful out of all proportion to his deserts and
wishes, and he was deep in somber meditation when the door opened and
Judge Ware stepped out into the sunshine.

In outward appearance the judge looked more like a large fresh-faced
boy in glasses than one of San Francisco's eminent jurists, and the
similarity was enhanced by the troubled and deprecating glances with
which he regarded his foreman, who towered above him like a mentor.
There was a momentary conference between them at the doorway, and
then, as Creede stumped away down the board walk, the judge turned and
reluctantly approached Hardy.

"I beg your pardon, sir," he began, as the young man in some confusion
rose to meet him, "but I should like a few words with you, on a matter
of business. I am Mr. Ware, the owner of the Dos S Ranch--perhaps you
may have heard of it--over in the Four Peaks country. Well--I hardly
know how to begin--but my foreman, Mr. Creede, was highly impressed
with your conduct a short time ago in the--er--affray with the
barkeeper. I--er--really know very little as to the rights of the
matter, but you showed a high degree of moral courage, I'm sure. Would
you mind telling me what your business is in these parts, Mr.--er--"

"Hardy," supplied the young man quietly, "Rufus Hardy. I am--"

"Er--_what_?" exclaimed the judge, hastily focussing his glasses.
"Hardy--Hardy--where have I heard that name before?"

"I suppose from your daughter, Miss Lucy," replied the young man,
smiling at his confusion. "Unless," he added hastily, "she has
forgotten about me."

"Why, Rufus Hardy!" exclaimed the judge, reaching out his hand. "Why,
bless my heart--to be sure. Why, where have you been for this last
year and more? I am sure your father has been quite worried about
you."

"Oh, I hope not," answered Hardy, shifting his gaze. "I guess he knows
I can take care of myself by this time--if I do write poetry," he
added, with a shade of bitterness.

"Well, well," said the judge, diplomatically changing the subject, "Lucy
will be glad to hear of you, at any rate. I believe she--er--wrote you
once, some time ago, at your Berkeley address, and the letter was
returned as uncalled for."

He gazed over the rims of his glasses inquiringly, and with a
suggestion of asperity, but the young man was unabashed.

"I hope you will tell Miss Lucy," he said deferentially, "that on
account of my unsettled life I have not ordered my mail forwarded for
some time." He paused and for the moment seemed to be considering
some further explanation; then his manner changed abruptly.

"I believe you mentioned a matter of business," he remarked bluffly,
and the judge came back to earth with a start. His mind had wandered
back a year or more to the mysterious disappearance of this same
self-contained young man from his father's house, not three blocks
from his own comfortable home. There had been a servant's rumor that
he had sent back a letter or two postmarked "Bowie, Arizona"--but old
Colonel Hardy had said never a word.

"Er--yes," he assented absently, "but--well, I declare," he exclaimed
helplessly, "I've quite forgotten what it was about."

"Won't you sit down, then?" suggested Hardy, indicating the edge of
the board walk with a courtly sweep of the hand. "This rain will make
good feed for you up around the Four Peaks--I believe it was of your
ranch there that you wished to speak."

Judge Ware settled down against a convenient post and caught his
breath, meanwhile regarding his companion curiously.

"Yes, that's it," he said. "I wanted to talk with you about my ranch,
but I swear I'll have to wait till Creede comes back, now."

"Very well," answered Hardy easily; "we can talk about home, then.
How is Miss Lucy succeeding with her art--is she still working at the
Institute?"

"Yes, indeed!" exclaimed the judge, quite mollified by the inquiry.
"Indeed she is, and doing as well as any of them. She had a landscape
hung at the last exhibit, that was very highly praised, even by
Mathers, and you know how hard he is to please. Tupper Browne won the
prize, but I think Lucy's was twice the picture--kind of soft and
sunshiny, you know--it made you think of home, just to look at it."

"Well, I'm glad to hear that," said Hardy, looking up the ragged
street a little wistfully. "I kind of lose track of things down here,
knocking around from place to place." He seated himself wearily on the
edge of the sidewalk and drummed with his sinewy white hands against a
boot leg. "But it's a great life, sure," he observed, half to himself.
"And by the way, Mr. Ware," he continued, "if it's all the same to you
I wish you wouldn't say anything to your foreman about my past life.
Not that there is anything disgraceful about it, but there isn't much
demand for college graduates in this country, you know, and I might
want to strike him for a job."

Judge Ware nodded, a little distantly; he did not approve of this
careless young man in all his moods. For a man of good family he was
hardly presentable, for one thing, and he spoke at times like an
ordinary working man. So he awaited the lumbering approach of his
foreman in sulky silence, resolved to leave the matter entirely in his
hands.

Jefferson Creede bore down upon them slowly, sizing up the situation as
he came, or trying to, for everything seemed to be at a standstill.

"Well?" he remarked, looking inquiringly from the judge to Hardy. "How
about it?"

There was something big and dominating about him as he loomed above
them, and the judge's schoolboy state of mind instantly returned.

"I--I really haven't done anything about the matter, Jefferson," he
stammered apologetically. "Perhaps you will explain our circumstances
to Mr. Hardy here, so that we can discuss the matter intelligently."
He looked away as he spoke, and the tall foreman grunted audibly.

"Well," he drawled, "they ain't much to explain. The sheepmen have
been gittin' so free up on our range that I've had a little trouble
with 'em--and if I was the boss they'd be more trouble, you can bet
your life on that. But the judge here seems to think we can kinder
suck the hind teat and baby things along until they git that Forest
Reserve act through, and make our winnin' later. He wants to make
friends with these sheepmen and git 'em to kinder go around a little
and give us half a chanst. Well, maybe it can be done--but not by me.
So I told him either to get a superintendent to handle the sheep end
of it or rustle up a new foreman, because I see red every time I hear
a sheep-blat.

"Then come the question," continued the cowman, throwing out his broad
hand as if indicating the kernel of the matter, "of _gittin'_ such a
man, and while we was talkin' it over you called old Tex down so good
and proper that there wasn't any doubt in _my_ mind--providin' you
want the job, of course."

He paused and fixed his compelling eyes upon Hardy with such a mixture
of admiration and good humor that the young man was won over at once,
although he made no outward sign. It was Judge Ware who was to pass
upon the matter finally, and he waited deferentially for him to
speak.

"Well--er--Jefferson," began the judge a little weakly, "do you think
that Mr. Hardy possesses the other qualities which would be called for
in such a man?"

"W'y, sure," responded Creede, waving the matter aside impatiently.
"Go ahead and hire him before he changes his mind."

"Very well then, Mr. Hardy," said the judge resignedly, "the first
requisite in such a man is that he shall please Mr. Creede. And since
he commends you so warmly I hope that you will accept the position.
Let me see--um--would seventy-five dollars a month seem a reasonable
figure? Well, call it seventy-five, then--that's what I pay Mr.
Creede, and I want you to be upon an equality in such matters.

"Now as to your duties. Jefferson will have charge of the cattle, as
usual; and I want you, Mr. Hardy, to devote your time and attention to
this matter of the sheep. Our ranch house at Hidden Water lies almost
directly across the river from one of the principal sheep crossings,
and a little hospitality shown to the shepherds in passing might be
like bread cast upon the waters which comes back an hundred fold after
many days. We cannot hope to get rid of them entirely, but if the
sheep owners would kindly respect our rights to the upper range, which
Mr. Creede will point out to you, I am sure we should take it very
kindly. Now that is your whole problem, Rufus, and I leave the details
entirely in your hands. But whatever you do, be friendly and see if
you can't appeal to their better nature."

He delivered these last instructions seriously and they were so taken
by Hardy, but Creede laughed silently, showing all his white teeth,
yet without attracting the unfavorable attention of the judge, who was
a little purblind. Then there was a brief discussion of details, an
introduction to Mr. Einstein of the New York Store, where Hardy was
given _carte blanche_ for supplies, and Judge Ware swung up on the
west-bound limited and went flying away toward home, leaving his
neighbor's son--now his own superintendent and sheep expert--standing
composedly upon the platform.

"Well," remarked Creede, smiling genially as he turned back to the
hotel, "the Old Man's all right, eh, if he does have fits! He's
good-hearted--and that goes a long ways in this country--but actually,
I believe he knows less about the cattle business than any man in
Arizona. He can't tell a steer from a stag--honest! And I can lose him
a half-mile from camp any day."

The tall cattleman clumped along in silence for a while, smiling over
some untold weakness of his boss--then he looked down upon Hardy and
chuckled to himself.

"I'm glad you're going to be along this trip," he said confidentially.
"Of course I'm lonely as a lost dog out there, but that ain't it; the
fact is, I need somebody to watch me. W'y, boy, I could beat the old
judge out of a thousand dollars' worth of cattle and he'd never know
it in a lifetime. Did ye ever live all alone out on a ranch for a
month or so? Well, you know how lawless and pisen-mean a man can git,
then, associatin' with himself. I'd've had the old man robbed forty
times over if he wasn't such a good-hearted old boy, but between
fightin' sheepmen and keepin' tab on a passel of brand experts up on
the Tonto I'm gittin' so ornery I don't dare trust myself. Have a
smoke? Oh, I forgot--"

He laughed awkwardly and rolled a cigarette.

"Got a match?" he demanded austerely. "Um, much obliged--be kinder
handy to have you along now." He knit his brows fiercely as he fired
up, regarding Hardy with a furtive grin.

"Say," he said abruptly, "I've got to make friends with you some way.
You _eat_, don't you? All right then, you come along with me over to
the Chink's. I'm going to treat you to somethin', if it's only ham 'n'
eggs."

They dined largely at Charley's and then drifted out to the feed
corral. Creede threw down some hay to a ponderous iron-scarred roan,
more like a war horse than a cow pony, and when he came back he found
Hardy doing as much for a clean-limbed sorrel, over by the gate.

"Yourn?" he inquired, surveying it with the keen concentrated gaze
which stamps every point on a cowboy's memory for life.

"Sure," returned Hardy, patting his pony carefully upon the shoulder.

"Kinder high-headed, ain't he?" ventured Creede, as the sorrel rolled
his eyes and snorted.

"That's right," assented Hardy, "he's only been broke about a month. I
got him over in the Sulphur Springs Valley."

"I knowed it," said the cowboy sagely, "one of them wire-grass
horses--an' I bet he can travel, too. Did you ride him all the way
here?"

"Clean from the Chiricahuas," replied the young man, and Jefferson
Creede looked up, startled.

"What did you say you was doin' over there?" he inquired slowly, and
Hardy smiled quietly as he answered:

"Riding for the Cherrycow outfit."

"The hell you say!" exclaimed Creede explosively, and for a long time
he stood silent, smoking as if in deep meditation.

"Well," he said at last, "I might as well say it--I took you for a
tenderfoot."




CHAPTER III

THE TRAIL OF THE SHEEP


The morning dawned as clear on Bender as if there had never been storm
nor clouds, and the waxy green heads of the greasewood, dotting the
level plain with the regularity of a vineyard, sparkled with a
thousand dewdrops. Ecstatic meadow larks, undismayed by the utter lack
of meadows, sang love songs from the tops of the telegraph poles; and
the little Mexican ground doves that always go in pairs tracked
amiably about together in the wet litter of the corral, picking up the
grain which the storm had laid bare. Before the early sun had cleared
the top of the eastern mountains Jefferson Creede and Hardy had risen
and fed their horses well, and while the air was yet chill they loaded
their blankets and supplies upon the ranch wagon, driven by a
shivering Mexican, and went out to saddle up.

Since his confession of the evening before Creede had put aside his
air of friendly patronage and, lacking another pose, had taken to
smoking in silence; for there is many a boastful cowboy in Arizona who
has done his riding for the Cherrycow outfit on the chuck wagon,
swamping for the cook. At breakfast he jollied the Chinaman into
giving him two orders of everything, from coffee to hot cakes, paid
for the same at the end, and rose up like a giant refreshed--but
beneath this jovial exterior he masked a divided mind. Although he had
come down handsomely, he still had his reservations about the
white-handed little man from Cherrycow, and when they entered the
corral he saddled his iron-scarred charger by feeling, gazing craftily
over his back to see how Hardy would show up in action.

Now, first the little man took a rope, and shaking out the loop
dropped it carelessly against his horse's fore-feet--and that looked
well, for the sorrel stood stiffly in his tracks, as if he had been
anchored. Then the man from Cherrycow picked up his bridle, rubbed
something on the bit, and offered it to the horse, who graciously
bowed his head to receive it. This was a new one on Creede and in the
excitement of the moment he inadvertently cinched his roan up two
holes too tight and got nipped for it, for old Bat Wings had a mind of
his own in such matters, and the cold air made him ugly.

"Here, quit that," muttered the cowboy, striking back at him; but when
he looked up, the sorrel had already taken his bit, and while he was
champing on it Hardy had slipped the headstall over his ears. There
was a broad leather blind on the hacamore, which was of the best
plaited rawhide with a horsehair tie rope, but the little man did not
take advantage of it to subdue his mount. Instead he reached down for
his gaudy Navajo saddle blanket, offered it to the sorrel to smell,
and then slid it gently upon his back. But when he stooped for his
saddle the high-headed horse rebelled. With ears pricked suspiciously
forward and eyes protruding he glared at the clattering thing in
horror, snorting deep at every breath. But, though he was free-footed,
by some obsession of the mind, cunningly inculcated in his breaking,
the sorrel pony was afraid to move.

As the saddle was drawn toward him and he saw that he could not escape
its hateful embrace he leaned slowly back upon his haunches, grunting
as if his fore-feet, wreathed in the loose rope, were stuck in some
terrible quicksands from which he tried in vain to extricate them; but
with a low murmur of indifferent words his master moved the saddle
resolutely toward him, the stirrups carefully snapped up over the
horn, and ignoring his loud snorts and frenzied shakings of the head
laid it surely down upon his back. This done, he suddenly spoke
sharply to him, and with a final groan the beautiful creature rose up
and consented to his fate.

Hardy worked quickly now, tightening the cinch, lowering the
stirrups, and gathering up the reins. He picked up the rope, coiled it
deftly and tied it to the saddle--and now, relieved of the idea that
he was noosed, the pony began to lift his feet and prance, softly,
like a swift runner on the mark. At these signs of an early break
Creede mounted hurriedly and edged in, to be ready in case the sorrel,
like most half-broken broncos, tried to scrape his rider off against
the fence; but Hardy needed no wrangler to shunt him out the gate.
Standing by his shoulder and facing the rear he patted the sorrel's
neck with the hand that held the reins, while with his right hand he
twisted the heavy stirrup toward him stealthily, raising his boot to
meet it. Then like a flash he clapped in his foot and, catching the
horn as his fiery pony shot forward, he snapped up into the saddle
like a jumping jack and went flying out the gate.

"Well, the son of a gun!" muttered Creede, as he thundered down the
trail after him. "Durned if he can't ride!"

There are men in every cow camp who can rope and shoot, but the man
who can ride a wild horse can hold up his head with the best of
them. No matter what his race or station if he will crawl a "snake"
and stay with him there is always room on the wagon for his
blankets; his fame will spread quickly from camp to camp, and the
boss will offer to raise him when he shows up for his time.
Jefferson Creede's face was all aglow when he finally rode up beside
Hardy; he grinned triumphantly upon horse and man as if they had won
money for him in a race; and Hardy, roused at last from his
reserve, laughed back out of pure joy in his possessions.

"How's that for a horse?" he cried, raising his voice above the thud
of hoofs. "I have to turn him loose at first--'fraid he'll learn to
pitch if I hold him in--he's never bucked with me yet!"

"You bet--he's a snake!" yelled Creede, hammering along on his
broad-chested roan. "Where'd you git 'im?"

"Tom Fulton's ranch," responded Hardy, reining his horse in and
patting him on the neck. "Turned in three months' pay and broke him
myself, to boot. I'll let you try him some day, when he's gentled."

"Well, if I wasn't so big 'n' heavy I'd take you up on that," said
Creede, "but I'm just as much obliged, all the same. I don't claim to
be no bronco-buster now, but I used to ride some myself when I was a
kid. But say, the old judge has got some good horses runnin' on the
upper range,--if you want to keep your hand in,--thirty or forty head
of 'em, and wild as hawks. There's some sure-enough wild horses too,
over on the Peaks, that belong to any man that can git his rope onto
'em--how would that strike you? We've been tryin' for years to catch
the black stallion that leads 'em."

Try as he would to minimize this exaggerated estimate of his prowess
as a horse-tamer Hardy was unable to make his partner admit that he
was anything short of a real "buster," and before they had been on the
trail an hour Creede had made all the plans for a big gather of wild
horses after the round-up.

"I had you spotted for a sport from the start," he said, puffing out
his chest at the memory of his acumen, "but, by jingo, I never thought
I was drawin' a bronco-twister. Well, now, I saw you crawl that horse
this mornin', and I guess I know the real thing by this time. Say," he
said, turning confidentially in his saddle, "if it's none of my
business you can say so, but what did you do to that bit?"

Hardy smiled, like a juggler detected in his trick. "You must have
been watching me," he said, "but I don't mind telling you--it's simply
passing a good thing along. I learned it off of a Yaqui Mayo Indian
that had been riding for Bill Greene on the Turkey-track--I rubbed it
with a little salt."

"Well, I'm a son of a gun!" exclaimed Creede incredulously. "Here
we've been gittin' our fingers bit off for forty years and never
thought of a little thing like that. Got any more tricks?"

"Nope," said Hardy, "I've only been in the Territory a little over a
year, this trip, and I'm learning, myself. Funny how much you can pick
up from some of these Indians and Mexicans that can't write their own
names, isn't it?"

"Umm, may be so," assented Creede doubtfully, "but I'd rather go to a
white man myself. Say," he exclaimed, changing the subject abruptly,
"what was that name the old man called you by when he was makin' that
talk about sheep--Roofer, or Rough House--or something like that?"

"Oh, that's my front name--Rufus. Why? What's the matter with it?"

"Nothin', I reckon," replied Creede absently, "never happened to hear
it before, 's all. I was wonderin' how he knowed it," he added,
glancing shrewdly sideways. "Thought maybe you might have met him up
in California, or somewheres."

"Oh, that's easy," responded Hardy unblinkingly. "The first thing he
did was to ask me my full name. I notice he calls you Jefferson," he
added, shiftily changing the subject.

"Sure thing," agreed Creede, now quite satisfied, "he calls everybody
that way. If your name is Jim you're James, John you're Jonathan, Jeff
you're Jefferson Davis--but say, ain't they any f'r short to your
name? We're gittin' too far out of town for this Mister business. My
name's Jeff, you know," he suggested.

"Why, sure," exclaimed Hardy, brushing aside any college-bred
scruples, "only don't call me Rough House--they might get the idea
that I was on the fight. But you don't need to get scared of
Rufus--it's just another way of saying Red. I had a red-headed
ancestor away back there somewhere and they called him Rufus, and then
they passed the name down in the family until it got to me, and I'm no
more red-headed than you are."

"_No_--is that straight?" ejaculated the cowboy, with enthusiasm,
"same as we call 'em Reddy now, eh? But say, I'd choke if I tried to
call you Rufus. Will you stand for Reddy? Aw, that's no good--what's
the matter with Rufe? Well, shake then, pardner, I'm dam' glad I met
up with you."

They pulled their horses down to a Spanish trot--that easy, limping
shuffle that eats up its forty miles a day--and rode on together like
brothers, heading for a distant pass in the mountains where the
painted cliffs of the Bulldog break away and leave a gap down to the
river. To the east rose Superstition Mountain, that huge buttress upon
which, since the day that a war party of Pimas disappeared within the
shadow of its pinnacles, hot upon the trail of the Apaches, and never
returned again, the Indians of the valley have always looked with
superstitious dread.

Creede told the story carelessly, smiling at the pride of the Pimas
who refused to admit that the Apaches alone, devils and bad medicine
barred, could have conquered so many of their warriors. To the west in
a long fringe of green loomed the cottonwoods of Moroni, where the
hard-working Mormons had turned the Salagua from its course and
irrigated the fertile plain, and there on their barren reservation
dwelt the remnant of those warlike Pimas, the unrequited friends of
the white men, now held by them as of no account.

As he heard the history of its people--how the Apaches had wiped out
the Toltecs, and the white men had killed off the Apaches, and then,
after pushing aside the Pimas and the Mexicans, closed in a death
struggle for the mastery of the range--Hardy began to perceive the
grim humor of the land. He glanced across at his companion, tall,
stalwart, with mighty arms and legs and features rugged as a mountain
crag, and his heart leaped up within him at the thought of the battles
to come, battles in which sheepmen and cattlemen, defiant of the law,
would match their strength and cunning in a fight for the open range.

As they rode along mile after mile toward the north the road mounted
gently; hills rose up one by one out of the desert floor, crowned with
towering _sahuaros_, and in the dip of the pass ahead a mighty forest
of their misshapen stalks was thrust up like giant fingers against the
horizon. The trail wound in among them, where they rose like fluted
columns above the lesser cactus--great skin-covered tanks, gorged fat
with water too bitter to quench the fieriest thirst, yet guarded
jealously by poison-barbed spines. Gilded woodpeckers, with hearts red
as blood painted upon their breasts, dipped in uneven flight from
_sahuaro_ to _sahuaro_, dodged into holes of their own making, dug
deep into the solid flesh; sparrow hawks sailed forth from their
summits, with quick eyes turned to the earth for lizards; and the
brown mocking bird, leaping for joy from the ironwood tree where his
mate was nesting, whistled the praise of the desert in the ecstatic
notes of love. In all that land which some say God forgot, there was
naught but life and happiness, for God had sent the rain.

The sun was high in the heavens when, as they neared the summit of
the broad pass, a sudden taint came down the wind, whose only burden
had been the fragrance of resinous plants, of wetted earth, and of
green things growing. A distant clamor, like the babble of many
voices or the surf-beats of a mighty sea, echoed dimly between the
_chuck-a-chuck_ of their horses' feet, and as Hardy glanced up
inquiringly his companion's lip curled and he muttered:

"Sheep!"

They rode on in silence. The ground, which before had been furred with
Indian wheat and sprouting six weeks' grass, now showed the imprints
of many tiny feet glozed over by the rain, and Hardy noticed vaguely
that something was missing--the grass was gone. Even where a minute
before it had covered the level flats in a promise of maturity, rising
up in ranker growth beneath the thorny trees and cactus, its place was
now swept bare and all the earth trampled into narrow, hard-tamped
trail. Then as a brush shed and corrals, with a cook tent and a couple
of water wagons in the rear, came into view, the ground went suddenly
stone bare, stripped naked and trampled smooth as a floor. Never
before had Hardy seen the earth so laid waste and desolate, the very
cactus trimmed down to its woody stump and every spear of root grass
searched out from the shelter of the spiny _chollas_. He glanced once
more at his companion, whose face was sullen and unresponsive; there
was a well-defined bristle to his short mustache and he rowelled his
horse cruelly when he shied at the blatting horde.

The shearing was in full blast, every man working with such feverish
industry that not one of them stopped to look up. From the receiving
corral three Mexicans in slouched hats and jumpers drove the sheep
into a broad chute, yelling and hurling battered oil cans at the
hindmost; by the chute an American punched them vigorously forward
with a prod, and yet another thrust them into the pens behind the
shearers, who bent to their work with a sullen, back-breaking stoop.
Each man held between his knees a sheep, gripped relentlessly, that
flinched and kicked at times when the shears clipped off patches of
flesh; and there in the clamor of a thousand voices they shuttled
their keen blades unceasingly, stripping off a fleece, throwing it
aside, and seizing a fresh victim by the foot, toiling and sweating
grimly. By another chute a man stood with a paint pot, stamping a
fresh brand upon every new-shorn sheep, and in a last corral the naked
ones, their white hides spotted with blood from their cuts, blatted
frantically for their lambs. These were herded in a small inclosure,
some large and browned with the grime of the flock, others white and
wobbly, newborn from mothers frightened in the shearing; and always
that tremendous wailing chorus--_Ba-a-a_, _ba-a-a_, _ba-a-a_--and men
in greasy clothes wrestling with the wool.

To a man used to the noise and turmoil of the round-up and branding
pen and accustomed to the necessary cruelties of stock raising there
was nothing in the scene to attract attention. But Hardy was of
gentler blood, inured to the hardships of frontier life but not to its
unthinking brutality, and as he beheld for the first time the waste,
the hurry, the greed of it all, his heart turned sick and his eyes
glowed with pity, like a woman's. By his side the sunburned swarthy
giant who had taken him willy-nilly for a friend sat unmoved, his lip
curled, not at the pity of it, but because they were sheep; and
because, among the men who rushed about driving them with clubs and
sacks, he saw more than one who had eaten at his table and then
sheeped out his upper range. His saturnine mood grew upon him as he
waited and, turning to Hardy, he shouted harshly:

"There's some of your friends over yonder," he said, jerking his thumb
toward a group of men who were weighing the long sacks of wool. "Want
to go over and get acquainted?"

Hardy woke from his dream abruptly and shook his head.

"No, let's not stop," he said, and Creede laughed silently as he
reined Bat Wings into the trail. But just as they started to go one of
the men by the scales hailed them, motioning with his hand and, still
laughing cynically, the foreman of the Dos S turned back again.

"That's Jim Swope," he said, "one of our big sheep men--nice
feller--you'll like him."

He led the way to the weighing scales, where two sweating Mexicans
tumbled the eight-foot bags upon the platform, and a burly man with a
Scotch turn to his tongue called off the weights defiantly. At his
elbow stood two men, the man who had called them and a wool
buyer,--each keeping tally of the count.

Jim Swope glanced quickly up from his work. He was a man not over
forty but bent and haggard, with a face wrinkled deep with hard lines,
yet lighted by blue eyes that still held a twinkle of grim humor.

"Hello, Jeff," he said, jotting down a number in his tally book,
"goin' by without stoppin', was ye? Better ask the cook for somethin'
to eat. Say, you're goin' up the river, ain't ye? Well, tell Pablo
Moreno and them Mexicans I lost a cut of two hundred sheep up there
somewhere. That son of a--of a herder of mine was too lazy to make a
corral and count 'em, so I don't know where they are lost, but I'll
give two bits a head for 'em, delivered here. Tell the old man that,
will you?"

He paused to enter another weight in his book, then stepped away from
the scales and came out to meet them.

"How's the feed up your way?" he inquired, smiling grimly.

"Dam' pore," replied Creede, carrying on the jest, "and it'll be
poorer still if you come in on me, so keep away. Mr. Swope, I'll make
you acquainted with Mr. Hardy--my new boss. Judge Ware has sent him
out to be superintendent for the Dos S."

"Glad to meet you, sir," said Swope, offering a greasy hand that
smelled of sheep dip. "Nice man, the old judge--here, _umbre_, put
that bag on straight! Three hundred and _fifteen_? Well I know a dam'
sight better--excuse me, boys--here, put that bag on again, and weigh
it right!"

"Well," observed Creede, glancing at his friend as the combat raged
unremittingly, "I guess we might as well pull. His busy day, you
understand. Nice feller, though--you'll like 'im." Once more the glint
of quiet deviltry came into his eyes, but he finished out the jest
soberly. "Comes from a nice Mormon family down in Moroni--six
brothers--all sheepmen. You'll see the rest of the boys when they come
through next month--but Jim's the best."

There was something in the sardonic smile that accompanied this
encomium which set Hardy thinking. Creede must have been thinking too,
for he rode past the kitchen without stopping, cocking his head up at
the sun as if estimating the length of their journey.

"Oh, did you want to git somethin' to eat?" he inquired innocently.
"No? That's good. That sheep smell kinder turns my stomach." And
throwing the spurs into Bat Wings he loped rapidly toward the summit,
scowling forbiddingly in passing at a small boy who was shepherding
the stray herd. For a mile or two he said nothing, swinging his head
to scan the sides of the mountains with eyes as keen as an eagle's;
then, on the top of the last roll, he halted and threw his hand out
grandly at the panorama which lay before them.

"There she lays," he said, as if delivering a funeral oration, "as
good a cow country as God ever made--and now even the jack rabbits
have left it. D'ye see that big mesa down there?" he continued,
pointing to a broad stretch of level land, dotted here and there with
giant cactus, which extended along the river. "I've seen a thousand
head of cattle, fat as butter, feedin' where you see them _sahuaros_,
and now look at it!"

He threw out his hand again in passionate appeal, and Hardy saw that
the mesa was empty.

"There was grass a foot high," cried Creede in a hushed, sustained
voice, as if he saw it again, "and flowers. Me and my brothers and
sisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, big
yaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies--and
ferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget 'em--but I've been
fightin' these sheep so long and gittin' so mean and ugly them flowers
wouldn't mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and
stink squashes. But hell, what's the use?" He threw out his hands once
more, palms up, and dropped them limply.

"That's old Pablo Moreno's place down there," he said, falling back
abruptly into his old way. "We'll stop there overnight--I want to help
git that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we'll
go up by trail in the mornin'."

Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the naked
hills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy,
quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once the
grama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle of
Jeff Creede's father had stood knee-high in flowers.

Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desert
lay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, and
the sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there was
no government; anybody's land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, to
hog for and fight over forever--and no law of right; only this, that
the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will
in the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, a
word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand;
and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious--a
verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother's knee many
years before:

"Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace."

But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed
every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens,
he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond,
which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.




CHAPTER IV

DON PABLO MORENO


On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats
where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the _casa_ of Don
Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the
thorny cactus which the Mexicans call _ocotilla_. Within this fence,
which inclosed several acres of standing grain and the miniature of a
garden, there were all the signs of prosperity--a new wagon under its
proper shade, a storehouse strongly built where chickens lingered
about for grain, a clean-swept _ramada_ casting a deep shadow across
the open doorway; but outside the inclosure the ground was stamped as
level as a threshing floor. As Creede and Hardy drew near, an old man,
grave and dignified, came out from the shady veranda and opened the
gate, bowing with the most courtly hospitality.

"_Buenos tardes, señores_," he pronounced, touching his hat in a
military salute. "_Pasa!_ Welcome to my poor house."

In response to these salutations Creede made the conventional
replies, and then as the old man stood expectant he said in a hurried
aside to Hardy:

"D'ye talk Spanish? He don't understand a word of English."

"Sure," returned Hardy. "I was brought up on it!"

"No!" exclaimed Creede incredulously, and then, addressing the Señor
Moreno in his native tongue, he said: "Don Pablo, this is my friend
Señor Hardy, who will live with me at Agua Escondida!"

"With great pleasure, señor," said the old gentleman, removing his
hat, "I make your acquaintance!"

"The pleasure is mine," replied Hardy, returning the salutation, and
at the sound of his own language Don Pablo burst into renewed
protestations of delight. Within the cool shadow of his _ramada_ he
offered his own chair and seated himself in another, neatly fashioned
of mesquite wood and strung with thongs of rawhide. Then, turning his
venerable head to the doorway which led to the inner court, he shouted
in a terrible voice:

"_Muchacho_!"

Instantly from behind the adobe wall, around the corner of which he
had been slyly peeping, a black-eyed boy appeared and stood before
him, his ragged straw hat held respectfully against his breast.

"_Sus manos!_" roared the old man; and dropping his hat the
_muchacho_ touched his hands before him in an attitude of prayer.

"Give the gentlemen a drink!" commanded Don Pablo severely, and after
Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a
porous _olla_, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed
mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the _mozo_
brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the
river--Bull Durham and brown paper. The señor offered these to his
guest, while Creede grinned in anticipation of the outcome.

"What?" exclaimed the Señor Moreno, astounded. "You do not smoke? Ah,
perhaps it is my poor tobacco! But wait, I have a cigarro which the
storekeeper gave me when I--No? No smoke nothing? Ah, well, well--no
smoke, no Mexicano, as the saying goes." He regarded his guest
doubtfully, with a shadow of disfavor. Then, rolling a cigarette, he
remarked: "You have a very white skin, Señor Hardy; I think you have
not been in Arizona very long."

"Only a year," replied Hardy modestly.

"_Muchacho!_" cried the señor. "Run and tell the señora to hasten the
dinner. And where," he inquired, with the shrewd glance of a country
lawyer, "and where did you learn, then, this excellent Spanish which
you speak?"

"At Old Camp Verde, to the north," replied Hardy categorically, and at
the name Creede looked up with sudden interest. "I lived there when I
was a boy."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Don Pablo, raising his eyebrows. "And were your
parents with you?"

"Oh, yes," answered Hardy, "my father was an officer at the post."

"Ah, _sí_, _sí_, _sí_," nodded the old man vigorously, "now I
understand. Your father fought the Apaches and you played with the
little Mexican boys, no? But now your skin is white--you have not
lived long under our sun. When the Apaches were conquered your parents
moved, of course--they are in San Francisco now, perhaps, or Nuevo
York."

"My father is living near San Francisco," admitted Hardy, "but," and
his voice broke a little at the words, "my mother has been dead many
years."

"Ah, indeed," exclaimed Don Pablo sympathetically, "I am very sorry.
My own _madre_ has been many years dead also. But what think you of
our country? Is it not beautiful?"

"Yes, indeed," responded Hardy honestly, "and you have a wonderful air
here, very sweet and pure."

"_Seguro!_" affirmed the old man, "_seguro que sí!_ But alas," he
added sadly, "one cannot live on air alone. Ah, _que malo_, how bad
these sheep are!"

He sighed, and regarded his guest sadly with eyes that were bloodshot
from long searching of the hills for cattle.

"I remember the day when the first sheep came," he said, in the manner
of one who begins a set narration. "In the year of '91 the rain came,
more, more, more, until the earth was full and the excess made
_lagunas_ on the plain. That year the Salagua left all bounds and
swept my fine fields of standing corn away, but we did not regret it
beyond reason for the grass came up on the mesas high as a horse's
belly, and my cattle and those of my friend Don Luís, the good father
of Jeff, here, spread out across the plains as far as the eye could
see, and every cow raised her calf. But look! On the next year no rain
came, and the river ran low, yet the plains were still yellow with
last year's grass. All would have been well now as before, with grass
for all, when down from the north like grasshoppers came the
_borregos_--_baaa_, _baaa_, _baaa_--thousands of them, and they were
starving. Never had I seen bands of sheep before in Arizona, nor the
father of Don Jeff, but some say they had come from California in '77,
when the drought visited there, and had increased in Yavapai and fed
out all the north country until, when this second _año seco_ came
upon them, there was no grass left to eat. And now, _amigo_, I will
tell you one thing, and you may believe it, for I am an old man and
have dwelt here long: it is not God who sends the dry years, but the
sheep!

"_Mira!_ I have seen the mowing machine of the Americano cut the tall
grass and leave all level--so the starved sheep of Yavapai swept
across our mesa and left it bare. Yet was there feed for all, for our
cattle took to the mountains and browsed higher on the bushes, above
where the sheep could reach; and the sheep went past and spread out on
the southern desert and were lost in it, it was so great.

"That was all, you will say--but no! In the Spring every ewe had her
lamb, and many two, and they grew fat and strong, and when the grass
became dry on the desert because the rains had failed again, they came
back, seeking their northern range where the weather was cool, for a
sheep cannot endure the heat. Then we who had let them pass in pity
were requited after the way of the _borregueros_--we were sheeped out,
down to the naked rocks, and the sheepmen went on, laughing
insolently. _Ay, que malo los borregueros_, what devils they are; for
hunger took the strength from our cows so that they could not suckle
their calves, and in giving birth many mothers and their little ones
died together. In that year we lost half our cows, Don Luís Creede and
I, and those that lived became thin and rough, as they are to this
day, from journeying to the high mountains for feed and back to the
far river for water.

"Then the father of Jeff became very angry, so that he lost weight and
his face became changed, and he took an oath that the first sheep or
sheep-herder that crossed his range should be killed, and every one
thereafter, as long as he should live. Ah, what a _buen hombre_ was
Don Luís--if we had one man like him to-day the sheep would yet go
round--a big man, with a beard, and he had no fear, no not for a
hundred men. And when in November the sheep came bleating back, for
they had promised so to do as soon as the feed was green, Don Luís met
them at the river, and he rode along its bank, night and day,
promising all the same fate who should come across--and, _umbre_, the
sheep went round!"

The old man slapped his leg and nodded his head solemnly. Then he
looked across at Creede and his voice took on a great tenderness. "My
friend has been dead these many years," he said, "but he was a true
man."

As Don Pablo finished his story the Señora opened the door of the
kitchen where the table was already set with boiled beans, meat stewed
with peppers, and thin corn cakes--the conventional _frijoles_, _carne
con chili_, and _tortillas_ of the Mexicans--and some fried eggs in
honor of the company. As the meal progressed the Señora maintained a
discreet silence, patting out _tortillas_ and listening politely to
her husband's stock of stories, for Don Pablo was lord in his own
house. The big-eyed _muchacho_ sat in the corner, watching the corn
cakes cook on the top of the stove and battening on the successive
rations which were handed out to him. There were stories, as they ate,
of the old times, of the wars and revolutions of Sonora, wherein the
Señor Moreno had taken too brave a part, as his wounds and exile
showed; strange tales of wonders and miracles wrought by the Indian
doctors of Altár; of sacred snakes with the sign of the cross blazoned
in gold on their foreheads, worshipped by the Indians with offerings
of milk and tender chickens; of primitive life on the _haciendas_ of
Sonora, where men served their masters for life and were rewarded at
the end with a pension of beans and _carne seco_.

Then as the day waned they sat at peace in the _ramada_, Moreno and
Creede smoking, and Hardy watching the play of colors as the sun
touched the painted crags of the Bulldog and lighted up the square
summit of Red Butte across the river, throwing mysterious shadows into
the black gorge which split it from crown to base. Between that high
cliff and the cleft red butte flowed the Salagua, squirming through
its tortuous cañon, and beyond them lay Hidden Water, the unknown,
whither a single man was sent to turn back the tide of sheep.

In the silence the tinkle of bells came softly from up the cañon and
through the dusk Hardy saw a herd of goats, led by a long-horned ram,
trailing slowly down from the mesa. They did not pause, either to rear
up on their hind feet for browse or to snoop about the gate, but filed
dutifully into their own corral and settled down for the night.

"Your goats are well trained, Don Pablo," said Hardy, by way of
conversation. "They come home of their own accord."

"Ah, no," protested Moreno, rising from his chair. "It is not the
goats but my goat dogs that are well trained. Come with me while I
close the gate and I will show you my flock."

The old gentleman walked leisurely down the trail to the corral, and
at their approach Hardy saw two shaggy dogs of no breed suddenly
detach themselves from the herd and spring defiantly forward.

"_Quita se, quita se!"_ commanded Don Pablo, and at his voice they
halted, still growling and baring their fangs at Hardy.

"_Mira_," exclaimed the old man, "are they not _bravo_? Many times the
_borregueros_ have tried to steal my bucks to lead their timid sheep
across the river, but Tira and Diente fight them like devils. One
Summer for a week the _chivas_ did not return, having wandered far up
into the mountains, but in the end Tira and Diente fetched them safely
home. See them now, lying down by the mother goat that suckled them;
you would not believe it, but they think they are goats."

He laughed craftily at the idea, and at Hardy's eager questions.

"_Seguro_," he said, "surely I will tell you about my goat dogs, for
you Americans often think the Mexicans are _tonto_, having no good
sense, because our ways are different. When I perceived that my cattle
were doomed by reason of the sheep trail crossing the river here at my
feet I bought me a she-goat with kids, and a ram from another flock.
These I herded myself along the brow of the hill, and they soon
learned to rear up against the bushes and feed upon the browse which
the sheep could not reach. Thus I thought that I might in time conquer
the sheep, fighting the devil with fire; but the coyotes lay in wait
constantly to snatch the kids, and once when the river was high the
_borregueros_ of Jeem Swopa stole my buck to lead their sheep across.

"Then I remembered a trick of my own people in Sonora, and I took the
blind pups of a dog, living far from here, and placed each of them
with a she-goat having one newborn kid; and while the kid was sucking
at one teat the mother could not help but let down milk for the puppy
at the other, until at last when the dog smell had left him she
adopted him for her own. Now as the pups grew up they went out on the
hills with their goat mother, and when, they being grown, she would no
longer suckle them, they stole milk from the other she-goats; and so
they live to-day, on milk and what rabbits they can catch. But
whenever they come to the house I beat them and drive them back--their
nature is changed now, and they love only goats. Eight years ago I
raised my first goat dogs, for many of them desert their mothers and
become house dogs, and now I have over a hundred goats, which they
lead out morning and night."

The old man lashed fast the gate to the corral and turned back toward
the house.

"Ah, yes," he said musingly, "the Americanos say continually that we
Mexicanos are foolish--but look at me! Here is my good home, the same
as before. I have always plenty beans, plenty meat, plenty flour,
plenty coffee. I welcome every one to my house, to eat and sleep--yet
I have plenty left. I am _muy contento_, Señor Hardy--yes, I am always
happy. But the Americanos? No! When the sheep come, they fight; when
their cattle are gone, they move; fight, fight; move, move; all the
time." He sighed and gazed wearily at the barren hills.

"Señor Hardy," he said at last, "you are young, yet you have seen the
great world--perhaps you will understand. Jeff tells me you come to
take charge of the Dos S Rancho, where the sheep come through by
thousands, even as they did here when there was grass. I am an old man
now; I have lived on this spot twenty-four years and seen much of the
sheep; let me advise you.

"When the sheepmen come across the river do not fight, as Don Jeff
does continually, but let them pass. They are many and the cowmen are
few; they are rich and we are very poor; how then can a few men whip
many, and those armed with the best? And look--if a sheepman is killed
there is the law, you know, and lawyers--yes, and money!" He shrugged
his shoulders and threw out his hands, peeping ruefully through the
fingers to symbolize prison bars.

"Is it not so?" he asked, and for the first time an Americano agreed
with him.

"One thing more, then," said Don Pablo, lowering his voice and
glancing toward the house, where Creede was conversing with the
Señora. "The _papá_ of Don Jeff yonder was a good man, but he was a
fighting Texano--and Jeff is of the same blood. Each year as the sheep
come through I have fear for him, lest he should kill some saucy
_borreguero_ and be sent to prison; for he has angry fits, like his
father, and there are many bad men among the sheep-herders,--escaped
criminals from Old Mexico, _ladrones_, and creatures of low blood,
fathered by evil Americanos and the nameless women of towns.

"In Sonora we would whip them from our door, but the sheepmen make
much of their herders, calling them brothers and _cuñados_ and what
not, to make them stay, since the work is hard and dangerous. And to
every one of them, whether herder or camp rustler, the owners give a
rifle with ammunition, and a revolver to carry always. So they are
drunk with valor. But our Jeff here has no fear of them, no, nor
decent respect. He overrides them when the fit is on him, as if they
were unfanged serpents--and so far he has escaped."

The old man leaned closer, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper,
acting out his words dramatically.

"But some day--" he clasped his heart, closed his eyes, and seemed to
lurch before a bullet. "No?" he inquired, softly. "Ah, well, then, you
must watch over him, for he is a good man, doing many friendships, and
his father was a _buen hombre_, too, in the days when we all were
rich. So look after him--for an old man," he added, and trudged
wearily back to the house.




CHAPTER V

HIDDEN WATER


The trail to Hidden Water leads up the Salagua, alternately climbing
the hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the river
bottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box cañon, it
swings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purling
brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill
ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the
Salagua is a _Rio_, broad and swift, with a current that clutches
treacherously at a horse's legs and roars over the brink of stony
reefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad mill
race, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they took
their plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.

"Swim?" he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shoulders
and turned his horse into the water. "Keep your head upstream, then,"
he said, "we'll try it a whirl, anyhow."

Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feeling
their way among the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below them
the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim,
sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up
the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede
looked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.

"How's that for high?" he inquired, slapping his wet legs. "I tell
you, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. I
wouldn't cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She's away
up since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you'll
hear her talk--snow's meltin' on the mountains. I wish to God she'd
_stay_ up!" he added fervently, as he poured the water out of his
boots.

"Why?" asked Hardy innocently. "Won't it interfere with your bringing
in supplies?"

"Sure thing," said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. "But when
you've been up here a while," he observed, "you'll savvy a lot of
things that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on its
hind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f'r a month, we
cowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don't give a dam' for
supplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.

"Begin to see light, eh?" he queried, as he pushed on up the river.
"Well, that's the only thing in God's world that wasn't made to order
for these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the
country east and west without consultin' nobody, not even Jim Swope,
and the sheep move north and south.

"How'd you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand
_borregos_ and half of 'em with lambs, when the _rio_ was on a bender?
I've seen some of these sheepmen wadin' around up to their chins for
two weeks, tryin' to float twenty-five hundred head across the
river--and there wasn't turkey buzzards enough in the country when
they got through.

"Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined with
carcasses two deep where they'd jest naturally crowded 'em into the
river and let 'em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy.
After they'd wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin'
they got tired and shoved 'em in, regardless. Well, if this warm
weather holds we'll be able to git our _rodér_ good and started before
the sheep come in. That's one reason why I never was able to do much
with these sheepmen," he added. "They hit me right square in the
middle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I'm too busy gatherin'
cattle to pay much attention to 'em. I did plan a little surprise
party last year--but that was somethin' special. But now you're on the
job, Rufe," he continued reassuringly, "I'm goin' to leave all sheep
and sheepmen strictly alone--you can bank on that. Bein' as we are
goin' to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never made
a cent fightin' 'em, that's a cinch, and if you can appeal to their
better natures, w'y, go to it! I'd help you if I could, but bein' as I
can't I'll git out of the road and give you a chanst.

"Now I'll tell you how it'll be," he continued, turning in his saddle
and hooking one leg over the horn, "the boys'll come in for the
_rodér_ to-morrow or next day; we begin to gather on the first, and it
takes us about a month. Well, we look for the sheep to come in on us
at about the same time--first of April--and we ain't been fooled yet.
They'll begin to stack up on the other side any time now, and as soon
as the water goes down they'll come across with a rush. And if they're
feelin' good-natured they'll spread out over The Rolls and drift
north, but if they're feelin' bad they'll sneak up onto Bronco Mesa
and scatter the cattle forty ways for Sunday, and bust up my _rodér_
and raise hell generally. We had a little trouble over that last
year," he added parenthetically.

"Well, I'll turn over the house and the grub and the whole business to
you this year and camp out with the boys under the mesquite--and then
you can entertain them sheepmen and jolly 'em up no end. They won't
have a dam' thing--horse feed, grub, tobacco, matches, nothin'! Never
do have anythin'. I'd rather have a bunch of Apaches camped next to
me--but if you want to be good to 'em there's your chanst. Meanwhile,
I'm only a cow-punch pullin' off a round-up, and your name is
Mr.--you're the superintendent of the Dos S. Your job is to protect
the upper range, and I begin to think you can do it."

There was a tone of half-hearted enthusiasm about this talk which
marked it for a prepared "spiel," laboriously devised to speed the new
superintendent upon his way; but, not being schooled in social deceit,
Creede failed utterly in making it convincing.

"That's good," said Hardy, "but tell me--what has been your custom in
the past? Haven't you been in the habit of feeding them when they came
in?"

"Feed 'em?" cried Creede, flaring up suddenly. "Did I feed 'em? Well,
I should guess yes--I never turned one away hungry in my life. W'y,
hell, man," he exclaimed, his anger growing on him, "I slep' in the
same blanket with 'em--until I become lousy," he added grimly.

"What!" exclaimed Hardy, aghast. "You don't mean to say--"

"No," interrupted Creede ironically, "I don't mean to say anythin'--not
from now on. But while we're on the subject and to avoid any future
misunderstandin' I might just as well tell you right now that I
can't see nothin' good in a sheepman--_nothin'!_ I'm like my cat Tom
when he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears and
I see hell, damnation, and sudden death!"

He rose up, frowning, on his mighty horse and gazed at Hardy with eyes
that burned deep with passion. "If every sheep and sheepman in Arizona
should drop dead at this minute," he said, "it would simply give me a
laughin' sensation. God damn 'em!" he added passionately, and it
sounded like a prayer.

Half an hour later as they passed through the gloomy silence of the
box cañon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood
cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters,
he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent
things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and
looked down upon Hidden Water his anger was forgotten.

"Well," he remarked, throwing out a hand, "there's home--how do you
like it?"

Hardy paused and looked it over critically--a broad V-shaped valley
half a mile in length, beginning at the mouth of a great dry wash and
spreading out through trees and hummocks down to the river. A broken
row of cottonwoods and sycamores stretched along the farther side,
following the broad, twisting bed of the sand wash where the last
flood had ripped its way to the Salagua; and on the opposite side,
close up against the base of the cliff, a flash of white walls and the
shadow of a _ramada_ showed where man had built his puny dwelling high
in order to escape its fury. At their feet lay the ranch pasture, a
broad elbow of the valley rich with grass and mesquite trees and
fenced in with barbed wire that ran from cliff to cliff. Beyond the
eastern wall the ground was rough and broken, cut up by innumerable
gulches and waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbidding
crags of a black butte whose shoulders ran down to and confined the
silvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was even
rougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towered
a mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedral
spire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence--purple with the
regal robes of distance.

"That's Weaver's Needle," volunteered Creede, following his
companion's eyes. "Every lost mine for a hundred miles around here is
located by sightin' at that peak. The feller it's named after was
picked up by the Apaches while he was out lookin' for the Lost
Dutchman and there's been a Jonah on the hidden-treasure business ever
since, judgin' by the results.

"D'ye see that big butte straight ahead? That's Black Butte. She's so
rough that even the mountain sheep git sore-footed, so they say--we
have to go up there on foot and drive our cattle down with rocks. Old
Bill Johnson's place is over the other side of that far butte; he's
got a fine rich valley over there--the sheep haven't got in on him
yet. You remember that old feller that was drunk down at Bender--well,
that's Bill. Calls his place Hell's Hip Pocket; you wait till you try
to git in there some day and you'll know why."

He paused and turned to the north.

"Might as well give you the lay of the land," he said. "I'll be too
busy to talk for the next month. There's the Four Peaks, northeast of
us, and our cows run clean to the rocks. They's more different brands
in that forty miles than you saw in the whole Cherrycow country, I bet
ye. I've got five myself on a couple hundred head that the old man
left me--and everybody else the same way. You see, when the sheep come
in down on the desert and around Moreno's we kept pushin' what was
left of our cattle east and east until we struck the Peaks--and here
we are, in a corner. The old judge has got nigh onto two thousand
head, but they's about twenty of us poor devils livin' up here in the
rocks that has got enough irons and ear marks to fill a brand book,
and not a thousand head among us.

"Well, I started out to show you the country, didn't I? You see that
bluff back of the house down there? That runs from here clean to the
Four Peaks without a break, and then it swings west in a kind of an ox
bow and makes that long ridge up there to the north that we called the
Juate. All that high country between our house here and the
Peaks--everythin' east of that long bluff--is Bronco Mesa. That's the
upper range the judge asked me to point out to you. Everythin' west of
Bronco Mesa is The Rolls--all them rollin' hills out there--and they's
feed enough out there to keep all the sheep in the country, twice
over--but no water. Now what makes us cowmen hot is, after we've give
'em that country and welcome, the sheepmen're all the time tryin' to
sneak in on our upper range. Our cows can't hardly make a livin'
walkin' ten or fifteen miles out on The Rolls every day, and then back
again to water; but them dam' sheep can go a week without drinkin',
and as much as a month in the winter-time.

"Why can't they give us a chanst, then? We _give_ 'em all the good
level land and simply ask 'em as a favor to please keep off of the
bench up there and leave our cows what little cactus and browse they
is. But no--seems like as soon as you give one of them Chihuahua
Mexicans a gun he wants to git a fight out of somebody, and so they
come crowdin' in across our dead line, just to see if they can't git
some of us goin'."

Once more his eyes were burning, his breath came hard, and his voice
became high and sustained. "Well, I give one of 'em all he wanted," he
said, "and more. I took his dam' pistol away and beat him over the
head with it--and I _moved_ him, too. He was Jasper Swope's pet, and I
reckon he had his orders, but I noticed the rest went round."

He stopped abruptly and sat silent, twisting his horse's mane
uneasily. Then he looked up, smiling curiously.

"If you hadn't come up this year I would've killed some of them
fellers," he said quietly. "I'm gittin' as crazy as old Bill
Johnson--and he hears voices. But now lookee here, Rufe, you don't
want to believe a word I say about this trouble. Don't you pay any
attention to me; I'm bughouse, and I know it. Jest don't mention sheep
to me and I'll be as happy as an Injun on a mescal jag. Come on, I'll
run you to the house!"

Throwing his weight forward he jumped his big horse down the rocky
trail and went thundering across the flat, whooping and laughing and
swinging under mesquite trees as if his whole heart was in the race.
Catching the contagion Hardy's sorrel dashed madly after him, and the
moment they struck the open he went by like a shot, over-running the
goal and dancing around the low adobe house like a circus horse.

"By Joe," exclaimed Creede as he came up, "that _caballo_ of yours can
run some. I'm goin' to make a little easy money off of Bill Lightfoot
when he comes in. He's been blowin' about that gray of his for two
years now and I'll match you ag'inst him for a yearlin'. And don't you
forgit, boy, we're going after that black stallion up on Bronco Mesa
just as soon as the _rodér_ is over."

His face was all aglow with friendliness and enthusiasm now, but as
they started toward the house, after turning their horses into the
corral, he suddenly stopped short in the trail.

"Gee," he said, "I wonder what's keepin' Tom? Here Tom! Heere Tom!
Pussy, pussy, pussy!" He listened, and called again. "I hope the
coyotes ain't caught him while I was gone," he said at length. "They
treed him a few times last year, but he just stayed up there and
yelled until I came--spoiled his voice callin' so long, but you bet he
can purr, all right."

He listened once more, long and anxiously, then his face lit up
suddenly.

"Hear that?" he asked, motioning toward the bluff, and while Hardy was
straining his ears a stunted black cat with a crook in his tail came
into view, racing in wildly from the great pile of fallen bowlders
that lay at the base of the cliff, and yowling in a hoarse, despairing
voice, like a condemned kitten in a sack.

"Hello, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" cried Creede, and as the cat stopped
abruptly, blinking warily at Hardy, he strode forward and gathered it
gently into his arms. "Well, you poor little devil," he exclaimed,
stroking its rough coat tenderly, "you're all chawed up again! Did
them dam' coyotes try to git you while I was gone?" And with many
profane words of endearment he hugged it against his breast,
unashamed.

"There's the gamiest cat in Arizona," he said, bringing him over to
Hardy with conscious pride. "Whoa, kitten, he won't hurt you. Dogged
if he won't tackle a rattlesnake, and kill 'im, too. I used to be
afraid to git out of bed at night without puttin' on my boots, but if
any old rattler crawls under my cot now it's good-bye, Mr. Snake.
Tommy is right there with the goods--and he ain't been bit yet,
neither. He killed three side-winders last Summer--didn't you, Tom,
Old Socks?--and if any sheep-herder's dog comes snoopin' around the
back door he'll mount him in a minute. If a man was as brave as he is,
now, he'd--well, that's the trouble--he wouldn't last very long in
this country. I used to wonder sometimes which'd go first--me or Tom.
The sheepmen was after me, and their dogs was after Tom. But I'm
afraid poor Tommy is elected; this is a dam' bad country for cats."

He set him down with a glance of admiring solicitude, such as a
Spartan mother might have bestowed upon her fighting offspring, and
kicked open the unlocked door.

The Dos S ranch house was a long, low structure of adobe bricks,
divided in the middle by the open passageway which the Mexicans always
affect to encourage any vagrant breeze. On one side of the _corredor_
was a single large room, half storehouse, half bunk room, with a
litter of pack saddles, rawhide kyacks and leather in one corner, a
heap of baled hay, grain, and provisions in the other, and the rest
strewn with the general wreckage of a camp--cooking utensils, Dutch
ovens, canvas pack covers, worn-out saddles, and ropes. On the other
side the rooms were more pretentious, one of them even having a board
floor. First came the large living-room with a stone chimney and a
raised hearth before the fireplace; whereon, each on its separate
pile of ashes, reposed two Dutch ovens, a bean kettle, and a
frying-pan, with a sawed-off shovel in the corner for scooping up
coals. Opening into the living-room were two bedrooms, which, upon
exploration, turned out to be marvellously fitted up, with high-headed
beds, bureaus and whatnots, besides a solid oak desk.

To these explorations of Hardy's Creede paid but slight attention, he
being engaged in cooking a hurried meal and watching Tommy, who had a
bad habit of leaping up on the table and stealing; but as Hardy paused
by the desk in the front bedroom he looked up from mixing his bread
and said:

"That's your room, Rufe, so you can clean it up and move in. I
generally sleep outdoors myself--and I ain't got nothin', nohow. Jest
put them guns and traps into the other room, so I can find 'em. Aw, go
ahead, you'll need that desk to keep your papers in. You've got to
write all the letters and keep the accounts, anyhow. It always did
make my back ache to lean over that old desk, and I'm glad to git
shent of it.

"Pretty swell rooms, ain't they? Notice them lace curtains? The
kangaroo rats have chawed the ends a little, but I tell you, when
Susie and Sallie Winship was here this was the finest house for forty
miles. That used to be Sallie's room, where you are now. Many's the
time in the old days that I've rid up here to make eyes at Sallie, but
the old lady wouldn't stand for no sich foolishness. Old Winship
married her back in St. Louie and brought her out here to slave around
cookin' for _rodér_ hands, and she wanted her daughters to live
different. Nope, she didn't want no bow-legged cow-punch for a
son-in-law, and I don't blame her none, because this ain't no place
for a woman; but Sal was a mighty fine girl, all the same."

He shook a little flour over his dough, brushed the cat off the table
absently, and began pinching biscuits into the sizzling fat of the
Dutch oven, which smoked over its bed of coals on the hearth. Then,
hooking the red-hot cover off the fire, he slapped it on and piled a
little row of coals along the upturned rim.

"Didn't you never hear about the Winship girls?" he asked, stroking
the cat with his floury hands. "No? Well, it was on account of them
that the judge took over this ranch. Old man Winship was one of these
old-time Indian-fightin', poker-playin' sports that come pretty nigh
havin' their own way about everythin'. He had a fine ranch up
here--the old Dos S used to brand a thousand calves and more, every
round-up; but when he got old he kinder speculated in mines and loaned
money, and got in the hole generally, and about the time the sheep
drifted in on him he hauled off and died. I pulled off a big _rodér_
for 'em and they sold a lot of cattle tryin' to patch things up the
best they could, but jest as everythin' was lovely the drouth struck
'em all in a heap, and when the Widde' Winship got the estate settled
up she didn't have nothin' much left but cows and good will. She
couldn't sell the cows--you never can, right after these dry
spells--and as I said, she wouldn't let the girls marry any of us
cowmen to kinder be man for the outfit; so what does she do but run
the ranch herself!

"Yes, sir--Susie and Sallie, that was as nice and eddicated girls as
you ever see, they jest put on overalls and climbed their horses and
worked them cattle themselves. Course they had _rodér_ hands to do the
dirty work in the corrals--brandin' and ear-markin' and the like--but
for ridin' the range and drivin' they was as good as the best. Well,
sir, you'd think every man in Arizona, when he heard what they was
doin', would do everythin' in his power to help 'em along, even to
runnin' a Dos S on an _orehanna_ once in a while instead of hoggin' it
himself; but they's fellers in this world, I'm convinced, that would
steal milk from a sick baby!"

The brawny foreman of the Dos S dropped the cat and threw out his
hands impressively, and once more the wild glow crept back into his
eyes.

"You remember that Jim Swope that I introduced you to down on the
desert? Well, he's a good sheepman, but he's on the grab for money
like a wolf. He's got it, too--that's the hell of it."

Creede sighed, and threw a scrap of bacon to Tommy.

"He keeps a big store down at Moroni," he continued, "and the widde',
not wantin' to shove her cows onto a fallin' market, runs up an
account with him--somethin' like a thousand dollars--givin' her note
for it, of course. It's about four years ago, now, that she happened
to be down in Moroni when court was in session, when she finds out by
accident that this same Jim Swope, seein' that cattle was about to go
up, is goin' to close her out. He'd 'a' done it, too, like fallin' off
a log, if the old judge hadn't happened to be in town lookin' up some
lawsuit. When he heard about it he was so durned mad he wrote out a
check for a thousand dollars and give it to her; and then, when she
told him all her troubles, he up and bought the whole ranch at her own
price--it wasn't much--and shipped her and the girls back to St.
Louie."

Creede brushed the dirt and flour off the table with a greasy rag and
dumped the biscuits out of the oven.

"Well," he said, "there's where I lost my last chanst to git a girl.
Come on and eat."




CHAPTER VI

THE CROSSING


From lonely ranches along the Salagua and Verde, from the Sunflower
and up the Alamo, from all the sheeped-out and desolate Four Peaks
country the cowboys drifted in to Hidden Water for the round-up,
driving their extra mounts before them. Beneath the brush _ramada_ of
the ranch house they threw off their canvas-covered beds and turned
their pack horses out to roll, strapping bells and hobbles on the bad
ones, and in a day the deserted valley of Agua Escondida became alive
with great preparations. A posse of men on fresh mounts rode out on
Bronco Mesa, following with unerring instinct the trail of the Dos S
horses, balking their wild breaks for freedom and rushing them
headlong into the fenced pasture across the creek. As the hired hands
of the Dos S outfit caught up their mounts and endeavored to put the
fear of God into their hearts, the mountain boys got out the keg of
horseshoes and began to shoe--every man his own blacksmith.

It was rough work, all around, whether blinding and topping off the
half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought "cowboy"
shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away
limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it
all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity never failed. The
solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of
them. They were starved for company and excitement; obsessed by
strange ideas which they had evolved out of the tumuli of their past
experience and clung to with dogged tenacity; warped with egotism;
stubborn, boastful, or silent, as their humor took them, but now all
eager to break the shell and mingle in the rush of life.

In this riot of individuals Jefferson Creede, the round-up boss,
strode about like a king, untrammelled and unafraid. There was not a
ridge or valley in all the Four Peaks country that he did not know,
yet it was not for this that he was boss; there was not a virtue or
weakness in all that crowd that he was not cognizant of, in the back
of his scheming brain. The men that could rope, the men that could
ride, the quitters, the blowhards, the rattleheads, the lazy, the
crooked, the slow-witted--all were on his map of the country; and as,
when he rode the ridges, he memorized each gulch and tree and odd
rock, so about camp he tried out his puppets, one by one, to keep his
map complete.

As they gathered about the fire that evening it was Bill Lightfoot who
engaged his portentous interest. He listened to Bill's boastful
remarks critically, cocking his head to one side and smiling whenever
he mentioned his horse.

"Yes, sir," asserted Bill belligerently, "I mean it--that gray of mine
can skin anything in the country, for a hundred yards or a mile. I've
got money that says so!"

"Aw, bull!" exclaimed Creede scornfully.

"Bull, nothin'," retorted Lightfoot hotly. "I bet ye--I bet ye a
thousand dollars they ain't a horse in Arizona that can keep out of my
dust for a quarter!"

"Well, I know you ain't got no thousand dollars--ner ten," sneered
Creede. "Why don't you bet yearlings? If you'd blow some of that hot
air through a tube it'd melt rocks, I reckon. But talk cow, man; we
can all savvy that!"

"Well, where's the horse that can beat me?" demanded Lightfoot,
bristling.

"That little sorrel out in the pasture," answered Creede laconically.

"I'll bet ye!" blustered Lightfoot. "Aw, rats! He ain't even broke
yet!"

"He can run, all right. I'll go you for a yearling heifer. Put up or
shut up."

And so the race was run. Early in the morning the whole _rodéo_ outfit
adjourned to the _parada_ ground out by the pole corrals, the open
spot where they work over the cattle. Hardy danced his sorrel up to
the line where the gray was waiting, there was a scamper of feet, a
streak of dust, and Bill Lightfoot was out one yearling heifer. A
howling mob of cowboys pursued them from the scratch, racing each
other to the finish, and then in a yell of laughter at Bill Lightfoot
they capered up the cañon and spread out over The Rolls--the _rodéo_
had begun.

As the shadow of the great red butte to the west, around which the
wagon road toiled for so many weary miles, reached out and touched the
valley, they came back in a body, hustling a bunch of cattle along
before them. And such cattle! After his year with the Chiricahua
outfit in that blessed eastern valley where no sheep as yet had ever
strayed Hardy was startled by their appearance. Gaunt, rough, stunted,
with sharp hips and hollow flanks and bellies swollen from eating the
unprofitable browse of cactus and bitter shrubs, they nevertheless
sprinted along on their wiry legs like mountain bucks; and a peculiar
wild, haggard stare, stamped upon the faces of the old cows, showed
its replica even in the twos and yearlings. Yet he forbore to ask
Creede the question which arose involuntarily to his lips, for he
knew the inevitable answer.

Day after day, as they hurriedly combed The Rolls for what few cattle
remained on the lower range, the cowmen turned their eyes to the river
and to the cañons and towering cliffs beyond, for the sheep; until at
last as they sat by the evening fire Creede pointed silently to the
lambent flame of a camp fire, glowing like a torch against the
southern sky.

"There's your friends, Rufe," he said, and the cowmen glanced at Hardy
inquiringly.

"I might as well tell you fellers," Creede continued, "that one reason
Rufe come up here was to see if he couldn't do somethin' with these
sheepmen."

He paused and looked at the circle of faces with a smile that was
almost a sneer.

"You fellers wouldn't back me up when it come to fightin'--none except
Ben Reavis and the Clark boys--so I told the old judge we might as
well lay down, and to send up some smooth _hombre_ to try and jockey
'em a little. Well, Hardy's the _hombre_; and bein' as you fellers
won't fight, you might as well look pleasant about it. What's that you
say, Bill?"

He turned with a sardonic grin to Lightfoot, who had already been
reduced to a state of silence by the relentless persecutions of the
_rodéo_ boss.

"I never said nawthin'," replied Lightfoot sullenly. "But if you'd've
gone at 'em the way we wanted to," he blurted out, as the grin
broadened, "instead of tryin' to move the whole outfit by daylight,
I'd've stayed with you till hell froze over. I don't want to git sent
up fer ten years."

"No," said Creede coolly, "ner you never will."

"Well, I don't see what you're pickin' on me fer," bellowed Lightfoot,
"the other fellers was there too. Why don't you sass Ensign or Pete a
while?"

"For a durned good reason," replied Creede steadily. "They never _was_
for fightin', but you, with that yawp of yours, was always a-hollerin'
and ribbin' me on to fight, and then, when the time come, you never
said 'Boo!' at 'em. Tucked your young cannon into the seat of your
pants and flew, dam' ye, and that's all there was to it. But that's
all right," he added resignedly. "If you fellers don't want to fight
you don't have to. But, dam' it, keep shut about it now, until you
mean business."

As to just who this man Hardy was and what he proposed to do with the
sheep the members of the Four Peaks round-up were still in ignorance.
All they knew was that he could ride, even when it came to drifting
his horse over the rocky ridges, and that Jeff Creede took him as a
matter of course. But, for a superintendent, he never seemed to have
much to say for himself. It was only when he walked up to his sorrel
pony in that gentle, precise way he had, and went through the familiar
motions of climbing a "bad one" that they sensed, dimly, a past not
without experience and excitement. Even in the preoccupation of their
own affairs and doings they could not fail to notice a supple strength
in his white hands, a military precision in his movements, and above
all a look in his eyes when he became excited--the steady resolute
stare with which his militant father had subdued outlaw horses, buck
soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well.
It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue
when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to
being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike
Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came
from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and
without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up to him.

Even after his mission was announced, Hardy made no change in his
manner of life. He rode out each day on the round-up, conning the lay
of the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally,
frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did
his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the
random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked
interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment,
whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to
do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not
know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions
in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns;
they had cut their huddled bands at night and scattered them for the
coyotes; they had caught unwary Mexican _borregueros_ in forbidden
pastures and administered "shap lessons," stretching them over
bowlders and spanking them with their leather leggings; they had
"talked reason" to the bosses in forceful terms; they had requested
them politely to move; they had implored them with tears in their
eyes--and still like a wave of the sea, like a wind, like a scourge of
grasshoppers which cannot be withstood, the sheep had come on, always
hungry, always fat, always more.

Nor was there any new thing in hospitality. The last bacon and bread
had been set upon the table; baled hay and grain, hauled in by day's
works from the alfalfa fields of Moroni and the Salagua, had been fed
to the famished horses of the very men who had sheeped off the grass;
the same blanket had been shared, sometimes, alas, with men who were
"crumby." And it was equally true that, in return, the beans and meat
of chance herders had been as ravenously devoured, the water casks of
patient "camp-rustlers" had been drained midway between the river and
camp, and stray wethers had showed up in the round-up fry-pans in the
shape of mutton. Ponder as he would upon the problem no solution
offered itself to Hardy. He had no policy, even, beyond that of common
politeness; and as the menacing clamor of the sheep drifted up to them
from the river the diplomat who was to negotiate the great truce began
to wonder whether, after all, he was the man of the hour or merely
another college graduate gone wrong.

On the opposite side of the river in bands of two and three thousand
the cohorts of the sheep gathered to make the crossing--gathered and
waited, for the Salagua was still high. At the foot of the high
cliffs, from the cleft cañon of which water flowed forth as if some
rod had called it from the rock, the leaders of the sheepmen were
sitting in council, gazing at the powerful sweep of the level river,
and then at the distant sand bar where their charges must win the
shore or be swept into the whirlpool below. Ah, that whirlpool! Many a
frightened ewe and weakling lamb in years past had drifted helplessly
into its swirl and been sucked down, to come up below the point a
water-logged carcass. And for each stinking corpse that littered the
lower bar the boss sheep owner subtracted five dollars from the sum of
his hard-earned wealth. Already on the flats below them the willows
and burro bushes were trembling as eager teeth trimmed them of their
leaves--in a day, or two days, the river bottom would be fed bare; and
behind and behind, clear to the broad floor of the desert, band after
band was pressing on to the upper crossing of the Salagua.

As Hardy rode up over the rocky point against which the river threw
its full strength and then, flung inexorably back, turned upon itself
in a sullen whirlpool, he could see the sheep among the willows, the
herders standing impassive, leaning upon their guns as more rustic
shepherds lean upon their staves, and above, at the head of the
crossing, the group of men, sitting within the circle of their horses
in anxious conference. If any of them saw him, outlined like a
sentinel against the sky, they made no sign; but suddenly a man in a
high Texas hat leaped up from the group, sprang astride his mule and
spurred him into the cold water. For the first twenty feet the mule
waded, shaking his ears; then he slumped off the edge of a submerged
bench into deeper water and swam, heading across the stream but
drifting diagonally with the current until, striking bottom once more,
he struggled out upon the sand spit. The rider looked eagerly about,
glanced up casually at the man on the point below, and then plunged
back into the water, shouting out hoarse orders to his Mexicans, who
were smoking idly in the shade of overhanging rocks. Immediately they
scrambled to their feet and scattered along the hillside. The stroke
of axes echoed from the crags above, and soon men came staggering down
to the river, dragging the thorny limbs of _palo verdes_ behind them.
With these they quickly constructed a brush fence in the form of a
wing, running parallel to the cliff and making a chute which opened
into the river.

Then with a great braying and bleating a huddle of sheep moved
unwillingly along it, led by bold goats with crooked horns and
resolute beards, and pushed forward by that same reckless rider on his
black mule, assisted by a horde of shouting Mexicans. But at the touch
of the cold water, two days from the snow beds of the White Mountains,
even the hardy bucks stepped back and shook their heads defiantly. In
vain with showers of rocks and flapping tarpaulins the herders stormed
the rear of the press--every foot was set against them and the sheep
only rushed about along the edge of the herd or crowded in
close-wedged masses against the bluff. At last a line of men leaped
into the enclosure, holding up a long canvas wagon-cover and,
encircling the first section of the leaders, shoved them by main force
into the river.

Instantly the goats took water, swimming free, and below them the man
on the black mule shouted and waved his broad Texas hat, heading them
across the stream. But the timid sheep turned back behind him, landing
below the fence against all opposition, and the babel of their braying
rose higher and higher, as if in protest against their unlucky fate.
Again and again the herders, stripped to their underclothes, pushed
the unwilling sheep into the current, wading out to their chins to
keep them headed across; each time the sodden creatures evaded them
and, drifting with the current, landed far below on the same side,
whence they rushed back to join their fellows.

Upon the opposite shore the goats stood shivering, watching the
struggle with yellow, staring eyes which showed no trace of fear. Like
brave generals of a craven band they were alone in their hardihood
and, with their feet upon the promised land, were doomed either to
proceed alone or return to their companions. So at last they did,
plunging in suddenly, while the man on the mule spurred in below in a
vain effort to turn them back.

That night by the camp fire Hardy mentioned the man on a black mule.

"My old friend, Jasp Swope," explained Creede suavely, "brother of
Jim, the feller I introduced you to. Sure, Jasp and I have had lo-ong
talks together--but he don't like me any more." He twisted his nose
and made a face, as if to intimate that it was merely a childish
squabble, and Hardy said no more. He was growing wise.

The next morning, and the next, Jasper Swope made other attempts at
the crossing; and then, as the snow water from the high mountains
slipped by and the warm weather dried up by so much each little
stream, he was able at last to ford the diminished river. But first,
with that indomitable energy which marked him at every move, he
cleared a passage along the base of the cliff to a place where the
earth-covered moraine broke off at the edge of the water. Here a broad
ledge shot down to the river like a toboggan slide, with a six-foot
jump off at the bottom.

Once on this chute, with the strong tug of the canvas wagon-covers
behind, there was nothing for the sheep to do but to take the plunge,
and as his brawny herders tumbled them head over heels into the deep
current Swope and his helpers waded out in a line below, shunting each
ewe and wading toward the farther shore. There on the edge of the
sand spit they huddled in a bunch, gathering about the hardier bucks
and serving as a lure for those that followed. As cut after cut was
forced into the stream a long row of bobbing heads stretched clear
across the river, each animal striving desperately to gain the
opposite bank and landing, spent and puffing, far below. A Mexican boy
at intervals drove these strays up the shore to the big bunch and then
concealed himself in the bushes lest by his presence he turn some
timid swimmer back and the whirlpool increase its toll. So they
crossed them in two herds, the wethers first, and then the ewes and
lambs--and all the little lambs that could not stem the stream were
floated across in broad pieces of tarpaulin whose edges were held up
by wading men.

From Lookout Point it was a majestic spectacle, the high cliffs, the
silvery river gliding noiselessly out from its black cañon, the white
masses of sheep, clustering on either side of the water--and as the
work went ahead merrily the Mexicans, their naked bodies gleaming like
polished bronze in the ardent sun, broke into a wild refrain, a love
song, perhaps, or a _cancion_ of old Mexico. Working side by side with
his men Jasper Swope joined in the song himself, and as they returned
empty-handed he seized the tallest and strongest of them and ducked
him in the water while his retainers roared with laughter. And Hardy,
sitting unnoticed upon his horse, began to understand why these
low-browed barbarians from Mexico were willing to fight, and if need
be to die, for their masters. The age of feudalism had returned--the
lords of the sheep went forth like barons, sharing every hardship and
leading the way in danger, and their men followed with the same
unthinking devotion that the Myrmidons showed for noble Achilles or
the Crusaders for their white-crossed knights.

Upon this and many other feats Hardy had ample leisure to meditate,
for the sheepmen regarded him no more than if he had been a monument
placed high upon the point to give witness to their victory. As the
sheep crossed they were even allowed to straggle out along the slopes
of the forbidden mesa, untended by their shepherds; and if the upper
range was the special reserve of the cowmen the sheep owners showed no
knowledge of the fact. For two days the grazing herd crept slowly
along the mesquite-covered flat toward Lookout Point, and on the third
morning they boiled up over the rocks and spewed down into the valley
of the Alamo.

"Well," observed Creede, as he watched the slow creeping of the flock,
"here's where I have to quit you, Rufe. In a week this ground around
here will be as level as a billiard table and they won't be enough
horse feed in the valley to keep a burro. The town herd pulls out for
Bender this mornin' and the rest of us will move up to Carrizo
Creek."

He hurried away to oversee the packing, but when all was ready he
waved the boys ahead and returned to the conversation.

"As I was sayin' a while ago, you won't see nothin' but sheep around
here now for the next two weeks--and all I want to say is, keep 'em
out of the pasture, and f'r God's sake don't let 'em corral in the
brandin' pens! They're dirty enough already, but if you git about six
inches of sheep manure in there and then mill a few hundred head of
cattle around on top of it, the dust would choke a skunk. Our cows
ain't so over-particular about that sheep smell, but if we poor
cowboys has got to breathe sheep and eat sheep and spit up sheep every
time we brand, it's crowdin' hospitality pretty strong. But if they
want grub or clothes or tabac, go to it--and see if you can't keep 'em
off the upper range."

He paused and gazed at Hardy with eyes which suggested a world of
advice and warning--then, leaving it all unsaid, he turned wearily
away.

"I look to find you with a sprained wrist," he drawled, "when I come
back--throwin' flapjacks for them sheepmen!" He made the quick motion
of turning a pancake in midair, smiled grimly, and galloped after the
long line of horses and packs that was stringing along up the Bronco
Mesa trail. And, having a premonition of coming company, Hardy went in
by the fireplace and put on a big kettle of beef. He was picking over
another mess of beans when he heard the clatter of hoofs outside and
the next moment the door was kicked violently open.

It was Jasper Swope who stood on the threshold, his high Texas hat
thrust far back upon his head--and if he felt any surprise at finding
the house occupied he gave no expression to it.

"Hello, there!" he exclaimed. "I thought you folks was all gone!"

"Nope," replied Hardy, and continued his work in silence.

"Cookin' for the outfit?" queried Swope, edging in at the door.

"Nope," replied Hardy.

"Well, who the hell air ye cookin' fer then?" demanded Swope, drawing
nearer. "'Scuse me if I pry into this matter, but I'm gittin'
interested." He paused and showed a jagged set of teeth beneath his
bristling red mustache, sneeringly.

"Well, I'll tell you," answered Hardy easily. "I thought some white
man might come along later and I'd ask him to dinner." He fixed his
eyes upon the sheepman with an instant's disapproval and then resumed
his cookery. As for Swope, his gray eyes flashed sudden fire from
beneath bushy eyebrows, and then a canny smile crept across his lips.

"I used to be a white man, myself," he said, "before I lost my soap.
What's the chance to git a bite of that bymeby?" He threw his hand out
toward the pot of beef, which was sending out odors of a rich broth,
flavored with onions and chili.

Hardy looked at him again, little shrimp of a man that he was, and
still with disapproval.

"D'ye call that a white man's way of entering another man's house?" he
inquired pointedly.

"Well," temporized Swope, and then he stopped. "A man in my line of
business gits in a hurry once in a while," he said lamely. "But I'm
hungry, all right," he remarked, _sotto voce_.

"Yes," said Hardy, "I've noticed it. But here--sit down and eat."

The sheepman accepted the dish of beef, dipped out a spoonful of
beans, broke off a slab of bread, and began his meal forthwith,
meanwhile looking at Hardy curiously.

"What's that you say you've noticed?" he inquired, and a quizzical
smile lurked beneath his dripping mustache as he reached over and
hefted the coffeepot.

"I've noticed," replied Hardy, "that you sheepmen get in a hurry once
in a while. You can't stop to knock on a door so you kick it open;
can't stop to go around a ranch, so you go through it, and so on."

"Ah," observed Swope slyly, "so that's what's bitin' you, eh? I reckon
you must be that new superintendent that Jim was tellin' about."

"That's right," admitted Hardy, "and you're Mr. Swope, of course.
Well, I'll say this for you, Mr. Swope, you certainly know how to get
sheep across a river. But when it comes to getting along with cowmen,"
he added, as the sheepman grinned his self-approval, "you don't seem
to stack up very high."

"Oh, I don't, hey?" demanded Swope defiantly. "Well, how about the
cowmen? Your friend Creede gets along with sheepmen like a house
afire, don't he? Him and a bunch of his punchers jumped on one of my
herders last Fall and dam' nigh beat him to death. Did you ever hear
of a sheepman jumpin' on a cowboy? No, by Gad, and you never will! We
carry arms to protect ourselves, but we never make no trouble."

He paused and combed the coffee grounds out of his heavy red mustache
with fingers that were hooked like an eagle's talons from clutching at
sheep in the cold water.

"I don't doubt, Mr. Superintendent," he said, with sinister
directness, "that these cowmen have filled you up about what bad
_hombres_ we are--and of course it ain't no use to say nothin'
now--but I jest want to tell you one thing, and I want you to remember
it if any trouble should come up; we sheepmen have never gone beyond
our legal rights, and we've got the law behind us. The laws of the
United States and the statutes of this Territory guarantee us the
right to graze our sheep on public lands and to go where we dam'
please--and we'll go, too, you can bank on that."

He added this last with an assurance which left no doubt as to his
intentions, and Hardy made no reply. His whole mind seemed centred on
a handful of beans from which he was picking out the rocks and little
lumps of clay which help to make up full weight.

"Well!" challenged Swope, after waiting for his answer, "ain't that
straight?"

"Sure," said Hardy absently.

Swope glared at him for a moment disapprovingly.

"Huh, you're a hell of a cowman," he grunted. "What ye goin' to do
about it?"

"About what?" inquired Hardy innocently.

"Aw, you know," replied Swope impatiently. "How about that upper
range?" He shoved back his chair as he spoke, and his eyes lit up in
anticipation of the battle.

"Well," responded Hardy judicially, "if you've got the legal right to
go up there, and if you're goin' where you dam' please, anyhow, it
don't look like I could do anything." He paused and smiled patiently
at the sheepman.

"You know very well, Mr. Swope," he said, "that if you want to go up
on that mesa and sheep off the feed we haven't got any legal means of
preventing you. But you know, too, that there isn't more than enough
feed for what cows the boys have left. If you want to go up there,
that's your privilege--and if you want to go out over The Rolls,
that's all right, too."

"Of course you don't give a dam'!" said Swope satirically.

"I guess you know how I feel, all right," returned Hardy, and then he
lapsed into silence, while Swope picked his teeth and thought.

"Where'd you come from?" he said at last, as if, forgetting all that
had passed, his mind had come back from a far country, unbiassed by
the facts.

"Over the mountains," replied Hardy, jerking his thumb toward the
east.

"Don't have no sheep over there, do they?" inquired Swope.

"Nope, nothing but cattle and horses."

"Ump!" grunted the sheepman, and then, as if the matter was settled
thereby, he said: "All right, pardner, bein' as you put it that way, I
reckon I'll go around."




CHAPTER VII

HELL'S HIP POCKET


In the days of Ahaz, king of Judah, Isaiah the son of Amoz is reported
to have seen in a vision a wolf which dwelt with a lamb, while a lion
ate straw like an ox, and a weaned child put his hand in the
cockatrice's den. Equally beautiful, as a dream, was the peace at
Hidden Water, where sheepman and cattleman sat down together in amity;
only, when it was all over, the wolf wiped his chops and turned away
with a wise smile--the millennium not having come, as yet, in
Arizona.

Hardy's wrist was a little lame, figuratively speaking, from throwing
flapjacks for hungry sheep herders, and the pile of grain and baled
hay in the storehouse had dwindled materially; but as the sheep came
through, band after band, and each turned off to the west, stringing
in long bleating columns out across The Rolls, he did not begrudge the
hard labor. After Jasper Swope came Jim, and Donald McDonald, as jolly
a Scottish shepherd as ever lived, and Bazan, the Mexican, who traced
his blood back to that victorious general whom Maximilian sent into
Sonora. There were Frenchmen, smelling rank of garlic and mutton
tallow; Basques with eyes as blue and vacant as the summer skies;
young Mormons working on shares, whose whole fortune was wrapped up in
the one huddle of sheep which they corralled and counted so carefully;
and then the common herders, fighting Chihuahuanos, with big round
heads and staring eyes, low-browed Sonorans, slow and brutal in their
ways, men of all bloods and no blood, lumped together in that
careless, all-embracing Western term "Mexicans."

But though they were low and primitive in mental processes, nearer to
their plodding burros than to the bright-eyed sensitive dogs, they
were the best who would consent to wander with the sheep through the
wilderness, seeing nothing, doing nothing, knowing nothing, having
before them nothing but the vision of a distant pay day, a drunk, the
_calabozo_, and the kind boss who would surely bail them out. Ah, that
was it--the one love and loyalty of those simple-minded creatures who,
unfit for the hurry and competition of the great world, sold their
lives by spans of months for twenty dollars and found; it was always
to the boss that they looked for help, and in return they did his
will.

When the great procession had drifted past, with its braying clamor,
its dogs, its men on muleback and afoot, the herders with their
carbines, the camp rustlers with their burros, belled and laden with
water casks and kyacks of grub, the sheep owners hustling about with
an energy that was almost a mania, Hardy sat beneath the _ramada_ of
the ranch house with dog-fighting Tommy in his lap and pondered deeply
upon the spectacle. A hundred thousand sheep, drifting like the
shadows of clouds across the illimitable desert, crossing swift
rivers, climbing high mountains, grazing beneath the northern pines;
and then turning south again and pouring down through the passes like
the resistless front of a cloudburst which leaves the earth bare and
wasted in its wake. For this one time he had turned the stream aside
and the tall grass still waved upon the upper range; but the next
time, or the next--what then?

Long and seriously he contemplated the matter, dwelling now upon the
rough good nature of the sheepmen and this almost miraculous
demonstration of their good will; then remembered with vague
misgivings their protestations against the unlawful violence which
presumed to deny them what was their legal right--free grazing on all
government lands. And in the end he wrote a brief note to Judge Ware,
telling him that while the sheepmen had accepted his hospitality in a
most friendly spirit and had respected the upper range, it was in his
opinion only a question of time until they would take the whole
country, unless they were restrained by law. He therefore recommended
that the judge look up the status of the bill to set aside the
watershed of the Salagua as a National Forest Reserve, and in case the
opposition to it indicated any long delay it would be well either to
sell out or reduce his stock. This note he sent out by Rafael, the
Mexican roustabout, who was still hauling in supplies from Bender, and
then with a glad heart he saddled up his horse, left a bait of meat on
the floor for Tommy, and struck out over the mesa for Carrizo Creek.

After his long confinement in the pasture the sorrel galloped along
the rocky trail with the grace and swiftness of an antelope, the warm
dry wind puffed little whirls of dust before them, and once more Hardy
felt like a man. If for the best interests of his employer it was
desirable that he cook beef and bread for sheepmen, he could do so
with good grace, but his spirit was not that of a man who serves.
Since he had left home he had taken a great deal from the world,
patiently accepting her arrogance while he learned her ways, but his
soul had never been humbled and he rode forth now like a king.

Upon that great mesa where the bronco mustangs from the Peaks still
defied the impetuosity of men, the giant _sahuaros_ towered in a
mighty forest as far as the eye could see, yet between each stalk
there lay a wide space, studded here and there with niggerheads of
bristling spines, and fuzzy _chollas_, white as the backs of sheep and
thorny beyond reason. Nor was this all: in the immensity of distance
there was room for _sahuaros_ and niggerheads and _chollas_, and much
besides. In every gulch and sandy draw the _palo verdes_, their yellow
flowers gleaming in the sun, stood out like lines of fire; the bottoms
of the steep ravines which gashed the mesa were illuminated with the
gaudy tassels of mesquite blossoms; gray coffee-berry bushes clumped
up against the sides of ridges, and in every sheltered place the long
grass waved its last-year's banners, while the fresh green of tender
growth matted the open ground like a lawn. Baby rabbits, feeding along
their runways in the grass, sat up at his approach or hopped
innocently into the shadow of the sheltering cat-claws; jack-rabbits
with black-tipped ears galloped madly along before him, imagining
themselves pursued, and in every warm sandy place where the lizards
took the sun there was a scattering like the flight of arrows as the
long-legged swift-jacks rose up on their toes and flew. All nature was
in a gala mood and Rufus Hardy no less. Yet as he rode along, gazing
at the dreamy beauty of this new world, the old far-away look crept
back into his eyes, a sad, brooding look such as one often sees in
the faces of little children who have been crossed, and the stern
lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper when he drew rein above
Carrizo Creek.

Below him lay the panorama of a mountain valley--the steep and rocky
walls; the silvery stream writhing down the middle; the green and
yellow of flowers along the lowlands; and in the middle, to give it
life, a great herd of cattle on the _parada_ ground, weaving and
milling before the rushes of yelling horsemen, intent on cutting out
every steer in the herd. Beyond lay the corrals of peeled cottonwood,
and a square house standing out stark and naked in the supreme
ugliness of corrugated iron, yet still oddly homelike in a land where
shelter was scarce. As he gazed, a mighty voice rose up to him from
the midst of the turmoil, the blatting of calves, the mooing of cows
and the hoarse thunder of mountain bulls:

"Hel-lo, Rufe!"

From his place on the edge of the herd Hardy saw Jefferson Creede,
almost herculean on his tall horse, waving a large black hat.
Instantly he put spurs to his sorrel and leaped down the narrow trail,
and at the edge of the herd they shook hands warmly, for friends are
scarce, wherever you go.

"Jest in time!" said Creede, grinning his welcome, "we're goin' over
into Hell's Hip Pocket to-morrow--the original hole in the ground--to
bring out Bill Johnson's beef critters, and I sure wanted you to make
the trip. How'd you git along with Jasp?"

"All right," responded Hardy, "he didn't make me any trouble. But I'm
glad to get away from that sheep smell, all the same."

The big cowboy fixed his eyes upon him eagerly.

"Did they go around?" he asked incredulously. "Jasp and all?"

"Sure," said Hardy. "Why?"

For a long minute Creede was silent, wrinkling his brows as he
pondered upon the miracle.

"Well, that's what _I_ want to know," he answered ambiguously. "But
say, you've got a fresh horse; jest take my place here while me and
Uncle Bill over there show them ignorant punchers how to cut cattle."

He circled rapidly about the herd and, riding out into the runway
where the cattle were sifted, the beef steers being jumped across the
open into the hold-up herd and the cows and calves turned back, he
held up his hand for the work to stop. Then by signals he sent the
galloping horsemen back to the edge of the herd and beckoned for old
Bill Johnson.

For a few minutes he sat quietly on his horse, waiting for the
harassed cattle to stop their milling. Then breaking into a song such
as cowboys sing at night he rode slowly in among them, threading about
at random, while old Bill Johnson on his ancient mare did likewise,
his tangled beard swaying idly in the breeze. On the border of the
herd they edged in as if by accident upon a fat steer and walked him
amiably forth into the open. Another followed out of natural
perversity, and when both were nicely started toward the beef cut the
two men drifted back once more into the herd. There was no running, no
shouting, no gallant show of horsemanship, but somehow the right
steers wandered over into the beef cut and stayed there. As if by
magic spell the outlaws and "snakes" became good, and with no breaks
for the hills the labor of an afternoon was accomplished in the space
of two dull and uneventful hours.

"That's the way to cut cattle!" announced Creede, as they turned the
discard toward the hills. "Ain't it, Bill?"

He turned to Johnson who, sitting astride a flea-bitten gray mare that
seemed to be in a perpetual doze, looked more like an Apache squaw
than a boss cowboy. The old man's clothes were even more ragged than
when Hardy had seen him at Bender, his copper-riveted hat was further
reinforced by a buckskin thong around the rim, and his knees were
short-stirruped almost up to his elbows by the puny little boy's
saddle that he rode, but his fiery eyes were as quick and piercing as
ever.

"Shore thing," he said, straightening up jauntily in his saddle,
"that's my way! Be'n doin' it fer years, while you boys was killin'
horses, but it takes Jeff hyar to see the p'int. Be gentle, boys, be
gentle with um--you don't gain nawthin' fer all yer hard ridin'."

He cut off a chew of tobacco and tucked it carefully away in his
cheek.

"Jeff hyar," he continued, as the bunch of cowboys began to josh
and laugh among themselves, "he comes by his savvy right--his paw
was a smart man before him, and mighty clever to his friends, to
boot. Many's the time I hev took little Jeffie down the river and
learned him tracks and beaver signs when he wasn't knee-high to a
grasshopper--hain't I, Jeff? And when I tell him to be gentle with
them cows he knows I'm right. I jest want you boys to take notice
when you go down into the Pocket to-morrer what kin be done by
kindness; and the first man that hollers or puts a rope on my gentle
stock, I'll sure make him hard to ketch.

"You hear me, naow," he cried, turning sharply upon Bill Lightfoot,
who was getting off something about "Little Jeffie," and then for the
first time he saw the face of the new cowboy who had ridden in that
afternoon. Not since the day he was drunk at Bender had Bill Johnson
set eyes upon the little man to whom he had sworn off, but he
recognized him instantly.

"Hello thar, pardner!" he exclaimed, reining his mare in abruptly.
"Whar'd you drop down from?"

"Why howdy do, Mr. Johnson!" answered Hardy, shaking hands, "I'm glad
to see you again. Jeff told me he was going down to your ranch
to-morrow and I looked to see you then."

Bill Johnson allowed this polite speech to pass over his shoulder
without response. Then, drawing Hardy aside, he began to talk
confidentially; expounding to the full his system of gentling cattle;
launching forth his invective, which was of the pioneer variety, upon
the head of all sheepmen; and finally coming around with a jerk to the
subject that was uppermost in his mind.

"Say," he said, "I want to ask you a question--are you any relation to
the Captain Hardy that I served with over at Fort Apache? Seems's if
you look like 'im, only smaller."

His stature was a sore point with Hardy, and especially in connection
with his father, but making allowance for Mr. Johnson's ways he
modestly admitted his ancestry.

"His son, eh!" echoed the old man. "Waal--now! I tell you, boy, I
_knowed_ you--I knowed you the minute you called down that dog-robber
of a barkeep--and I was half drunk, too. And so you're the new
superintendent down at the Dos S, eh? Waal, all I can say is: God help
them pore sheepmen if you ever git on their trail. I used to chase
Apaches with yore paw, boy!"

It was Bill Johnson's turn to talk that evening and like most
solitaries who have not "gone into the silence," he availed himself of
a listener with enthusiasm.

Stories of lion hunts and "b'ar fights" fell as trippingly from his
lips as the words of a professional monologist, and when he had
finished his account of the exploits of Captain Samuel Barrows Hardy,
even the envious Lightfoot regarded Rufus with a new respect, for
there is no higher honor in Arizona than to be the son of an Indian
fighter. And when the last man had crawled wearily into his blankets
the old hermit still sat by the dying fire poking the charred ends
into the flames and holding forth to the young superintendent upon the
courage of his sire.

Hardly had the son of his father crept under the edge of Creede's
blankets and dropped to sleep before that huge mountain of energy rose
up and gave the long yell. The morning was at its blackest, that murky
four A. M. darkness which precedes the first glimmer of light; but
the day's work had to be done. The shivering horse-wrangler stamped on
his boots and struck out down the cañon after the _remuda_, two or
three cooks got busy about the fire which roared higher and higher as
they piled on the ironwood to make coals, and before the sun had more
than mounted the southern shoulder of the Four Peaks the long line of
horsemen was well on the trail to Hell's Hip Pocket.

The frontier imagination had in no wise overleaped itself in naming
this abyss. Even the tribute which Facilis Descensus Vergil paid to
the local Roman hell could hardly be said of the Pocket--it is not
even easy to get into it. From the top of the divide it looks like a
valley submerged in a smoky haze through which the peaks and pinnacles
of the lower parks rise up like cathedral spires, pointing solemnly to
heaven. As the trail descends through washed-out gulches and
"stone-patches," now skating along the backbone of a ridge and now
dropping as abruptly into some hollow waterway, the cliffs and
pinnacles begin to loom up against the sky; then they seem to close in
and block the way, and just as the cañon boxes in to nothing the trail
slips into a gash in the face of the cliff where the soft sandstone
has crumbled away between two harder strata, and climbs precariously
along through the sombre gloom of the gorge to the bright light of the
fair valley beyond.

It is a kind of fairy land, that hidden pocket in the hills, always
covered by a mystic haze, for which the Mexicans give it the name
_Humada_. Its steep cañon comes down from the breast of the most
easterly of the Four Peaks, impassable except by the one trail; it
passes through the box and there widens out into a beautiful valley,
where the grass lies along the hillsides like the tawny mane of a
lion, and tender flowers stand untrampled in the rich bottoms. For
three miles or more it spreads out between striated cliffs where hawks
and eagles make their nests; then once more it closes in, the creek
plunges down a narrow gorge and disappears, writhing tortuously on its
way to the Salagua whose fire-blasted walls rise in huge bulwarks
against the south, dwarfing the near-by cliffs into nothingness by
their majestic height.

In the presence of this unearthly beauty and grandeur old Bill
Johnson--ex-trapper, ex-soldier, ex-prospector, ex-everything--had
dwelt for twenty years, dating from the days when his house was his
fortress, and his one desire was to stand off the Apaches until he
could find the Lost Dutchman.

Where the valley narrowed down for its final plunge into the gorge the
old trapper had built his cabin, its walls laid "square with the
world" by sighting on the North Star. When the sun entered the
threshold of the western door it was noon, and his watch never ran
down. The cabin was built of shaly rocks, squared and laid in mud,
like bricks; a tremendous stone chimney stood against the north end
and a corral for his burros at the south. Three hounds with bleared
eyes and flapping ears, their foreheads wrinkled with age and the
anxieties of the hunt, bayed forth a welcome as the cavalcade strung
in across the valley; and mild-eyed cattle, standing on the ridges to
catch the wind, stared down at them in surprise. Never, even at San
Carlos, where the Chiricahua cattle fatten on the best feed in
Arizona, had Hardy seen such mountains of beef. Old steers with six
and seven rings on their horns hung about the salting places, as if
there were no such things as beef drives and slaughter houses in this
cruel world, and even when the cowboys spread out like a fan and
brought them all in to the cutting grounds there was hardly a calf
that bawled.

As the three or four hundred head that made up his entire earthly
possession drifted obediently in, the old man rode up to Creede and
Hardy and waved his hand expansively.

"Thar, boys," he said, "thar's the results of peace and kindness. Nary
a critter thar that I heven't scratched between the horns since the
day his maw brought him down to the salt lick. I even git Jeff and
the boys to brand and earmark 'em fer me, so they won't hev no hard
feelin' fer the Old Man. D'ye see that big white-faced steer?" he
asked, pointing with pride to the monarch of the herd. "Waal, how much
ye think he'll weigh?" he demanded, turning to Creede. "Fifteen
hundred?"

"Um, more 'n that," responded Creede, squinting his eyes down
judicially. "Them Herefords are awful solid when they git big. I
reckon he'll run nigh onto seventeen hundred, Bill." He paused and
winked furtively at Hardy. "I kin git fifty dollars fer that old boy,
jest the way he stands," he said, "and bein' as he can't carry no more
weight nohow, I'll jest cut him into the town herd right now, and--"

"Hyar!" shouted Johnson, grabbing the cowboy's bridle, "who's doin'
this, anyhow?"

"W'y _you_, Bill," answered Creede innocently, "but--"

"That's all right, then," said the old man shortly, "you leave that
steer alone. I'll jest cut this herd to suit myself."

Over at the branding pen the irons were on the fire and the marking
was progressing rapidly, but out in the open Mr. Bill Johnson was
making slow work of his cut.

"He gets stuck on them cows, like an Irishman with his pig," observed
Creede, as the old man turned back a prime four-year-old. "He'd rather
be barbecued by the Apaches than part with that big white-faced boy.
If I owned 'em I'd send down a lot of them big fat brutes and buy
doggies; but Bill spends all the money he gits fer booze anyhow, so I
reckon it's all right. He generally sends out about twenty runts and
roughs, and lets it go at that. Say! You'll have to git a move on,
Bill," he shouted, "we want to send that beef cut on ahead!"

The old man reined in his mare and surveyed the big herd critically.

"Waal," he drawled, "I reckon that'll do fer this trip, then. Take 'em
along. And the fust one of you punchers that hits one of them critters
over the tail with his hondu," he shouted, as the eager horsemen
trotted over to start them, "will hev me to lick!"

He placed an order for provisions with Creede, asked him to keep the
supplies at Hidden Water until he came over for them with the burros,
and turned away contentedly as the cowboys went upon their way.

Down by the branding pen the mother cows licked the blood from their
offsprings' mangled ears and mooed resentfully, but the big
white-faced steer stood in brutish content on the salting grounds and
gazed after the town herd thoughtfully.

A bunch of burros gathered about the doorway of the cabin, snooping
for bacon rinds; the hounds leaned their heavy jowls upon his knees
and gazed up worshipfully into their master's face; and as the sun
dipped down toward the rim of the mighty cliffs that shut him in, the
lord of Hell's Hip Pocket broke into the chorus of an ancient song:

        "Oh, _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains,
        And _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains,
        And _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains,
        I'll go till I find me a home."




CHAPTER VIII

A YEAR'S MAIL


The beef herd was safely delivered at Bender, the feeders disposed of
at Moroni, and the checks sent on to the absentee owner, who did not
know a steer from a stag; the _rodéo_ hands were paid off and
successfully launched upon their big drunk; bills were paid and the
Summer's supplies ordered in, and then at last the superintendent and
_rodéo_ boss settled down to a little domesticity.

Since the day that Hardy had declined to drink with him Creede had
quietly taken to water, and he planted a bag of his accumulated wages
in a corner of the mud floor, to see, as he facetiously expressed it,
if it would grow. Mr. Bill Johnson had also saved his "cow money" from
Black Tex and banked it with Hardy, who had a little cache of his own,
as well. With their finances thus nicely disposed of the two partners
swept the floor, cleaned up the cooking dishes, farmed out their
laundry to a squaw, and set their house in order generally. They were
just greasing up their _reatas_ for a run after the wild horses of
Bronco Mesa when Rafael pulled in with a wagon-load of supplies and
destroyed their peaceful life.

It was late when the grinding and hammering of wheels upon the
boulders of the creek-bed announced his near approach and Creede went
out to help unload the provisions. A few minutes later he stepped into
the room where Hardy was busily cooking and stood across the table
from him with his hands behind his back, grinning mischievously.

"Rufe," he said, "you've got a girl."

Hardy looked up quickly and caught the significance of his pose, but
he did not smile. He did not even show an interest in the play.

"How do you figure that out?" he asked, indifferently.

"Oh, I know," drawled Creede. "Got a letter from her."

A single hawk-like glance was the only answer to this sally.

"She says: 'Why the hell don't you write!'" volunteered the cowboy.

"'S that so!" commented Hardy, and then he went on with his cooking.

For a minute Creede stood watching him, his eyes keen to detect the
slightest quaver, but the little man seemed suddenly to have forgotten
him; he moved about absently, mechanically, dropping nothing, burning
nothing, yet far away, as in a dream.

"Huh!" exclaimed Creede, disgusted with his own make-believe, "you
don't seem to care whether school keeps or not. I'll excuse you from
any further work this evenin'--here's your mail."

He drew a bundle of letters from behind his back and dropped it
heavily upon the table, but even then Hardy did not rise.

"Guess the Old Man must've forwarded my mail," he remarked, smiling at
the size of the pack. "I've been knocking around so, I haven't
received a letter in a year. Chuck 'em on my desk, will ye?"

"Sure," responded Creede, and stepping across the broad living-room he
threw the bundle carelessly on the bed.

"You're like me," he remarked, drawing his chair up sociably to
supper, "I ain't got a letter fer so long I never go near the dam'
post office."

He sighed, and filled his plate with beans.

"Ever been in St. Louis?" he inquired casually. "No? They say it's a
fine burg. Think I'll save up my _dinero_ and try it a whirl some
day."

The supper table was cleared and Creede had lit his second cigarette
before Hardy reverted to the matter of his mail.

"Well," he said, "I might as well look over those letters--may be a
thousand-dollar check amongst them."

Then, stepping into his room, he picked up the package, examined it
curiously, and cut the cords with his knife.

A sheaf of twenty or more letters spilled out and, sitting on the edge
of the bed, he shuffled them over in the uncertain light of the fire,
noting each inscription with a quick glance; and as he gathered up the
last he quietly tucked three of them beneath the folds of his
blankets--two in the same hand, bold and dashing yet stamped with a
certain feminine delicacy and grace, and each envelope of a pale blue;
the third also feminine, but inscribed in black and white, a crooked
little hand that strayed across the page, yet modestly shrank from
trespassing on the stamp.

With the remainder of his mail Hardy blundered over to the table,
dumping the loose handful in a great pile before the weak glimmer of
the lamp.

"There," he said, as Creede blinked at the heap, "I reckon that's mail
enough for both of us. You can read the advertisements and I'll see
what the judge has to say for himself. Pitch in, now." He waved his
hand towards a lot of business envelopes, but Creede shook his head
and continued to smoke dreamily.

"Nope," he said briefly, "don't interest me."

He reached out and thumbed the letters over dumbly, spelling out a
long word here and there or scrutinizing some obscure handwriting
curiously, as if it were Chinese, or an Indian sign on a rock. Then,
shoving back his chair, he watched Hardy's face as he skimmed rapidly
through the first letter.

"Good news in the first part of it and bad in the last," he remarked,
as Hardy put it down.

"That's right," admitted Hardy, "but how'd you know?"

He gazed up at his complacent partner with a look of innocent wonder,
and Creede laughed.

"W'y, hell boy," he said, "I can read you like a book. Your face tells
the whole story as you go along. After you've been down here in
Arizona a few seasons and got them big eyes of yourn squinched down a
little--well, I may have to ast you a few questions, then."

He waved his hand in a large gesture and blew out a cloud of smoke,
while a twinkle of amusement crept into Hardy's unsquinched eyes.

"Maybe I'm smoother than I look," he suggested dryly. "You big, fat
fellows get so self-satisfied sometimes that you let lots of things go
by you."

"Well, I'll take my chances on you," answered Creede placidly. "What
did the old judge say?"

"He says you did fine with the cattle," said Hardy, "and sold 'em just
in time--the market fell off within a week after we shipped."

"Um-huh," grunted Creede. "And what's the bad bunch of news at the
end?"

The bad bunch of news was really of a personal nature, stirring up
unpleasant memories, but Hardy passed it off by a little benevolent
dissimulation.

"He says he's mighty glad I steered the sheep away, but there is
something funny going on back in Washington; some combine of the sheep
and lumber interests has got in and blocked the whole Forest Reserve
business and there won't be any Salagua Forest Reserve this year. So I
guess my job of sheep-wrangler is going to hold; at least the judge
asked me to stay with it until Fall."

"Well, you stay then, Rufe," said Creede earnestly, "because
I've kinder got stuck on you--I like your style," he added half
apologetically.

"All right, Jeff," said Hardy. "Here's another letter--from my father.
See if you can guess what it is like."

He set his face rigidly and read the short letter through without a
quaver.

"You and the Old Man have had a fallin'-out," observed Creede, with a
shrewd grin, "and he says when you git good and tired of bein' a dam'
fool you might as well come home."

"Well, that's about the size of it," admitted Hardy. "I never told you
much about my father, did I?"

"Never knew you had one," said Creede, "until Bill Johnson began to
blow about what an Injun-fighter he was. I reckon that's where you git
your sportin' blood, ain't it?"

"Well, I'll tell you," began Hardy. "The Old Man and I never did get
along together. He's used to commanding soldiers and all that, and I'm
kind of quiet, but he always took a sneaking pride in me when I was a
boy, I guess. Anyway, every time I'd get into a fight around the post
and lick two or three Mexican kids, or do some good work riding or
shooting, he'd say I'd be a man before my mother, or something like
that--but that was as far as he got. And all the time, on the quiet,
he was educating me for the Army. His father was a captain, and he's a
colonel, and I can see now he was lotting on my doing as well or
better--but hell, that only made matters worse."

He slid down in his chair and gazed into the fire gloomily. It was the
first time Creede had heard his partner use even the mildest of the
range expletives, for in that particular he was still a tenderfoot,
and the word suddenly conveyed to him the depths of the little man's
abandonment and despair.

"Why--what was the matter?" he inquired sympathetically. "Couldn't you
git no appointment?"

"Huh!" growled Hardy. "I guess you know, all right. Look at me!" he
exclaimed, in a sudden gust of passion and resentment. "Why, damn it,
man, I'm an inch too short!"

"Well--I'll--be--dogged!" breathed Creede. "I never thought of that!"

"No," rejoined Hardy bitterly, "nor the Old Man, either--not until I
stopped growing! Well, he hasn't had a bit of use for me since. That's
the size of it. And he didn't take any pains to conceal the fact--most
army men don't. There's only one man in the world to them, and that's
a soldier; and if you're not a soldier, you're nothing."

He waved a hand as if dismissing himself from the universe, and sank
moodily into his seat, while Creede looked him over in silence.

"Rufe," he said quietly, "d'ye remember that time when I picked you to
be boss sheep-wrangler, down at Bender? Well, I might as well tell you
about that now--'t won't do no harm. The old judge couldn't figure out
what it was I see in you to recommend you for the job. Like's not you
don't know yourself. _He_ thought I was pickin' you because you was a
peaceful guy, and wouldn't fight Black Tex; but that's where he got
fooled, and fooled bad! I picked you because I knew dam' well you
_would_ fight!"

He leaned far over across the table and his eyes glowed with a fierce
light.

"D'ye think I want some little suckin' mamma's-joy of a diplomat on my
hands when it comes to a show-down with them sheepmen?" he cried. "No,
by God, I want a _man_, and you're the boy, Rufe; so shake!"

He rose and held out his hand. Hardy took it.

"I wouldn't have sprung this on you, pardner," he continued
apologetically, "if I didn't see you so kinder down in the mouth about
your old man. But I jest want you to know that they's one man that
appreciates you for a plain scrapper. And I'll tell you another thing;
when the time comes you'll look jest as big over the top of a
six-shooter as I do, and stand only half the chanst to git hit. W'y,
shucks!" he exclaimed magnanimously, "my size is agin' me at every
turn; my horse can't hardly pack me, I eat such a hell of a lot, and,
well, I never can git a pair of pants to fit me. What's this here
letter?"

He picked one up at random, and Hardy ascertained that his tailor some
six months previously had moved to a new and more central location,
where he would be pleased to welcome all his old customers. But the
subject of diminutive size was effectually dismissed and, having
cheered up his little friend as best he could, Creede seized the
occasion to retire. Lying upon his broad back in his blankets, with
Tommy purring comfortably in the hollow of his arm, he smoked out his
cigarette in speculative silence, gazing up at the familiar stars
whose wheelings mark off the cowboy's night, and then dropped quietly
to sleep, leaving his partner to brood over his letters alone.

For a long time he sat there, opening them one by one--the vague and
indifferent letters which drift in while one is gone; and at last he
stole silently across the dirt floor and brought out the three letters
from his bed. There in a moment, if he had been present, Creede might
have read him like a book; his lips drawn tight, his eyes big and
staring, as he tore open one of the pale blue envelopes with trembling
hands. The fragments of a violet, shattered by the long journey, fell
before him as he plucked out the note, and its delicate fragrance rose
up like incense as he read. He hurried through the missive, as if
seeking something which was not there, then his hungry eyes left the
unprofitable page and wandered about the empty room, only to come back
to those last words: "Always your Friend, Kitty Bonnair."

"Always your friend," he repeated bitterly--"always your friend. Ah,
God!" He sighed wearily and shook his head. For a moment he lapsed
into dreams; then, reaching out, he picked up the second letter,
postmarked over a year before, and examined it idly. The very hour of
its collection was recorded--"Ferry Sta. 1.30 A. M."--and the date he
could never forget. Written on that very same day, and yet its message
had never reached him!

He could see as in a vision the shrouded form of Kitty Bonnair
slipping from her door at midnight to fling a final word after him,
not knowing how far he would flee; he could see the lonely mail
collector, half obscured in the San Francisco fog, as he scooped the
letter from the box with many others and boarded the car for the
ferry. It was a last retort, and likely bitter, for he had spoken in
anger himself, and Kitty was not a woman to be denied. There was an
exaggerated quirk to the square corners of her letters, a brusque
shading of the down strokes--undoubtedly Kitty was angry. But for once
he had disarmed her--it was a year after, now, and he had read her
forgiveness first! Yet it was with a strange sinking of the heart that
he opened the blue envelope and stared at the scribbled words:

DEAR FRIEND THAT WAS: My heart is very sore to-night--I had trusted
you so--I had depended upon you so--and now you have deliberately
broken all your faith and promises. Rufus, I had thought you
different from other men--more gentle, more considerate, more capable
of a true friendship which I fondly hoped would last forever--but now,
oh, I can never forgive you! Just when life was heaviest with
disappointments, just when I was leaning upon you most as a true
friend and comrade--then you must needs spoil it all. And after I had
told you I could never love any one! Have you forgotten all that I
told you in the balcony? Have you forgotten all that I have risked for
the friendship I held so dear? And then to spoil it all! Oh, I hate
you--I hate you!

He stopped and stiffened in his chair, and his eyes turned wild with
horror; then he gathered his letters together blindly and crept away
to bed. In the morning he arose and went about his work with
mouse-like quietness, performing all things thoroughly and well,
talking, even laughing, yet with a droop like that of a wounded
creature that seeks only to hide and escape.

Creede watched him furtively, hung around the house for a while, then
strode out to the pasture and caught up his horse.

"Be back this aft," he said, and rode majestically away up the cañon,
where he would be out of the way. For men, too, have their instincts
and intuitions, and they are even willing to leave alone that which
they cannot remedy and do not understand.

As Creede galloped off, leaving the ranch of a sudden lonely and
quiet, Tommy poked his head anxiously out through a slit in the canvas
bottom of the screen door and began to cry--his poor cracked voice,
all broken from calling for help from the coyotes, quavering dismally.
In his most raucous tones he continued this lament for his master
until at last Hardy gathered him up and held him to his breast.

"Ah, Kitty, Kitty," he said, and at the caressing note in his voice
the black cat began to purr hoarsely, raising his scrawny head in the
ecstasy of being loved. Thief and reprobate though he was, and sadly
given to leaping upon the table and flying spitefully at dogs, even
that rough creature felt the need of love; how much more the
sensitive and high-bred man, once poet and scholar, now cowboy and
sheep-wrangler, but always the unhappy slave of Kitty Bonnair.

The two letters lay charred to ashes among the glowing coals, but
their words, even the kindest meant, were seared deep in his heart,
fresh hurts upon older scars, and as he sat staring at the gaunt
_sahuaros_ on the hilltops he meditated gloomily upon his reply. Then,
depositing Tommy on the bed, he sat down at his desk before the
iron-barred window and began to write.

  DEAR FRIEND THAT WAS: Your two letters came together--the one that
  you have just sent, and the one written on that same night, which
  I hope I may some day forget. It was not a very kind letter--I am
  sorry that I should ever have offended you, but it was not gently
  done. No friend could ever speak so to another, I am sure. As for
  the cause, I am a human being, a man like other men, and I am not
  ashamed. Yet that I should so fail to read your mind I am ashamed.
  Perhaps it was my egotism, which made me over-bold, thinking that
  any woman could love me. But if what I offered was nothing to you,
  if even for a moment you hated me, it is enough. Now for all this
  talk of friendship--I am not your friend and never will be; and
  if, after what has passed, you are my friend, I ask but one
  thing--let me forget. For I will never come back, I will never
  write, I will never submit. Surely, with all that life offers you,
  you can spare me the humiliation of being angry with you.

  I am now engaged in work which, out of consideration for Judge
  Ware, I cannot leave; otherwise I would not ask you not to write
  to me.

  Trusting that you will remember me kindly to your mother, I
  remain, sincerely,

                                                        Rufus Hardy.

He signed his name at the bottom, folded the sheet carefully, and
thrust the sealed envelope into an inner pocket. Then for the first
time, he drew out the third letter and spread its pages before him--a
long letter, full of news, yet asking no questions. The tense lines
about his lips relaxed as he read, he smiled whimsically as he heard
of the queer doings of his old-time friends; how these two had run
away and got married in order to escape a church wedding, how Tupper
Browne had painted a likeness of Mather in Hades--after the "Dante" of
Doré--and had been detected in the act; and then this little note,
cued in casually near the end:

  Kitty Bonnair has given up art for the present on account of her
  eyes, and has gone in for physical culture and riding lessons in
  the park. She dropped in at the last meeting of The Circle, and I
  told her how curiously father had encountered you at Bender. We
  all miss you very much at The Circle--in fact, it is not doing so
  well of late. Kitty has not attended a meeting in months, and I
  often wonder where we may look for another Poet, Philosopher, and
  Friend--unless you will come back! Father did not tell me where
  you had been or what you intended to do, but I hope you have not
  given up the Muse. To encourage you I will send down a book, now
  and then, and you may send me a poem. Is it a bargain? Then
  good-bye.

                                 With best wishes,
                                                   LUCY WARE.

  P. S.--I met your father on the street the other day, and he
  seemed very much pleased to hear how well you were getting along.

Hardy put the letter down and sighed.

"Now there's a thoroughly nice girl," he said. "I wonder why she
doesn't get married." Then, reaching for a fresh sheet of paper, he
began to write, describing the beauty of the country; the noble
qualities of his horse, Chapuli, the Grasshopper; the march of the
vast army of sheep; Creede, Tommy, and whatnot, with all the pent-up
enthusiasm of a year's loneliness. When it was ended he looked at the
letter with a smile, wondering whether to send it by freight or
express. Six cents in stamps was the final solution of the problem,
and as his pocketbook contained only four he stuck them on and awaited
his partner's return.

"Say, Jeff," he called, as Creede came in from the pasture, "have you
got any stamps?"

"Any which?" inquired Creede suspiciously.

"Any postage stamps--to put on letters."

"Huh!" exclaimed Creede. "You must think I've got a girl--or important
business in the States. No, I'll tell you. The only stamp I've got is
in a glass frame, hung up on the wall--picture of George Washington,
you know. Haven't you never seen it? W'y, it's right there in the
parler--jest above the pianney--and a jim-dandy piece of steel
engraving she is, too." He grinned broadly as he concluded this
running fire of jest, but his partner remained serious to the end.

"Well," he said, "I guess I'll go down to Moroni in the morning,
then."

"What ye goin' down there for?" demanded Creede incredulously.

"Why, to buy a stamp, of course," replied Hardy, "it's only forty
miles, isn't it?" And early in the morning, true to his word, he
saddled up Chapuli and struck out down the river.

From the doorway Creede watched him curiously, his lips parted in a
dubious smile.

"There's something funny goin' on here, ladies," he observed sagely,
"something funny--and I'm dogged if I savvy what it is." He stooped
and scooped up Tommy in one giant paw. "Well, Tom, Old Socks," he
said, holding him up where he could sniff delicately at the rafters,
"you've got a pretty good nose, how about it, now--can you smell a
rat?" But even Tommy could not explain why a man should ride forty
miles in order to buy a stamp.




CHAPTER IX

MORONI


The Mormon settlement of Moroni proved to belong to that large class
of Western "cities" known as "string-towns"--a long line of stores on
either side of a main street, brick where fires have swept away the
shacks, and wood with false fronts where dynamite or a change of wind
has checked the conflagration; a miscellaneous conglomeration of
saloons, restaurants, general stores, and livery stables, all very
satisfying to the material wants of man, but in the ensemble not
over-pleasing to the eye.

At first glance, Moroni might have been Reno, Nevada; or Gilroy,
California; or Deming, New Mexico; or even Bender--except for the
railroad. A second glance, however, disclosed a smaller number of
disconsolate cow ponies standing in front of the saloons and a larger
number of family rigs tied to the horse rack in front of Swope's
Store; there was also a tithing house with many doors, a brick church,
and women and children galore. And for twenty miles around there was
nothing but flowing canals and irrigated fields waving with wheat and
alfalfa, all so green and prosperous that a stranger from the back
country was likely to develop a strong leaning toward the faith before
he reached town and noticed the tithing house.

As for Hardy, his eyes, so long accustomed to the green lawns and
trees of Berkeley, turned almost wistful as he gazed away across the
rich fields, dotted with cocks of hay or resounding to the whirr of
the mower; but for the sweating Latter Day Saints who labored in the
fields, he had nothing but the pitying contempt of the cowboy. It was
a fine large country, to be sure, and produced a lot of very necessary
horse feed, but Chapuli shied when his feet struck the freshly
sprinkled street, and somehow his master felt equally ill at ease.

Having purchased his stamp and eaten supper, he was wandering
aimlessly up and down the street--that being the only pleasure and
recourse of an Arizona town outside the doors of a saloon--when in the
medley of heterogeneous sounds he heard a familiar voice boom out and
as abruptly stop. It was evening and the stores were closed, but
various citizens still sat along the edge of the sidewalk, smoking and
talking in the semi-darkness. Hardy paused and listened a moment. The
voice which he had heard was that of no ordinary man; it was deep and
resonant, with a rough, overbearing note almost military in its
brusqueness; but it had ceased and another voice, low and protesting,
had taken its place. In the gloom he could just make out the forms of
the two men, sitting on their heels against the wall and engaged in a
one-sided argument. The man with the Southern drawl was doing all the
talking, but as Hardy passed by, the other cut in on him again.

"Well," he demanded in masterful tones, "what ye goin' to do about
it?" Then, without waiting for an answer, he exclaimed:

"Hello, there, Mr. Hardy!"

"Hello," responded Hardy. "Who is this, anyway?"

"Jim Swope," replied the voice, with dignified directness. "What're
you doing in these parts?"

"Came down to buy a postage stamp," replied Hardy, following a habit
he had of telling the truth in details.

"Huh!" grunted Swope. "It's a wonder you wouldn't go to Bender for
it--that Jew over there might make you a rate!"

"Nope," responded Hardy, ignoring the too-evident desire of the Moroni
storekeeper to draw him into an argument. "He couldn't do it--they say
the Government loses money every time it sells one. Nice town you've
got down here," he remarked, by way of a parting compliment; but
Swope was not satisfied to let him escape so easily.

"Hold on, there!" he exclaimed, rousing up from his place. "What's
your bloody hurry? Come on back here and shake hands with Mr.
Thomas--Mr. Thomas is my boss herder up in Apache County. Thinking of
bringing him down here next Fall," he added laconically, and by the
subtle change in his voice Hardy realized intuitively that that move
had been the subject of their interrupted argument. More than that, he
felt vaguely that he himself was somehow involved in the discussion,
the more so as Mr. Thomas balked absolutely at shaking hands with
him.

"I hope Mr. Thomas will find it convenient to stop at the ranch," he
murmured pleasantly, "but don't let me interfere with your business."

"Well, I guess that's all to-night, Shep," remarked Swope, taking
charge of the situation. "I jest wanted you to meet Hardy while you
was together. This is the Mr. Hardy, of the Dos S outfit, you
understand," he continued, "and a white cowman! If you have to go
across his range, go quick--and tell your men the same. I want them
dam' tail-twisters up in that Four Peaks country to know that it pays
to be decent to a sheepman, and I'm goin' to show some of 'em, too,
before I git through! But any time my sheep happen to git on your
range, Mr. Hardy," he added reassuringly, "you jest order 'em off, and
Mr. Thomas here will see to it that they go!"

He turned upon his boss herder with a menacing gesture, as if charging
him with silence, and Thomas, whose sole contribution to the
conversation had been a grunt at the end, swung about and ambled
sullenly off up the street.

"Feelin' kinder bad to-night," explained Swope, as his _mayordomo_
butted into the swinging doors of a saloon and disappeared, "but you
remember what I said about them sheep. How do things look up your
way?" he inquired. "Feed pretty good?"

"It's getting awfully dry," replied Hardy noncommittally. "I suppose
your sheep are up on the Black Mesa by this time."

"Ump!" responded the sheepman, and then there was a long pause. "Sit
down," he said at last, squatting upon the edge of the sidewalk, "I
want to talk business with you."

He lit a short black pipe and leaned back comfortably against a post.

"You seem to be a pretty smooth young feller," he remarked,
patronizingly. "How long have you been in these parts? Two months, eh?
How'd Judge Ware come to get a-hold of you?"

"Just picked me up down at Bender," replied Hardy.

"Oh, jest picked you up, hey? I thought mebby you was some kin to him.
Ain't interested in the cattle, are you? Well, I jest thought you
might be, being put in over Jeff that way, you know. Nice boy, that,
but hot-headed as a goat. He'll be making hair bridles down in Yuma
some day, I reckon. His old man was the same way. So you ain't no kin
to the judge and've got no int'rest in the cattle, either, eh? H'm,
how long do you figure on holding down that job?"

"Don't know," replied Hardy; "might quit to-day or get fired
to-morrow. It's a good place, though."

"Not the only one, though," suggested the sheepman shrewdly, "not by a
dam' sight! Ever investigate the sheep business? No? Then you've
overlooked something! I've lived in this country for nigh onto twenty
years, and followed most every line of business, but I didn't make my
pile punching cows, nor running a store, neither--I made it _raising
sheep_. Started in with nothing at the time of the big drought in '92,
herding on shares. Sheep did well in them good years that followed,
and first thing I knew I was a sheepman. Now I've got forty thousand
head, and I'm making a hundred per cent on my investment every year.
Of course, if there comes a drought I'll lose half of 'em, but did
you ever sit down and figure out a hundred per cent a year? Well, five
thousand this year is ten next year, and ten is twenty the next year,
and the twenty looks like forty thousand dollars at the end of three
years. That's quite a jag of money, eh? I won't say what it would be
in three years more, but here's the point. You're a young man and out
to make a stake, I suppose, like the rest of 'em. What's the use of
wasting your time and energy trying to hold that bunch of half-starved
cows together? What's the use of going into a _poor_ business, man,
when there's a _better_ business; and I'll tell you right now, the
sheep business is the coming industry of Arizona. The sheepmen are
going to own this country, from Flag to the Mexican line, and you
might as well git on the boat, boy, before it's too late."

He paused, as if waiting for his points to sink home; then he reached
out and tapped his listener confidentially on the knee.

"Hardy," he said, "I like your style. You've got a head, and you know
how to keep your mouth shut. More'n that, you don't drink. A man like
you could git to be a boss sheep-herder in six months; you could make
a small fortune in three years and never know you was workin'. You
don't need to work, boy; I kin git a hundred men to work--what I want
is a man that can _think_. Now, say, I'm goin' to need a man pretty
soon--come around and see me some time."

"All right," said Hardy, reluctantly, "but I might as well tell you
now that I'm satisfied where I am."

"Satisfied!" ripped out Swope, with an oath. "Satisfied! Why, man
alive, you're jest hanging on by your eyebrows up there at Hidden
Water! _You_ haven't got nothin'; you don't even own the house you
live in. I could go up there to-morrow and file on that land and you
couldn't do a dam' thing. Judge Ware thought he was pretty smooth when
he euchred me out of that place, but I want to tell you, boy--and you
can tell him, if you want to--that Old Man Winship never held no title
to that place, and it's public land to-day. That's all public land up
there; there ain't a foot of land in the Four Peaks country that I
can't run my sheep over if I want to, and keep within my legal rights.
So that's where you're at, Mr. Hardy, if you want to know!"

He stopped and rammed a cut of tobacco into his pipe, while Hardy
tapped his boot meditatively. "Well," he said at last, "if that's the
way things are, I'm much obliged to you for not sheeping us out this
Spring. Of course, I haven't been in the country long, and I don't
know much about these matters, but I tried to accommodate you all I
could, thinking--"

"That ain't the point," broke in Swope, smoking fiercely, "I ain't
threatening ye, and I appreciate your hospitality--but here's the
point. What's the use of your monkeying along up there on a job that
is sure to play out, when you can go into a better business? Answer me
that, now!"

But Hardy only meditated in silence. It was beyond contemplation that
he should hire himself out as a sheep-herder, but if he said so
frankly it might call down the wrath of Jim Swope upon both him and
the Dos S. So he stood pat and began to fish for information.

"Maybe you just think my job is going to play out," he suggested,
diplomatically. "If I'd go to a cowman, now, or ask Judge Ware, they
might tell me I had it cinched for life."

Swope puffed smoke for a minute in a fulminating, dangerous silence.

"Huh!" he said. "I can dead easy answer for that. Your job, Mr. Hardy,
lasts jest as long as I want it to--and no longer. Now, you can figure
that out for yourself. But I'd jest like to ask you a question, since
you're so smart; how come all us sheepmen kept off your upper range
this year?"

"Why," said Hardy innocently, "I tried to be friendly and treated you
as white as I could, and I suppose--"

"Yes, you suppose," sneered Swope grimly, "but I'll jest tell you; we
wanted you to hold your job."

"That's very kind of you, I'm sure," murmured Hardy.

"Yes," replied the sheepman sardonically, "it is--dam' kind of us. But
now the question is: What ye goin' to do about it?"

"Why, in what way?"

"Well, now," began Swope, patiently feeling his way, "suppose, jest
for instance, that some fool Mexican herder should accidentally get in
on your upper range--would you feel it your duty to put him off?"

"Well," said Hardy, hedging, "I really hadn't considered the matter
seriously. Of course, if Judge Ware--"

"The judge is in San Francisco," put in Swope curtly. "Now, suppose
that _all_ of us sheepmen should decide that we wanted some of that
good feed up on Bronco Mesa, and, suppose, furthermore, that we should
all go up there, as we have a perfect legal right to do, what would
you do?"

"I don't know," replied Hardy politely.

"Well, supposen I dropped a stick of dynamite under you," burst out
Swope hoarsely, "would you jump? Speak up, man, you know what I'm
talking about. You don't think you can stand off the whole Sheepmen's
Protective Association, do you? Well, then, will ye abide by the law
and give us our legal rights or will ye fight like a dam' fool and git
sent to Yuma for your pains? That's what I want to know, and when you
talk to me you talk to the whole Sheepmen's Association, with money
enough in its treasury to send up every cowman in the Four Peaks
country! What I want to know is this--will you fight?"

"I might," answered Hardy quietly.

"Oh, you might, hey?" jeered the sheepman, tapping his pipe ominously
on the sidewalk. "You might, he-ey? Well, look at Jeff Creede--_he_
fought--and what's he got to show for it? Look at his old man--_he_
fought--and where is he now? Tell me that!

"But, say, now," he exclaimed, changing his tone abruptly, "this ain't
what I started to talk about. I want to speak with you, Mr. Hardy, on
a matter of business. You jest think them things over until I see you
again--and, of course, all this is on the q. t. But now let's talk
business. When you want to buy a postage stamp you come down here to
Moroni, don't you? And why? Why, because it's near, sure! But when you
want a wagon-load of grub--and there ain't no one sells provisions
cheaper than I do, beans four-fifty, bacon sixteen cents, flour a
dollar-ninety, everything as reasonable--you haul it clean across the
desert from Bender. That easy adds a cent a pound on every ton you
pull, to say nothin' of the time. Well, what I want to know is this:
Does Einstein sell you grub that much cheaper? Take flour, for
instance--what does that cost you?"

"I don't know," answered Hardy, whose anger was rising under
this unwarranted commercial badgering. "Same as with you, I
suppose--dollar-ninety."

"Ah!" exclaimed Swope triumphantly, "and the extra freight on a sack
would be fifty cents, wouldn't it--a cent a pound, and a fifty-pound
sack! Well, now say, Hardy, we're good friends, you know, and all
that--and Jasp and me steered all them sheep around you, you
recollect--what's the matter with your buying your summer supplies off
of me? I'll guarantee to meet any price that Bender Sheeny can
make--and, of course, I'll do what's right by you--but, by Joe, I
think you owe it to me!"

He paused and waited impatiently for his answer, but once more Hardy
balked him.

"I don't doubt there's a good deal in what you say, Mr. Swope," he
said, not without a certain weariness, "but you'll have to take that
matter up with Judge Ware."

"Don't you have the ordering of the supplies?" demanded Swope
sharply.

"Yes, but he pays for them. All I do is to order what I want and O. K.
the bills. My credit is good with Einstein, and the rate lies between
him and Judge Ware."

"Well, your credit is good here, too," replied Swope acidly, "but I
see you'd rather trade with a Jew than stand in with your friends, any
day."

"I tell you I haven't got a thing to do with it," replied Hardy
warmly. "I take my orders from Judge Ware, and if he tells me to trade
here I'll be glad to do so--it'll save me two days' freighting--but
I'm not the boss by any means."

"No, nor you ain't much of a supe, neither," growled Swope morosely.
"In fact, I consider you a dam' bum supe. Some people, now, after they
had been accommodated, would take a little trouble, but I notice you
ain't breaking your back for me. Hell, no, you don't care if I _never_
make a deal. But that's all right, Mr. Hardy, I'll try and do as much
for you about that job of yourn."

"Well, you must think I'm stuck on that job," cried Hardy hotly, "the
way you talk about it! You seem to have an idea that if I get let out
it'll make some difference to me, but I might as well tell you right
now, Mr. Swope, that it won't. I've got a good horse and I've got
money to travel on, and I'm just holding this job to accommodate Judge
Ware. So if you have any idea of taking it out on him you can just say
the word and I'll quit!"

"Um-m!" muttered the sheepman, taken aback by this sudden burst of
temper, "you're a hot-headed boy, ain't you?" He surveyed him
critically in the half light, as if appraising his value as a fighter,
and then proceeded in a more conciliatory manner. "But you mustn't let
your temper git away with you like that," he said. "You're likely to
say something you'll be sorry for later."

"Oh, I don't know," retorted Hardy. "It might relieve my mind some.
I've only been in this country a few months, but if a sheepman is the
only man that has any legal or moral rights I'd like to know about it.
You talk about coming in on our upper range, having a right to the
whole country, and all that. Now I'd like to ask you whether in your
opinion a cowman has got a right to live?"

"Oh, tut, tut, now," protested Swope, "you're gettin' excited."

"Well, of course I'm getting excited," replied Hardy, with feeling.
"You start in by telling me the sheepmen are going to take the whole
country, from Flag to the line; then you ask me what I'd do if a
Mexican came in on us; then you say you can sheep us out any time you
want to, and what am I going to do about it! Is that the way you talk
to a man who has done his best to be your friend?"

"I never said we was going to sheep you out," retorted the sheepman
sullenly. "And if I'd 'a' thought for a minute you would take on like
this about it I'd've let you go bust for your postage stamps."

"I know you didn't _say_ it," said Hardy, "but you hinted it good and
strong, all right. And when a man comes as near to it as you have I
think I've got a right to ask him straight out what his intentions
are. Now how about it--are you going to sheep us out next Fall or are
you going to give us a chance?"

"Oh hell!" burst out Swope, in a mock fury, "I'm never going to talk
to _you_ any more! You're crazy, man! _I_ never said I was going to
sheep you out!"

"No," retorted Hardy dryly, "and you never said you wasn't, either."

"Yes, I did, too," spat back Swope, seizing at a straw. "Didn't I
introduce you to my boss herder and tell him to keep off your range?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Hardy coldly. "Did you?"

For a moment the sheepman sat rigid in the darkness. Then he rose to
his feet, cursing.

"Well, you can jest politely go to hell," he said, with venomous
deliberation, and racked off down the street.




CHAPTER X

"FEED MY SHEEP"


The slow, monotonous days of Summer crept listlessly by like dreams
which, having neither beginning nor end, pass away into nothingness,
leaving only a dim memory of restlessness and mystery.

In the relentless heat of noon-day the earth seemed to shimmer and
swim in a radiance of its own; at evening the sun set in a glory
incomparable; and at dawn it returned to its own. Then in the long
breathless hours the cows sought out the scanty shadow of the cañon
wall, sprawling uneasily in the sand; the lizards crept far back into
the crevices of the rocks; the birds lingered about the water holes,
throttling their tongues, and all the world took on a silence that was
almost akin to death. As the Summer rose to its climax a hot wind
breathed in from the desert, clean and pure, but withering in its
intensity; the great bowlders, superheated in the glare of day,
irradiated the stored-up energy of the sun by night until even the
rattlesnakes, their tough hides scorched through by the burning sands,
sought out their winter dens to wait for a touch of frost. There was
only one creature in all that heat-smitten land that defied the sway
of the Sun-God and went his way unheeding--man, the indomitable, the
conqueror of mountains and desert and sea.

When the sun was hottest, then was the best time to pursue the black
stallion of Bronco Mesa, chasing him by circuitous ways to the river
where he and his band could drink. But though more than one fine mare
and suckling, heavy with water, fell victim, the black stallion,
having thought and intelligence like a man, plunged through the water,
leaving his thirst unquenched, refusing with a continency and
steadfastness rare even among men to sell his liberty at any price. In
the round corral at Hidden Water there was roping and riding as Creede
and Hardy gentled their prizes; in the cool evenings they rode forth
along the Alamo, counting the cows as they came down to water or
doctoring any that were sick; and at night they lay on their cots
beneath the _ramada_ telling long stories till they fell asleep.

At intervals of a month or more Hardy rode down to Moroni and
each time he brought back some book of poems, or a novel, or a
bundle of magazines; but if he received any letters he never
mentioned it. Sometimes he read in the shade, his face sobered to a
scholarly repose, and when the mood came and he was alone he
wrote verses--crude, feverish, unfinished--and destroyed them,
furtively.

He bore his full share of the rough work, whether riding or
horse-breaking or building brush corrals, but while he responded to
every mood of his changeable companion he hid the whirl of emotion
which possessed him, guarding the secret of his heart even when
writing to Lucy Ware; and slowly, as the months crept by, the wound
healed over and left him whole.

At last the days grew shorter, the chill came back into the morning
air, and the great thunder-caps which all Summer had mantled the
Peaks, scattering precarious and insufficient showers across the
parching lowlands, faded away before the fresh breeze from the coast.
Autumn had come, and, though the feed was scant, Creede started his
round-up early, to finish ahead of the sheep. Out on The Rolls the
wild and runty cows were hiding their newborn calves; the spring twos
were grown to the raw-boned dignity of steers; and all must be
gathered quickly, before the dust arose in the north and the sheep
mowed down the summer grass. Once more from their distant ranches the
mountain men trailed in behind their horses; the _rodéo_ hands dropped
in from nowhere, mysteriously, talking loudly of high adventures but
with the indisputable marks of Mormon hay-forks on their thumbs.

Before their restless energy The Rolls were swept bare of market
stock, and the upper end of the mesa as well, before the first sheep
dust showed against the hills. The _rodéo_ outfit left Carrizo and
came down to Hidden Water, driving their herd before them, and still
no sheep appeared. So long had they strained their eyes for nothing
that the cowmen from the north became uneasy, dropping out one by one
to return to their ranches for fear that the sheep had crept in and
laid waste their pastures and corrals. Yet the round-up ended without
a band in sight, where before The Rolls had been ploughed into
channels by their multitude of feet.

In a slow fever of apprehension Hardy rode ceaselessly along the rim
of Bronco Mesa, without finding so much as a track. Throughout that
long month of watching and waiting the memory of his conversation with
Jim Swope had haunted him, and with a sinister boding of impending
evil he had ridden far afield, even to the lower crossing at Pablo
Moreno's, where a few Mexicans and Basques were fording the shallow
river. Not one of those veiled threats and intimations had he confided
to Creede, for the orders from Judge Ware had been for peace and Jeff
was hot-headed and hasty; but in his own mind Hardy pictured a solid
phalanx of sheep, led by Jasp Swope and his gun-fighting Chihuahuanos,
drifting relentlessly in over the unravaged mesa. Even that he could
endure, trusting to some appeal or protest to save him from the
ultimate disaster, but the strain of this ominous waiting was more
than Hardy's nerves could stand.

As the town herd was put on the long trail for Bender and the round-up
hands began to spit dry for their first drink, the premonition of evil
conquered him and he beckoned Creede back out of the rout.

"I've got a hunch," he said, "that these sheepmen are hanging back
until you boys are gone, in order to raid the upper range. I don't
_know_ anything, you understand, but I'm looking for trouble. How does
it look to you?"

"Well," answered Creede sombrely, "I don't mind tellin' you that this
is a new one on me. It's the first fall gather that I can remember
when I didn't have a round-up with a sheepman or two. They're willin'
enough to give us the go-by in the Spring, when there's grass
everywhere, but when they come back over The Rolls in the Fall and see
what they've done to the feed--well, it's like fightin' crows out of a
watermelon patch to protect that upper range.

"The only thing I can think of is they may be held back by this dry
weather. But, I tell you, Rufe," he added, "it's jest as well I'm
goin'--one man can tell 'em to he'p themselves as good as two, and I
might get excited. You know your orders--and I reckon the sheepmen do,
too, 's fer 's that goes. They're not so slow, if they do git lousy.
But my God, boy, it hurts my feelin's to think of you all alone up
here, tryin' to appeal to Jasp Swope's better nature." He twisted his
lips, and shrugged his huge shoulders contemptuously. Then without
enthusiasm he said: "Well, good luck," and rode away after his
cattle.

Creede's scorn for this new policy of peace had never been hidden,
although even in his worst cursing spells he had never quite named the
boss. But those same orders, if they ever became known, would call in
the rapacious sheepmen like vultures to a feast, and the bones of his
cattle--that last sorry remnant of his father's herds--would bleach on
Bronco Mesa with the rest, a mute tribute to the triumph of sheep.

All that day Hardy rode up the Alamo until he stood upon the summit of
the Juate 

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