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Arizona nights

by Stewart Edward White · English · Gutenberg #753 · 378,262 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Arizona nights

Author: Stewart Edward White


        
Release date: December 1, 1996 [eBook #753]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/753


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARIZONA NIGHTS ***









ARIZONA NIGHTS

by

STEWART EDWARD WHITE




TABLE OF CONTENTS


CHAP.

    I. THE OLE VIRGINIA
   II. THE EMIGRANTS
  III. THE REMITTANCE MAN
   IV. THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
    V. THE DRIVE
   VI. CUTTING OUT
  VII. A CORNER IN HORSES
 VIII. THE CORRAL BRANDING
   IX. THE OLD TIMER
    X. THE TEXAS RANGERS
   XI. THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND
  XII. THE MURDER ON THE BEACH
 XIII. BURIED TREASURE
  XIV. THE CHEWED SUGAR CANE
   XV. THE CALABASH STEW
  XVI. THE HONK-HONK BREED


PART II--THE TWO GUN MAN

    I. THE CATTLE RUSTLERS
   II. THE MAN WITH NERVE
  III. THE AGREEMENT
   IV. THE ACCOMPLISHMENT


PART III--THE RAWHIDE

    I. THE PASSING OF THE COLT'S FORTY-FIVE
   II. THE SHAPES OF ILLUSION
  III. THE PAPER A YEAR OLD
   IV. DREAMS
    V. THE ARRIVAL
   VI. THE WAGON TIRE
  VII. ESTRELLA
 VIII. THE ROUND-UP
   IX. THE LONG TRAIL
    X. THE DISCOVERY
   XI. THE CAPTURE
  XII. IN THE ARROYO
 XIII. THE RAWHIDE
  XIV. THE DESERT




CHAPTER ONE

THE OLE VIRGINIA

The ring around the sun had thickened all day long, and the turquoise
blue of the Arizona sky had filmed.  Storms in the dry countries are
infrequent, but heavy; and this surely meant storm.

We had ridden since sun-up over broad mesas, down and out of deep
canons, along the base of the mountain in the wildest parts of the
territory.  The cattle were winding leisurely toward the high country;
the jack rabbits had disappeared; the quail lacked; we did not see a
single antelope in the open.

"It's a case of hole up," the Cattleman ventured his opinion. "I have a
ranch over in the Double R.  Charley and Windy Bill hold it down.
We'll tackle it.  What do you think?"

The four cowboys agreed.  We dropped into a low, broad watercourse,
ascended its bed to big cottonwoods and flowing water, followed it into
box canons between rim-rock carved fantastically and painted like a
Moorish facade, until at last in a widening below a rounded hill, we
came upon an adobe house, a fruit tree, and a round corral.  This was
the Double R.

Charley and Windy Bill welcomed us with soda biscuits.  We turned our
horses out, spread our beds on the floor, filled our pipes, and
squatted on our heels.  Various dogs of various breeds investigated us.
It was very pleasant, and we did not mind the ring around the sun.

"Somebody else coming," announced the Cattleman finally.

"Uncle Jim," said Charley, after a glance.

A hawk-faced old man with a long white beard and long white hair rode
out from the cottonwoods.  He had on a battered broad hat abnormally
high of crown, carried across his saddle a heavy "eight square" rifle,
and was followed by a half-dozen lolloping hounds.

The largest and fiercest of the latter, catching sight of our group,
launched himself with lightning rapidity at the biggest of the ranch
dogs, promptly nailed that canine by the back of the neck, shook him
violently a score of times, flung him aside, and pounced on the next.
During the ensuing few moments that hound was the busiest thing in the
West.  He satisfactorily whipped four dogs, pursued two cats up a tree,
upset the Dutch oven and the rest of the soda biscuits, stampeded the
horses, and raised a cloud of dust adequate to represent the smoke of
battle.  We others were too paralysed to move.  Uncle Jim sat placidly
on his white horse, his thin knees bent to the ox-bow stirrups, smoking.

In ten seconds the trouble was over, principally because there was no
more trouble to make.  The hound returned leisurely, licking from his
chops the hair of his victims.  Uncle Jim shook his head.

"Trailer," said he sadly, "is a little severe."

We agreed heartily, and turned in to welcome Uncle Jim with a fresh
batch of soda biscuits.

The old man was one of the typical "long hairs."  He had come to the
Galiuro Mountains in '69, and since '69 he had remained in the Galiuro
Mountains, spite of man or the devil.  At present he possessed some
hundreds of cattle, which he was reputed to water, in a dry season,
from an ordinary dishpan.  In times past he had prospected.

That evening, the severe Trailer having dropped to slumber, he held
forth on big-game hunting and dogs, quartz claims and Apaches.

"Did you ever have any very close calls?" I asked.

He ruminated a few moments, refilled his pipe with some awful tobacco,
and told the following experience:


In the time of Geronimo I was living just about where I do now; and
that was just about in line with the raiding.  You see, Geronimo, and
Ju [1], and old Loco used to pile out of the reservation at Camp
Apache, raid south to the line, slip over into Mexico when the soldiers
got too promiscuous, and raid there until they got ready to come back.
Then there was always a big medicine talk.  Says Geronimo:

"I am tired of the warpath.  I will come back from Mexico with all my
warriors, if you will escort me with soldiers and protect my people."

"All right," says the General, being only too glad to get him back at
all.

So, then, in ten minutes there wouldn't be a buck in camp, but next
morning they shows up again, each with about fifty head of hosses.

"Where'd you get those hosses?" asks the General, suspicious.

"Had 'em pastured in the hills," answers Geronimo.

"I can't take all those hosses with me; I believe they're stolen!" says
the General.

"My people cannot go without their hosses," says Geronimo.

So, across the line they goes, and back to the reservation.  In about a
week there's fifty-two frantic Greasers wanting to know where's their
hosses.  The army is nothing but an importer of stolen stock, and knows
it, and can't help it.

Well, as I says, I'm between Camp Apache and the Mexican line, so that
every raiding party goes right on past me.  The point is that I'm a
thousand feet or so above the valley, and the renegades is in such a
devil of a hurry about that time that they never stop to climb up and
collect me.  Often I've watched them trailing down the valley in a
cloud of dust.  Then, in a day or two, a squad of soldiers would come
up, and camp at my spring for a while.  They used to send soldiers to
guard every water hole in the country so the renegades couldn't get
water.  After a while, from not being bothered none, I got thinking I
wasn't worth while with them.

Me and Johnny Hooper were pecking away at the old Virginia mine then.
We'd got down about sixty feet, all timbered, and was thinking of
cross-cutting.  One day Johnny went to town, and that same day I got in
a hurry and left my gun at camp.

I worked all the morning down at the bottom of the shaft, and when I
see by the sun it was getting along towards noon, I put in three good
shots, tamped 'em down, lit the fusees, and started to climb out.

It ain't noways pleasant to light a fuse in a shaft, and then have to
climb out a fifty-foot ladder, with it burning behind you.  I never did
get used to it.  You keep thinking, "Now suppose there's a flaw in that
fuse, or something, and she goes off in six seconds instead of two
minutes?  where'll you be then?"  It would give you a good boost
towards your home on high, anyway.

So I climbed fast, and stuck my head out the top without looking--and
then I froze solid enough.  There, about fifty feet away, climbing up
the hill on mighty tired hosses, was a dozen of the ugliest Chiricahuas
you ever don't want to meet, and in addition a Mexican renegade named
Maria, who was worse than any of 'em.  I see at once their hosses was
tired out, and they had a notion of camping at my water hole, not
knowing nothing about the Ole Virginia mine.

For two bits I'd have let go all holts and dropped backwards, trusting
to my thick head for easy lighting.  Then I heard a little fizz and
sputter from below.  At that my hair riz right up so I could feel the
breeze blow under my hat.  For about six seconds I stood there like an
imbecile, grinning amiably.  Then one of the Chiricahuas made a sort of
grunt, and I sabed that they'd seen the original exhibit your Uncle Jim
was making of himself.

Then that fuse gave another sputter and one of the Apaches said "Un
dah." That means "white man."  It was harder to turn my head than if
I'd had a stiff neck; but I managed to do it, and I see that my ore
dump wasn't more than ten foot away.  I mighty near overjumped it; and
the next I knew I was on one side of it and those Apaches on the other.
Probably I flew; leastways I don't seem to remember jumping.

That didn't seem to do me much good.  The renegades were grinning and
laughing to think how easy a thing they had; and I couldn't rightly
think up any arguments against that notion--at least from their
standpoint.  They were chattering away to each other in Mexican for the
benefit of Maria.  Oh, they had me all distributed, down to my
suspender buttons!  And me squatting behind that ore dump about as
formidable as a brush rabbit!

Then, all at once, one of my shots went off down in the shaft.

"Boom!" says she, plenty big; and a slather of rock, and stones come
out of the mouth, and began to dump down promiscuous on the scenery.  I
got one little one in the shoulder-blade, and found time to wish my ore
dump had a roof.  But those renegades caught it square in the thick of
trouble.  One got knocked out entirely for a minute, by a nice piece of
country rock in the head.

"Otra vez!" yells I, which means "again."

"Boom!" goes the Ole Virginia prompt as an answer.

I put in my time dodging, but when I gets a chance to look, the Apaches
has all got to cover, and is looking scared.

"Otra vez!" yells I again.

"Boom!" says the Ole Virginia.

This was the biggest shot of the lot, and she surely cut loose.  I
ought to have been half-way up the bill watching things from a safe
distance, but I wasn't.  Lucky for me the shaft was a little on the
drift, so she didn't quite shoot my way.  But she distributed about a
ton over those renegades.  They sort of half got to their feet
uncertain.

"Otra vez!" yells I once more, as bold as if I could keep her shooting
all day.

It was just a cold, raw blazer; and if it didn't go through I could see
me as an Apache parlour ornament.  But it did.  Those Chiricahuas give
one yell and skipped.  It was surely a funny sight, after they got
aboard their war ponies, to see them trying to dig out on horses too
tired to trot.

I didn't stop to get all the laughs, though.  In fact, I give one jump
off that ledge, and I lit a-running.  A quarter-hoss couldn't have beat
me to that shack. There I grabbed old Meat-in-the-pot and made a climb
for the tall country, aiming to wait around until dark, and then to
pull out for Benson.  Johnny Hooper wasn't expected till next day,
which was lucky.  From where I lay I could see the Apaches camped out
beyond my draw, and I didn't doubt they'd visited the place.  Along
about sunset they all left their camp, and went into the draw, so
there, I thinks, I sees a good chance to make a start before dark.  I
dropped down from the mesa, skirted the butte, and angled down across
the country.  After I'd gone a half mile from the cliffs, I ran across
Johnny Hooper's fresh trail headed towards camp!

My heart jumped right up into my mouth at that. Here was poor old
Johnny, a day too early, with a pack-mule of grub, walking innocent as
a yearling, right into the bands of those hostiles.  The trail looked
pretty fresh, and Benson's a good long day with a pack animal, so I
thought perhaps I might catch him before he runs into trouble.  So I
ran back on the trail as fast as I could make it.  The sun was down by
now, and it was getting dusk.

I didn't overtake him, and when I got to the top of the canon I crawled
along very cautious and took a look.  Of course, I expected to see
everything up in smoke, but I nearly got up and yelled when I see
everything all right, and old Sukey, the pack-mule, and Johnny's hoss
hitched up as peaceful as babies  to the corral.

"THAT'S all right!" thinks I, "they're back in their camp, and haven't
discovered Johnny yet.  I'll snail him out of there."

So I ran down the hill and into the shack.  Johnny sat in his
chair--what there was of him.  He must have got in about two hours
before sundown, for they'd had lots of time to put in on him.  That's
the reason they'd stayed so long up the draw.  Poor old Johnny!  I was
glad it was night, and he was dead.  Apaches are the worst Injuns there
is for tortures.  They cut off the bottoms of old man Wilkins's feet,
and stood him on an ant-hill--.

In a minute or so, though, my wits gets to work.

"Why ain't the shack burned?" I asks myself, "and why is the hoss and
the mule tied all so peaceful to the corral?"

It didn't take long for a man who knows Injins to answer THOSE
conundrums.  The whole thing was a trap--for me--and I'd walked into
it, chuckle-headed as a prairie-dog!

With that I makes a run outside--by now it was dark--and listens.  Sure
enough, I hears hosses.  So I makes a rapid sneak back over the trail.

Everything seemed all right till I got up to the rim-rock.  Then I
heard more hosses--ahead of me.  And when I looked back I could see
some Injuns already at the shack, and starting to build a fire outside.

In a tight fix, a man is pretty apt to get scared till all hope is
gone.  Then he is pretty apt to get cool and calm.  That was my case.
I couldn't go ahead--there was those hosses coming along the trail.  I
couldn't go back--there was those Injins building the fire.  So I
skirmished around till I got a bright star right over the trail head,
and I trained old Meat-in-the-pot to bear on that star, and I made up
my mind that when the star was darkened I'd turn loose.  So I lay there
a while listening.  By and by the star was blotted out, and I cut
loose, and old Meat-in-the-pot missed fire--she never did it before nor
since; I think that cartridge--

Well, I don't know where the Injins came from, but it seemed as if the
hammer had hardly clicked before three or four of them bad piled on me.
I put up the best fight I could, for I wasn't figuring to be caught
alive, and this miss-fire deal had fooled me all along the line.  They
surely had a lively time.  I expected every minute to feel a knife in
my back, but when I didn't get it then I knew they wanted to bring me
in alive, and that made me fight harder.  First and last, we rolled and
plunged all the way from the rim-rock down to the canon-bed.  Then one
of the Injins sung out:

"Maria!"

And I thought of that renegade Mexican, and what I'd heard bout him,
and that made me fight harder yet.

But after we'd fought down to the canon-bed, and had lost most of our
skin, a half-dozen more fell on me, and in less than no time they had
me tied.  Then they picked me up and carried me over to where they'd
built a big fire by the corral.


Uncle Jim stopped with an air of finality, and began lazily to refill
his pipe.  From the open mud fireplace he picked a coal.  Outside, the
rain, faithful to the prophecy of the wide-ringed sun, beat fitfully
against the roof.

"That was the closest call I ever had," said he at last.

"But, Uncle Jim," we cried in a confused chorus, "how did you get away?
What did the Indians do to you?  Who rescued you?"

Uncle Jim chuckled.

"The first man I saw sitting at that fire," said he, "was Lieutenant
Price of the United States Army, and by him was Tom Horn."

"'What's this?' he asks, and Horn talks to the Injins in Apache.

"'They say they've caught Maria,' translates Horn back again.

"'Maria-nothing!' says Lieutenant Price. 'This is Jim Fox. I know him.'"

"So they turned me loose.  It seems the troops had driven off the
renegades an hour before."

"And the Indians who caught you, Uncle Jim?  You said they were
Indians."

"Were Tonto Basin Apaches," explained the old  man--"government scouts
under Tom Horn."



[1] Pronounced "Hoo."




CHAPTER TWO

THE EMIGRANTS

After the rain that had held us holed up at the Double R over one day,
we discussed what we should do next.

"The flats will be too boggy for riding, and anyway the cattle will be
in the high country," the Cattleman summed up the situation.  "We'd bog
down the chuck-wagon if we tried to get back to the J. H.  But now
after the rain the weather ought to be beautiful.  What shall we do?"

"Was you ever in the Jackson country?" asked Uncle Jim.  "It's the
wildest part of Arizona.  It's a big country and rough, and no one
lives there, and there's lots of deer and mountain lions and bear.
Here's my dogs.  We might have a hunt."

"Good!" said we.

We skirmished around and found a condemned army pack saddle with
aparejos, and a sawbuck saddle with kyacks.  On these, we managed to
condense our grub and utensils.  There were plenty of horses, so our
bedding we bound flat about their naked barrels by means of the
squaw-hitch.  Then we started.

That day furnished us with a demonstration of what Arizona horses can
do.  Our way led first through a canon-bed filled with rounded boulders
and rocks, slippery and unstable.  Big cottonwoods and oaks grew so
thick as partially to conceal the cliffs on either side of us.  The
rim-rock was mysterious with caves; beautiful with hanging gardens of
tree ferns and grasses growing thick in long transverse crevices;
wonderful in colour and shape.  We passed the little canons fenced off
by the rustlers as corrals into which to shunt from the herds their
choice of beeves.

The Cattleman shook his head at them.  "Many  a man has come from Texas
and established a herd with no other asset than a couple of horses and
a branding-iron," said he.

Then we worked up gradually to a divide, whence we could see a range of
wild and rugged mountains on our right.  They rose by slopes and
ledges, steep and rough, and at last ended in the thousand-foot cliffs
of the buttes, running sheer and unbroken for  many miles.  During all
the rest of our trip they were to be our companions, the only constant
factors in the tumult of lesser peaks, precipitous canons, and twisted
systems in which we were constantly involved.

The sky was sun-and-shadow after the rain.  Each and every Arizonan
predicted clearing.

"Why, it almost never rains in Arizona," said Jed Parker.  "And when it
does it quits before it begins."

Nevertheless, about noon a thick cloud gathered about the tops of the
Galiuros above us.  Almost immediately it was dissipated by the wind,
but when the peaks again showed, we stared with astonishment to see
that they were white with snow.  It was as though a magician had passed
a sheet before them the brief instant necessary to work his great
transformation.  Shortly the sky thickened again, and it began to rain.

Travel had been precarious before; but now its difficulties were
infinitely increased.  The clay sub-soil to the rubble turned slippery
and adhesive.  On the sides of the mountains it was almost impossible
to keep a footing.  We speedily became wet, our hands puffed and
purple, our boots sodden with the water that had trickled from our
clothing into them.

"Over the next ridge," Uncle Jim promised us, "is an old shack that I
fixed up seven years ago.  We can all make out to get in it."

Over the next ridge, therefore, we slipped and slid, thanking the god
of luck for each ten feet gained.  It was growing cold.  The cliffs and
palisades near at hand showed dimly behind the falling rain; beyond
them waved and eddied the storm mists through which the mountains
revealed and concealed proportions exaggerated into unearthly grandeur.
Deep in the clefts of the box canons the streams were filling.  The
roar of their rapids echoed from innumerable precipices.  A soft swish
of water usurped the world of sound.

Nothing more uncomfortable or more magnificent could be imagined.  We
rode shivering.  Each said to himself, "I can stand this--right now--at
the present moment.  Very well; I will do so, and I will refuse to look
forward even five minutes to what I may have to stand," which is the
true philosophy of tough times and the only effective way to endure
discomfort.

By luck we reached the bottom of that canon without a fall.  It was
wide, well grown with oak trees, and belly deep in rich horse feed--an
ideal place to camp were it not for the fact that a thin sheet of water
a quarter of an inch deep was flowing over the entire surface of the
ground.  We spurred on desperately, thinking of a warm fire and a
chance to steam.


The roof of the shack had fallen in, and the floor was six inches deep
in adobe mud.

We did not dismount--that would have wet our saddles--but sat on our
horses taking in the details.  Finally Uncle Jim came to the front with
a suggestion.

"I know of a cave," said he, "close under a butte.  It's a big cave,
but it has such a steep floor that I'm not sure as we could stay in it;
and it's back the other side of that ridge."

"I don't know how the ridge is to get back over--it was slippery enough
coming this way--and the cave may shoot us out into space, but I'd like
to LOOK at a dry place anyway," replied the Cattleman.

We all felt the same about it, so back over the ridge we went.  About
half way down the other side Uncle Jim turned sharp to the right, and
as the "hog back" dropped behind us, we found ourselves out on the
steep side of a mountain, the perpendicular cliff over us to the right,
the river roaring savagely far down below our left, and sheets of water
glazing the footing we could find among the boulders and debris.
Hardly could the ponies keep from slipping sideways on the slope, as we
proceeded farther and farther from the solidity of the ridge behind us,
we experienced the illusion of venturing out on a tight rope over
abysses of space.  Even the feeling of danger was only an illusion,
however, composite of the falling rain, the deepening twilight, and the
night that had already enveloped the plunge of the canon below.
Finally Uncle Jim stopped just within the drip from the cliffs.

"Here she is," said he.

We descended eagerly.  A deer bounded away from the base of the buttes.
The cave ran steep, in the manner of an inclined tunnel, far up into
the dimness.  We had to dig our toes in and scramble to make way up it
at all, but we found it dry, and after a little search discovered a
foot-ledge of earth sufficiently broad for a seat.

"That's all right," quoth Jed Parker. "Now, for sleeping places."

We scattered.  Uncle Jim and Charley promptly annexed the slight
overhang of the cliff whence the deer had jumped.  It was dry at the
moment, but we uttered pessimistic predictions if the wind should
change.  Tom Rich and Jim Lester had a little tent, and insisted on
descending to the canon-bed.

"Got to cook there, anyways," said they, and departed with the two pack
mules and their bed horse.

That left the Cattleman, Windy Bill, Jed Parker, and me.  In a moment
Windy Bill came up to us whispering and mysterious.

"Get your cavallos and follow me," said he.

We did so.  He led us two hundred yards to another cave, twenty feet
high, fifteen feet in diameter, level as a floor.

"How's that?" he cried in triumph. "Found her just now while I was
rustling nigger-heads for a fire."

We unpacked our beds with chuckles of joy, and spread them carefully
within the shelter of the cave.  Except for the very edges, which did
not much matter, our blankets and "so-guns," protected by the canvas
"tarp," were reasonably dry.  Every once in a while a spasm of
conscience would seize one or the other of us.

"It seems sort of mean on the other fellows," ruminated Jed Parker.

"They had their first choice," cried we all.

"Uncle Jim's an old man," the Cattleman pointed out.

But Windy Bill had thought of that.  "I told him of this yere cave
first.  But he allowed he was plumb satisfied."

We finished laying out our blankets.  The result looked good to us.  We
all burst out laughing.

"Well, I'm sorry for those fellows," cried the Cattleman.  We hobbled
our horses and descended to the gleam of the fire, like guilty
conspirators.  There we ate hastily of meat, bread and coffee, merely
for the sake of sustenance.  It certainly amounted to little in the way
of pleasure.  The water from the direct rain, the shivering trees, and
our hat brims accumulated in our plates faster than we could bail it
out.  The dishes were thrust under a canvas.  Rich and Lester decided
to remain with their tent, and so we saw them no more until morning.

We broke off back-loads of mesquite and toiled up the hill, tasting
thickly the high altitude in the severe labour.  At the big cave we
dumped down our burdens, transported our fuel piecemeal to the vicinity
of the narrow ledge, built a good fire, sat in a row, and lit our
pipes.  In a few moments, the blaze was burning high, and our bodies
had ceased shivering.  Fantastically the firelight revealed the knobs
and crevices, the ledges and the arching walls.  Their shadows leaped,
following the flames, receding and advancing like playful beasts.  Far
above us was a single tiny opening through which the smoke was sucked
as through a chimney.  The glow ruddied the men's features.  Outside
was thick darkness, and the swish and rush and roar of rising waters.
Listening, Windy Bill was reminded of a story.  We leaned back
comfortably against the sloping walls of the cave, thrust our feet
toward the blaze, smoked, and hearkened to the tale of Windy Bill.


There's a tur'ble lot of water running loose here, but I've seen the
time and place where even what is in that drip would be worth a gold
mine.  That was in the emigrant days.  They used to come over south of
here, through what they called Emigrant Pass, on their way to
Californy. I was a kid then, about eighteen year old, and what I didn't
know about Injins and Agency cattle wasn't a patch of alkali.  I had a
kid outfit of h'ar bridle, lots of silver and such, and I used to ride
over and be the handsome boy before such outfits as happened along.

They were queer people, most of 'em from Missoury and such-like
southern seaports, and they were tur'ble sick of travel by the time
they come in sight of Emigrant Pass.  Up to Santa Fe they mostly hiked
along any old way, but once there they herded up together in bunches of
twenty wagons or so, 'count of our old friends, Geronimo and Loco.  A
good many of 'em had horned cattle to their wagons, and they crawled
along about two miles an hour, hotter'n hell with the blower on,
nothin' to look at but a mountain a week way, chuck full of alkali,
plenty of sage-brush and rattlesnakes--but mighty little water.

Why, you boys know that country down there.  Between the Chiricahua
Mountains and Emigrant Pass it's maybe a three or four days' journey
for these yere bull-slingers.

Mostly they filled up their bellies and their kegs, hoping to last
through, but they sure found it drier than cork legs, and generally
long before they hit the Springs their tongues was hangin' out a foot.
You see, for all their plumb nerve in comin' so far, the most of them
didn't know sic 'em.  They were plumb innocent in regard to savin'
their water, and Injins, and such; and the long-haired buckskin fakes
they picked up at Santa Fe for guides wasn't much better.

That was where Texas Pete made his killing.

Texas Pete was a tough citizen from the Lone Star.  He was about as
broad as he was long, and wore all sorts of big whiskers and black
eyebrows.  His heart was very bad.  You never COULD tell where Texas
Pete was goin' to jump next.  He was a side-winder and a diamond-back
and a little black rattlesnake all rolled into one.  I believe that
Texas Pete person cared about as little for killin' a man as for takin'
a drink--and he shorely drank without an effort.  Peaceable citizens
just spoke soft and minded their own business; onpeaceable citizens
Texas Pete used to plant out in the sagebrush.

Now this Texas Pete happened to discover a water hole right out in the
plumb middle of the desert.  He promptly annexed said water hole, digs
her out, timbers her up, and lays for emigrants.

He charged two bits a head--man or beast--and nobody got a mouthful
till he paid up in hard coin.

Think of the wads he raked in!  I used to figure it up, just for the
joy of envyin' him, I reckon.  An average twenty-wagon outfit, first
and last, would bring him in somewheres about fifty dollars--and
besides he had forty-rod at four bits a glass.  And outfits at that
time were thicker'n spatter.

We used all to go down sometimes to watch them come in.  When they see
that little canvas shack and that well, they begun to cheer up and move
fast.  And when they see that sign, "Water, two bits a head," their
eyes stuck out like two raw oysters.

Then come the kicks.  What a howl they did raise, shorely.  But it
didn't do no manner of good.  Texas Pete didn't do nothin' but sit
there and smoke, with a kind of sulky gleam in one corner of his eye.
He didn't even take the trouble to answer, but his Winchester lay
across his lap.  There wasn't no humour in the situation for him.

"How much is your water for humans?" asks one emigrant.

"Can't you read that sign?" Texas Pete asks him.

"But you don't mean two bits a head for HUMANS!" yells the man.  "Why,
you can get whisky for that!"

"You can read the sign, can't you?" insists Texas Pete.

"I can read it all right?" says the man, tryin' a new deal, "but they
tell me not to believe more'n half I read."

But that don't go; and Mr. Emigrant shells out with the rest.

I didn't blame them for raisin' their howl.  Why, at that time the
regular water holes was chargin' five cents a head from the government
freighters, and the motto was always "Hold up Uncle Sam," at that.
Once in a while some outfit would get mad and go chargin' off dry; but
it was a long, long way to the Springs, and mighty hot and dusty.
Texas Pete and his one lonesome water hole shorely did a big business.

Late one afternoon me and Gentleman Tim was joggin' along above Texas
Pete's place.  It was a tur'ble hot day--you had to prime yourself to
spit--and we was just gettin' back from drivin' some beef up to the
troops at Fort Huachuca.  We was due to cross the Emigrant Trail--she's
wore in tur'ble deep--you can see the ruts to-day.  When we topped the
rise we see a little old outfit just makin' out to drag along.

It was one little schooner all by herself, drug along by two poor old
cavallos that couldn't have pulled my hat off.  Their tongues was out,
and every once in a while they'd stick in a chuck-hole.  Then a man
would get down and put his shoulder to the wheel, and everybody'd take
a heave, and up they'd come, all a-trembling and weak.

Tim and I rode down just to take a look at the curiosity.

A thin-lookin' man was drivin', all humped up.

"Hullo, stranger," says I, "ain't you 'fraid of Injins?"

"Yes," says he.

"Then why are you travellin' through an Injin country all alone?"

"Couldn't keep up," says he. "Can I get water here?"

"I reckon," I answers.

He drove up to the water trough there at Texas Pete's, me and Gentleman
Tim followin' along because our trail led that way.  But he hadn't
more'n stopped before Texas Pete was out.

"Cost you four bits to water them hosses," says he.

The man looked up kind of bewildered.

"I'm sorry," says he, "I ain't got no four bits.  I got my roll lifted
off'n me."

"No water, then," growls Texas Pete back at him.

The man looked about him helpless.

"How far is it to the next water?" he asks me.

"Twenty mile," I tells him.

"My God!" he says, to himself-like.

Then he shrugged his shoulders very tired.

"All right.  It's gettin' the cool of the evenin'; we'll make it."  He
turns into the inside of that old schooner.

"Gi' me the cup, Sue."

A white-faced woman who looked mighty good to us alkalis opened the
flaps and gave out a tin cup, which the man pointed out to fill.

"How many of you is they?" asks Texas Pete.

"Three," replies the man, wondering.

"Well, six bits, then," says Texas Pete, "cash down."

At that the man straightens up a little.

"I ain't askin' for no water for my stock," says he, "but my wife and
baby has been out in this sun all day without a drop of water.  Our
cask slipped a hoop and bust just this side of Dos Cabesas.  The poor
kid is plumb dry."

"Two bits a head," says Texas Pete.

At that the woman comes out, a little bit of a baby in her arms.  The
kid had fuzzy yellow hair, and its face was flushed red and shiny.

"Shorely you won't refuse a sick child a drink of water, sir," says she.

But Texas Pete had some sort of a special grouch;  I guess he was just
beginning to get his snowshoes off after a fight with his own forty-rod.

"What the hell are you-all doin' on the trail without no money at all?"
he growls, "and how do you expect to get along?  Such plumb tenderfeet
drive me weary."

"Well," says the man, still reasonable, "I ain't got no money, but I'll
give you six bits' worth of flour or trade or an'thin' I got."

"I don't run no truck-store," snaps Texas Pete, and turns square on his
heel and goes back to his chair.

"Got six bits about you?" whispers Gentleman Tim to me.

"Not a red," I answers.

Gentleman Tim turns to Texas Pete.

"Let 'em have a drink, Pete.  I'll pay you next time I come down."

"Cash down," growls Pete.

"You're the meanest man I ever see," observes Tim.  "I wouldn't speak
to you if I met you in hell carryin' a lump of ice in your hand."

"You're the softest _I_ ever see," sneers Pete.  "Don't they have any
genooine Texans down your way?"

"Not enough to make it disagreeable," says Tim.

"That lets you out," growls Pete, gettin' hostile and handlin' of his
rifle.

Which the man had been standin' there bewildered, the cup hangin' from
his finger.  At last, lookin' pretty desperate, he stooped down to dig
up a little of the wet from an overflow puddle lyin' at his feet. At
the same time the hosses, left sort of to themselves and bein' drier
than a covered bridge, drug forward and stuck their noses in the trough.

Gentleman Tim and me was sittin' there on our hosses, a little to one
side.  We saw Texas Pete jump up from his chair, take a quick aim, and
cut loose with his rifle.  It was plumb unexpected to us.  We hadn't
thought of any shootin', and our six-shooters was tied in, 'count of
the jumpy country we'd been drivin' the steers over.  But Gentleman
Tim, who had unslung his rope, aimin' to help the hosses out of the
chuckhole, snatched her off the horn, and with one of the prettiest
twenty-foot flip throws I ever see done he snaked old Texas Pete right
out of his wicky-up, gun and all.  The old renegade did his best to
twist around for a shot at us; but it was no go; and I never enjoyed
hog-tying a critter more in my life than I enjoyed hog-tying Texas
Pete.  Then we turned to see what damage had been done.

We were some relieved to find the family all right, but Texas Pete had
bored one of them poor old crow-bait hosses plumb through the head.

"It's lucky for you you don't get the old man," says Gentleman Tim very
quiet and polite.

Which Gentleman Tim was an Irishman, and I'd been on the range long
enough with him to know that when he got quiet and polite it was time
to dodge behind something.

"I hope, sir" says he to the stranger, "that you will give your wife
and baby a satisfying drink.  As for your hoss, pray do not be under
any apprehension.  Our friend, Mr. Texas Pete, here, has kindly
consented to make good any deficiencies from his own corral."

Tim could talk high, wide, and handsome when he set out to.

The man started to say something; but I managed to herd him to one side.

"Let him alone," I whispers.  "When he talks that way, he's mad; and
when he's mad, it's better to leave nature to supply the lightnin'
rods."

He seemed to sabe all right, so we built us a little fire and started
some grub, while Gentleman Tim walked up and down very grand and fierce.

By and by he seemed to make up his mind.  He went over and untied Texas
Pete.

"Stand up, you hound," says he.  "Now listen to me.  If you make a
break to get away, or if you refuse to do just as I tell you, I won't
shoot you, but I'll march you up country and see that Geronimo gets
you."

He sorted out a shovel and pick, made Texas Pete carry them right along
the trail a quarter, and started him to diggin' a hole.

Texas Pete started in hard enough, Tim sittin' over him on his hoss,
his six-shooter loose, and his rope free.  The man and I stood by, not
darin' to say a word.  After a minute or so Texas Pete began to work
slower and slower.  By and by he stopped.

"Look here," says he, "is this here thing my grave?"

"I am goin' to see that you give the gentleman's hoss decent
interment," says Gentleman Tim very polite.

"Bury a hoss!" growls Texas Pete.

But he didn't say any more.  Tim cocked his six-shooter.

"Perhaps you'd better quit panting and sweat a little," says he.

Texas Pete worked hard for a while, for Tim's quietness was beginning
to scare him up the worst way.  By and by he had got down maybe four or
five feet, and Tim got off his hoss.

"I think that will do," says he.

"You may come out.  Billy, my son, cover him.  Now, Mr. Texas Pete," he
says, cold as steel, "there is the grave.  We will place the hoss in
it.  Then I intend to shoot you and put you in with the hoss, and write
you an epitaph that will be a comfort to such travellers of  the Trail
as are honest, and a warnin' to such as are not.  I'd as soon kill you
now as an hour from now, so you may make a break for it if you feel
like it."

He stooped over to look into the hole.  I thought he looked an extra
long time, but when he raised his head his face had changed complete.

"March!" says he very brisk.

We all went back to the shack.  From the corral Tim took Texas Pete's
best team and hitched her to the old schooner.

"There," says he to the man.  "Now you'd better hit the trail.  Take
that whisky keg there for water.  Good-bye."

We sat there without sayin' a word for some time after the schooner had
pulled out.  Then Tim says, very abrupt:

"I've changed my mind."

He got up.

"Come on, Billy," says he to me.  "We'll just leave our friend tied up.
I'll be back to-morrow to turn you loose.  In the meantime it won't
hurt you a bit to be a little uncomfortable, and hungry--and thirsty."

We rode off just about sundown, leavin' Texas Pete lashed tight.

Now all this knocked me hell-west and crooked, and I said so, but I
couldn't get a word out of Gentleman Tim.  All the answer I could get
was just little laughs.

We drawed into the ranch near midnight, but next mornin' Tim had a long
talk with the boss, and the result was that the whole outfit was
instructed to arm up with a pick or a shovel apiece, and to get set for
Texas Pete's.  We got there a little after noon, turned the old boy
out--without firearms--and then began to dig at a place Tim told us to,
near that grave of Texas Pete's.  In three hours we had the finest
water-hole developed you ever want to see.  Then the boss stuck up a
sign that said:

                PUBLIC WATER-HOLE.  WATER, FREE.

"Now you old skin," says he to Texas Pete, "charge all you want to on
your own property.  But if I ever hear of your layin' claim to this
other hole, I'll shore make you hard to catch."

Then we rode off home.  You see, when Gentleman Tim inspected that
grave, he noted indications of water; and it struck him that runnin'
the old renegade out of business was a neater way of gettin' even than
merely killin' him.


Somebody threw a fresh mesquite on the fire.  The flames leaped up
again, showing a thin trickle of water running down the other side of
the cave.  The steady downpour again made itself prominent through the
re-established silence.

"What did Texas Pete do after that?" asked the Cattleman.

"Texas Pete?" chuckled Windy Bill.  "Well, he put in a heap of his
spare time lettin' Tim alone."




CHAPTER THREE

THE REMITTANCE MAN

After Windy Bill had finished his story we began to think it time to
turn in.  Uncle Jim and Charley slid and slipped down the chute-like
passage leading from the cave and disappeared in the direction of the
overhang beneath which they had spread their bed.  After a moment we
tore off long bundles of the nigger-head blades, lit the resinous ends
at our fire, and with these torches started to make our way along the
base of the cliff to the other cave.

Once without the influence of the fire our impromptu links cast an
adequate light.  The sheets of rain became suddenly visible as they
entered the circle of illumination.  By careful scrutiny of the footing
I gained the entrance to our cave without mishap.  I looked back.  Here
and there irregularly gleamed and spluttered my companions' torches.
Across each slanted the rain.  All else was of inky blackness except
where, between them and me, a faint red reflection shone on the wet
rocks.  Then I turned inside.

Now, to judge from the crumbling powder of the footing, that cave had
been dry since Noah.  In fact, its roof was nearly a thousand feet
thick.  But since we had spread our blankets, the persistent waters had
soaked down and through.  The thousand-foot roof had a sprung a leak.
Three separate and distinct streams of water ran as from spigots.  I
lowered my torch.  The canvas tarpaulin shone with wet, and in its
exact centre glimmered a pool of water three inches deep and at least
two feet in diameter.

"Well, I'll be," I began.  Then I remembered those three wending their
way along a wet and disagreeable trail, happy and peaceful in
anticipation of warm blankets and a level floor.  I chuckled and sat on
my heels out of the drip.

First came Jed Parker, his head bent to protect the fire in his pipe.
He gained the very centre of the cave before he looked up.

Then he cast one glance at each bed, and one at me.  His grave,
hawk-like features relaxed.  A faint grin appeared under his long
moustache.  Without a word he squatted down beside me.

Next the Cattleman.  He looked about him with a comical expression of
dismay, and burst into a hearty laugh.

"I believe I said I was sorry for those other fellows," he remarked.

Windy Bill was the last.  He stooped his head to enter, straightened
his lank figure, and took in the situation without expression.

"Well, this is handy," said he; "I was gettin' tur'ble dry, and was
thinkin' I would have to climb way down to the creek in all this rain."

He stooped to the pool in the centre of the tarpaulin and drank.

But now our torches began to run low.  A small dry bush grew near the
entrance.  We ignited it, and while it blazed we hastily sorted a
blanket apiece and tumbled the rest out of the drip.

Our return without torches along the base of that butte was something
to remember.  The night was so thick you could feel the darkness
pressing on you; the mountain dropped abruptly to the left, and was
strewn with boulders and blocks of stone.  Collisions and stumbles were
frequent.  Once I stepped off a little ledge five or six feet--nothing
worse than a barked shin.  And all the while the rain, pelting us
unmercifully, searched out what poor little remnants of dryness we had
been able to retain.

At last we opened out the gleam of fire in our cave, and a minute later
were engaged in struggling desperately up the slant that brought us to
our ledge and the slope on which our fire burned.

"My Lord!" panted Windy Bill, "a man had ought to have hooks on his
eyebrows to climb up here!"

We renewed the fire--and blessed the back-load of mesquite we had
packed up earlier in the evening.  Our blankets we wrapped around our
shoulders, our feet we hung over the ledge toward the blaze, our backs
we leaned against the hollow slant of the cave's wall.  We were not
uncomfortable.  The beat of the rain sprang up in the darkness, growing
louder and louder, like horsemen passing on a hard road.  Gradually we
dozed off.

For a time everything was pleasant.  Dreams came fused with realities;
the firelight faded from consciousness or returned fantastic to our
half-awakening; a delicious numbness overspread our tired bodies. The
shadows leaped, became solid, monstrous.  We fell asleep.

After a time the fact obtruded itself dimly through our stupor that the
constant pressure of the hard rock had impeded our circulation.  We
stirred uneasily, shifting to a better position.

That was the beginning of awakening.  The new position did not suit.  A
slight shivering seized us, which the drawing closer of the blanket
failed to end.  Finally I threw aside my hat and looked out.  Jed
Parker, a vivid patch-work comforter wrapped about his shoulders, stood
upright and silent by the fire.  I kept still, fearing to awaken the
others.  In a short time I became aware that the others were doing
identically the same thing.  We laughed, threw off our blankets,
stretched, and fed the fire.

A thick acrid smoke filled the air.  The Cattleman, rising, left a
trail of incandescent footprints.  We investigated hastily, and
discovered that the supposed earth on the slant of the cave was nothing
more than bat guano, tons of it.  The fire, eating its way beneath, had
rendered untenable its immediate vicinity.  We felt as though we were
living over a volcano.  How soon our ledge, of the same material, might
be attacked, we had no means of knowing.  Overcome with drowsiness, we
again disposed our blankets, resolved to get as many naps as possible
before even these constrained quarters were taken from us.

This happened sooner and in a manner otherwise than we had expected.
Windy Bill brought us to consciousness by a wild yell.

Consciousness reported to us a strange, hurried sound like the long
roll on a drum.  Investigation showed us that this cave, too, had
sprung a leak; not with any premonitory drip, but all at once, as
though someone had turned on a faucet.  In ten seconds a very competent
streamlet six inches wide had eroded a course down through the guano,
past the fire and to the outer slope.  And by the irony of fate that
one--and only one--leak in all the roof expanse of a big cave was
directly over one end of our tiny ledge.  The Cattleman laughed.

"Reminds me of the old farmer and his kind friend," said he.  "Kind
friend hunts up the old farmer in the village.

"'John,' says he, 'I've bad news for you. Your barn has burned up.'

"'My Lord!' says the farmer.

"'But that ain't the worst.  Your cow was burned, too.'

"'My Lord!' says the farmer.

"'But that ain't the worst.  Your horses were burned.'

"'My Lord!' says the farmer.

"'But, that ain't the worst.  The barn set fire to the house, and it
was burned--total loss.'

"'My Lord!' groans the farmer.

"'But that ain't the worst.  Your wife and child were killed, too.'

"'At that the farmer began to roar with laughter.

"'Good heavens, man!' cries his friend, astonished, 'what in the world
do you find to laugh at in that?'

"'Don't you see?' answers the farmer.  'Why, it's so darn COMPLETE!'

"Well," finished the Cattleman, "that's what strikes me about our case;
it's so darn complete!"

"What time is it?" asked Windy Bill.

"Midnight," I announced.

"Lord!  Six hours to day!" groaned Windy Bill. "How'd you like to be
doin' a nice quiet job at gardenin' in the East where you could belly
up to the bar reg'lar every evenin', and drink a pussy cafe and smoke
tailor-made cigareets?"

"You wouldn't like it a bit," put in the Cattleman with decision;
whereupon in proof he told us the following story:


Windy has mentioned Gentleman Tim, and that reminded me of the first
time I ever saw him.  He was an Irishman all right, but he had been
educated in England, and except for his accent he was more an
Englishman than anything else.  A freight outfit brought him into
Tucson from Santa Fe and dumped him down on the plaza, where at once
every idler in town gathered to quiz him.

Certainly he was one of the greenest specimens I ever saw in this
country.  He had on a pair of balloon pants and a Norfolk jacket, and
was surrounded by a half-dozen baby trunks.  His face was red-cheeked
and aggressively clean, and his eye limpid as a child's.  Most of those
present thought that indicated childishness; but I could see that it
was only utter self-unconsciousness.

It seemed that he was out for big game, and intended to go after
silver-tips somewhere in these very mountains.  Of course he was
offered plenty of advice, and would probably have made engagements much
to be regretted had I not taken a strong fancy to him.

"My friend," said I, drawing him aside, "I don't want to be
inquisitive, but what might you do when you're home?"

"I'm a younger son," said he. I was green myself in those days, and
knew nothing of primogeniture.

"That is a very interesting piece of family history," said I, "but it
does not answer my question."

He smiled.

"Well now, I hadn't thought of that," said he, "but in a manner of
speaking, it does.  I do nothing."

"Well," said I, unabashed, "if you saw me trying to be a younger son
and likely to forget myself and do something without meaning to,
wouldn't you be apt to warn me?"

"Well, 'pon honour, you're a queer chap.  What do you mean?"

"I mean that if you hire any of those men to guide you in the
mountains, you'll be outrageously cheated, and will be lucky if you're
not gobbled by Apaches."

"Do you do any guiding yourself, now?" he asked, most innocent of
manner.

But I flared up.

"You damn ungrateful pup," I said, "go to the devil in your own way,"
and turned square on my heel.

But the young man was at my elbow, his hand on my shoulder.

"Oh, I say now, I'm sorry.  I didn't rightly understand.  Do wait one
moment until I dispose of these boxes of mine, and then I want the
honour of your further acquaintance."

He got some Greasers to take his trunks over to the hotel, then linked
his arm in mine most engagingly.

"Now, my dear chap," said he, "let's go somewhere for a B & S, and find
out about each other."

We were both young and expansive.  We exchanged views, names, and
confidences, and before noon we had arranged to hunt together, I to
collect the outfit.

The upshot of the matter was that the Honourable Timothy Clare and I
had a most excellent month's excursion, shot several good bear, and
returned to Tucson the best of friends.

At Tucson was Schiefflein and his stories of a big strike down in the
Apache country.  Nothing would do but that we should both go to see for
ourselves.  We joined the second expedition; crept in the gullies, tied
bushes about ourselves when monumenting corners, and so helped
establish the town of Tombstone.  We made nothing, nor attempted to.
Neither  of us knew anything of mining, but we were both thirsty for
adventure, and took a schoolboy delight in playing the game of life or
death with the Chiricahuas.

In fact, I never saw anybody take to the wild life as eagerly as the
Honourable Timothy Clare.  He wanted to attempt everything.  With him
it was no sooner see than try, and he had such an abundance of
enthusiasm that he generally succeeded.  The balloon pants soon went.
In a month his outfit was irreproachable.  He used to study us by the
hour, taking in every detail of our equipment, from the smallest to the
most important.  Then he asked questions.  For all his desire to be one
of the country, he was never ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance.

"Now, don't you chaps think it silly to wear such high heels to your
boots?"  he would ask.  "It seems to me a very useless sort of vanity."

"No vanity about it, Tim," I explained. "In the first place, it keeps
your foot from slipping through the stirrup.  In the second place, it
is good to grip on the ground when you're roping afoot."

"By Jove, that's true!" he cried.

So he'd get him a pair of boots.  For a while it was enough to wear and
own all these things.  He seemed to delight in his six-shooter and his
rope just as ornaments to himself and horse.  But he soon got over
that.  Then he had to learn to use them.

For the time being, pistol practice, for instance, would absorb all his
thoughts.  He'd bang away at intervals all day, and figure out new
theories all night.

"That bally scheme won't work," he would complain.  "I believe if I
extended my thumb along the cylinder it would help that side jump."

He was always easing the trigger-pull, or filing the sights.  In time
he got to be a fairly accurate and very quick shot.

The same way with roping and hog-tying and all the rest.

"What's the use?" I used to ask him.  "If you were going to be a
buckeroo, you couldn't go into harder training."

"I like it," was always his answer.

He had only one real vice, that I could see.  He would gamble.  Stud
poker was his favourite; and I never saw a Britisher yet who could play
poker.  I used to head him off, when I could, and he was always
grateful, but the passion was strong.

After we got back from founding Tombstone I was busted and had to go to
work.

"I've got plenty," said Tim, "and it's all yours."

"I know, old fellow," I told him, "but your money wouldn't do for me."

Buck Johnson was just seeing his chance then, and was preparing to take
some breeding cattle over into the Soda Springs Valley.  Everybody
laughed at him--said it was right in the line of the Chiricahua raids,
which was true.  But Buck had been in there with Agency steers, and
thought he knew.  So he collected a trail crew, brought some Oregon
cattle across, and built his home ranch of three-foot adobe walls with
portholes.  I joined the trail crew; and somehow or another the
Honourable Timothy got permission to go along on his own hook.

The trail was a long one.  We had thirst and heat and stampedes and
some Indian scares.  But in the queer atmospheric conditions that
prevailed that summer, I never saw the desert more wonderful.  It was
like waking to the glory of God to sit up at dawn and see the colours
change on the dry ranges.

At the home ranch, again, Tim managed to get permission to stay on.  He
kept his own mount of horses, took care of them, hunted, and took part
in all the cow work.  We lost some cattle from Indians, of course, but
it was too near the Reservation for them to do more than pick up a few
stray head on their way through.  The troops were always after them
full jump, and so they never had time to round up the beef.  But of
course we had to look out or we'd lose our hair, and many a cowboy has
won out to the home ranch in an almighty exciting race.  This was nuts
for the Honourable Timothy Clare, much better than hunting silver-tips,
and he enjoyed it no limit.

Things went along that way for some time, until one evening as I was
turning out the horses a buckboard drew in, and from it descended Tony
Briggs and a dapper little fellow dressed all in black and with a plug
hat.

"Which I accounts for said hat reachin' the ranch, because it's Friday
and the boys not in town," Tony whispered to me.

As I happened to be the only man in sight, the stranger addressed me.

"I am looking," said he in a peculiar, sing-song manner I have since
learned to be English, "for the Honourable Timothy Clare.  Is he here?"

"Oh, you're looking for him are you?" said I.  "And who might you be?"

You see, I liked Tim, and I didn't intend to deliver him over into
trouble.

The man picked a pair of eye-glasses off his stomach where they dangled
at the end of a chain, perched them on his nose, and stared me over.  I
must have looked uncompromising, for after a few seconds he abruptly
wrinkled his nose so that the glasses fell promptly to his stomach
again, felt his waistcoat pocket, and produced a card.  I took it, and
read:

             JEFFRIES CASE, Barrister.

"A lawyer!" said I suspiciously.

"My dear man," he rejoined with a slight impatience, "I am not here to
do your young friend a harm.  In fact, my firm have been his family
solicitors for generations."

"Very well," I agreed, and led the way to the one-room adobe that Tim
and I occupied.

If I had expected an enthusiastic greeting for the boyhood friend from
the old home, I would have been disappointed.  Tim was sitting with his
back to the door reading an old magazine.  When we entered he glanced
over his shoulder.

"Ah, Case," said he, and went on reading.  After a moment he said
without looking up, "Sit down."

The little man took it calmly, deposited himself in a chair and his bag
between his feet, and looked about him daintily at our rough quarters.
I made a move to go, whereupon Tim laid down his magazine, yawned,
stretched his arms over his head, and sighed.

"Don't go, Harry," he begged.  "Well, Case," he addressed the
barrister, "what is it this time?  Must be something devilish important
to bring you--how many thousand miles is it--into such a country as
this."

"It is important, Mr. Clare," stated the lawyer in his dry sing-song
tones; "but my journey might have been avoided had you paid some
attention to my letters."

"Letters!" repeated Tim, opening his eyes. "My dear chap, I've had no
letters."

"Addressed as usual to your New York bankers."

Tim laughed softly. "Where they are, with my last two quarters'
allowance.  I especially instructed them to send me no mail.  One
spends no money in  this country."  He paused, pulling his moustache.
"I'm truly sorry you had to come so far," he continued, "and if your
business is, as I suspect, the old one of inducing me to return to my
dear uncle's arms, I assure you the mission will prove quite fruitless.
Uncle Hillary and I could never live in the same county, let alone the
same house."

"And yet your uncle, the Viscount Mar, was very fond of you," ventured
Case.  "Your allowances--"

"Oh, I grant you his generosity in MONEY affairs--"

"He has continued that generosity in the terms of his will, and those
terms I am here to communicate to you."

"Uncle Hillary is dead!" cried Tim.

"He passed away the sixteenth of last June."

A slight pause ensued.

"I am ready to hear you," said Tim soberly, at last.

The barrister stooped and began to fumble with his bag.

"No, not that!" cried Tim, with some impatience.  "Tell me in your own
words."

The lawyer sat back and pressed his finger points together over his
stomach.

"The late Viscount," said he, "has been graciously pleased to leave you
in fee simple his entire estate of Staghurst, together with its
buildings, rentals, and privileges.  This, besides the residential
rights, amounts to some ten thousands pounds sterling per annum."

"A little less than fifty thousand dollars a year, Harry," Tim shot
over his shoulder at me.

"There is one condition," put in the lawyer.

"Oh, there is!" exclaimed Tim, his crest falling.  "Well, knowing my
Uncle Hillary--"

"The condition is not extravagant," the lawyer hastily interposed.  "It
merely entails continued residence in England, and a minimum of nine
months on the estate.  This provision is absolute, and the estate
reverts in its discontinuance, but may I be permitted to observe that
the majority of men, myself among the number, are content to spend the
most of their lives, not merely in the confines of a kingdom, but
between the four walls of a room, for much less than ten thousand
pounds a year.  Also that England is not without its attractions for an
Englishman, and that Staghurst is a country place of many
possibilities."

The Honourable Timothy had recovered from his first surprise.

"And if the conditions are not complied with?" he inquired.

"Then the estate reverts to the heirs at law, and you receive an
annuity of one hundred pounds, payable quarterly."

"May I ask further the reason for this extraordinary condition?"

"My distinguished client never informed me," replied the lawyer,
"but"--and a twinkle appeared in his eye--"as an occasional disburser
of funds--Monte Carlo--"

Tim burst out laughing.

"Oh, but I recognise Uncle Hillary there!" he cried. "Well, Mr. Case, I
am sure Mr. Johnson, the owner of this ranch, can put you up, and
to-morrow we'll start back."

He returned after a few minutes to find me sitting' smoking a moody
pipe.  I liked Tim, and I was sorry to have him go.  Then, too, I was
ruffled, in the senseless manner of youth, by the sudden  altitude to
which his changed fortunes had lifted him.  He stood in the middle of
the room, surveying me, then came across and laid his arm on my
shoulder.

"Well," I growled, without looking up, "you're a very rich man now, Mr.
Clare."

At that he jerked me bodily out of my seat and stood me up in the
centre of the room, the Irish blazing out of his eyes.

"Here, none of that!" he snapped. "You damn little fool!  Don't you
'Mr. Clare' me!"

So in five minutes we were talking it over.  Tim was very much excited
at the prospect.  He knew Staghurst well, and told me all about the big
stone house, and the avenue through the trees; and the hedge-row roads,
and the lawn with its peacocks, and the round green hills, and the
labourers' cottages.

"It's home," said he, "and I didn't realise before how much I wanted to
see it.  And I'll be a man of weight there, Harry, and it'll be mighty
good."

We made all sorts of plans as to how I was going to visit him just as
soon as I could get together the money for the passage.  He had the
delicacy not to offer to let me have it; and that clinched my trust and
love of him.

The next day he drove away with Tony and the dapper little lawyer.  I
am not ashamed to say that I watched the buckboard until it disappeared
in the mirage.

I was with Buck Johnson all that summer, and the following winter, as
well.  We had our first round-up, found the natural increase much in
excess of the loss by Indians, and extended our holdings up over the
Rock Creek country.  We witnessed the start of many Indian campaigns,
participated in a few little brushes with the Chiricahuas, saw the
beginning of the cattle-rustling.  A man had not much opportunity to
think of anything but what he had right on hand, but I found time for a
few speculations on Tim.  I wondered how he looked now, and what he was
doing, and how in blazes he managed to get away with fifty thousand a
year.

And then one Sunday in June, while I was lying on my bunk, Tim pushed
open the door and walked in.  I was young, but I'd seen a lot, and I
knew the expression of his face.  So I laid low and said nothing.

In a minute the door opened again, and Buck Johnson himself came in.

"How do," said he; "I saw you ride up."

"How do you do," replied Tim.

"I know all about you," said Buck, without any preliminaries; "your
man, Case, has wrote me.  I don't know your reasons, and I don't want
to know--it's none of my business--and I ain't goin' to tell you just
what kind of a damn fool I think you are--that's none of my business,
either.  But I want you to understand without question how you stand on
the ranch."

"Quite good, sir," said Tim very quietly.

"When you were out here before I was glad to have you here as a sort of
guest.  Then you were what I've heerd called a gentleman of leisure.
Now you're nothin' but a remittance man.  Your money's nothin' to me,
but the principle of the thing is.  The country is plumb pestered with
remittance men, doin' nothin', and I don't aim to run no home for
incompetents.  I had a son of a duke drivin' wagon for me; and he
couldn't drive nails in a snowbanks.  So don't you herd up with the
idea that you can come on this ranch and loaf."

"I don't want to loaf," put in Tim, "I want a job."

"I'm willing to give you a job," replied Buck, "but it's jest an
ordinary cow-puncher's job at forty a month.  And if you don't fill
your saddle, it goes to someone else."

"That's satisfactory," agreed Tim.

"All right," finished Buck, "so that's understood.  Your friend Case
wanted me to give you a lot of advice.  A man generally has about as
much use for advice as a cow has for four hind legs."

He went out.

"For God's sake, what's up?" I cried, leaping  from my bunk.

"Hullo, Harry," said he, as though he had seen me the day before, "I've
come back."

"How come back?" I asked.  "I thought you couldn't leave the estate.
Have they broken the will?"

"No," said he.

"Is the money lost?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"The long and short of it is, that I couldn't afford that estate and
that money."

"What do you mean?"

"I've given it up."

"Given it up!  What for?"

"To come back here."

 I took this all in slowly.

"Tim Clare," said I at last, "do you mean to say that you have given up
an English estate and fifty thousand dollars a year to be a remittance
man at five hundred, and a cow-puncher on as much more?"

"Exactly," said he.

"Tim," I adjured him solemnly, "you are a damn fool!"

"Maybe," he agreed.

"Why did you do it?" I begged.

He walked to the door and looked out across the desert to where the
mountains hovered like soap-bubbles on the horizon.  For a long time he
looked; then whirled on me.

"Harry," said he in a low voice, "do you remember the camp we made on
the shoulder of the mountain that night we were caught out?  And do you
remember how the dawn came up on the big snow peaks across the way--and
all the canon below us filled with whirling mists--and the steel stars
leaving us one by one?  Where could I find room for that in English
paddocks?  And do you recall the day we trailed across the Yuma
deserts, and the sun beat into our skulls, and the dry, brittle hills
looked like papier-mache, and the grey sage-bush ran off into the rise
of the hills; and then came sunset and the hard, dry mountains grew
filmy, like gauze veils of many colours, and melted and glowed and
faded to slate blue, and the stars came out?  The English hills are
rounded and green and curried, and the sky is near, and the stars only
a few miles up.  And do you recollect that dark night when old Loco and
his warriors were camped at the base of Cochise's Stronghold, and we
crept down through the velvet dark wondering when we would be
discovered, our mouths sticky with excitement, and the little winds
blowing?"

He walked up and down a half-dozen times, his breast heaving.

"It's all very well for the man who is brought up to it, and who has
seen nothing else.  Case can exist in four walls; he has been brought
up to it and knows nothing different.  But a man like me--

"They wanted me to canter between hedge-row,--I who have ridden the
desert where the sky over me and the plain under me were bigger than
the Islander's universe!  They wanted me to oversee little farms--I who
have watched the sun rising over half a world!  Talk of your ten thou'
a year and what it'll buy!  You know, Harry, how it feels when a steer
takes the slack of your rope, and your pony sits back!  Where in
England can I buy that?  You know the rising and the falling of days,
and the boundless spaces where your heart grows big, and the thirst of
the desert and the hunger of the trail, and a sun that shines and fills
the sky, and a wind that blows fresh from the wide places!  Where in
parcelled, snug, green, tight little England could I buy that with ten
thou'--aye, or an hundred times ten thou'?  No, no, Harry, that fortune
would cost me too dear.  I have seen and done and been too much.  I've
come back to the Big Country, where the pay is poor and the work is
hard and the comfort small, but where a man and his soul meet their
Maker face to face."


The Cattleman had finished his yarn.  For a time no one spoke.
Outside, the volume of rain was subsiding.  Windy Bill reported a few
stars shining through rifts in the showers.  The chill that precedes
the dawn brought us as close to the fire as the smouldering guano would
permit.

"I don't know whether he was right or wrong," mused the Cattleman,
after a while.  "A man can do a heap with that much money.  And yet an
old 'alkali' is never happy anywhere else.  However," he concluded
emphatically, "one thing I do know:  rain, cold, hunger, discomfort,
curses, kicks, and violent deaths included, there isn't one of you
grumblers who would hold that gardening job you spoke of three days!"




CHAPTER FOUR

THE CATTLE RUSTLERS

Dawn broke, so we descended through wet grasses to the canon.  There,
after some difficulty, we managed to start a fire, and so ate
breakfast, the rain still pouring down on us.  About nine o'clock, with
miraculous suddenness, the torrent stopped.  It began to turn cold.
The Cattleman and I decided to climb to the top of the butte after
meat, which we entirely lacked.

It was rather a stiff ascent, but once above the sheer cliffs we found
ourselves on a rolling meadow tableland a half-mile broad by, perhaps,
a mile and a half in length.  Grass grew high; here and there were
small live oaks planted park-like; slight and rounded ravines
accommodated brooklets.  As we walked back, the edges blended in the
edges of the mesa across the canon.  The deep gorges, which had
heretofore seemed the most prominent elements of the scenery, were
lost.  We stood, apparently, in the middle of a wide and undulating
plain, diversified by little ridges, and running with a free sweep to
the very foot of the snowy Galiuros.  It seemed as though we should be
able to ride horseback in almost any given direction.  Yet we knew that
ten minutes' walk would take us to the brink of most stupendous
chasms--so deep that the water flowing in them hardly seemed to move;
so rugged that only with the greatest difficulty could a horseman make
his way through the country at all; and yet so ancient that the bottoms
supported forests, rich grasses, and rounded, gentle knolls.  It was a
most astonishing set of double impressions.

We succeeded in killing a nice, fat white-tail buck, and so returned to
camp happy.  The rain, held off.  We dug ditches, organised shelters,
cooked a warm meal.  For the next day we planned a bear hunt afoot, far
up a manzanita canon where Uncle Jim knew of some "holing up" caves.

But when we awoke in the morning we threw aside our coverings with some
difficulty to look on a ground covered with snow; trees laden almost to
the breaking point with snow, and the air filled with it.

"No bear today" said the Cattleman.

"No," agreed Uncle Jim drily.  "No b'ar.  And what's more, unless yo're
aimin' to stop here somewhat of a spell, we'll have to make out to-day."

We cooked with freezing fingers, ate while dodging avalanches from the
trees, and packed reluctantly.  The ropes were frozen, the hobbles
stiff, everything either crackling or wet.  Finally the task was
finished.  We took a last warming of the fingers and climbed on.

The country was wonderfully beautiful with the white not yet shaken
from the trees and rock ledges.  Also it was wonderfully slippery.  The
snow was soft enough to ball under the horses' hoofs, so that most of
the time the poor animals skated and stumbled along on stilts.  Thus we
made our way back over ground which, naked of these difficulties, we
had considered bad enough.

Imagine riding along a slant of rock shelving off to a bad tumble, so
steep that your pony has to do more or less expert ankle work to keep
from slipping off sideways.  During the passage of that rock you are
apt to sit very light.  Now cover it with several inches of snow, stick
a snowball on each hoof of your mount, and try again.  When you have
ridden it--or its duplicate--a few score of times, select a steep
mountain side, cover it with round rocks the size of your head, and
over that spread a concealing blanket of the same sticky snow.  You are
privileged to vary these to the limits of your imagination.

Once across the divide, we ran into a new sort of trouble.  You may
remember that on our journey over we had been forced to travel for some
distance in a narrow stream-bed.  During our passage we had scrambled
up some rather steep and rough slopes, and hopped up some fairly high
ledges.  Now we found the heretofore dry bed flowing a good eight
inches deep.  The steep slopes had become cascades; the ledges,
waterfalls.  When we came to them, we had to "shoot the rapids" as best
we could, only to land with a PLUNK in an indeterminately deep pool at
the bottom.  Some of the pack horses went down, sousing again our
unfortunate bedding, but by the grace of fortune not a saddle pony lost
his feet.

After a time the gorge widened.  We came out into the box canon with
its trees.  Here the water spread and shoaled to a depth of only two or
three inches.  We splashed along gaily enough, for, with the exception
of an occasional quicksand or boggy spot, our troubles were over.

Jed Parker and I happened to ride side by side, bringing up the rear
and seeing to it that the pack animals did not stray or linger.  As we
passed the first of the rustlers' corrals, he called my attention to
them.

"Go take a look," said he. "We only got those fellows out of here two
years ago."

I rode over.  At this point the rim-rock broke to admit the ingress of
a ravine into the main canon.  Riding a short distance up the ravine, I
could see that it ended abruptly in a perpendicular cliff.  As the
sides also were precipitous, it became necessary only to build a fence
across the entrance into the main canon to become possessed of a corral
completely closed in.  Remembering the absolute invisibility of these
sunken canons until the rider is almost directly over them, and also
the extreme roughness and remoteness of the district, I could see that
the spot was admirably adapted to concealment.

"There's quite a yarn about the gang that held this hole," said Jed
Parker to me, when I had ridden back to him  "I'll tell you about it
sometime."

We climbed the hill, descended on the Double R, built a fire in the
stove, dried out, and were happy.  After a square meal--and a dry
one--I reminded Jed Parker of his promise, and so, sitting cross-legged
on his "so-gun" in the middle of the floor, he told us the following
yarn:

There's a good deal of romance been written about the "bad man," and
there's about the same amount of nonsense.  The bad man is justa plain
murderer, neither more nor less.  He never does get into a real, good,
plain, stand-up gunfight if he can possibly help it.  His killin's are
done from behind a door, or when he's got his man dead to rights.
There's Sam Cook.  You've all heard of him.  He had nerve, of course,
and when he was backed into a corner he made good; he was sure sudden
death with a gun.  But when he went for a man deliberate, he didn't
take no special chances.  For a while he was marshal at Willets.
Pretty soon it was noted that there was a heap of cases of resisting
arrest, where Sam as marshal had to shoot, and that those cases almost
always happened to be his personal enemies.  Of course, that might be
all right, but it looked suspicious.  Then one day he killed poor old
Max Schmidt out behind his own saloon.  Called him out and shot him in
the stomach.  Said Max resisted arrest on a warrant for keepin' open
out of hours!  That was a sweet warrant to take out in Willets, anyway!
Mrs. Schmidt always claimed that she saw that deal played, and that,
while they were talkin' perfectly peacable, Cook let drive from the hip
at about two yards' range.  Anyway, we decided we needed another
marshal.  Nothin' else was ever done, for the Vigilantes hadn't been
formed, and your individual and decent citizen doesn't care to be
marked by a gun of that stripe.  Leastwise, unless he wants to go in
for bad-man methods and do a little ambusheein' on his own account.

The point is, that these yere bad men are a low-down, miserable
proposition, and plain, cold-blood murderers, willin' to wait for a
sure thing, and without no compunctions whatsoever.  The bad man takes
you unawares, when you're sleepin', or talkin', or drinkin', or lookin'
to see what for a day it's goin' to be, anyway.  He don't give you no
show, and sooner or later he's goin' to get you in the safest and
easiest way for himself.  There ain't no romance about that.

And, until you've seen a few men called out of their shacks for a
friendly conversation, and shot when they happen to look away; or asked
for a drink of water, and killed when they stoop to the spring; or
potted from behind as they go into a room, it's pretty hard to believe
that any man can be so plumb lackin' in fair play or pity or just
natural humanity.

As you boys know, I come in from Texas to Buck Johnson's about ten year
back.  I had a pretty good mount of ponies that I knew, and I hated to
let them go at prices they were offerin' then, so I made up my mind to
ride across and bring them in with me.  It wasn't so awful far, and I
figured that I'd like to take in what New Mexico looked like anyway.

About down by Albuquerque I tracked up with another outfit headed my
way.  There was five of them, three men, and a woman, and a yearlin'
baby.  They had a dozen hosses, and that was about all I could see.
There was only two packed, and no wagon.  I suppose the whole
outfit--pots, pans, and kettles--was worth five dollars.  It was just
supper when I run across them, and it didn't take more'n one look to
discover that flour, coffee, sugar, and salt was all they carried.  A
yearlin' carcass, half-skinned, lay near, and the fry-pan was, full of
meat.

"Howdy, strangers," says I, ridin' up.

They nodded a little, but didn't say nothin'.  My hosses fell to
grazin', and I eased myself around in my saddle, and made a cigareet.
The men was tall, lank fellows, with kind of sullen faces, and sly,
shifty eyes; the woman was dirty and generally mussed up.  I knowed
that sort all right.  Texas was gettin' too many fences for them.

"Havin' supper?" says I, cheerful.

One of 'em grunted "Yes" at me; and, after a while, the biggest asked
me very grudgin' if I wouldn't light and eat, I told them "No," that I
was travellin' in the cool of the evenin'.

"You seem to have more meat than you need, though," says I.  "I could
use a little of that."

"Help yourself," says they.  "It's a maverick we come across."

I took a steak, and noted that the hide had been mighty well cut to
ribbons around the flanks and that the head was gone.

"Well," says I to the carcass, "No one's going to be able to swear
whether you're a maverick or not, but I bet you knew the feel of a
brandin' iron all right."

I gave them a thank-you, and climbed on again.  My hosses acted some
surprised at bein' gathered up again, but I couldn't help that.

"It looks like a plumb imposition, cavallos," says I to them, "after an
all-day, but you sure don't want to join that outfit any more than I do
the angels, and if we camp here we're likely to do both."

I didn't see them any more after that until I'd hit the Lazy Y, and had
started in runnin' cattle in the Soda Springs Valley.  Larry Eagen and
I rode together those days, and that's how I got to know him pretty
well.  One day, over in the Elm Flat, we ran smack on this Texas outfit
again, headed north.  This time I was on my own range, and I knew where
I stood, so I could show a little more curiosity in the case.

"Well, you got this far," says I.

"Yes," says they.

"Where you headed?"

"Over towards the hills."

"What to do?"

"Make a ranch, raise some truck; perhaps buy a few cows."

They went on.

"Truck" says I to Larry, "is fine prospects in this country."

He sat on his horse looking after them.

"I'm sorry for them" says he. "It must he almighty hard scratchin'."

Well, we rode the range for upwards of two year.  In that time we saw
our Texas friends--name of Hahn--two or three times in Willets, and
heard of them off and on.  They bought an old brand of Steve McWilliams
for seventy-five dollars, carryin' six or eight head of cows.  After
that, from time to time, we heard of them buying more--two or three
head from one man, and two or three from another.  They branded them
all with that McWilliams iron--T 0--so, pretty soon, we began to see
the cattle on the range.

Now, a good cattleman knows cattle just as well as you know people, and
he can tell them about as far off.  Horned critters look alike to you,
but even in a country supportin' a good many thousand head, a man used
to the business can recognise most every individual as far as he can
see him.  Some is better than others at it.  I suppose you really have
to be brought up to it.  So we boys at the Lazy Y noted all the cattle
with the new T 0, and could estimate pretty close that the Hahn outfit
might own, maybe, thirty-five head all told.

That was all very well, and nobody had any kick comin'.  Then one day
in the spring, we came across our first "sleeper."

What's a sleeper?  A sleeper is a calf that has been ear-marked, but
not branded.  Every owner has a certain brand, as you know, and then he
crops and slits the ears in a certain way, too.  In that manner he
don't have to look at the brand, except to corroborate the ears; and,
as the critter generally sticks his ears up inquirin'-like to anyone
ridin' up, it's easy to know the brand without lookin' at it, merely
from the ear-marks.  Once in a great while, when a man comes across an
unbranded calf, and it ain't handy to build a fire, he just ear-marks
it and let's the brandin' go till later.  But it isn't done often, and
our outfit had strict orders never to make sleepers.

Well, one day in the spring, as I say, Larry and me was ridin', when we
came across a Lazy Y cow and calf.  The little fellow was ear-marked
all right, so we rode on, and never would have discovered nothin' if a
bush rabbit hadn't jumped and scared the calf right across in front of
our hosses.  Then we couldn't help but see that there wasn't no brand.

Of course we roped him and put the iron on him.  I took the chance to
look at his ears, and saw that the marking had been done quite recent,
so when we got in that night I reported to Buck Johnson that one of the
punchers was gettin' lazy and sleeperin'.  Naturally he went after the
man who had done it; but every puncher swore up and down, and back and
across, that he'd branded every calf he'd had a rope on that spring.
We put it down that someone was lyin', and let it go at that.

And then, about a week later, one of the other boys reported a
Triangle-H sleeper.  The Triangle-H was the Goodrich brand, so we
didn't have nothin' to do with that.  Some of them might be sleeperin'
for all we knew.  Three other cases of the same kind we happened across
that same spring.

So far, so good.  Sleepers runnin' in such numbers was a little
astonishin', but nothin' suspicious.  Cattle did well that summer, and
when we come to round up in the fall, we cut out maybe a dozen of those
T 0 cattle that had strayed out of that Hahn country.  Of the dozen
there was five grown cows, and seven yearlin's.

"My Lord, Jed," says Buck to me, "they's a heap of these youngsters
comin' over our way."

But still, as a young critter is more apt to stray than an old one
that's got his range established, we didn't lay no great store by that
neither.  The Hahns took their bunch, and that's all there was to it.

Next spring, though, we found a few more sleepers, and one day we came
on a cow that had gone dead lame.  That was usual, too, but Buck, who
was with me, had somethin' on his mind.  Finally he turned back and
roped her, and threw her.

"Look here, Jed," says he, "what do you make of this?"

I could see where the hind legs below the hocks had been burned.

"Looks like somebody had roped her by the hind feet," says I.

"Might be," says he, "but her heels lame that way makes it look more
like hobbles."

So we didn't say nothin' more about that neither, until just by luck we
came on another lame cow.  We threw her, too.

"Well, what do you think of this one?" Buck Johnson asks me.

"The feet is pretty well tore up," says I, "and down to the quick, but
I've seen them tore up just as bad on the rocks when they come down out
of the mountains."

You sabe what that meant, don't you?  You see, a rustler will take a
cow and hobble her, or lame her so she can't follow, and then he'll
take her calf a long ways off and brand it with his iron.  Of course,
if we was to see a calf of one brand followin' of a cow with another,
it would be just too easy to guess what had happened.

We rode on mighty thoughtful.  There couldn't be much doubt that cattle
rustlers was at work.  The sleepers they had ear-marked, hopin' that no
one would discover the lack of a brand.  Then, after the calf was
weaned, and quit followin' of his mother, the rustler would brand it
with his own iron, and change its ear-mark to match.  It made a nice,
easy way of gettin' together a bunch of cattle cheap.

But it was pretty hard to guess off-hand who the rustlers might be.
There were a lot of renegades down towards the Mexican line who made a
raid once in a while, and a few oilers [2] livin' near had water holes
in the foothills, and any amount of little cattle holders, like this T
0 outfit, and any of them wouldn't shy very hard at a little sleeperin'
on the side.  Buck Johnson told us all to watch out, and passed the
word quiet among the big owners to try and see whose cattle seemed to
have too many calves for the number of cows.

The Texas outfit I'm tellin' you about had settled up above in this
Double R canon where I showed you those natural corrals this morning.
They'd built them a 'dobe, and cleared some land, and planted a few
trees, and made an irrigated patch for alfalfa.  Nobody never rode over
this way very much, 'cause the country was most too rough for cattle,
and our ranges lay farther to the southward.  Now, however, we began to
extend our ridin' a little.

I was down towards Dos Cabesas to look over the cattle there, and they
used to send Larry up into the Double R country.  One evenin' he took
me to one side.

"Look here, Jed," says he, "I know you pretty well, and I'm not ashamed
to say that I'm all new at this cattle business--in fact, I haven't
been at it more'n a year.  What should be the proportion of cows to
calves anyhow?"

"There ought to be about twice as many cows as there're calves," I
tells him.

"Then, with only about fifty head of grown cows, there ought not to be
an equal number of yearlin's?"

"I should say not," says I.  "What are you drivin' at?"

"Nothin' yet," says he.

A few days later he tackled me again.

"Jed," says he, "I'm not good, like you fellows are, at knowin' one cow
from another, but there's a calf down there branded T 0 that I'd pretty
near swear I saw with an X Y cow last month.  I wish you could come
down with me."

We got that fixed easy enough, and for the next month rammed around
through this broken country lookin' for evidence.  I saw enough to
satisfy me to a moral certainty, but nothin' for a sheriff; and, of
course, we couldn't go shoot up a peaceful rancher on mere suspicion.
Finally, one day, we run on a four-months' calf all by himself, with
the T 0 iron onto him--a mighty healthy lookin' calf, too.

"Wonder where HIS mother is!" says I.

"Maybe it's a 'dogie,'" says Larry Eagen--we calls calves whose mothers
have died "dogies."

"No," says I, "I don't hardly think so.  A dogie is always under size
and poor, and he's layin' around water holes, and he always has a big,
sway belly onto him.  No, this is no dogie; and, if it's an honest
calf, there sure ought to be a T 0 cow around somewhere."

So we separated to have a good look.  Larry rode up on the edge of a
little rimrock.  In a minute I saw his hoss jump back, dodgin' a
rattlesnake or somethin', and then fall back out of sight.  I jumped my
hoss up there tur'ble quick, and looked over, expectin' to see nothin'
but mangled remains.  It was only about fifteen foot down, but I
couldn't see bottom 'count of some brush.

"Are you all right?" I yells.

"Yes, yes!" cries Larry, "but for the love of God, get down here as
quick as you can."

I hopped off my hoss and scrambled down somehow.

"Hurt?" says I, as soon as I lit.

"Not a bit--look here."

There was a dead cow with the Lazy Y on her flank.

"And a bullet-hole in her forehead," adds Larry.  "And, look here, that
T 0 calf was bald-faced, and so was this cow."

"Reckon we found our sleepers," says I.

So, there we was.  Larry had to lead his cavallo down the barranca to
the main canon.  I followed along on the rim, waitin' until a place
gave me a chance to get down, too, or Larry a chance to get up.  We
were talkin' back and forth when, all at once, Larry shouted again.

"Big game this time," he yells. "Here's a cave and a mountain lion
squallin' in it."

I slid down to him at once, and we drew our six-shooters and went up to
the cave openin', right under the rim-rock.  There, sure enough, were
fresh lion tracks, and we could hear a little faint cryin' like woman.

"First chance," claims Larry, and dropped to his hands and knees at the
entrance.

"Well, damn me!" he cries, and crawls in at once, payin' no attention
to me tellin' him to be more cautious.  In a minute he backs out,
carryin' a three-year-old goat.

"We seem to be in for adventures to-day," says he.  "Now, where do you
suppose that came from, and how did it get here?"

"Well," says I, "I've followed lion tracks where they've carried
yearlin's across their backs like a fox does a goose.  They're tur'ble
strong."

"But where did she come from?" he wonders.

"As for that," says I, "don't you remember now that T 0 outfit had a
yearlin' kid when it came into the country?"

"That's right," says he. "It's only a mile down the canon.  I'll take
it home.  They must be most distracted about it."

So I scratched up to the top where my pony was waitin'.  It was a
tur'ble hard climb, and I 'most had to have hooks on my eyebrows to get
up at all.  It's easier to slide down than to climb back.  I dropped my
gun out of my holster, and she went way to the bottom, but I wouldn't
have gone back for six guns.  Larry picked it up for me.

So we went along, me on the rim-rock and around the barrancas, and
Larry in the bottom carryin' of the kid.

By and by we came to the ranch house, stopped to wait.  The minute
Larry hove in sight everybody was out to once, and in two winks the
woman had that baby.  They didn't see me at all, but I could hear, plain
enough, what they said.  Larry told how he had found her in the cave,
and all about the lion tracks, and the woman cried and held the kid
close to her, and thanked him about forty times.  Then when she'd wore
the edge off a little, she took the kid inside to feed it or somethin'.

"Well," says Larry, still laughin', "I must hit the trail."

"You say you found her up the Double R?" asks Hahn. "Was it that cave
near the three cottonwoods?"

"Yes," says Larry.

"Where'd you get into the canyon?"

"Oh, my hoss slipped off into the barranca just above."

"The barranca just above," repeats Hahn, lookin' straight at him.

Larry took one step back.

"You ought to be almighty glad I got into the canyon at all," says he.

Hahn stepped up, holdin' out his hand.

"That's right," says he. "You done us a good turn there."

Larry took his hand.  At the same time Hahn pulled his gun and shot him
through the middle.

It was all so sudden and unexpected that I stood there paralysed.

Larry fell forward the way a man mostly will when he's hit in the
stomach, but somehow he jerked loose a gun and got it off twice.  He
didn't hit nothin', and I reckon he was dead before he hit the ground.
And there he had my gun, and I was about as useless as a pocket in a
shirt!

No, sir, you can talk as much as you please, but the killer is a
low-down ornery scub, and he don't hesitate at no treachery or
ingratitude to keep his carcass safe.


Jed Parker ceased talking.  The dusk had fallen in the little room, and
dimly could be seen the recumbent figures lying at ease on their
blankets.  The ranch foreman was sitting bolt upright, cross-legged.  A
faint glow from his pipe barely distinguished his features.

"What became of the rustlers?" I asked him.

"Well, sir, that is the queer part.  Hahn himself, who had done the
killin', skipped out.  We got out warrants, of course, but they never
got served.  He was a sort of half outlaw from that time, and was
killed finally in the train hold-up of '97.  But the others we tried
for rustling.  We didn't have much of a case, as the law went then, and
they'd have gone free if the woman hadn't turned evidence against them.
The killin' was too much for her.  And, as the precedent held good in a
lot of other rustlin' cases, Larry's death was really the beginnin' of
law and order in the cattle business."

We smoked.  The last light suddenly showed red against the grimy
window.  Windy Bill arose and looked out the door.

"Boys," said he, returning. "She's cleared off.  We can get back to the
ranch tomorrow."



[2] "Oilers"--Greasers--Mexicans.




CHAPTER FIVE

THE DRIVE

A cry awakened me.  It was still deep night.  The moon sailed overhead,
the stars shone unwavering like candles, and a chill breeze wandered in
from the open spaces of the desert.  I raised myself on my elbow,
throwing aside the blankets and the canvas tarpaulin.  Forty other
indistinct, formless bundles on the ground all about me were sluggishly
astir.  Four figures passed and repassed between me and a red fire.  I
knew them for the two cooks and the horse wranglers.  One of the latter
was grumbling.

"Didn't git in till moon-up last night," he growled.  "Might as well
trade my bed for a lantern and be done with it."

Even as I stretched my arms and shivered a little, the two wranglers
threw down their tin plates with a clatter, mounted horses and rode
away in the direction of the thousand acres or so known as the pasture.

I pulled on my clothes hastily, buckled in my buckskin shirt, and dove
for the fire.  A dozen others were before me.  It was bitterly cold.
In the east the sky had paled the least bit in the world, but the moon
and stars shone on bravely and undiminished.  A band of coyotes was
shrieking desperate blasphemies against the new day, and the stray
herd, awakening, was beginning to bawl and bellow.

Two crater-like dutch ovens, filled with pieces of fried beef, stood
near the fire; two galvanised water buckets, brimming with soda
biscuits, flanked them; two tremendous coffee pots stood guard at
either end.  We picked us each a tin cup and a tin plate from the box
at the rear of the chuck wagon; helped ourselves from a dutch oven, a
pail, and a coffee pot, and squatted on our heels as close to the fire
as possible.  Men who came too late borrowed the shovel, scooped up
some coals, and so started little fires of their own about which new
groups formed.

While we ate, the eastern sky lightened.  The mountains under the dawn
looked like silhouettes cut from slate-coloured paper; those in the
west showed faintly luminous.  Objects about us became dimly visible.
We could make out the windmill, and the adobe of the ranch houses, and
the corrals.  The cowboys arose one by one, dropped their plates into
the dishpan, and began to hunt out their ropes.  Everything was obscure
and mysterious in the faint grey light.  I watched Windy Bill near his
tarpaulin.  He stooped to throw over the canvas.  When he bent, it was
before daylight; when he straightened his back, daylight had come.  It
was just like that, as though someone had reached out his hand to turn
on the illumination of the world.

The eastern mountains were fragile, the plain was ethereal, like a sea
of liquid gases.  From the pasture we heard the shoutings of the
wranglers, and made out a cloud of dust.  In a moment the first of the
remuda came into view, trotting forward with the free grace of the
unburdened horse.  Others followed in procession: those near sharp and
well defined, those in the background more or less obscured by the
dust, now appearing plainly, now fading like ghosts.  The leader turned
unhesitatingly into the corral.  After him poured the stream of the
remuda--two hundred and fifty saddle horses--with an unceasing thunder
of hoofs.

Immediately the cook-camp was deserted.  The cowboys entered the
corral.  The horses began to circle around the edge of the enclosure as
around the circumference of a circus ring.  The men, grouped at the
centre, watched keenly, looking for the mounts they had already decided
on.  In no time each had recognised his choice, and, his loop trailing,
was walking toward that part of the revolving circumference where his
pony dodged.  Some few whirled the loop, but most cast it with a quick
flip.  It was really marvellous to observe the accuracy with which the
noose would fly, past a dozen tossing heads, and over a dozen backs, to
settle firmly about the neck of an animal perhaps in the very centre of
the group.  But again, if the first throw failed, it was interesting to
see how the selected pony would dodge, double back, twist, turn, and
hide to escape second cast.  And it was equally interesting to observe
how his companions would help him.

They seemed to realise that they were not wanted, and would push
themselves between the cowboy and his intended mount with the utmost
boldness.  In the thick dust that instantly arose, and with the
bewildering thunder of galloping, the flashing change of grouping, the
rush of the charging animals, recognition alone would seem almost
impossible, yet in an incredibly short time each had his mount, and the
others, under convoy of the wranglers, were meekly wending their way
out over the plain.  There, until time for a change of horses, they
would graze in a loose and scattered band, requiring scarcely any
supervision.  Escape?  Bless you, no, that thought was the last in
their minds.

In the meantime the saddles and bridles were adjusted.  Always in a
cowboy's "string" of from six to ten animals the boss assigns him two
or three broncos to break in to the cow business.  Therefore, each
morning we could observe a half dozen or so men gingerly leading wicked
looking little animals out to the sand "to take the pitch out of them."
One small black, belonging to a cowboy called the Judge, used more than
to fulfil expectations of a good time.

"Go to him, Judge!" someone would always remark.

"If he ain't goin' to pitch, I ain't goin' to make him", the Judge
would grin, as he swung aboard.

The black would trot off quite calmly and in a most matter of fact way,
as though to shame all slanderers of his lamb-like character.  Then, as
the bystanders would turn away, he would utter a squeal, throw down his
head, and go at it.  He was a very hard bucker, and made some really
spectacular jumps, but the trick on which he based his claims to
originality consisted in standing on his hind legs at so perilous an
approach to the perpendicular that his rider would conclude he was
about to fall backwards, and then suddenly springing forward in a
series of stiff-legged bucks. The first manoeuvre induced the rider to
loosen his seat in order to be ready to jump from under, and the second
threw him before he could regain his grip.

"And they say a horse don't think!" exclaimed an admirer.

But as these were broken horses--save the mark!--the show was all over
after each had had his little fling.  We mounted and rode away, just as
the mountain peaks to the west caught the rays of a sun we should not
enjoy for a good half hour yet.

I had five horses in my string, and this morning rode "that C S horse,
Brown Jug."  Brown Jug was a powerful and well-built animal, about
fourteen two in height, and possessed of a vast enthusiasm for
cow-work.  As the morning was frosty, he felt good.

At the gate of the water corral we separated into two groups.  The
smaller, under the direction of Jed Parker, was to drive the mesquite
in the wide flats.  The rest of us, under the command of Homer, the
round-up captain, were to sweep the country even as far as the base of
the foothills near Mount Graham.  Accordingly we put our horses to the
full gallop.

Mile after mile we thundered along at a brisk rate of speed.  Sometimes
we dodged in and out among the mesquite bushes, alternately separating
and coming together again; sometimes we swept over grassy plains
apparently of illimitable extent, sometimes we skipped and hopped and
buck-jumped through and over little gullies, barrancas, and other sorts
of malpais--but always without drawing rein.  The men rode easily, with
no thought to the way nor care for the footing.  The air came back
sharp against our faces.  The warm blood stirred by the rush flowed
more rapidly.  We experienced a delightful glow.  Of the morning cold
only the very tips of our fingers and the ends of our noses retained a
remnant.  Already the sun was shining low and level across the plains.
The shadows of the canons modelled the hitherto flat surfaces of the
mountains.

After a time we came to some low hills helmeted with the outcrop of a
rock escarpment.  Hitherto they had seemed a termination of Mount
Graham, but now, when we rode around them, we discovered them to be
separated from the range by a good five miles of sloping plain.  Later
we looked back and would have sworn them part of the Dos Cabesas
system, did we not know them to be at least eight miles' distant from
that rocky rampart.  It is always that way in Arizona.  Spaces develop
of whose existence you had not the slightest intimation.  Hidden in
apparently plane surfaces are valleys and prairies.  At one sweep of
the eye you embrace the entire area of an eastern State; but
nevertheless the reality as you explore it foot by foot proves to be
infinitely more than the vision has promised.

Beyond the hill we stopped.  Here our party divided again, half to the
right and half to the left.  We had ridden, up to this time, directly
away from camp, now we rode a circumference of which headquarters was
the centre.  The country was pleasantly rolling and covered with grass.
Here and there were clumps of soapweed.  Far in a remote distance lay a
slender dark line across the plain.  This we knew to be mesquite; and
once entered, we knew it, too, would seem to spread out vastly.  And
then this grassy slope, on which we now rode, would show merely as an
insignificant streak of yellow.  It is also like that in Arizona.

I have ridden in succession through grass land, brush land, flower
land, desert.  Each in turn seemed entirely to fill the space of the
plains between the mountains.

From time to time Homer halted us and detached a man.  The business of
the latter was then to ride directly back to camp, driving all cattle
before him.  Each was in sight of his right- and left-hand neighbour.
Thus was constructed a drag-net whose meshes contracted as home was
neared.

I was detached, when of our party only the Cattleman and Homer
remained.  They would take the outside.  This was the post of honour,
and required the hardest riding, for as soon as the cattle should
realise the fact of their pursuit, they would attempt to "break" past
the end and up the valley.  Brown Jug and I congratulated ourselves on
an exciting morning in prospect.

Now, wild cattle know perfectly well what a drive means, and they do
not intend to get into a round-up if they can help it.  Were it not for
the two facts, that they are afraid of a mounted man, and cannot run
quite so fast as a horse, I do not know how the cattle business would
be conducted.  As soon as a band of them caught sight of any one of us,
they curled their tails and away they went at a long, easy lope that a
domestic cow would stare at in wonder.  This was all very well; in fact
we yelled and shrieked and otherwise uttered cow-calls to keep them
going, to "get the cattle started," as they say.  But pretty soon a
little band of the many scurrying away before our thin line, began to
bear farther and farther to the east.  When in their judgment they
should have gained an opening, they would turn directly back and make a
dash for liberty.  Accordingly the nearest cowboy clapped spurs to his
horse and pursued them.

It was a pretty race.  The cattle ran easily enough, with long, springy
jumps that carried them over the ground faster than appearances would
lead one to believe.  The cow-pony, his nose stretched out, his ears
slanted, his eyes snapping with joy of the chase, flew fairly "belly to
earth."  The rider sat slightly forward, with the cowboy's loose seat.
A whirl of dust, strangely insignificant against the immensity of a
desert morning, rose from the flying group.  Now they disappeared in a
ravine, only to scramble out again the next instant, pace undiminished.
The rider merely rose slightly and threw up his elbows to relieve the
jar of the rough gully.  At first the cattle seemed to hold their own,
but soon the horse began to gain.  In a short time he had come abreast
of the leading animal.

The latter stopped short with a snort, dodged back, and set out at
right angles to his former course.  From a dead run the pony came to a
stand in two fierce plunges, doubled like a shot, and was off on the
other tack.  An unaccustomed rider would here have lost his seat.  The
second dash was short.  With a final shake of the head, the steers
turned to the proper course in the direction of the ranch.  The pony
dropped unconcernedly to the shuffling jog of habitual progression.

Far away stretched the arc of our cordon.  The  most distant rider was
a speck, and the cattle ahead of him were like maggots endowed with a
smooth, swift onward motion.  As yet the herd had not taken form; it
was still too widely scattered.  Its units, in the shape of small
bunches, momently grew in numbers.  The distant plains were crawling
and alive with minute creatures making toward a common tiny centre.

Immediately in our front the cattle at first behaved very well.  Then
far down the long gentle slope I saw a break for the upper valley.  The
manikin that represented Homer at once became even smaller as it
departed in pursuit.  The Cattleman moved down to cover Homer's
territory until he should return--and I in turn edged farther to the
right.  Then another break from another bunch.  The Cattleman rode at
top speed to head it.  Before long he disappeared in the distant
mesquite.  I found myself in sole charge of a front three miles long.

The nearest cattle were some distance ahead, and trotting along at a
good gait.  As they had not yet discovered the chance left open by
unforeseen circumstance, I descended and took in on my cinch while yet
there was time.  Even as I mounted, an impatient movement on the part
of experienced Brown Jug told me that the cattle had seen their
opportunity.

I gathered the reins and spoke to the horse.  He needed no further
direction, but set off at a wide angle, nicely calculated, to intercept
the truants.   Brown Jug was a powerful beast.  The spring of his leap
was as whalebone.  The yellow earth began to stream past like water.
Always the pace increased with a growing thunder of hoofs.  It seemed
that nothing could turn us from the straight line, nothing check the
headlong momentum of our rush.  My eyes filled with tears from the wind
of our going.  Saddle strings streamed behind.  Brown Jug's mane
whipped my bridle band.  Dimly I was conscious of soapweed, sacatone,
mesquite, as we passed them.  They were abreast and gone before I could
think of them or how they were to be dodged.  Two antelope bounded away
to the left; birds rose hastily from the grasses.  A sudden chirk,
chirk, chirk, rose all about me.  We were in the very centre of a
prairie-dog town, but before I could formulate in my mind the
probabilities of holes and broken legs, the chirk, chirk, chirking had
fallen astern.  Brown Jug had skipped and dodged successfully.

We were approaching the cattle.  They ran stubbornly and well,
evidently unwilling to be turned until the latest possible moment.  A
great rage at their obstinacy took possession of us both.  A broad
shallow wash crossed our way, but we plunged through its rocks and
boulders recklessly, angered at even the slight delay they
necessitated.  The hardland on the other side we greeted with joy.
Brown Jug extended himself with a snort.

Suddenly a jar seemed to shake my very head loose.  I found myself
staring over the horse's head directly down into a deep and precipitous
gully, the edge of which was so cunningly concealed by the grasses as
to have remained invisible to my blurred vision.  Brown Jug, however,
had caught sight of it at the  last instant, and had executed one of
the wonderful stops possible only to a cow-pony.

But already the cattle had discovered a passage above, and were
scrambling down and across.  Brown Jug and I, at more sober pace, slid
off the almost perpendicular bank, and out the other side.

A moment later we had headed them.  They whirled, and without the
necessity of any suggestion on my part Brown Jug turned after them, and
so quickly that my stirrup actually brushed the ground.

After that we were masters.  We chased the cattle far enough to start
them well in the proper direction, and then pulled down to a walk in
order to get a breath of air.

But now we noticed another band, back on the ground over which we had
just come, doubling through in the direction of Mount Graham.  A hard
run set them to rights.  We turned.  More had poured out from the
hills.  Bands were crossing everywhere, ahead and behind.  Brown Jug
and I went to work.

Being an indivisible unit, we could chase only one bunch at a time;
and, while we were after one, a half dozen others would be taking
advantage of our preoccupation.  We could not hold our own.  Each run
after an escaping bunch had to be on a longer diagonal.  Gradually we
were forced back, and back, and back; but still we managed to hold the
line unbroken.  Never shall I forget the dash and clatter of that
morning.  Neither Brown Jug nor I thought for a moment of sparing
horseflesh, nor of picking a route.  We made the shortest line, and
paid little attention to anything that stood in the way.  A very fever
of resistance possessed us.  It was like beating against a head wind,
or fighting fire, or combating in any other of the great forces of
nature.  We were quite alone.  The Cattleman and Homer had vanished.
To our left the men were fully occupied in marshalling the compact
brown herds that had gradually massed--for these antagonists of mine
were merely outlying remnants.

I suppose Brown Jug must have run nearly twenty miles with only one
check.  Then we chased a cow some distance and into the dry bed of a
stream, where she whirled on us savagely.  By luck her horn hit only
the leather of my saddle skirts, so we left her; for when a cow has
sense enough to "get on the peck," there is no driving her farther.  We
gained nothing, and had to give ground, but we succeeded in holding a
semblance of order, so that the cattle did not break and scatter far
and wide.  The sun had by now well risen, and was beginning to shine
hot.  Brown Jug still ran gamely and displayed as much interest as
ever, but he was evidently tiring. We were both glad to see Homer's
grey showing in the fringe of mesquite.

Together we soon succeeded in throwing the cows into the main herd.
And, strangely enough, as soon as they had joined a compact band of
their fellows, their wildness left them and, convoyed by outsiders,
they set themselves to plodding energetically toward the home ranch.

As my horse was somewhat winded, I joined the "drag" at the rear.  Here
by course of natural sifting soon accumulated all the lazy, gentle, and
sickly cows, and the small calves.  The difficulty now was to prevent
them from lagging and dropping out.  To that end we indulged in a great
variety of the picturesque cow-calls peculiar to the cowboy.  One found
an old tin can which by the aid of a few pebbles he converted into a
very effective rattle.

The dust rose in clouds and eddied in the sun.  We slouched easily in
our saddles.  The cowboys compared notes as to the brands they had
seen.  Our ponies shuffled along, resting, but always ready for a dash
in chase of an occasional bull calf or yearling with independent ideas
of its own.

Thus we passed over the country, down the long gentle slope to the
"sink" of the valley, whence another long gentle slope ran to the base
of the other ranges.  At greater or lesser distances we caught the
dust, and made out dimly the masses of the other herds collected by our
companions, and by the party under Jed Parker.  They went forward
toward the common centre, with a slow ruminative movement, and the dust
they raised went with them.

Little by little they grew plainer to us, and the home ranch, hitherto
merely a brown shimmer in the distance, began to take on definition as
the group of buildings, windmills, and corrals we knew.  Miniature
horsemen could be seen galloping forward to the open white plain where
the herd would be held.  Then the mesquite enveloped us; and we knew
little more, save the anxiety lest we overlook laggards in the brush,
until we came out on the edge of that same white plain.

Here were more cattle, thousands of them, and billows of dust, and a
great bellowing, and slim, mounted figures riding and shouting ahead of
the herd.  Soon they succeeded in turning the leaders back.  These
threw into confusion those that followed.  In a few moments the cattle
had stopped.  A cordon of horsemen sat at equal distances holding them
in.

"Pretty good haul," said the man next to me; "a good five thousand
head."




CHAPTER SIX

CUTTING OUT

It was somewhere near noon by the time we had bunched and held the herd
of some four or five thousand head in the smooth, wide flat, free from
bushes and dog holes.  Each sat at ease on his horse facing the cattle,
watching lazily the clouds of dust and the shifting beasts, but ready
at any instant to turn back the restless or independent individuals
that might break for liberty.

Out of the haze came Homer, the round-up captain, on an easy lope.  As
he passed successively the sentries he delivered to each a low command,
but without slacking pace.  Some of those spoken to wheeled their
horses and rode away.  The others settled themselves in their saddles
and began to roll cigarettes.

"Change horses; get something to eat," said he to me; so I swung after
the file traveling at a canter over the low swells beyond the plain.

The remuda had been driven by its leaders to a corner of the pasture's
wire fence, and there held.  As each man arrived he dismounted, threw
off his saddle, and turned his animal loose.  Then he flipped a loop in
his rope and disappeared in the eddying herd.  The discarded horse,
with many grunts, indulged in a satisfying roll, shook himself
vigorously, and walked slowly away.  His labour was over for the day,
and he knew it, and took not the slightest trouble to get out of the
way of the men with the swinging ropes.

Not so the fresh horses, however.  They had no intention of being
caught, if they could help it, but dodged and twisted, hid and doubled
behind the moving screen of their friends.  The latter, seeming as
usual to know they were not wanted, made no effort to avoid the men,
which probably accounted in great measure for the fact that the herd as
a body remained compact, in spite of the cowboys threading it, and in
spite of the lack of an enclosure.

Our horses caught, we saddled as hastily as possible; and then at the
top speed of our fresh and eager ponies we swept down on the chuck
wagon.  There we fell off our saddles and descended on the meat and
bread like ravenous locusts on a cornfield.  The ponies stood where we
left them, "tied to the ground", the cattle-country fashion.

As soon as a man had stoked up for the afternoon he rode away.  Some
finished before others, so across the plain formed an endless
procession of men returning to the herd, and of those whom they
replaced coming for their turn at the grub.

We found the herd quiet.  Some were even lying down, chewing their cuds
as peacefully as any barnyard cows. Most, however, stood ruminative, or
walked slowly to and fro in the confines allotted by the horsemen, so
that the herd looked from a distance like a brown carpet whose pattern
was constantly changing--a dusty brown carpet in the process of being
beaten.  I relieved one of the watchers, and settled myself for a wait.

At this close inspection the different sorts of cattle showed more
distinctly their characteristics.  The cows and calves generally rested
peacefully enough, the calf often lying down while the mother stood
guard over it.  Steers, however, were more restless.  They walked
ceaselessly, threading their way in and out among the standing cattle,
pausing in brutish amazement at the edge of the herd, and turning back
immediately to endless journeyings.  The bulls, excited by so much
company forced on their accustomed solitary habit, roared defiance at
each other until the air fairly trembled.  Occasionally two would clash
foreheads.  Then the powerful animals would push and wrestle, trying
for a chance to gore.  The decision of supremacy was a question of but
a few minutes, and a bloody topknot the worst damage.  The defeated one
side-stepped hastily and clumsily out of reach, and then walked away.

Most of the time all we had to do was to sit our horses and watch these
things, to enjoy the warm bath of the Arizona sun, and to converse with
our next neighbours.  Once in a while some enterprising cow, observing
the opening between the men, would start to walk out.  Others would
fall in behind her until the movement would become general.  Then one
of us would swing his leg off the pommel and jog his pony over to head
them off.  They would return peacefully enough.

But one black muley cow, with a calf as black and muley as herself, was
more persistent.  Time after time, with infinite patience, she tried it
again the moment my back was turned.  I tried driving her far into the
herd.  No use; she always returned.  Quirtings and stones had no effect
on her mild and steady persistence.

"She's a San Simon cow," drawled my neighbour.  "Everybody knows her.
She's at every round-up, just naturally raisin' hell."

When the last man had returned from chuck, Homer made the dispositions
for the cut.  There were present probably thirty men from the home
ranches round about, and twenty representing owners at a distance, here
to pick up the strays inevitable to the season's drift.  The round-up
captain appointed two men to hold the cow-and-calf cut, and two more to
hold the steer cut.  Several of us rode into the herd, while the
remainder retained their positions as sentinels to hold the main body
of cattle in shape.

Little G and I rode slowly among the cattle looking everywhere.  The
animals moved sluggishly aside to give us passage, and closed in as
sluggishly behind us, so that we were always closely hemmed in wherever
we went.  Over the shifting sleek backs, through the eddying clouds of
dust, I could make out the figures of my companions moving slowly,
apparently aimlessly, here and there.

Our task for the moment was to search out the unbranded J H calves.
Since in ranks so closely crowded it would be physically impossible
actually to see an animal's branded flank, we depended entirely on the
ear-marks.

Did you ever notice how any animal, tame or wild, always points his
ears inquiringly in the direction of whatever interests or alarms him?
Those ears are for the moment his most prominent feature.  So when a
brand is quite indistinguishable because, as now, of press of numbers,
or, as in winter, from extreme length of hair, the cropped ears tell
plainly the tale of ownership.  As every animal is so marked when
branded, it follows that an uncut pair of ears means that its owner has
never felt the iron.

So, now we had to look first of all for calves with  uncut ears.  After
discovering one, we had to ascertain his ownership by examining the
ear-marks of his mother, by whose side he was sure, in this alarming
multitude, to be clinging faithfully.

Calves were numerous, and J H cows everywhere to be seen, so in
somewhat less than ten seconds I had my eye on a mother and son.
Immediately I turned Little G in their direction.  At the slap of my
quirt against the stirrup, all the cows immediately about me shrank
suspiciously aside.  Little G stepped forward daintily, his nostrils
expanding, his ears working back and forth, trying to the best of his
ability to understand which animals I had selected.  The cow and her
calf turned in toward the centre of the herd.  A touch of the reins
guided the pony.  At once he comprehended.  From that time on he needed
no further directions.

Cautiously, patiently, with great skill, he forced the cow through the
press toward the edge of the herd.  It had to be done very quietly, at
a foot pace, so as to alarm neither the objects of pursuit nor those
surrounding them.  When the cow turned back, Little G somehow happened
always in her way.  Before she knew it she was at the outer edge of the
herd.  There she found herself, with a group of three or four
companions, facing the open plain.  Instinctively she sought shelter.
I felt Little G's muscles tighten beneath me.  The moment for action
had come.  Before the cow had a chance to dodge among her companions
the pony was upon her like a thunderbolt.  She broke in alarm, trying
desperately to avoid the rush.  There ensued an exciting contest of
dodgings, turnings, and doublings.  Wherever she turned Little G was
before her.  Some of his evolutions were marvellous.  All I had to do
was to sit my saddle, and apply just that final touch of judgment
denied even the wisest of the lower animals.  Time and again the turn
was so quick that the stirrup swept the ground.  At last the cow,
convinced of the uselessness of further effort to return, broke away on
a long lumbering run to the open plain.  She was stopped and held by
the men detailed, and so formed the nucleus of the new cut-herd.
Immediately Little G, his ears working in conscious virtue, jog-trotted
back into the herd, ready for another.

After a dozen cows had been sent across to the  cut-herd, the work
simplified.  Once a cow caught sight of this new band, she generally
made directly for it, head and tail up.  After the first short struggle
to force her from the herd, all I had to do was to start her in the
proper direction and keep her at it until her decision was fixed.  If
she was too soon left to her own devices, however, she was likely to
return.  An old cowman knows to a second just the proper moment to
abandon her.

Sometimes, in spite of our best efforts a cow succeeded in circling us
and plunging into the main herd.  The temptation was then strong to
plunge in also, and to drive her out by main force; but the temptation
had to be resisted.  A dash into the thick of it might break the whole
band.  At once, of his own accord, Little G dropped to his fast,
shuffling walk, and again we addressed ourselves to the task of pushing
her gently to the edge.

This was all comparatively simple--almost any pony is fast enough for
the calf cut--but now Homer gave orders for the steer cut to begin, and
steers are rapid and resourceful and full of natural cussedness.
Little G and I were relieved by Windy Bill, and betook ourselves to the
outside of the herd.

Here we had leisure to observe the effects that up to this moment we
had ourselves been producing.  The herd, restless by reason of the
horsemen threading it, shifted, gave ground, expanded, and contracted,
so that its shape and size were always changing in the constant area
guarded by the sentinel cowboys.  Dust arose from these movements,
clouds of it, to eddy and swirl, thicken and dissipate in the currents
of air.  Now it concealed all but the nearest dimly-outlined animals;
again it parted in rifts through which mistily we discerned the riders
moving in and out of the fog; again it lifted high and thin, so that we
saw in clarity the whole herd and the outriders and the mesas far away.
As the afternoon waned, long shafts of sun slanted through this dust.
It played on men and beasts magically, expanding them to the dimensions
of strange genii, appearing and effacing themselves in the billows of
vapour from some enchanted bottle.

We on the outside found our sinecure of hot noon-tide filched from us
by the cooler hours.  The cattle, wearied of standing, and perhaps
somewhat hungry and thirsty, grew more and more impatient.  We rode
continually back and forth, turning the slow movement in on itself.
Occasionally some particularly enterprising cow would conclude that one
or another of the cut-herds would suit her better than this mill of
turmoil.  She would start confidently out, head and tail up, find
herself chased back, get stubborn on the question, and lead her pursuer
a long, hard run before she would return to her companions.  Once in a
while one would even have to be roped and dragged back.  For know,
before something happens to you, that you can chase a cow safely only
until she gets hot and winded.  Then she stands her ground and gets
emphatically "on the peck."

I remember very well when I first discovered this. It was after I had
had considerable cow work, too.  I thought of cows as I had always seen
them--afraid of a horseman, easy to turn with the pony, and willing to
be chased as far as necessary to the work.  Nobody told me anything
different.  One day we were making a drive in an exceedingly broken
country.  I was bringing in a small bunch I had discovered in a pocket
of the hills, but was excessively annoyed by one old cow that insisted
on breaking back.  In the wisdom of further experience, I now conclude
that she probably had a calf in the brush.  Finally she got away
entirely.  After starting the bunch well ahead, I went after her.

Well, the cow and I ran nearly side by side for as much as half a mile
at top speed.  She declined to be headed.  Finally she fell down and
was so entirely winded that she could not get up.

"Now, old girl, I've got you!" said I, and set myself to urging her to
her feet.

The pony acted somewhat astonished, and suspicious of the job.  Therein
he knew a lot more than I did.  But I insisted, and, like a good pony,
he obeyed.  I yelled at the cow, and slapped my bat, and used my quirt.
When she had quite recovered her wind, she got slowly to her feet--and
charged me in a most determined manner.

Now, a bull, or a steer, is not difficult to dodge.  He lowers his
head, shuts his eyes, and comes in on one straight rush.  But a cow
looks to see what she is doing; her eyes are open every minute, and it
overjoys her to take a side hook at you even when you succeed in
eluding her direct charge.

The pony I was riding did his best, but even then could not avoid a
sharp prod that would have ripped him up had not my leather bastos
intervened.  Then we retired to a distance in order to plan further;
but we did not succeed in inducing that cow to revise her ideas, so at
last we left her.  When, in some chagrin, I mentioned to the round-up
captain the fact that I had skipped one animal, he merely laughed.

"Why, kid," said he, "you can't do nothin' with a cow that gets on the
prod that away 'thout you ropes her; and what could you do with her out
there if you DID rope her?"

So I learned one thing more about cows.

After the steer cut had been finished, the men representing the
neighbouring ranges looked through the herd for strays of their brands.
These were thrown into the stray-herd, which had been brought up from
the bottom lands to receive the new accessions.  Work was pushed
rapidly, as the afternoon was nearly gone.

In fact, so absorbed were we that until it was almost upon us we did
not notice a heavy thunder-shower that arose in the region of the
Dragoon Mountains, and swept rapidly across the zenith.  Before we knew
it the rain had begun.  In ten seconds it had increased to a deluge,
and in twenty we were all to leeward of the herd striving desperately
to stop the drift of the cattle down wind.

We did everything in our power to stop them, but in vain.  Slickers
waved, quirts slapped against leather, six-shooters flashed, but still
the cattle, heads lowered, advanced with slow and sullen persistence
that would not be stemmed.  If we held our ground, they divided around
us.  Step by step we were forced to give way--the thin line of
nervously plunging horses sprayed before the dense mass of the cattle.

"No, they won't stampede," shouted Charley to my question.  "There's
cows and calves in them. If they was just steers or grown critters,
they might."

The sensations of those few moments were very vivid--the blinding beat
of the storm in my face, the unbroken front of horned heads bearing
down on me, resistless as fate, the long slant of rain with the sun
shining in the distance beyond it.

Abruptly the downpour ceased.  We shook our hats free of water, and
drove the herd back to the cutting grounds again.

But now the surface of the ground was slippery, and the rapid
manoeuvring of horses had become a matter precarious in the extreme.
Time and again the ponies fairly sat on their haunches and slid when
negotiating a sudden stop, while quick turns meant the rapid
scramblings that only a cow-horse could accomplish.  Nevertheless the
work went forward unchecked.  The men of the other outfits cut their
cattle into the stray-herd.  The latter was by now of considerable
size, for this was the third week of the round-up.

Finally everyone expressed himself as satisfied.  The largely
diminished main herd was now started forward by means of shrill cowboy
cries and beating of quirts.  The cattle were only too eager to go.
From my position on a little rise above the stray-herd I could see the
leaders breaking into a run, their heads thrown forward as they snuffed
their freedom.  On the mesa side the sentinel riders quietly withdrew.
From the rear and flanks the horsemen closed in.  The cattle poured out
in a steady stream through the opening thus left on the mesa side.  The
fringe of cowboys followed, urging them on.  Abruptly the cavalcade
turned and came loping back. The cattle continued ahead on a trot,
gradually spreading abroad over the landscape, losing their integrity
as a herd.  Some of the slower or hungrier dropped out and began to
graze.  Certain of the more wary disappeared to right or left.

Now, after the day's work was practically over, we had our first
accident.  The horse ridden by a young fellow from Dos Cabesas slipped,
fell, and rolled quite over his rider.  At once the animal lunged to
his feet, only to be immediately seized by the nearest rider.  But the
Dos Cabesas man lay still, his arms and legs spread abroad, his head
doubled sideways in a horribly suggestive manner.  We hopped off.  Two
men straightened him out, while two more looked carefully over the
indications on the ground.

"All right," sang out one of them, "the horn didn't catch him."

He pointed to the indentation left by the pommel.  Indeed five minutes
brought the man to his senses.  He complained of a very twisted back.
Homer set one of the men in after the bed-wagon, by means of which the
sufferer was shortly transported to camp.  By the end of the week he
was again in the saddle.  How men escape from this common accident with
injuries so slight has always puzzled me.  The horse rolls completely
over his rider, and yet it seems to be the rarest thing in the world
for the latter to be either killed or permanently injured.

Now each man had the privilege of looking through the J H cuts to see
if by chance steers of his own had been included in them.  When all had
expressed themselves as satisfied, the various bands were started to
the corrals.

From a slight eminence where I had paused to enjoy the evening I looked
down on the scene.  The three herds, separated by generous distance one
from the other, crawled leisurely along; the riders, their hats thrust
back, lolled in their saddles, shouting conversation to each other,
relaxing after the day's work; through the clouds strong shafts of
light belittled the living creatures, threw into proportion the
vastness of the desert.




CHAPTER SEVEN

A CORNER IN HORSES

It was dark night.  The stay-herd bellowed frantically from one of the
big corrals; the cow-and-calf-herd from a second.  Already the remuda,
driven in from the open plains, scattered about the thousand acres of
pasture.  Away from the conveniences of fence and corral, men would
have had to patrol all night.  Now, however, everyone was gathered
about the camp fire.

Probably forty cowboys were in the group, representing all types, from
old John, who had been in the business forty years, and had punched
from the Rio Grande to the Pacific, to the Kid, who would have given
his chance of salvation if he could have been taken for ten years older
than he was.  At the moment Jed Parker was holding forth to his friend
Johnny Stone in reference to another old crony who had that evening
joined the round-up.

"Johnny," inquired Jed with elaborate gravity, and entirely ignoring
the presence of the subject of conversation, "what is that thing just
beyond the fire, and where did it come from?"

Johnny Stone squinted to make sure.

"That?" he replied.  "Oh, this evenin' the dogs see something run down
a hole, and they dug it out, and that's what they got."

The newcomer grinned.

"The trouble with you fellows," he proffered "is that you're so plumb
alkalied you don't know the real thing when you see it."

"That's right," supplemented Windy Bill drily. "HE come from New York."

"No!" cried Jed. "You don't say so?  Did he come in one box or in two?"

Under cover of the laugh, the newcomer made a raid on the dutch ovens
and pails.  Having filled his plate, he squatted on his heels and fell
to his belated meal.  He was a tall, slab-sided individual, with a
lean, leathery face, a sweeping white moustache, and a grave and
sardonic eye.  His leather chaps were plain and worn, and his hat had
been fashioned by time and wear into much individuality.  I was not
surprised to hear him nicknamed Sacatone Bill.

"Just ask him how he got that game foot," suggested Johnny Stone to me
in an undertone, so, of course, I did not.

Later someone told me that the lameness resulted from his refusal of an
urgent invitation to return across a river.  Mr. Sacatone Bill happened
not to be riding his own horse at the time.

The Cattleman dropped down beside me a moment later.

"I wish," said he in a low voice, "we could get that fellow talking.
He is a queer one.  Pretty well educated apparently.  Claims to be
writing a book of memoirs.  Sometimes he will open up in good shape,
and sometimes he will not.  It does no good to ask him direct, and he
is as shy as an old crow when you try to lead him up to a subject.  We
must just lie low and trust to Providence."

A man was playing on the mouth organ.  He played excellently well, with
all sorts of variations and frills.  We smoked in silence.  The deep
rumble of the cattle filled the air with its diapason.  Always the
shrill coyotes raved out in the mesquite.  Sacatone Bill had finished
his meal, and had gone to sit by Jed Parker, his old friend.  They
talked together low-voiced.  The evening grew, and the eastern sky
silvered over the mountains in anticipation of the moon.

Sacatone Bill suddenly threw back his head and laughed.

"Reminds me of the time I went to Colorado!"  he cried.

"He's off!" whispered the Cattleman.

A dead silence fell on the circle.  Everybody shifted position the
better to listen to the story of Sacatone Bill.


About ten year ago I got plumb sick of punchin' cows around my part of
the country.  She hadn't rained since Noah, and I'd forgot what water
outside a pail or a trough looked like.  So I scouted around inside of
me to see what part of the world I'd jump to, and as I seemed to know
as little of Colorado and minin' as anything else, I made up the pint
of bean soup I call my brains to go there.  So I catches me a buyer at
Henson and turns over my pore little bunch of cattle and prepared to
fly.  The last day I hauled up about twenty good buckets of water and
threw her up against the cabin.  My buyer was settin' his hoss waitin'
for me to get ready.  He didn't say nothin' until we'd got down about
ten mile or so.

"Mr. Hicks," says he, hesitatin' like, "I find it a good rule in this
country not to overlook other folks' plays, but I'd take it mighty kind
if you'd explain those actions of yours with the pails of water."

"Mr. Jones," says I, "it's very simple.  I built that shack five year
ago, and it's never rained since.  I just wanted to settle in my mind
whether or not that damn roof leaked."

So I quit Arizona, and in about a week I see my reflection in the
winders of a little place called Cyanide in the Colorado mountains.

Fellows, she was a bird.  They wasn't a pony in sight, nor a squar'
foot of land that wasn't either street or straight up.  It made me
plumb lonesome for a country where you could see a long ways even if
you didn't see much.  And this early in the evenin' they wasn't hardly
anybody in the streets at all.

I took a look at them dark, gloomy, old mountains, and a sniff at a
breeze that would have frozen the whiskers of hope, and I made a dive
for the nearest lit winder.  They was a sign over it that just said:

                 THIS IS A SALOON

I was glad they labelled her.  I'd never have known it. They had a
fifteen-year old kid tendin' bar, no games goin', and not a soul in the
place.

"Sorry to disturb your repose, bub," says I, "but see if you can sort
out any rye among them collections of sassapariller of yours."

I took a drink, and then another to keep it company--I was beginnin' to
sympathise with anythin' lonesome.  Then I kind of sauntered out to the
back room where the hurdy-gurdy ought to be.

Sure enough, there was a girl settin' on the pianner stool, another in
a chair, and a nice shiny Jew drummer danglin' his feet from a table.
They looked up when they see me come in, and went right on talkin'.

"Hello, girls!" says I.

At that they stopped talkin' complete.

"How's tricks?" says I.

"Who's your woolly friend?" the shiny Jew asks of the girls.

I looked at him a minute, but I see he'd been raised a pet, and then,
too, I was so hungry for sassiety I was willin' to pass a bet or two.

"Don't you ADMIRE these cow gents?" snickers one of the girls.

"Play somethin', sister," says I to the one at the pianner.

She just grinned at me.

"Interdooce me," says the drummer in a kind of a way that made them all
laugh a heap.

"Give us a tune," I begs, tryin' to be jolly, too.

"She don't know any pieces," says the Jew.

"Don't you?" I asks pretty sharp.

"No," says she.

"Well, I do," says I.

I walked up to her, jerked out my guns, and reached around both sides
of her to the pianner.  I run the muzzles up and down the keyboard two
or three times, and then shot out half a dozen keys.

"That's the piece I know," says I.

But the other girl and the Jew drummer had punched the breeze.

The girl at the pianner just grinned, and pointed to the winder where
they was some ragged glass hangin'.  She was dead game.

"Say, Susie," says I, "you're all right, but your friends is tur'ble.
I may be rough, and I ain't never been curried below the knees, but I'm
better to tie to than them sons of guns."

"I believe it," says she.

So we had a drink at the bar, and started out to investigate the
wonders of Cyanide.

Say, that night was a wonder.  Susie faded after about three drinks,
but I didn't seem to mind that.  I hooked up to another saloon kept by
a thin Dutchman.  A fat Dutchman is stupid, but a thin one is all right.

In ten minutes I had more friends in Cyanide than they is fiddlers in
hell.  I begun to conclude Cyanide wasn't so lonesome.  About four
o'clock in comes a little Irishman about four foot high, with more
upper lip than a muley cow, and enough red hair to make an artificial
aurorer borealis.  He had big red hands with freckles pasted onto them,
and stiff red hairs standin' up separate and lonesome like signal
stations.  Also his legs was bowed.

He gets a drink at the bar, and stands back and yells:

"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!"

Now, this was none of my town, so I just stepped back of the end of the
bar quick where I wouldn't stop no lead.  The shootin' didn't begin.

"Probably Dutchy didn't take no note of what the locoed little dogie
DID say," thinks I to myself.

The Irishman bellied up to the bar again, and pounded on it with his
fist.

"Look here!" he yells.  "Listen to what I'm tellin' ye!  God bless the
Irish and let the Dutch rustle!  Do ye hear me?"

"Sure, I hear ye," says Dutchy, and goes on swabbin' his bar with a
towel.

At that my soul just grew sick.  I asked the man next to me why Dutchy
didn't kill the little fellow.

"Kill him!" says this man.  "What for?"

"For insultin' of him, of course."

"Oh, he's drunk," says the man, as if that explained anythin'.

That settled it with me.  I left that place, and went home, and it
wasn't more than four o'clock, neither.  No, I don't call four o'clock
late.  It may be a little late for night before last, but it's just the
shank of the evenin' for to-night.

Well, it took me six weeks and two days to go broke.  I didn't know sic
em, about minin'; and before long I KNEW that I didn't 'know sic 'em.
Most all day I poked around them mountains---not like our'n--too much
timber to be comfortable.  At night I got to droppin' in at Dutchy's.
He had a couple of quiet games goin', and they was one fellow among
that lot of grubbin' prairie dogs that had heerd tell that cows had
horns.  He was the wisest of the bunch on the cattle business.  So I
stowed away my consolation, and made out to forget comparing Colorado
with God's country.

About three times a week this Irishman I told you of--name
O'Toole--comes bulgin' in.  When he was sober he talked minin' high,
wide, and handsome.  When he was drunk he pounded both fists on the bar
and yelled for action, tryin' to get Dutchy on the peck.

"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!" he yells about six
times.  "Say, do you hear?"

"Sure," says Dutchy, calm as a milk cow, "sure, I hears ye!"

I was plumb sorry for O'Toole.  I'd like to have given him a run; but,
of course, I couldn't take it up without makin' myself out a friend of
this Dutchy party, and I couldn't stand for that.  But I did tackle
Dutchy about it one night when they wasn't nobody else there.

"Dutchy," says I, "what makes you let that bow-legged cross between a
bulldog and a flamin' red sunset tromp on you so?  It looks to me like
you're plumb spiritless."

Dutchy stopped wiping glasses for a minute.

"Just you hold on" says he.  "I ain't ready yet. Bimeby I make him
sick; also those others who laugh with him."

He had a little grey flicker in his eye, and I thinks to myself that
maybe they'd get Dutchy on the peck yet.

As I said, I went broke in just six weeks and two days.  And I was
broke a plenty.  No hold-outs anywhere.  It was a heap long ways to
cows; and I'd be teetotally chawed up and spit out if I was goin' to
join these minin' terrapins defacin' the bosom of nature.  It sure
looked to me like hard work.

While I was figurin' what next, Dutchy came in.  Which I was tur'ble
surprised at that, but I said good-mornin' and would he rest his poor
feet.

"You like to make some money?" he asks.

"That depends," says I, "on how easy it is."

"It is easy," says he. "I want you to buy hosses for me."

"Hosses!  Sure!" I yells, jumpin' up. "You bet you!  Why, hosses is
where I live!  What hosses do you want?"

"All hosses," says he, calm as a faro dealer.

"What?" says I.  "Elucidate, my bucko.  I don't take no such blanket
order.  Spread your cards."

"I mean just that," says he. "I want you to buy all the hosses in this
camp, and in the mountains.  Every one."

"Whew!" I whistles. "That's a large order. But I'm your meat."

"Come with me, then," says he.  I hadn't but just got up, but I went
with him to his little old poison factory.  Of course, I hadn't had no
breakfast; but he staked me to a Kentucky breakfast.  What's a Kentucky
breakfast?  Why, a Kentucky breakfast is a three-pound steak, a bottle
of whisky, and a setter dog.  What's the dog for?  Why, to eat the
steak, of course.

We come to an agreement.  I was to get two-fifty a head commission.  So
I started out.  There wasn't many hosses in that country, and what
there was the owners hadn't much use for unless it was to work a whim.
I picked up about a hundred head quick enough, and reported to Dutchy.

"How about burros and mules?" I asks Dutchy.

"They goes," says he. "Mules same as hosses; burros four bits a head to
you."

At the end of a week I had a remuda of probably two hundred animals.
We kept them over the hills in some "parks," as these sots call meadows
in that country.  I rode into town and told Dutchy.

"Got them all?" he asks.

"All but a cross-eyed buckskin that's mean, and the bay mare that Noah
bred to."

"Get them," says he.

"The bandits want too much," I explains.

"Get them anyway," says he.

I went away and got them.  It was scand'lous; such prices.

When I hit Cyanide again I ran into scenes of wild excitement.  The
whole passel of them was on that one street of their'n, talkin' sixteen
ounces to the pound.  In the middle was Dutchy, drunk as a soldier-just
plain foolish drunk.

"Good Lord!" thinks I to myself, "he ain't celebratin' gettin' that
bunch of buzzards, is he?"

But I found he wasn't that bad.  When he caught sight of me, he fell on
me drivellin'.

"Look there!" he weeps, showin' me a letter.

I was the last to come in; so I kept that letter--here she is.  I'll
read her.

Dear Dutchy:--I suppose you thought I'd flew the coop, but I haven't
and this is to prove it.  Pack up your outfit and hit the trail.  I've
made the biggest free gold strike you ever see.  I'm sending you
specimens.  There's tons just like it, tons and tons.  I got all the
claims I can hold myself; but there's heaps more.  I've writ to Johnny
and Ed at Denver to come on.  Don't give this away.  Make tracks.  Come
in to Buck Canon in the Whetstones and oblige.

                           Yours truly,
                              Henry Smith


Somebody showed me a handful of white rock with yeller streaks in it.
His eyes was bulgin' until you could have hung your hat on them.  That
O'Toole party was walkin' around, wettin' his lips with his tongue and
swearin' soft.

"God bless the Irish and let the Dutch rustle!" says he.  "And the fool
had to get drunk and give it away!"

The excitement was just started, but it didn't last long.  The crowd
got the same notion at the same time, and it just melted.  Me and
Dutchy was left alone.

I went home.  Pretty soon a fellow named Jimmy Tack come around a
little out of breath.

"Say, you know that buckskin you bought off'n me?" says he, "I want to
buy him back."

"Oh, you do," says I.

"Yes," says he.  "I've got to leave town for a couple of days, and I
got to have somethin' to pack."

"Wait and I'll see," says I.

Outside the door I met another fellow.

"Look here," he stops me with.  "How about that bay mare I sold you?
Can you call that sale off?  I got to leave town for a day or two and--"

"Wait," says I.  "I'll see."

By the gate was another hurryin' up.

"Oh, yes," says I when he opens his mouth.  "I know all your troubles.
You have to leave town for a couple of days, and you want back that
lizard you sold me.  Well, wait."

After that I had to quit the main street and dodge back of the hog
ranch.  They was all headed my way.  I was as popular as a snake in a
prohibition town.

I hit Dutchy's by the back door.

"Do you want to sell hosses?" I asks. "Everyone in town wants to buy."

Dutchy looked hurt.

"I wanted to keep them for the valley market," says he, "but--How much
did you give Jimmy Tack for his buckskin?"

"Twenty," says I.

"Well, let him have it for eighty," says Dutchy; "and the others in
proportion."

I lay back and breathed hard.

"Sell them all, but the one best hoss," says he--"no, the TWO best."

"Holy smoke!" says I, gettin' my breath. "If you mean that, Dutchy, you
lend me another gun and give me a drink."

He done so, and I went back home to where the whole camp of Cyanide was
waitin'.

I got up and made them a speech and told them I'd sell them hosses all
right, and to come back.  Then I got an Injin boy to help, and we
rustled over the remuda and held them in a blind canon.  Then I called
up these miners one at a time, and made bargains with them.  Roar!
Well, you could hear them at Denver, they tell me, and the weather
reports said, "Thunder in the mountains."  But it was cash on delivery,
and they all paid up.  They had seen that white quartz with the gold
stickin' into it, and that's the same as a dose of loco to miner gents.

Why didn't I take a hoss and start first?  I did think of it--for about
one second.  I wouldn't stay in that country then for a million dollars
a minute.  I was plumb sick and loathin' it, and just waitin' to make
high jumps back to Arizona.  So I wasn't aimin' to join this stampede,
and didn't have no vivid emotions.

They got to fightin' on which should get the first hoss; so I bent my
gun on them and made them draw lots.  They roared some more, but done
so; and as fast as each one handed over his dust or dinero he made a
rush for his cabin, piled on his saddle and pack, and pulled his
freight on a cloud of dust.  It was sure a grand stampede, and I
enjoyed it no limit.

So by sundown I was alone with the Injin.  Those two hundred head
brought in about twenty thousand dollars.  It was heavy, but I could
carry it.  I was about alone in the landscape; and there were the two
best hosses I had saved out for Dutchy.  I was sure some tempted.  But
I had enough to get home on anyway; and I never yet drank behind the
bar, even if I might hold up the saloon from the floor.  So I grieved
some inside that I was so tur'ble conscientious, shouldered the sacks,
and went down to find Dutchy.

I met him headed his way, and carryin' of a sheet of paper.

"Here's your dinero," says I, dumpin' the four big sacks on the ground.

He stooped over and hefted them.  Then he passed one over to me.

"What's that for?" I asks.

"For you," says he.

"My commission ain't that much," I objects.

"You've earned it," says he, "and you might have skipped with the whole
wad."

"How did you know I wouldn't?" I asks.

"Well," says he, and I noted that jag of his had flew. "You see, I was
behind that rock up there, and I had you covered."

I saw; and I began to feel better about bein' so tur'ble conscientious.

We walked a little ways without sayin' nothin'.

"But ain't you goin' to join the game?" I asks.

"Guess not," says he, jinglin' of his gold. "I'm satisfied."

"But if you don't get a wiggle on you, you are sure goin' to get left
on those gold claims," says I.

"There ain't no gold claims," says he.

"But Henry Smith--" I cries.

"There ain't no Henry Smith," says he.

I let that soak in about six inches.

"But there's a Buck Canon," I pleads. "Please say there's a Buck Canon."

"Oh, yes, there's a Buck Canon," he allows.  "Nice limestone
formation--make good hard water."

"Well, you're a marvel," says I.

We walked together down to Dutchy's saloon.

We stopped outside.

"Now," says he, "I'm goin' to take one of those hosses and go
somewheres else.  Maybe you'd better do likewise on the other."

"You bet I will," says I.

He turned around and taked up the paper he was carryin'.  It was a
sign.  It read:

            THE DUTCH HAS RUSTLED

"Nice sentiment," says I.  "It will be appreciated when the crowd comes
back from that little pasear into Buck Canon.  But why not tack her up
where the trail hits the camp?  Why on this particular door?"

"Well," said Dutchy, squintin' at the sign sideways, "you see I sold
this place day before yesterday--to Mike O'Toole."




CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CORRAL BRANDING

All that night we slept like sticks of wood.  No dreams visited us, but
in accordance with the immemorial habit of those who live out--whether
in the woods, on the plains, among the mountains, or at sea--once
during the night each of us rose on his elbow, looked about him, and
dropped back to sleep.  If there had been a fire to replenish, that
would have been the moment to do so; if the wind had been changing and
the seas rising, that would have been the time to cast an eye aloft for
indications, to feel whether the anchor cable was holding; if the
pack-horses had straggled from the alpine meadows under the snows, this
would have been the occasion for intent listening for the faintly
tinkling hell so that next day one would know in which direction to
look.  But since there existed for us no responsibility, we each
reported dutifully at the roll-call of habit, and dropped back into our
blankets with a grateful sigh.

I remember the moon sailing a good gait among apparently stationary
cloudlets; I recall a deep, black shadow lying before distant silvery
mountains; I glanced over the stark, motionless canvases, each of which
concealed a man; the air trembled with the bellowing of cattle in the
corrals.

Seemingly but a moment later the cook's howl brought me to
consciousness again.  A clear, licking little fire danced in the
blackness.  Before it moved silhouettes of men already eating.

I piled out and joined the group.  Homer was busy distributing his men
for the day.  Three were to care for the remuda; five were to move the
stray-herd from the corrals to good feed; three branding crews were
told to brand the calves we had collected in the cut of the afternoon
before.  That took up about half the men.  The rest were to make a
short drive in the salt grass.  I joined the Cattleman, and together we
made our way afoot to the branding pen.

We were the only ones who did go afoot, however, although the corrals
were not more than two hundred yards' distant.  When we arrived we
found the string of ponies standing around outside.  Between the
upright bars of greasewood we could see the cattle, and near the
opposite side the men building a fire next the fence.  We pushed open
the wide gate and entered.  The three ropers sat their horses, idly
swinging the loops of their ropes back and forth.  Three others brought
wood and arranged it craftily in such manner as to get best draught for
heatin,--a good branding fire is most decidedly a work of art.  One
stood waiting for them to finish, a sheaf of long JH stamping irons in
his hand.  All the rest squatted on their heels along the fence,
smoking cigarettes and chatting together.  The first rays of the sun
slanted across in one great sweep from the remote mountains.

In ten minutes Charley pronounced the irons ready.  Homer, Wooden, and
old California John rode in among the cattle.  The rest of the men
arose and stretched their legs and advanced.  The Cattleman and I
climbed to the top bar of the gate, where we roosted, he with his
tally-book on his knee.

Each rider swung his rope above his head with one hand, keeping the
broad loop open by a skilful turn of the wrist at the end of each
revolution.  In a moment Homer leaned forward and threw.  As the loop
settled, he jerked sharply upward, exactly as one would strike to hook
a big fish.  This tightened the loop and prevented it from slipping
off.  Immediately, and without waiting to ascertain the result of the
manoeuvre, the horse turned and began methodically, without undue
haste, to walk toward the branding fire.  Homer wrapped the rope twice
or thrice about the horn, and sat over in one stirrup to avoid the
tightened line and to preserve the balance.  Nobody paid any attention
to the calf.  The critter had been caught by the two hind legs.  As the
rope tightened, he was suddenly upset, and before he could realise that
something disagreeable was happening, he was sliding majestically along
on his belly.  Behind him followed his anxious mother, her head
swinging from side to side.

Near the fire the horse stopped.  The two "bull-doggers" immediately
pounced upon the victim.  It was promptly flopped over on its right
side.  One knelt on its head and twisted back its foreleg in a sort of
hammer-lock; the other seized one hind foot, pressed his boot heel
against the other hind leg close to the body, and sat down behind the
animal.  Thus  the calf was unable to struggle.  When once you have had
the wind knocked out of you, or a rib or two broken, you cease to think
this unnecessarily rough.  Then one or the other threw off the rope.
Homer rode away, coiling the rope as he went.

"Hot iron!" yelled one of the bull-doggers.

"Marker!" yelled the other.

Immediately two men ran forward.  The brander pressed the iron smoothly
against the flank.  A smoke and the smell of scorching hair arose.
Perhaps the calf blatted a little as the heat scorched.  In a brief
moment it was over.  The brand showed cherry, which is the proper
colour to indicate due peeling and a successful mark.

In the meantime the marker was engaged in his work.  First, with a
sharp knife he cut off slanting the upper quarter of one ear.  Then he
nicked out a swallow-tail in the other.  The pieces he thrust into his
pocket in order that at the completion of the work he could thus check
the Cattleman's tally-board as to the number of calves branded.[3]  The
bull-dogger let go.  The calf sprang up, was appropriated and smelled
over by his worried mother, and the two departed into the herd to talk
it over.

It seems to me that a great deal of unnecessary twaddle is abroad as to
the extreme cruelty of branding.  Undoubtedly it is to some extent
painful, and could some other method of ready identification be
devised, it might be as well to adopt it in preference.  But in the
circumstance of a free range, thousands of cattle, and hundreds of
owners, any other method is out of the question.  I remember a New
England movement looking toward small brass tags to be hung from the
ear.  Inextinguishable laughter followed the spread of this doctrine
through Arizona.  Imagine a puncher descending to examine politely the
ear-tags of wild cattle on the open range or in a round-up.

But, as I have intimated, even the inevitable branding and ear-marking
are not so painful as one might suppose.  The scorching hardly
penetrates below the outer tough skin--only enough to kill the roots of
the hair--besides which it must be remembered that cattle are not so
sensitive as the higher nervous organisms.  A calf usually bellows when
the iron bites, but as soon as released he almost invariably goes to
feeding or to looking idly about.  Indeed, I have never seen one even
take the trouble to lick his wounds, which is certainly not true in the
case of the injuries they inflict on each other in fighting.  Besides
which, it happens but once in a lifetime, and is over in ten seconds; a
comfort denied to those of us who have our teeth filled.

In the meantime two other calves had been roped by the two other men.
One of the little animals was but a few months old, so the rider did
not bother with its hind legs, but tossed his loop over its neck.
Naturally, when things tightened up, Mr. Calf entered his objections,
which took the form of most vigorous bawlings, and the most comical
bucking, pitching, cavorting, and bounding in the air.  Mr. Frost's
bull-calf alone in pictorial history shows the attitudes.  And then, of
course, there was the gorgeous contrast between all this frantic and
uncomprehending excitement and the absolute matter-of-fact
imperturbability of horse and rider.  Once at the fire, one of the men
seized the tightened rope in one hand, reached well over the animal's
back to get a slack of the loose hide next the belly, lifted strongly,
and tripped.  This is called "bull-dogging."  As he knew his business,
and as the calf was a small one, the little beast went over promptly,
bit the ground with a whack, and was pounced upon and held.

Such good luck did not always follow, however.  An occasional and
exceedingly husky bull yearling declined to be upset in any such
manner.  He would catch himself on one foot, scramble vigorously, and
end by struggling back to the upright.  Then ten to one he made a dash
to get away.  In such case he was generally snubbed up short enough at
the end of the rope; but once or twice he succeeded in running around a
group absorbed in branding.  You can imagine what happened next.  The
rope, attached at one end to a conscientious and immovable horse and at
the other to a reckless and vigorous little bull, swept its taut and
destroying way about mid-knee high across that group.  The brander and
marker, who were standing, promptly sat down hard; the bull-doggers,
who were sitting, immediately turned several most capable somersaults;
the other calf arose and inextricably entangled his rope with that of
his accomplice.  Hot irons, hot language, and dust filled the air.

Another method, and one requiring slightly more knack, is to grasp the
animal's tail and throw it by a quick jerk across the pressure of the
rope.  This is productive of some fun if it fails.

By now the branding was in full swing.  The three horses came and went
phlegmatically.  When the nooses fell, they turned and walked toward
the fire as a matter of course.  Rarely did the cast fail.  Men ran to
and fro busy and intent.  Sometimes three or four calves were on the
ground at once.  Cries arose in a confusion:  "Marker"  "Hot iron!"
"Tally one!" Dust eddied and dissipated.  Behind all were clear
sunlight and the organ roll of the cattle bellowing.

Toward the middle of the morning the bull-doggers began to get a little
tired.

"No more necked calves," they announced.  "Catch 'em by the hind legs,
or bull-dog 'em yourself."

And that went.  Once in a while the rider, lazy, or careless, or
bothered by the press of numbers, dragged up a victim caught by the
neck.  The bull-doggers flatly refused to have anything to do with it.
An obvious way out would have been to flip off the loop and try again;
but of course that would have amounted to a confession of wrong.

"You fellows drive me plumb weary," remarked the rider, slowly
dismounting.  "A little bit of a calf like that!  What you all need is
a nigger to cut up your food for you!"

Then he would spit on his hands and go at it alone.  If luck attended
his first effort, his sarcasm was profound.

"There's yore little calf," said he.  "Would you like to have me tote
it to you, or do you reckon you could toddle this far with yore little
old iron?"

But if the calf gave much trouble, then all work ceased while the
unfortunate puncher wrestled it down.

Toward noon the work slacked.  Unbranded calves were scarce.  Sometimes
the men rode here and there for a minute or so before their eyes fell
on a pair of uncropped ears.  Finally Homer rode over to the Cattleman
and reported the branding finished.  The latter counted the marks in
his tally-book.

"One hundred and seventy-six," he announced.

The markers, squatted on their heels, told over the bits of ears they
had saved.  The total amounted to but an hundred and seventy-five.
Everybody went to searching for the missing bit.  It was not
forth-coming.  Finally Wooden discovered it in his hip pocket.

"Felt her thar all the time," said he, "but thought it must shorely be
a chaw of tobacco."

This matter satisfactorily adjusted, the men all ran for their ponies.
They had been doing a wrestler's heavy work all the morning, but did
not seem to be tired.  I saw once in some crank physical culture
periodical that a cowboy's life was physically ill-balanced, like an
oarsman's, in that it exercised only certain muscles of the body.  The
writer should be turned loose in a branding corral.

Through the wide gates the cattle were urged out to the open plain.
There they were held for over an hour while the cows wandered about
looking for their lost progeny.  A cow knows her calf by scent and
sound, not by sight.  Therefore the noise was deafening, and the motion
incessant.

Finally the last and most foolish cow found the last and most foolish
calf.  We turned the herd loose to hunt water and grass at its own
pleasure, and went slowly back to chuck.



[3] For the benefit of the squeamish it might be well to note that the
fragments of the ears were cartilaginous, and therefore not bloody.




CHAPTER NINE

THE OLD TIMER

About a week later, in the course of the round-up, we reached the
valley of the Box Springs, where we camped for some days at the
dilapidated and abandoned adobe structure that had once been a ranch
house of some importance.

Just at dusk one afternoon we finished cutting the herd which our
morning's drive had collected. The stray-herd, with its new additions
from the day's work, we pushed rapidly into one big stock corral.  The
cows and unbranded calves we urged into another.  Fifty head of beef
steers found asylum from dust, heat, and racing to and fro, in the mile
square wire enclosure called the pasture.  All the remainder, for which
we had no further use we drove out of the flat into the brush and
toward the distant mountains.  Then we let them go as best pleased them.

By now the desert bad turned slate-coloured, and the brush was olive
green with evening.  The hard, uncompromising ranges, twenty miles to
eastward, had softened behind a wonderful veil of purple and pink,
vivid as the chiffon of a girl's gown.  To the south and southwest the
Chiricahuas and Dragoons were lost in thunderclouds which flashed and
rumbled.

We jogged homewards, our cutting ponies, tired with the quick, sharp
work, shuffling knee deep in a dusk that seemed to disengage itself and
rise upwards from the surface of the desert.  Everybody was hungry and
tired.  At the chuck wagon we threw  off our saddles and turned the
mounts into the remuda.  Some of the wisest of us, remembering the
thunderclouds, stacked our gear under the veranda roof of the old ranch
house.

Supper was ready.  We seized the tin battery, filled the plates with
the meat, bread, and canned corn, and squatted on our heels.  The food
was good, and we ate hugely in silence.  When we could hold no more we
lit pipes.  Then we had leisure to notice that the storm cloud was
mounting in a portentous silence to the zenith, quenching the brilliant
desert stars.

"Rolls" were scattered everywhere.  A roll includes a cowboy's bed and
all of his personal belongings.  When the outfit includes a bed-wagon,
the roll assumes bulky proportions.

As soon as we had come to a definite conclusion that it was going to
rain, we deserted the camp fire and went rustling for our blankets.  At
the end of ten minutes every bed was safe within the doors of the
abandoned adobe ranch house, each owner recumbent on the floor claim he
had pre-empted, and every man hoping fervently that he had guessed
right as to the location of leaks.

Ordinarily we had depended on the light of camp fires, so now
artificial illumination lacked.  Each man was indicated by the
alternately glowing and waning lozenge of his cigarette fire.
Occasionally someone struck a match, revealing for a moment high-lights
on bronzed countenances, and the silhouette of a shading hand.  Voices
spoke disembodied.  As the conversation developed, we gradually
recognised the membership of our own roomful.  I had forgotten to state
that the ranch house included four chambers.  Outside, the rain roared
with Arizona ferocity.  Inside, men congratulated themselves, or swore
as leaks developed and localised.

Naturally we talked first of stampedes.  Cows and bears are the two
great cattle-country topics.  Then we had a mouth-organ solo or two,
which naturally led on to songs.  My turn came.  I struck up the first
verse of a sailor chantey as possessing at least the interest of
novelty:

   Oh, once we were a-sailing, a-sailing were we,
     Blow high, blow low, what care we;
   And we were a-sailing to see what we could see,
     Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.

I had just gone so far when I was brought up short by a tremendous oath
behind me.  At the same instant a match flared.  I turned to face a
stranger holding the little light above his head, and peering with
fiery intentness over the group sprawled about the floor.

He was evidently just in from the storm.  His dripping hat lay at his
feet.  A shock of straight, close-clipped vigorous hair stood up grey
above his seamed forehead.  Bushy iron-grey eyebrows drawn close
together thatched a pair of burning, unquenchable eyes.  A square, deep
jaw, lightly stubbled with grey, was clamped so tight that the cheek
muscles above it stood out in knots and welts.

Then the match burned his thick, square fingers, and he dropped it into
the darkness that ascended to swallow it.

"Who was singing that song?" he cried harshly.  Nobody answered.

"Who was that singing?" he demanded again.

By this time I had recovered from my first astonishment.

"I was singing," said I.

Another match was instantly lit and thrust into my very face.  I
underwent the fierce scrutiny of an instant, then the taper was thrown
away half consumed.

"Where did you learn it?" the stranger asked in an altered voice.

"I don't remember," I replied; "it is a common enough deep-sea chantey."

A heavy pause fell.  Finally the stranger sighed.

"Quite like," he said; "I never heard but one man sing it."

"Who in hell are you?" someone demanded out of the darkness.

Before replying, the newcomer lit a third match, searching for a place
to sit down.  As he bent forward, his strong, harsh face once more came
clearly into view.

"He's Colorado Rogers," the Cattleman answered for him; "I know him."

"Well," insisted the first voice, "what in hell does Colorado Rogers
mean by bustin' in on our song fiesta that way?"

"Tell them, Rogers," advised the Cattleman, "tell them--just as you
told it down on the Gila ten years ago next month."

"What?" inquired Rogers.  "Who are you?"

"You don't know me," replied the Cattleman, "but I was with Buck
Johnson's outfit then.  Give us the yarn."

"Well," agreed Rogers, "pass over the 'makings' and I will."

He rolled and lit a cigarette, while I revelled in the memory of his
rich, great voice.  It was of the sort made to declaim against the sea
or the rush of rivers or, as here, the fall of waters and the
thunder--full, from the chest, with the caressing throat vibration that
gives colour to the most ordinary statements.  After ten words we sank
back oblivious of the storm, forgetful of the leaky roof and the dirty
floor, lost in the story told us by the Old Timer.




CHAPTER TEN

THE TEXAS RANGERS

I came from Texas, like the bulk of you punchers, but a good while
before the most of you were born.  That was forty-odd years ago--and
I've been on the Colorado River ever since.  That's why they call me
Colorado Rogers.  About a dozen of us came out together.  We had all
been Texas Rangers, but when the war broke out we were out of a job.
We none of us cared much for the Johnny Rebs, and still less for the
Yanks, so we struck overland for the West, with the idea of hitting the
California diggings.

Well, we got switched off one way and another.  When we got down to
about where Douglas is now, we found that the Mexican Government was
offering a bounty for Apache scalps.  That looked pretty good to us,
for Injin chasing was our job, so we started in to collect.  Did pretty
well, too, for about three months, and then the Injins began to get too
scarce, or too plenty in streaks.  Looked like our job was over with,
but some of the boys discovered that Mexicans, having straight black
hair, you couldn't tell one of their scalps from an Apache's.  After
that the bounty business picked up for a while.  It was too much for
me, though, and I quit the outfit and pushed on alone until I struck
the Colorado about where Yuma is now.

At that time the California immigrants by the southern route used to
cross just there, and these Yuma Injins had a monopoly on the ferry
business.  They were a peaceful, fine-looking lot, without a thing on
but a gee-string.  The women had belts with rawhide strings hanging to
the knees.  They put them on one over the other until they didn't feel
too decollotey.  It wasn't until the soldiers came that the officers'
wives got them to wear handkerchiefs over their breasts.  The system
was all right, though.  They wallowed around in the hot, clean sand,
like chickens, and kept healthy.  Since they took to wearing clothes
they've been petering out, and dying of dirt and assorted diseases.

They ran this ferry monopoly by means of boats made of tules, charged a
scand'lous low price, and everything was happy and lovely.  I ran on a
little bar and panned out some dust, so I camped a while, washing gold,
getting friendly with the Yumas, and talking horse and other things
with the immigrants.

About a month of this, and the Texas boys drifted in. Seems they sort
of overdid the scalp matter, and got found out.  When they saw me, they
stopped and went into camp.  They'd travelled a heap of desert, and
were getting sick of it.  For a while they tried gold washing, but I
had the only pocket--and that was about skinned.  One evening a fellow
named Walleye announced that he had been doing some figuring, and
wanted to make a speech.  We told him to fire ahead.

"Now look here," said he, "what's the use of going to California?  Why
not stay here?"

"What in hell would we do here?" someone asked.  "Collect Gila monsters
for their good looks?"

"Don't get gay," said Walleye.  "What's the matter with going into
business?  Here's a heap of people going through, and more coming every
day.  This ferry business could be made to pay big.  Them Injins
charges two bits a head.  That's a crime for the only way across.  And
how much do you suppose whisky'd be worth to drink after that desert?
And a man's so sick of himself by the time he gets this far that he'd
play chuck-a-luck, let alone faro or monte."

That kind of talk hit them where they lived, and Yuma was founded right
then and there.  They hadn't any whisky yet, but cards were plenty, and
the ferry monopoly was too easy.  Walleye served notice on the Injins
that a dollar a head went; and we all set to building a tule raft like
the others.  Then the wild bunch got uneasy, so they walked upstream
one morning and stole the Injins' boats.  The Injins came after them
innocent as babies, thinking the raft had gone adrift.  When they got
into camp our men opened up and killed four of them as a kind of hint.
After that the ferry company didn't have any trouble.  The Yumas moved
up river a ways, where they've lived ever since.  They got the corpses
and buried them.  That is, they dug a trench for each one and laid
poles across it, with a funeral pyre on the poles.  Then they put the
body on top, and the women of the family cut their hair off and threw
it on.  After that they set fire to the outfit, and, when the poles bad
burned through, the whole business fell into the trench of its own
accord.  It was the neatest, automatic, self-cocking, double-action
sort of a funeral I ever saw.  There wasn't any ceremony--only crying.

The ferry business flourished at prices which were sometimes hard to
collect. But it was a case of pay or go back, and it was a tur'ble long
ways back.  We got us timbers and made a scow; built a baile and saloon
and houses out of adobe; and called her Yuma, after the Injins that had
really started her.  We got our supplies through the Gulf of
California, where sailing boats worked up the river.  People began to
come in for one reason or another, and first thing we knew we had a
store and all sorts of trimmings.  In fact we was a real live town.




CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SAILOR WITH ONE HAND

At this moment the heavy beat of the storm on the roof ceased with
miraculous suddenness, leaving the outside world empty of sound save
for the DRIP, DRIP, DRIP of eaves.  Nobody ventured to fill in the
pause that followed the stranger's last words, so in a moment he
continued his narrative.


We had every sort of people with us off and on, and, as I was lookout
at a popular game, I saw them all.  One evening I was on my way home
about two o'clock of a moonlit night, when on the edge of the shadow I
stumbled over a body lying part across the footway.  At the same
instant I heard the rip of steel through cloth and felt a sharp stab in
my left leg.  For a minute I thought some drunk had used his knife on
me, and I mighty near derringered him as he lay.  But somehow I didn't,
and looking closer, I saw the man was unconscious.  Then I scouted to
see what had cut me, and found that the fellow had lost a hand.  In
place of it he wore a sharp steel hook.  This I had tangled up with and
gotten well pricked.

I dragged him out into the light.  He was a slim-built young fellow,
with straight black hair, long and lank and oily, a lean face, and big
hooked nose.  He had on only a thin shirt, a pair of rough wool pants,
and the rawhide home-made zapatos the Mexicans wore then instead of
boots.  Across his forehead ran a long gash, cutting his left eyebrow
square in two.

There was no doubt of his being alive, for he was breathing hard, like
a man does when he gets hit over the head.  It didn't sound good.  When
a man breathes that way he's mostly all gone.

Well, it was really none of my business, as you might say.  Men got
batted over the head often enough in those days.  But for some reason I
picked him up and carried him to my 'dobe shack, and laid him out, and
washed his cut with sour wine.  That brought him to.  Sour wine is fine
to put a wound in shape to heal, but it's no soothing syrup.  He sat up
as though he'd been touched with a hot poker, stared around wild-eyed,
and cut loose with that song you were singing.  Only it wasn't that
verse.  It was another one further along, that went like this:

  Their coffin was their ship, and their grave it was the sea,
    Blow high, blow low, what care we;
  And the quarter that we gave them was to sink them in the sea,
    Down on the coast of the High Barbaree.

It fair made my hair rise to hear him, with the big, still, solemn
desert outside, and the quiet moonlight, and the shadows, and him
sitting up straight and gaunt, his eyes blazing each side his big eagle
nose, and his snaky hair hanging over the raw cut across his head.
However, I made out to get him bandaged up and in shape; and pretty
soon he sort of went to sleep.

Well, he was clean out of his head for nigh two weeks.  Most of the
time he lay flat on his back staring at the pole roof, his eyes burning
and looking like they saw each one something a different distance off,
the way crazy eyes do.  That was when he was best.  Then again he'd
sing that Barbaree song until I'd go out and look at the old Colorado
flowing by just to be sure I hadn't died and gone below.  Or else he'd
just talk.  That was the worst performance of all.  It was like
listening to one end of a telephone, though we didn't know what
telephones were in those days.  He began when he was a kid, and he gave
his side of conversations, pausing for replies.  I could mighty near
furnish the replies sometimes.  It was queer lingo--about ships and
ships' officers and gales and calms and fights and pearls and whales
and islands and birds and skies.  But it was all little stuff.  I used
to listen by the hour, but I never made out anything really important
as to who the man was, or where he'd come from, or what he'd done.

At the end of the second week I came in at noon as per usual to fix him
up with grub.  I didn't pay any attention to him, for he was quiet.  As
I was bending over the fire he spoke.  Usually I didn't bother with his
talk, for it didn't mean anything, but something in his voice made me
turn.  He was lying on his side, those black eyes of his blazing at me,
but now both of them saw the same distance.

"Where are my clothes?" he asked, very intense.

"You ain't in any shape to want clothes," said I.  "Lie still."

I hadn't any more than got the words out of my mouth before he was atop
me.  His method was a winner.  He had me by the throat with his hand,
and I felt the point of the hook pricking the back of my neck. One
little squeeze--Talk about your deadly weapons!

But he'd been too sick and too long abed.  He turned dizzy and keeled
over, and I dumped him back on the bunk.  Then I put my six-shooter on.

In a minute or so he came to.

"Now you're a nice, sweet proposition," said I, as soon as I was sure
he could understand me.  "Here I pick you up on the street and save
your worthless carcass, and the first chance you get you try to crawl
my hump.  Explain."

"Where's my clothes?" he demanded again, very fierce.

"For heaven's sake," I yelled at him, "what's the matter with you and
your old clothes?  There ain't enough of them to dust a fiddle with
anyway.  What do you think I'd want with them?  They're safe enough."'

"Let me have them," he begged.

"Now, look here," said I, "you can't get up to-day.  You ain't fit."

"I know," he pleaded, "but let me see them."

Just to satisfy him I passed over his old duds.

"I've been robbed," he cried.

"Well," said I, "what did you expect would happen to you lying around
Yuma after midnight with a hole in your head?"

"Where's my coat?" he asked.

"You had no coat when I picked you up," I replied.

He looked at me mighty suspicious, but didn't say anything more--he
wouldn't even answer when I spoke to him.  After he'd eaten a fair meal
he fell asleep.  When I came back that evening the bunk was empty and
he was gone.

I didn't see him again for two days.  Then I caught sight of him quite
a ways off.  He nodded at me very sour, and dodged around the corner of
the store.

"Guess he suspicions I stole that old coat of his," thinks I; and
afterwards I found that my surmise had been correct.

However, he didn't stay long in that frame of mind.  It was along
towards evening, and I was walking on the banks looking down over the
muddy old Colorado, as I always liked to do.  The sun had just set, and
the mountains had turned hard and stiff, as they do after the glow, and
the sky above them was a thousand million miles deep of pale green-gold
light.  A pair of Greasers were ahead of me, but I could see only their
outlines, and they didn't seem to interfere any with the scenery.
Suddenly a black figure seemed to rise up out of the ground; the
Mexican man went down as though he'd been jerked with a string, and the
woman screeched.

I ran up, pulling my gun.  The Mex was flat on his face, his arms
stretched out.  On the middle of his back knelt my one-armed friend.
And that sharp hook was caught neatly under the point of the Mexican's
jaw.  You bet he lay still.

I really think I was just in time to save the man's life.  According to
my belief another minute would have buried the hook in the Mexican's
neck.  Anyway, I thrust the muzzle of my Colt's into the sailor's face.

"What's this?" I asked.

The sailor looked up at me without changing his position.  He was not
the least bit afraid.

"This man has my coat," he explained.

"Where'd you get the coat?" I asked the Mex.

"I ween heem at monte off Antonio Curvez," said he.

"Maybe," growled the sailor.

He still held the hook under the man's jaw, but with the other hand he
ran rapidly under and over the Mexican's left shoulder.  In the half
light I could see his face change.  The gleam died from his eye; the
snarl left his lips.  Without further delay he arose to his feet.

"Get up and give it here!" he demanded.

The Mexican was only too glad to get off so easy.  I don't know whether
he'd really won the coat at monte or not.  In any case, he flew poco
pronto, leaving me and my friend together.

The man with the hook felt the left shoulder of the coat again, looked
up, met my eye, muttered something intended to be pleasant, and walked
away.

This was in December.

During the next two months he was a good deal about town, mostly doing
odd jobs.  I saw him off and on.  He always spoke to me as pleasantly
as he knew how, and once made some sort of a bluff about paying me back
for my trouble in bringing him around.  However, I didn't pay much
attention to that, being at the time almighty busy holding down my card
games.

The last day of February I was sitting in my shack smoking a pipe after
supper, when my one-armed friend opened the door a foot, slipped in,
and shut it immediately.  By the time he looked towards me I knew where
my six-shooter was.

"That's all right," said I, "but you better stay right there."

I intended to take no more chances with that hook.

He stood there looking straight at me without winking or offering to
move.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"I want to make up to you for your trouble," said he.  "I've got a good
thing, and I want to let you in on it."

"What kind of a good thing?" I asked.

"Treasure," said he.

"H'm," said I.

I examined him closely.  He looked all right enough, neither drunk nor
loco.

"Sit down," said I--"over there; the other side the table."  He did so.
"Now, fire away," said I.

He told me his name was Solomon Anderson, but that he was generally
known as Handy Solomon, on account of his hook; that he had always
followed the sea; that lately he had coasted the west shores of Mexico;
that at Guaymas he had fallen in with Spanish friends, in company with
whom he had visited the mines in the Sierra Madre; that on this
expedition the party had been attacked by Yaquis and wiped out, he
alone surviving; that his blanket-mate before expiring had told him of
gold buried in a cove of Lower California by the man's grandfather;
that the man had given him a chart showing the location of the
treasure; that he had sewn this chart in the shoulder of his coat,
whence his suspicion of me and his being so loco about getting it back.

"And it's a big thing," said Handy Solomon to me, "for they's not only
gold, but altar jewels and diamonds.  It will make us rich, and a dozen
like us, and you can kiss the Book on that."

"That may all be true," said I, "but why do you tell me?  Why don't you
get your treasure without the need of dividing it?"

"Why, mate," he answered, "it's just plain gratitude.  Didn't you save
my life, and nuss me, and take care of me when I was nigh killed?"

"Look here, Anderson, or Handy Solomon, or whatever you please to call
yourself," I rejoined to this, "if you're going to do business with
me--and I do not understand yet just what it is you want of me--you'll
have to talk straight.  It's all very well to say gratitude, but that
don't go with me.  You've been around here three months, and barring a
half-dozen civil words and twice as many of the other kind, I've failed
to see any indications of your gratitude before.  It's a quality with a
hell of a hang-fire to it."

He looked at me sideways, spat, and looked at me sideways again.  Then
he burst into a laugh.

"The devil's a preacher, if you ain't lost your pinfeathers,"' said he.
"Well, it's this then:  I got to have a boat to get there; and she must
be stocked.  And I got to have help with the treasure, if it's like
this fellow said it was.  And the Yaquis and cannibals from Tiburon is
through the country.  It's money I got to have, and it's money I
haven't got, and can't get unless I let somebody in as pardner."

"Why me?" I asked.

"Why not?" he retorted. "I ain't see anybody I like better."

We talked the matter over at length.  I had to force him to each point,
for suspicion was strong in him.  I stood out for a larger party.  He
strongly opposed this as depreciating the shares, but I had no
intention of going alone into what was then considered a wild and
dangerous country.  Finally we compromised.  A third of the treasure
was to go to him, a third to me, and the rest was to be divided among
the men whom I should select.  This scheme did not appeal to him.

"How do I know you plays fair?" he complained.  "They'll be four of you
to one of me; and I don't like it, and you can kiss the Book on that."

"If you don't like it, leave it," said I, "and get out, and be damned
to you."

Finally he agreed; but he refused me a look at the chart, saying that
he had left it in a safe place.  I believe in reality he wanted to be
surer of me, and for that I can hardly blame him.




CHAPTER TWELVE

THE MURDER ON THE BEACH

At this moment the cook stuck his head in at the open door.

"Say, you fellows," he complained, "I got to be up at three o'clock.
Ain't you never going to turn in?"

"Shut up, Doctor!"  "Somebody kill him!"  "Here, sit down and listen to
this yarn!" yelled a savage chorus.

There ensued a slight scuffle, a few objections.  Then silence, and the
stranger took up his story.


I had a chum named Billy Simpson, and I rung him in for friendship.
Then there was a solemn, tall Texas young fellow, strong as a bull,
straight and tough, brought up fighting Injins.  He never said much,
but I knew he'd be right there when the gong struck.  For fourth man I
picked out a German named Schwartz.  He and Simpson had just come back
from the mines together.  I took him because he was a friend of
Billy's, and besides was young and strong, and was the only man in town
excepting the sailor, Anderson, who knew anything about running a boat.
I forgot to say that the Texas fellow was named Denton.

Handy Solomon had his boat all picked out.  It belonged to some Basques
who had sailed her around from California.  I must say when I saw her I
felt inclined to renig, for she wasn't more'n about twenty-five feet
long, was open except for a little sort of cubbyhole up in the front of
her, had one mast, and was pointed at both ends.  However, Schwartz
said she was all right.  He claimed he knew the kind; that she was the
sort used by French fishermen, and could stand all sorts of trouble.
She didn't look it.

We worked her up to Yuma, partly with oars and partly by sails.  Then
we loaded her with grub for a month.  Each of us had his own weapons,
of course.  In addition we put in picks and shovels, and a small cask
of water.  Handy Solomon said that would be enough, as there was water
marked down on his chart.  We told the gang that we were going trading.

At the end of the week we started, and were out four days.  There
wasn't much room, what with the supplies and the baggage, for the five
of us.  We had to curl up 'most anywheres to sleep.  And it certainly
seemed to me that we were in lots of danger.  The waves were much
bigger than she was, and splashed on us considerable, but Schwartz and
Anderson didn't seem to mind.  They laughed at us.  Anderson sang that
song of his, and Schwartz told us of the placers he had worked.  He and
Simpson had made a pretty good clean-up, just enough to make them want
to get rich.  The first day out Simpson showed us a belt with about an
hundred ounces of dust.  This he got tired of wearing, so he kept it in
a compass-box, which was empty.

At the end of the four days we turned in at a deep bay and came to
anchor.  The country was the usual proposition--very light-brown,
brittle-looking mountains, about two thousand feet high; lots of sage
and cactus, a pebbly beach, and not a sign of anything fresh and green.

But Denton and I were mighty glad to see any sort of land.  Besides,
our keg of water was pretty low, and it was getting about time to
discover the spring the chart spoke of.  So we piled our camp stuff in
the small boat and rowed ashore.

Anderson led the way confidently enough up a dry arroyo, whose sides
were clay and conglomerate.  But, though we followed it to the end, we
could find no indications that it was anything more than a wash for
rain floods.

"That's main queer," muttered Anderson, and returned to the beach.

There he spread out the chart--the first look at it we'd had--and set
to studying it.

It was a careful piece of work done in India ink, pretty old, to judge
by the look of it, and with all sorts of pictures of mountains and
dolphins and ships and anchors around the edge.  There was our bay, all
right.  Two crosses were marked on the land part--one labelled "oro"
and the other "agua."

"Now there's the high cliff," says Anderson, following it out, "and
there's the round hill with the boulder--and if them bearings don't
point due for that ravine, the devil's a preacher."

We tried it again, with the same result.  A second inspection of the
map brought us no light on the question.  We talked it over, and looked
at it from all points, but we couldn't dodge the truth:  the chart was
wrong.

Then we explored several of the nearest gullies, but without finding
anything but loose stones baked hot in the sun.

By now it was getting towards sundown, so we built us a fire of
mesquite on the beach, made us supper, and boiled a pot of beans.

We talked it over.  The water was about gone.

"That's what we've got to find first," said Simpson, "no question of
it.  It's God knows how far to the next water, and we don't know how
long it will take us to get there in that little boat.  If we run our
water entirely out before we start, we're going to be in trouble.
We'll have a good look to-morrow, and if we don't find her, we'll run
down to Mollyhay[4] and get a few extra casks."

"Perhaps that map is wrong about the treasure, too," suggested Denton.

"I thought of that," said Handy Solomon, "but then, thinks I to myself,
this old rip probably don't make no long stay here--just dodges in and
out like, between tides, to bury his loot.  He would need no water at
the time; but he might when he came back, so he marked the water on his
map.  But he wasn't noways particular AND exact, being in a hurry.  But
you can kiss the Book to it that he didn't make no such mistakes about
the swag."

"I believe you're right," said I.

When we came to turn in, Anderson suggested that he should sleep aboard
the boat.  But Billy Simpson, in mind perhaps of the hundred ounces in
the compass-box, insisted that he'd just as soon as not.  After a
little objection Handy Solomon gave in, but I thought he seemed sour
about it.  We built a good fire, and in about ten seconds were asleep.

Now, usually I sleep like a log, and did this time until about
midnight.  Then all at once I came broad awake and sitting up in my
blankets.  Nothing had happened--I wasn't even dreaming--but there I
was as alert and clear as though it were broad noon.

By the light of the fire I saw Handy Solomon sitting, and at his side
our five rifles gathered.

I must have made some noise, for he turned quietly toward me, saw I was
awake, and nodded.  The moonlight was sparkling on the hard stony
landscape, and a thin dampness came out from the sea.

After a minute Anderson threw on another stick of wood, yawned, and
stood up.

"It's wet," said he; "I've been fixing the guns."

He showed me how he was inserting a little patch of felt between the
hammer and the nipple, a scheme of his own for keeping damp from the
powder.  Then he rolled up in his blanket.  At the time it all seemed
quite natural--I suppose my mind wasn't fully awake, for all my head
felt so clear.  Afterwards I realised what a ridiculous bluff he was
making: for of course the cap already on the nipple was plenty to keep
out the damp.  I fully believe he intended to kill us as we lay.  Only
my sudden awakening spoiled his plan.

I had absolutely no idea of this at the time, however.  Not the
slightest suspicion entered my head.  In view of that fact, I have
since believed in guardian angels.  For my next move, which at the time
seemed to me absolutely aimless, was to change my blankets from one
side of the fire to the other.  And that brought me alongside the five
rifles.

Owing to this fact, I am now convinced, we awoke safe at daylight,
cooked breakfast, and laid the plan for the day.  Anderson directed us.
I was to climb over the ridge before us and search in the ravine on the
other side.  Schwartz was to explore up the beach to the left, and
Denton to the right.  Anderson said he would wait for Billy Simpson,
who had overslept in the darkness of the cubbyhole, and who was now
paddling ashore.  The two of them would push inland to the west until a
high hill would give them a chance to look around for greenery.

We started at once, before the sun would be hot.  The hill I had to
climb was steep and covered with chollas, so I didn't get along very
fast.  When I was about half way to the top I heard a shot from the
beach.  I looked back.  Anderson was in the small boat, rowing rapidly
out to the vessel.  Denton was running up the beach from one direction
and Schwartz from the other.  I slid and slipped down the bluff,
getting pretty well stuck up with the cholla spines.

At the beach we found Billy Simpson lying on his ace, shot through the
back.  We turned him over, but he was apparently dead.  Anderson had
hoisted the sail, had cut loose from the anchor, and was sailing away.

Denton stood up straight and tall, looking.  Then he pulled his belt in
a hole, grabbed my arm, and started to run up the long curve of the
beach.  Behind us came Schwartz.  We ran near a mile, and then fell
among some tules in an inlet at the farther point.

"What is it?" I gasped.

"Our only chance--to get him--" said Denton.  "He's got to go around
this point--big wind--perhaps his mast will bust--then he'll come
ashore--" He opened and shut his big brown hands.

So there we two fools lay, like panthers in the tules, taking our only
one-in-a-million chance to lay hands on Anderson.  Any sailor could
have told us that the mast wouldn't break, but we had winded Schwartz a
quarter of a mile back.  And so we waited, our eyes fixed on the boat's
sail, grudging her every inch, just burning to fix things to suit us a
little better.  And naturally she made the point in what I now know was
only a fresh breeze, squared away, and dropped down before the wind
toward Guaymas.

We walked back slowly to our camp, swallowing the copper taste of too
hard a run.  Schwartz we picked up from a boulder, just recovering.  We
were all of us crazy mad.  Schwartz half wept, and blamed and cussed.
Denton glowered away in silence.  I ground my feet into the sand in a
help less sort of anger, not only at the man himself, but also at the
whole way things had turned out.  I don't believe the least notion of
our predicament had come to any of us.  All we knew yet was that we had
been done up, and we were hostile about it.

But at camp we found something to occupy us for the moment.  Poor Billy
was not dead, as we had supposed, but very weak and sick, and a hole
square through him.  When we returned he was conscious, but that was
about all.  His eyes were shut, and he was moaning.  I tore open his
shirt to stanch the blood.  He felt my hand and opened his eyes.  They
were glazed, and I don't think he saw me.

"Water, water!" he cried.

At that we others saw all at once where we stood.  I remember I rose to
my feet and found myself staring straight into Tom Denton's eyes.  We
looked at each other that way for I guess it was a full minute.  Then
Tom shook his head.

"Water, water!" begged poor Billy.

Tom leaned over him.

"My God, Billy, there ain't any water!" said he.



[4] Mulege--I retain the Old Timer's pronunciation.




CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BURIED TREASURE

The Old Timer's voice broke a little.  We had leisure to notice that
even the drip from the eaves ha

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