Title: The Untamed
Author: Pattullo, George
Language: English
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                              The Untamed

[Illustration: “_So much had three days with the wild linked up the
slack chain of her blood tie._”--_Shiela_]



                              The Untamed
                      Range Life in the Southwest

                                   By
                            George Pattullo

                             [Illustration]

                                Toronto
                             McLeod & Allen
                                  1911



      Copyright 1908, 1909, 1910 by THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
              Copyright 1910 by THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY
           Copyright 1911 by THE PHILLIPS PUBLISHING COMPANY
               Copyright 1911 by DESMOND FITZGERALD, INC.



                                   TO
                             FRANK B. MOSON
             and the boys of the O R, R O, and Turkey Track



                My coffee I boil without being ground.
                The fire I kindle with chips gathered round.
              My books are the brooks, my sermons the stones;
              My parson’s a wolf on pulpit of bones.
                The sky is my ceiling; my carpet’s the grass;
                My music’s the lowing of herds as they pass.
                --_Ballad of The Trail Boss._



    Acknowledgment is made to _The Saturday Evening Post_,
    _McClure’s Magazine_, and _The American Magazine_ for permission
    to republish these stories.



                                CONTENTS


                                                          PAGE
              I OL’ SAM              A mule                13

             II THE MARAUDER         A coyote              51

            III CORAZÓN              A roping horse        83

             IV THE OUTLAW           A steer              112

              V SHIELA               A wolfhound          142

             VI MOLLY                A range cow          173

            VII THE BABY AND THE     Mountain lion        202
                  PUMA

           VIII THE MANKILLER        A jack               230

             IX NEUTRIA              A mountain cowhorse  257



                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


            “So much had three days with the    _Frontispiece_
            wild linked up the slack chain of
            her blood tie”

                                                _Facing Page_
            “What you mean by running off this        48
            a-way?”

            “The wolf drove away a couple of          60
            buzzards and fell upon this
            savagely”

            “Leaping, with legs stiff, straight      100
            off the ground”

            “On his hind legs, his worn fangs        170
            gleaming, he received her”

            “The lonely hut was untenanted”          240



                                   I
                                OL’ SAM


“Git your nose out’n that pot. Hi, you flop-eared--I swan, that ol’ mule
makes me mad sometimes. He’d jist as leave snake your whole batch right
from under your nose as look at you. Git, you long-legged rascal!
Whoopee!”

The cook dashed at the offender, swinging a bit of firewood. It struck
the hybrid upon the hindquarter and he countered instantaneously by
lashing out with his heels. Then he turned to smell of the projectile,
but finding it unfit for consumption, trotted off up a neighboring rise
and presently disappeared from view.

Certain coarse men of the Lazy L outfit called him Hell-on-Wheels, among
other things, but his real name was Sam, and he made one of the
four-mule team that hauled the chuck-wagon during round-up. Between him
and Dave was a personal feud; they were most loving enemies. In the
beginning the cook had pampered him by feeding bread to the big
creature, taking no heed, and now this artificial appetite he had
created made of Dave’s waking hours a perpetual vigil and conjured up
nightmares in place of refreshing sleep.

For whenever Sam wasn’t doing the major share of hauling some four
thousand odd pounds of wagon, bedding and provisions from one round-up
ground to another, he was loafing on the confines of camp, awaiting a
favorable opportunity to go in surreptitiously and nose among the pots
or at the back of the wagon for the buns Dave made so cunningly. What
time he lost this way from grazing he made up easily by his pillage;
bread is very fattening, and then, of course, the chuck-wagon team
received regular rations of corn.

Yet Dave was a watchful scoundrel, and day by day it was being borne in
upon Sam that in these attempts at pilfering he received blows and abuse
more often than huns. But at night, when the punchers lay asleep on the
ground and he could hear the cook slumbering stertorously beneath the
wagon-fly, it was different: then Sam would wander into camp and make
his way on soundless feet to the dead fire. Beside its ashes he knew
there would be scraps of bread, perhaps some of them sweetened with
molasses, and for these his whole being craved. On one such excursion,
as he munched happily on a wet crust, he inadvertently put his foot into
Dave’s face, and, because Hell-on-Wheels weighed about thirteen hundred
pounds, the cook awoke very peevish.

“If it wasn’t,” he remarked next morning as he hitched up--“if it wasn’t
that you could haul more’n them other three put together, I’d skin you
alive. Oh, you needn’t go for to pretend you didn’t do it a-purpose. You
seen me there, all right. Look at that lip! Don’t it look as if I’d fell
off’n a mountain?”

The cook always knew what to expect of Sam. When putting the mules in
the wagon he was cognizant of the precise moment that Sam would kick,
and could judge to a hair’s breadth at what angle the smashing blow
would be delivered. On his part, Sam knew that the cook was prepared;
otherwise it is doubtful whether he would have let go some of the
vicious side-sweeps of his left leg that he did. On occasions when the
attacks were especially wicked, or when Dave calculated the margin of
safety with too fine nicety, he would possess himself of a stout club
and hammer Hell-on-Wheels until he was weak. In this way were bred
mutual respect and a thorough understanding.

It was when the wagon was miring down, or when they were climbing a
rocky trail in the mountains, that Sam and the cook gloried one in the
other. Once Dave’s judgment went wrong by three inches in fording a
stream--he may have been careless with a splendid contempt, as was his
habit--and one hind wheel sank oozily into quicksand. The cook stood up
and whirled his long whip and adjured his team by all that was holy to
pull, pull, pull.

“Now, you, Hell-on-Wheels! Good ol’ boy! You, Sam! You!”

He lashed three of the team with stinging force, but Sam he did not
touch. The great mule laid his shoulders into the collar and
heaved,--heaved again--and with a wrench and a sucking sound they
floundered out to hard sand, to safety. Whenever Sam came to a
realization that the job required something extra, and stretched himself
out accordingly, either the wagon followed where he wanted to go or the
mule went through his harness.

The wagon boss esteemed Sam and valued him at his worth, but it cannot
be said that he was fond of the beast. There was much in his personality
Uncle Henry did not like. Nor did the horse-wrangler. Had anybody
requested Maclovio for a frank opinion of Sam, the Mexican would have
spat with contempt and exhausted the resources of his patois. That
nerveless limb of the devil? Don’t try to tell him the mule stampeded
the staked horses by accident; Maclovio knew better; Sam had planned the
whole turmoil from the start of the round-up. The wrangler had to herd
the mules with the remuda, and the uncanny sagacity the drag-mule
displayed in following out his own plans of grazing and enjoyment filled
the Mexican with superstitious dread.

The ropers hated him with an active, abiding hatred they made no effort
to conceal. He was the only member of the wagon team that would not
submit to be caught without roping. The other mules would trot in with
the horses from pasture and walk quietly to the wagon to be bridled,
under the lure of grain; but not so with the big fellow. Sam never
crowded away among the horses in foolish panic when a roper walked
through the remuda toward him: that was the way the cow-ponies did,
struggling blindly to get beyond range, and so the noose fell about
their necks with ridiculous ease. That was not Sam’s method, he being
temperamentally opposed to panic. He waited until the roper approached,
waited until the coil sped toward him; and then only did he dodge. As a
result, he eluded the noose time after time. In fact, it always took
longer to rope Sam than any five of the hundred horses.

One day the hawk-eyed autocrat of the Lazy L range spurred into camp in
hot haste while the outfit was partaking of dinner. Heatedly he urged:
“Watch your horses Uncle Henry.” Then he went to the fire, filled a tin
plate with beef and beans, and a cup with coffee, and speared a bun.

“Shore. But what for special? They’re doing well and we ain’t lost one,”
replied the wagon boss, making room for his chief on the shady spot
where he squatted.

“Then you’re in luck. That band of mustangs has roamed down here from
the Flying W. They passed within two miles of the ranch yesterday and,
by Jupiter, if ol’ Pete didn’t join ’em. The ol’ fool! Eleven years that
horse has been a cowhorse and now he runs off from the home pasture with
a bunch of wild ones.”

“Where’re they heading?”

“You know as much as I do. I reckon the pasture is poor on the Flying W,
don’t you? They ain’t had much rain and probably this bunch’ll make for
the mountains. Better watch out,” the manager admonished.

Dave toiled with his team next afternoon through a waste of sand and
mesquite. It was very hot--had there been such a thing as a thermometer
on the wagon it would have registered better than 112--and he sat
hunched on the seat, occasionally throwing an encouraging word to the
straining mules. Behind came Al with the hoodlum wagon, which, being
much lighter, made easy work for a pair of stout horses, so that Al
dozed with his hat well down over his eyes and dreamed of a dress-maker
in Doghole. It was growing towards sunset and they would pitch camp in
the foothills and have supper ready for the boys before darkness fell.

Without warning the mule team stopped and stood at gaze, rousing Dave
abruptly. A dense cloud of dust was bearing down on them from the right
and out of that swirl came the muffled pounding of many hoofs.

“The remuda’s stompeded,” yelled Al.

“No, they ain’t. No, they ain’t. It’s them wild horses. Git your gun,
Al, quick!”

By the time Al had reached behind him with one hand to fumble for the
rifle, the band had swept by and was disappearing. Probably there were
thirty horses in it, but that was only a guess, because Dave obtained
nothing more than a glimpse of streaming manes and tails. They ran
compactly, a noble buckskin in the lead, and tailing the band was a
white horse; it was evident that he held the furious pace only by a
supreme effort.

“There goes ol’ Pete. Blast him, if he ain’t hitting only the high
spots,” Dave bawled.

At this moment his attention was called to Sam. The mule’s head was
thrown high, the usually slouching ears were rigid and pricked forward,
and he was sniffing the air restlessly. Once he made an abrupt lurch
sideways as though to follow the free rovers, but the bit sawed his
mouth, the collar and traces bound him and he could only champ
impatiently. If a mule really knows how to tremble, Sam was trembling
then--it was more a twitching of the muscles. The band was lost to sight
and sound. Dave called a raucous command and once more they settled to
work. Again Sam became listless and applied himself lethargically to
pulling.

A cool breeze whipped among the scrub-cedar of the foothills and went
whining down the valley. Above the black rim of El Toro rose a rich,
golden disc. Its pale light softened the outlines of the forms asleep
upon the ground; in that kindly radiance the chuck-wagon and the
unsightly confusion of camp merged into blurs that harmonized with the
giant shadow of the mountain. The night was full of murmurings, tense
with the suggestion of strange other worlds. Surely the plaintive
wailing the breeze bore to Sam from El Toro’s pines was a message.

He stood with his nose up wind and drew in the scents of the wilds. His
forelegs were hobbled, the rope twisted about them so tightly that he
could barely shuffle when he grazed, and near at hand twelve horses were
staked out. One of them, hopelessly entangled in his rope, was fighting
it in terror; already he was on his knees unable to do aught but cut
himself. In a draw a half-mile away the remuda cropped the grass under
the eyes of a triple guard, for Uncle Henry was mindful of the manager’s
warning, and upon Dave’s report he took no chances.

Out from the shadow cast by a mesquite bush a coyote skulked, and Sam
snorted and shook his head in anger. The beast’s scent offended him, but
he was not afraid. Somewhere in the dark a wildcat cried and the mule
cocked his ears to listen. Next moment he jumped awkwardly aside as a
polecat scurried by on a hunt for food.

The mule was growing restive. It was not nervousness--a mule is rarely
nervous or frightened. When he runs away or pitches or balks, it is
seldom because something has put fear into him; it is refined
cussedness. Anyone who ever succeeded in owning a mule longer than a
month will tell you that.

Of a sudden Sam sank his head and his powerful teeth met and rasped on
the rope that chafed his legs. One of the strands parted and he strained
to break the hobble, but too impatient to direct his gnawing to one
spot, he was unsuccessful and finally desisted.

Was that the call of a horse? It did not come from the direction in
which the remuda had been driven off, and his ears tingled for a
repetition of the sound. Twice he humped himself and struck out with his
heels in the fury of impotence, and paused breathlessly with his eyes
fixed on the yellow ball above El Toro’s summit. He took one step
forward and became immovable as his glance fell to the wide lane of
light it cast.

Down this silver-shimmering path a horse came proudly. None but a free
rover ever trod earth as he did. Sam could see the fiery eyes flashing
suspicion, the regal head thrown back, the nostrils a-quiver to divine
danger. He came like a phantom, lightly as one, silently as one, and a
dozen yards away he halted, and there in the light of the moon surveyed
the camp, the staked mounts, the sleeping men. It was the king of the
wild horses. Far back of him a blotch on a hillside shifted with gleam
of color.

A madness was come upon Sam. From out the night countless voices called
to him appealingly; away out there in the illusive sheen must be liberty
and delight. His sluggish blood was racing wildly, his body and limbs
were a-quake with eagerness to respond to that appeal, to be gone into
that alluring gloom. One of the staked animals whinnied and tugged
fiercely on his rope.

At once the buckskin stallion blared a challenge, and he was away. The
shadows swallowed him up. From over the hill came a rolling thunder, the
noise of scores of flying hoofs, and Sam got the hobble between his
teeth a second time, gave one ferocious upward rend, and the strands
parted and dropped from him. He was free, and the wilderness was
calling, calling.

“Ol’ Hell-on-Wheels has done gone,” observed Dave.

“Done gone?” the wagon boss echoed. “Gone where? He must be round
somewheres. He cain’t git through the day without bread, Sam cain’t.”

“He done run off with them mustangs!” In Dave’s tone was depressed
conviction. “You hearn ’em last night the same as me. Nobody seen him
go, but look here. I jist found his hobble all bit in two.”

“And we’ve got to move camp this morning,” the wagon boss raved.

“P’raps he’ll come back. I shouldn’t think they’d want Sam with ’em,
Uncle Henery. He’d smash ’em all up, that bunch, he would!”

“He shore would.” Uncle Henry could not suppress a snigger of
satisfaction.

He dispatched two of the boys to scour the country for the fugitive, and
Dave hitched a two-mule team, falling a prey to melancholy as he moved
about them in absolute security. How he missed that ol’ son-of-a-gun
with his sly nibbles and his kicking and sublime obstinacy. These
creatures pull? The cook grew hot with disdain and had two men told off
to help haul the wagon with ropes in bad spots. In the days that
followed he would often stop in his work and wonder what sense there was
in going through life, anyway.

Meanwhile, Sam flourished like unto the green bay tree. When the band
sped away into the hills the night of his temptation and fall, the mule
summoned up unguessed reserves of speed and trailed behind. The
tumultuous joy of liberty fired him; his muscles responded to this new
throbbing life like steel springs, so that Sam not only caught up with
the mustangs, but ran well within himself in holding with them. The
renegade Pete galloped in rear and, knowing Sam these many years,
nickered him breathless welcome.

A recruit to the ranks was not a novelty, and though Sam was a mule,
they accepted him readily enough, and for several days they roamed the
cañons of El Toro. Rains had been frequent in this region and they
obtained their fill of grass. As is the way of horses, the band paid
scant attention to the mule; he grazed with them, and when any alarm or
mere exuberance of spirits prompted a run, he could show his heels to
all but the buckskin leader and a bay mare which seemed to carry wings
on her feet.

And on the fifth day occasion arose for him to prove his prowess. In the
band were a dozen mares, seven colts of various ages and fifteen horses,
all under the leadership of the buckskin. Now, Sam was a mule of
considerable common-sense; he never disputed the sovereignty of the
stallion, but at the same time he was fully sensible of his own strength
and fighting ability, having had occasion to test the same frequently,
and he had not the remotest intention of allowing any horse on the range
or other quadruped, to take undue liberties.

As they came up from watering at a mountain spring at high noon, the
mustangs were compelled to thread a narrow defile, and much crowding
resulted. A colt ricochetted from the mule and lost his feet, whereupon
the mother made at Sam with her teeth. This attack he ignored
dexterously by bursting through the press and imposing the bodies of
several horses between him and the indignant mare; but when a youthful
black took it into his head that Sam was a recreant and could be bullied
with impunity, various things happened. By now, they were out in the
open. Trumpeting defiance, the black ran at him.

The combat did not last three minutes. It is probable that the mule
would have killed his assailant when he lay prone after the third
onslaught, had not the leader trotted up in royal wrath to quell the
disorder in his following. Should he go for him too, and reduce him to
pulp? Sam’s eyes were glittering evilly, and the mulish, enduring rage
was alive, but his habitual discretion cooled the impulse and he gave
ground, his ears laid back, his retreat reluctant. The stallion wisely
let him go.

Soon he attained to a species of leadership, a vice-royalty under the
reigning buckskin. For one thing, his caution was tempered by almost
human powers of discrimination; for another, he was never subject to the
nervous tremors to which even the stallion fell victim and which were
the inspiration of many stampedes. Sam could sense peril as far as any
and was dubious, in a calm way, of everything he saw until he had
investigated; but sudden noises, or a strange scent brought abruptly to
his nostrils, did not send him flying over the country, shrilling
warnings. He made reasonably sure of the possibility of danger before
giving the alarm. Of his old masters, he was peculiarly wary, and twice
at night, when they passed within a mile of the round-up camp, the
mule’s nose acquainted him of its proximity, and he led them far to the
west.

When the outfit had almost completed the round-up, Sam wandered off from
the band on a morning’s jaunt and came unexpectedly upon the remuda in a
draw. The wrangler espied that unmistakable gait from afar and spurred
desperately to catch him, but the mule was fleet as a greyhound and
could not be headed. Two of the horses followed the fallen one. They
knew Sam and respected him, and what was good enough for him would suit
them admirably. Maclovio did not see their departure; madly scurrying
from point to point to herd the restless horses, he failed to perceive
the flight toward the gap, and it was only when the roping began after
dinner that the loss was discovered. The Mexican prayed inwardly that
Sam would break a leg and die by inches; if he would only break his
neck, he would buy a dozen candles for the altar at Tucalari.

Old Pete McVey, the manager, sat on the stoop of the bunkhouse at
headquarters and made a solemn vow to the skies.

“I’ll hunt down every last one of that bunch and hang Sam’s hide to the
saddle-shed. We’ve had two breakdowns with the wagon since he left--that
ol’ mule we got from Doghole ain’t no good, Mit--and now two horses have
run off.”

“I done told Uncle Henery and Dave that I felt shore it was Sam or some
of them mustangs that stompeded those steers last week.”

“When I get him, the ol’ fool!” burst out the manager.

He organized a hunt, and with three men and four staghounds set out
cheerily to wipe the wild horses from the face of the earth. The band
winded them two miles away and carried the hunt to another range, but at
last they crept within striking distance, and the chase was on.

Sam knew the dogs and had seen them run in sport about headquarters.
Therefore, he let himself out and led the band beside the buckskin
stallion, and for mile after mile they raced. A laggard was pulled down,
the ancient sinner Pete--a hound leaped for his nose and Pete turned a
somersault. McVey himself shot the injured animal, and they camped in
the neighborhood and took up the pursuit next morning.

It was a famous hunt. The dogs brought down four animals, and the Lazy L
men, tiring in the chase, fired after the fugitives, killing three; but
Sam remained ever in the van, unhurt. McVey led his men back, satisfied
that the mustangs would seek new haunts, swearing vengefully at Sam and
rejoicing in his heart that the giant mule had won to safety.

The band wintered in the mountains, and more than once during those
terrible months the emaciated Hell-on-Wheels had to paw down through
three inches of snow to get at the grass, and he obtained little more
than enough to sustain life. Several of the colts succumbed to a
three-days’ storm, and when spring was ushered in, with a soft wind that
whispered tender promises to a stricken land, at least a dozen of the
horses and mares were sickly. As for Sam, he was only hungry. A mule
seems immune from disease, and hunger and thirst cannot wreak the havoc
on his iron constitution that they create among the more sensitive
horses. The mustangs ranged widely in a quest for good pasture and at
last worked down to the Lazy L.

Dave had put in the cold months in dispirited fashion, there being
little to do. He moped around headquarters, and whenever the wagon boss
ventured to consult him on preparations for the spring round-up, the
cook maintained a glum silence. It would be a bad year, he was sure of
that; they needn’t expect much of the calf crop. Far be it from him to
discourage any man, least of all McVey and Uncle Henery, but he felt in
his bones that ill luck would attend them. What could be expected of a
wagon team that would let him mire down in Coyote Creek? The round-up
would be a farce.

“Them mustangs is back,” Reb announced, riding in from a winter camp. “I
seen ’em topping a mesa over near Lone Pine Spring.”

“I’ll give twenty dollars a head for ’em,” declared the manager, slowly
removing the pipe from his lips.

Nearly a score of punchers equipped themselves to earn the reward. Some
failed even to get trace of the band; others trailed them for days, but
never came in sight; Dick, Bob Saunders and Maclovio got within half a
mile and with relays of horses applied themselves to capture in a
scientific way. They would run those mustangs off their legs. In four
days they were back, with their mounts used up and McVey to welcome
them.

“That ol’ mule kin smell us a mile,” Dick reported. “He always gives the
alarm first. And run? Jim-in-ee, the way that rascal kin run!”

Dave listened and gloomed and finally took a great resolution. He might
just as well be honest with himself--the round-up would never be the
same without Sam. The cook had been a cowhand in his time and he hadn’t
trailed cattle up through the Panhandle for nothing. Therefore he would
not match his speed against the wild horses.

“Say, Mister McVey, I want to git a month off.”

“Where’re you going now? This isn’t another trip to Doghole?”

“I hoped you’d done forgot that,” Dave answered severely. “No, sir, I
want to go and git Hell-on-Wheels.”

“How could you catch him? I’ve tried; all the boys have tried. And you
haven’t ridden in ten years.”

“You let me try and you’ll see.” Dave tried to draw in his waist and
appear athletic as the manager ran his eye over his two hundred and
fourteen pounds.

“You couldn’t get that mule in a thousand years. Unless”--as an
afterthought--“you spread breadpans all over the range and set traps.”

“There’s where you’re wrong, Mister McVey, sir. I ain’t rode much since
I took to cookin’, but I’m pretty active. You gimme that month and
you’ll see.”

“Go ahead. I’d just as soon pay the reward to you as to anybody
else--sooner.”

Sam was the first of the band to sight the enemy trudging through the
sand of the plain toward them. Far behind a burro followed, led by
another man on foot. This truly was interesting. The mule advanced for a
closer inspection and the others awaited his verdict, having implicit
confidence in him as a sentinel. Thus it happened that Dave gained to
within three hundred yards before Sam flagged his tail and departed. The
horses massed swiftly into a compact body and followed, but they did not
run as they would have run from mounted men. Instinctively they knew
that this thing on two legs could not catch them, so it was at a
swinging trot that they breasted a hill.

On its crest the mustangs slowed down; they dropped to a walk and turned
to look back at what pursued. There plodded old Dave, apparently paying
them no special attention, but nevertheless coming in their direction.
Once more Sam waited until the cook came within shouting distance, then,
the buckskin raising the alarm, they cantered off.

So it went all the afternoon. Dave made no attempt to get close up with
them; he did not conceal his approach; he did not stalk them; and he was
especially cautious not to alarm to an extent that would send them
fleeing for miles. Instead, he was satisfied merely to keep them in
sight. Sometimes he paused to wipe the sweat from his face and neck, but
he betrayed no impatience. Far behind a burro followed, led by another
man on foot, and when the cook changed his course so did the burro,
still maintaining its distance.

Sam was sorely puzzled. That stout figure possessed a peculiar
attraction for him. When he had put a considerable tract between himself
and it, he could not forbear to stop and watch what it would do. Still
it came on--yet it was not threatening. The mule’s sense of danger was
lulled. And he was not the only perplexed member of the band: curiosity
had the stallion in its grip, too. There was not a horse among the free
rovers but would slacken gait to ascertain where the foolish pursuer
walked now.

By the time the sun died behind a fringe of hills, Sam and the others
were horribly thirsty. They swung around in a wide semicircle and struck
for a lake six miles distant. Dave followed. Hardly had they drunk half
their fill, standing waist-deep in the cooling water, when the expectant
mule warned them of the approach of that shadowing figure. They waded
out and made off reluctantly.

The cook arrived two minutes later and stretched out on his back on the
edge of the lake and thought with sweet sorrow of the days when he
weighed one hundred and sixty. Presently the man with the burro joined
him, and they took down their bedding, staked out the tireless
pack-animal, built a fire of dried broomweed, and ate.

“They won’t go far from here to-night. It jist happens there ain’t any
water nearer than twenty miles. No-oo, I reckon they’ll hang round
somewheres near,” Dave observed, rolling a cigarette.

He divined correctly. Sam and his companions discovered that they were
hungry, very hungry. While they did not realize it, they had eaten
little that afternoon, for no sooner would they shake off the pursuer
and fall to nibbling nervously at the dried grass than he would
reappear, persistent as their own shadows, and they would continue their
flight. Now he followed no more, and they must eat. Eat they did to some
extent, but a burning curiosity and a vague uneasiness had seized upon
them. They felt irresistibly attracted by the campfire that sparkled in
the darkness down by the water they craved; time after time they would
near it fearfully. Without turning his head Dave knew that dozens of
wondering eyes surveyed him from the outer rim of dark fifty yards away.

Before dawn the cook and his assistant had made fast the burro’s burden
with the “diamond hitch,” and hard upon the coming of light Dave started
out alone. In an hour he was in sight of the mustangs. Sam shook his
head in irritation and the band moved off slowly. Dave followed. Far
behind came a burro, led by a man on foot.

He camped at noon in a stretch of alkali, and because there was no water
near they partook sparingly of some the cook carried in tins slung over
the burro’s load. As for the beast, he must wait till nightfall, which
did not worry the burro in the least. Well Dave knew that the mustangs
must make for water.

A dozen times in a day the cook would be out of view of the fugitives
and a dozen times he would catch up with them, disturbing their
intermittent grazing. It is doubtful if he averaged more than twenty
miles in twenty-four hours; it is certain that the wild horses covered
nearly three times that distance in their outbursts of panic and their
doublings back on the pursuer. The chase led in a triangle that took in
all the water-holes within a radius of ninety miles, and almost always
Dave contrived to arrive before the band had got quite their fill.

Sam had lost at least a hundred pounds by the end of a week and was
become gaunt and savage. Several of the colts, only a few months old,
gave up the flight and their mothers forsook the band in safety, the
pursuers ignoring them. The others kept on. Sam’s contempt for the slow
crawling thing behind them was changing to a haunting dread, and he
became subject to petty fits of irritation. Why couldn’t the enemy come
on boldly? Why couldn’t he match his speed with theirs in one grand
rush? But no, there he was, patiently legging it through the sand,
through grass, over foothills, up mountain trails, through gorges, down
into valleys. A horrible fascination took possession of the mule. Had
Dave turned about to retrace his steps, it is probable that Sam would
have followed out of curiosity to see where he was going; but Dave still
came on.

About this time, too, they got a taste of real summer. From an empty sky
the sun smote the land, browning the hills, crisping the grass in the
valleys until it crackled into dust. First one mountain stream ceased to
run, then another; a creek that used to sweep down in a torrent after
the spring rains now dribbled among scorching boulders. Thus came about
the beginning of the end.

“They cain’t stand more’n another week of this, Charlie,” Dave remarked,
as they camped beside a hatful of water in the foothills.

“I reckon not. Did you notice some of them mares? They’s all in. You got
within fifty yards of ’em once to-day, Dave. The burro here has kep’ up
well. Ain’t you, you greedy devil? She’s looking fine. I’m giving her
corn.”

Never did the mustangs get enough to eat. Another sort of madness than
the madness for liberty was laying hold of Sam. His days consisted of
timid attempts at grazing, from which he would start at the lightest
sound; of enforced pilgrimages from one pasture to another; and it must
have been four hundred hours since he had had his fill of water. More
than once, in a frenzy of revolt, he put five miles between him and his
clinging disturber; but after two hours of uneasy nibbling he would be
interrupted once again--and again must move on. What food he got failed
to nourish as it should, and the rest he snatched was not rest. In the
night, when he might have lost his foe, the mule knew well that he was
near, for there in the blackness his fire sent up its sparks and it drew
him and his companions like a magnet. No matter where they roamed, the
cook managed to spend the dark hours near water, and the band could not
tear themselves from the vicinity.

There came a day when Sam’s ribs showed pitifully through his rough coat
and he shuffled along in desperate dejection, his ears flopping. A heavy
fatigue numbed his limbs, made cruel weights of them, and he was
thirsty, deliriously thirsty; but if his plight was bad, that of the
mustangs was worse. They stumbled coughing through the dust, too tired
to lift their feet. Occasionally one broke into a half-hearted trot
which survived only a few steps. The race was run.

Within six hours the band began to break up. First the mares and colts
dropped out, careless of what might befall. The mothers went weakly to
feeding on the burnt grass, their offspring hovering near in the last
stages of exhaustion; but to these Dave paid no attention. He was after
Hell-on-Wheels, and he did not intend to inject new life into the jaded
survivors by the slaughter of their beaten companions. By his orders
Charlie, too, ignored them, though his fingers itched as his mind dwelt
on the reward.

Four of the horses lagged, staggered forward a few paces and fell
behind, spent, swaying dizzily as they moved aside to let Dave pass.
They were oblivious to everything now, insensible to peril, scarcely
able to discern objects through their glazed eyes; but Sam and the
stallion and some few kept on. Dave followed.

Hot rebellion surged up in the mule more than once, sapping his last
ounce of spirit. Up would go his head in defiance and he would increase
his lead; but the strength was ebbing from the wonderful muscles of him;
he was sick at heart and wanted to lie down. Ahead, perhaps an hour’s
walk, he knew there was water. He must reach that. Would this thing that
hung to their rear never give them respite?

Dave trudged now only twenty yards back. He was footsore, a fearful
weariness was upon him and the heat was awful. Yet no thought of giving
up occurred to his mind; his patience was unfailing. Not once did he do
a hurried thing to alarm the quarry.

[Illustration: “_What you mean by running off this a-way?_”]

It was the twenty-fourth day. All around them stretched a desert of
alkali broken by patches of tree-cactus and clumps of bear-grass, and
through the white, chalky dust Sam toiled dispiritedly a dozen yards in
front of the stallion. Behind the faltering buckskin limped five
skeletons of horses, and ten yards behind the hindermost walked Dave.
There was no need that Charlie remain far in rear. The mustangs did not
notice him, and he followed close with the burro.

The rovers had drunk deep that morning at a spring on the edge of the
desert--this being as Dave would have it--and now all vigor of body and
spirit had departed. Sam’s head swung low to the ground, his knees were
shaking and he saw nothing of what he passed. To his bloodshot eyes
these scorched wastes were a wavering mist, and he knew only that he
must go on.

Suddenly, as though by telepathic agreement, the weird procession
halted. Sam turned. He faced the cook as he came up without hesitation,
rope in hand. Dave slipped the noose about his neck and rubbed the dusty
muzzle sunk against his hip.

“You ol’ fool, you!” he mouthed at him. “What you mean by running off
this a-way? Didn’t you know that team weren’t no good without you? What
did you reckon I was going to do, you pore ol’ son-of-a-gun?”

He ran his eye over the emaciated body; then his glance fell to his own
shrunken outline.

“I reckon we’re both some thinner, Sam. And my feet’s awful sore. What
you need is corn. Here, Charlie, gimme that ‘morale’!”

Staked out with the nosebag over his head, the mule munched dully on the
life-giving grain, while Dave prepared dinner and Charlie moved from
point to point on the plain with a rifle, earning half a month’s pay
every time he got near a horse. Charlie began to figure he would be a
rich cowman some day.

Two hours later the men were smoking in the peace and content of hard
work well done, when Sam walked stiffly to the end of his rope. By
straining on it he could just reach the edge of the campfire. Dave rose
up on his elbow.

“Hi, there! Git your nose out’n that pan, you rascal! I swan, he’s
hunting for bread.”



                                   II
                              THE MARAUDER


Six frowsy buzzards sat on a tree and made mock of his hunger. With his
bushy tail drooping dismally between his legs, he zigzagged his way up
the wide, dry bed of Red River, flitting from cover to cover like an
uneasy ghost. Up one steep bank he sidled, to squat on his haunches,
whence he surveyed the camp hungrily.

“There’s a big ol’ ki-yote,” said the hoodlum driver. “Git your gun,
Dave.”

The cook abandoned the washpan with alacrity and ransacked the
chuck-wagon for his weapon. When he rejoined Mac the coyote was still in
view, but he seemed farther away.

“He done moved. I cain’t hit him from here,” said the cook.

“I been watching him and he ain’t budged. Yes, he has, too. I’ll swan, I
never seen him do it.”

The prairie wolf now sat a good three hundred yards away, his back to
the camp, as though indifferent and contemptuous of it. Dave knelt on
one heel, took slow, careful aim, and fired. A spurt of sand five yards
short of the coyote was the result. The animal half turned his head, the
sensitive upper lip quivered and curled over the wicked fangs, for all
the world like a sneer, and then he resumed his placid scrutiny of
nothing. Mac forcibly removed the rifle from Dave’s grasp, deaf to his
picturesque explanation of the miss, adjusted the sight and lay down.

“You had it sighted for a hunderd yards,” he rebuked. “I put her up a
few notches.”

“Whee-ee-ee,” whined a snub-nosed leaden pellet. A spurt of sand five
yards beyond the coyote was the result. It aroused the animal to instant
activity. If he was not beyond range, then the wagon had a better gun
than he had ever met with, so he glided away like a shadow.

“There goes two dollars bounty,” sighed the cook regretfully. “That’s
just what I done lost to Jack, shootin’ craps last night.”

“Where’s that nester’s ol’ dog that was smelling round the pots this
morning?” Mac demanded. “There he goes now. Hi-yi, ol’ feller! Go git
him, boy! Go to him!”

A yellow mongrel, half shepherd and a mixture of other breeds, abandoned
his slinking tour of the camp and became at once a respectable, alert
dog, with a job. He sighted the fleeing coyote, and, giving tongue,
followed after.

“He won’t never catch him. Those lil’ ol’ ki-yotes kin outrun a streak
of lightning, and stop to sleep a-doing it,” said Mac.

It was evident that the pursuit did not worry the fugitive greatly. He
loped along easily, with the dog gaining at every frantic leap until a
scant yard separated them, when, still maintaining his careless gait,
the coyote veered to the south; and yet the distance between them did
not diminish. The dog was blowing and puffing throaty threats, while the
wolf watched him out of the corner of one eye. With a mad burst of speed
the cur gained a yard, whereupon something happened. Without appearing
to strain himself at all, the coyote simply disappeared from view over
the next rise. The dog had seen a pepper-and-salt, gray streak flash
over the crest, but that was all. He stopped in a dazed sort of way to
figure the matter out.

While he was figuring, a foxlike head poked itself over a clump of
bear-grass and the coyote yawned in his face. Once more the chase was
on, with redoubled fury.

This was an old game to Scartoe. He had raced all sorts of dogs, from
collie to fox terrier, and only once, when a greyhound ran him, had he
stood in danger. Greatly to his chagrin and alarm on that occasion, he
had been forced to switch the lithe pursuer unexpectedly into a
barb-wire division-fence, to save his hide. As he ran now he was
studying this loud-voiced antagonist of the yellow hair. Whatever he
saw, the result was wholly surprising. He increased his lead by ten
yards, then whirled about and sat down, at which the dog plowed up the
ground for five feet in a panic-stricken effort to put on the brakes,
and promptly changed his course. Still growling, he trotted away toward
a cactus far to the left, as though suddenly made aware of something
extremely interesting to be found there.

The coyote’s lip flickered, and he walked to the sandy sides of a
ravine. With a final look back from its top, he descended leisurely;
then, once in the creek bed, glided at top speed in an opposite
direction. He was bound homeward.

All of which goes to show the delicacy of coyote judgment and the depths
of his knowledge of human and canine nature. For there are dogs which
will close on a coyote and kill him at the first opportunity and with no
hesitation. Pluck does not run exclusively in breeds, and individual
dogs of all kinds have been known to go for the prairie thief at sight,
and even for the redoubtable lobo; but others there are which will shirk
a tussle with this scorned of the wolf tribe, this scavenger and outcast
of the wild. And a coyote, being lowest in the ranks of those obsessed
of fear, is the readiest to detect cowardice in others; moreover, he has
the cunning to profit by it.

Enjoyable as this little breather had been, it had not provided the meal
for which he was searching. Rather it had whetted the gnawing demand for
it and the prospect of obtaining anything seemed more remote than ever,
because he had builded some hopes on scraps from the camp. Scartoe eased
to a walk--not the brisk, firm patter of the dog, but a sneaking,
apologetic, tortuous gait, that was yet swift and wonderfully noiseless.

Prairie dogs there were none, though he scour the length and breadth of
six hundred square miles. Poison had done its work thoroughly and only
the empty holes remained, half grown over with grass and weeds, a
constant menace to horsemen. Of ground squirrel there were a few, and at
certain seasons the sage grouse furnished him succulent meals; but these
were trifles, after all, and it took infinite patience and stealth to
secure them.

Scartoe crept slantwise up a ridge and took a look around. The sun beat
down on a land it had desolated. Where creeks had been were now gorges
of baked clay; a long stretch of sage-grass was white with dust and
crackling; large fissures dumbly voiced the parched ground’s protests;
the bear-grass and cactus showed scrawny and dried; and above this
scorched land rose a canopy of jumbled white clouds, magnificent,
matchless. A score or two of lean cattle were browsing on the slopes,
nibbling the long, yellow bean pods from mesquite trees, but of other
signs of life there were none, save the scurrying green and blue and
golden-brown lizards, which darted from stone to stone at amazing speed.

And this had been the style of his hunting for weeks, so that he was
gaunt and desperate. Nothing in all the world in the shape of meat,
except creatures so large and strong he dare not attack. Nothing--his
restless eyes became riveted on a bush not fifty yards to his right.
Surely something had stirred there. His nose was thrust forward to give
his extraordinarily strong sense of smell a chance, and it told him what
his eyes were unable wholly to define. There was a calf behind that
bush.

His famished stomach drove him forward, while his natural cowardice
whispered caution. It was plain to him that the calf was very young.
Otherwise he would have wanted the assistance of a brother marauder.
Even now, however, those cattle grazing on the slopes haunted him, but a
fleeting glance over the immediate vicinity assured him the prey was
unguarded. So he stole forward. His advance was a miracle of furtive
effort, and such was the beast’s inherited cunning that, quite
unconsciously, he took advantage of spots where his color blended so
harmoniously with the rough ground that wolf and rock and shrub were
indistinguishable.

The gods of little calves must have been wide-awake that day; else what
could have prompted the youngster to stir and lift his head? He had
heard no sound; no scent had reached his nostrils. The coyote was too
old a hand at stalking for that. A pair of round, fear-distended eyes
were turned toward the terrible thing that shot through space straight
for his neck, and a plaintive bawl was cut short in the middle. That was
because the calf got into action--action quicker than any in his life of
three weeks. He lurched upward and departed, minus the left ear. The
beast snarled and turned to pursue, but a noise diverted him. Like a man
waking from a dream, the coyote caught, too late, the rush of hoofs. He
shrank aside, but not far enough. The mother’s horns caught him above
the shoulder and ripped him to the flank, tossing him five feet into the
air. When he came down he tarried not, but, bloody, torn and mad with
fear, sought the safety of his cañon retreat.

His wife and five babies were awaiting him. He had been out all night on
his prowl for food, and it was now three hours after sunup, the hour
when, ordinarily, he would be stretched out on a sunny knoll, taking a
nap in the content of a full stomach. A score of yards from the den his
nose told him that the family had fed, so he came trotting down the
rocky creek-bed, stiffly expectant. The tiny, furry, broad-headed pups
were snarling and tugging at the remnants of a meal and, hungry though
he was, he paused to watch them with a certain fatherly pride. Then, at
a growl from his mate, he slunk forth again on his quest. His wound
smarted, but did not cripple him, and hunger was a spur.

[Illustration: “_The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon
this savagely_”]

He found what his wife had said he would find, the remains of the offal
of a heifer which the outfit had killed the previous day for food.
Luckier in her search, the mother coyote had come upon the abandoned
camp late the previous night, though it was ten miles from home and she
disliked such distant hunting; and, having fed, she had carried a huge
strip of the entrails to her babies. The wolf drove away a couple of
buzzards and fell upon this savagely; and, having gorged, sat down to
lick his cut. In a few minutes he moved painfully on the back trail, for
his hurts were stiffening.

The family home was a simple affair, such as the original families of
human kind might have begun life with. Anything provided with an
olfactor could ascertain its propinquity at a distance of forty yards,
for it gave off the stinging, musty odor of the wolf tribe. There were
also numerous faint trails hard by, some of them blind trails, contrived
cunningly to draw the stupid hunter astray. The genuine paths led into a
broader, clearly-defined one which ended in a hole about two feet square
in the wall of an arroyo, and this entrance was concealed from the
casual observer by a scrub-cedar that clung to a precarious foothold and
subsisted on nothing. No water had come down this channel in generations
and they felt safe on that score.

The hallway of the home was little more than a yard long. It led into a
den whereto no light penetrated--a hollowed space perhaps two and a half
feet high, and large enough for the head of the house to turn around in.
There were also some ramifications to it, four smaller cells dug out in
the same fashion, and out of one of these another passage led upward. It
came out on top of the embankment, twenty feet away; for Scartoe was a
cautious rascal and had no intention of letting his domicile become a
trap. He desired it to be a haven and, therefore, he had selected a
residence with a back door, though most of his tribe contented
themselves with an entrance.

This caution was habitual with him and was the child of experience.
Experience had taught him some bitter lessons and had given him his
name. For, in the spring of the year when he reached his full height and
was filled with conceit of his strength, a famine threatened. The wolf
ranged far and got nothing. Hitherto suspicious of the haunts of men, he
overcame his fears at last and raided the ranch headquarters and came
away with a lusty young rooster. Next night he attempted to repeat this
feat, and while nosing the skeleton of a cow lying close to the home
pasture fence, something snapped over his foot. A numbing pain shot
through him. When he bounded high and backward to clear, he was jerked
to the ground.

Clasped like a vise about his toes was a steel trap, a mercilessly
powerful contraption of chains, weighted with two hundred pounds. It had
him, but fortunately his leg was not caught. In his frenzy of terror,
freedom was worth any sacrifice or pain. He sank his teeth into his own
flesh and gnawed his toes off, and holding the bleeding stump up in
front of him, fled on three legs. Not a sound did he make during his
agony. It was not pluck, but a stoicism begot of fear. Had he whined, a
charge of buckshot would have ended his days; for the cook dozed
fitfully behind a woodpile fifty yards away.

When the foot grew well he was a trifle short in the left foreleg; but
it made scarcely any difference in his gait. The only difference was in
the trail he made, and from that he was known as Scartoe.

The hurt the cow gave him healed with astonishing rapidity, for sunlight
and dry air are Nature’s magicians. While taking a siesta in front of
his den next afternoon and tenderly licking the ragged wound, he was
witness of a strange encounter. His pups were frisking about, tumbling
and growling and snapping in youthful enjoyment of life, while the
mother lay beside him, encouraging these evidences of prospective adult
ferocity.

At the foot of the knoll whereon they reposed, something rose, wavering,
with a fear-thrilling rattle, and the pups scattered. At the same moment
a sharp hiss answered this first challenge. With eyes glowing and ears
cocked, husband and wife waited for the battle between these enemies.

A dark green reptile with cream-colored bands, about forty inches in
length, was circling a rattler. The latter lay coiled, ready to strike,
his folds curling and uncurling in long ripples as his head turned to
follow the movements of his enemy. Fully six feet in length he was and
of a prodigious thickness; but fear had already entered the heart of
him. The king-snake sped around him with the speed of light; once,
twice, thrice the rattler launched a blow, but there was no foe there.
Then the malignant killer was on him.

A king-snake is immune from the rattler’s poison and wages constant
warfare on all reptiles. Such is the steel-wire strength of his coils
that the size of an adversary never daunts him for an instant. He will
tackle a snake twice his size and weight, and he will kill him, too. It
was all over in a few minutes. Round and round his victim he folded
himself; each second the pressure increased. There was some desperate
flaying of the ground as the combatants struggled, for the enemy of all
brute creation was fighting for his life. When he lay dead, the
king-snake let go and tried to swallow him. He did, in fact, get him
half down, but the practical difficulty in the way of surrounding an
object larger than one’s self triumphed over his appetite. So he gave up
the attempt and the reptile.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow.”

Scartoe stood on a butte, with his nose pointing to the moon, his tail
between his legs, and weirdly gave vent to his feelings in song. It
began with two short barks and trailed into a succession of piercing,
reverberating yelps, that melted into one another and rolled and echoed,
as by the ventriloquist’s art, until the night grew hideous with the
clamor. One would have sworn that a hundred coyotes held the hill, and
were indulging in some funereal close-harmony.

This was his evensong. It came welling from his throat in a flood, in
spite of him, and the coyote could no more control the impulse, the
inheritance of ages, than a man can choke back the hiccoughs. His
stomach would retch and his neck muscles work in the throes of it until
the song was released. Once again, in the course of twenty-four hours,
did the impulse seize him. Just before the sun crept over the edge of
the world his nose would be tilted toward the gray vault of heaven.

“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow!”

He desisted at last and, considerably uplifted, departed on his hunt for
food. A score of his fellows he met in his prowling, some hunting in
couples; but Scartoe was a family man and a lone marauder, and would
have none of them. In the half million acres composing the ranch were
fully four hundred of his brethren. This in spite of a once vigorous
warfare, in which poison and trap and gun and dog had been the weapons.
In the last three years the campaign against the coyotes had waned,
though each head would bring the taker a bounty at the county-seat and
another at headquarters.

It is not to be wondered at that the thieves became arrogant and
venturesome. They reveled in their depredations and pitted their keen
wits against man’s intelligence with increasing boldness. What if twenty
thousand of their brethren had been killed in the previous twelvemonth,
in the national forest preserves alone? Many times twenty thousand
survived in the cattle country; and official estimate gives it that each
coyote does damage to stock to the amount of one hundred dollars
annually. Scartoe must have passed, on the silent trails in his night
hunt, the destroyers of ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock in a year.

Once he paused in a patch of broomweed to send his doleful cry to the
stars. It gurgled from his throat like water from a bottle. He gave
tongue no more that night. From the mouth of a cañon, far to his right,
sounded a long-drawn howl, plaintive, threatening. Hardly had it ceased
than a piercing scream broke from a hackberry tree within a hundred
yards of where Scartoe crouched. Truly the lords of the wilds were
abroad to-night; but it was not the panther’s cry which drove Scartoe
from the trail. What he was giving right-of-way to was the lobo.

The coyote drew off a short distance and sank humbly to earth as a
loafer wolf came running out of the shadows. He was a huge fellow,
almost red along the back, gray as to his underbody, and he loped
purposefully, bent on slaughter. Scartoe sank lower and groveled. In
imagination he was fawning upon this mighty creature that inspired him
with dread and respect; for, though of the same race, they were far
apart as the poles. He knew the magnificent courage of the loafer and,
when the King hunted, to him belonged the trail.

He watched him go by, and once more wended his devious way across
country. A nice little scheme had hatched in his brain as he lay there,
born of a long-time feud. Forty turkeys, eighty chickens and nineteen
cocks were now to his credit; to the credit of the ranch-house cook
stood the toes of his left foreleg. One turkey-gobbler remained--that he
knew with accuracy, and Scartoe speculated pleasurably thereon.

Had he been a human being, he would have laughed as he slid under the
outer barb-wire fence at headquarters. Ten paces away he had scented the
handiwork of man. Sprinkle and smooth the sand as he might, set bait and
lay trap ever so cunningly, the cook could not foil that marvelous
instinct. There were but two holes by which Scartoe could enter the pen;
before he started he was well aware that a trap lay in each. Approaching
one, three feet from it, he scratched loose stones and earth behind him
in a shower on a spot which looked too smooth and inviting to his eye
and where his nose told him a man had fussed with his hands.

At last he was rewarded. A stick he rolled over touched the spring, and
the steel jaws leaped together with a clash. He proceeded to dig all
around the trap until it was wholly exposed, after which he gave a
disdainful sniff and jumped over it. Thirty seconds later he emerged
from the pen bearing a fine, fat gobbler, and away he went, careless of
the trail of feathers his dragging prey made.

“You-all kin see for yourself what he done,” cried the cook, gloriously
profane, next morning. “He knowed that was there all the time and simply
sprung it. Got that lil’ ol’ gobbler, too; last one I had.”

“Ki-yotes is shore smart,” the straw boss agreed. “Smart as humans, I
reckon.”

“Smart as humans?” the cook retorted contemptuously. “Why, ol’ Dick is a
human.”

“That’s so,” said the straw boss thoughtfully. “Well, they’s smarter,
then; smart as a good hoss.”

“That ol’ ki-yote and me’s been fighting for three years. I near had him
once; but he done chawed his foot off--they’s that treacherous. Only
last week I done set a rooster in that mesquite tree there, and put
traps all around. He had to step in one to git that bird. Know what he
done?” The cook’s voice rose to a howl. “I’ll eat my shirt if he didn’t
go off and git a friend, who sprung the trap and got caught. Yes, sir.
Then ol’ Scartoe, he done jump in and got the rooster.”

“Ever try poison?”

“Won’t touch it. He kin smell strych-nine farther’n he kin see. Ate some
once and near died, I reckon, for I seen the place where he was took
sick. Every trap I set, he just scratches stones or sticks on to it
until he springs the thing.”

The straw boss, riding to a division camp the next day, came upon
Scartoe trying to imitate a rock as he slept on the brow of a hill. The
rider had no gun, but got down his rope and rode toward the sleeper
carelessly, so as not to alarm him. The coyote let him approach within
thirty yards, then awoke to yawn; but he was wrong in his estimate of
the straw boss, because that worthy gentleman, hot with the memory of
the recent indignity, let out a whoop and gave chase. Before he could
warm up into anything like his usual form, a rope sped through the air
and encircled Scartoe’s neck.

Now, there are three rules to observe in roping coyotes. The first is
not to rope them, and the other two do not matter. A noose was nothing
new to Scartoe and he knew the parry. Before it could tighten and jerk
him into eternity, he took one slashing bite at it and the rope parted,
cut clean. Next moment the coyote had mingled with the scenery.

He was a serious-minded animal, yet he permitted himself some
diversions. When his wife found the remains of the beef, Scartoe
realized that there was a round-up in progress, which meant food in
plenty, and he took to following the outfit from camp to camp, singing
to them about nine o’clock every night and again before the dawn. They
showed their appreciation by taking pot shots at him with a .30-30; but
he bore a charmed life. He managed to pick up much good meat by this
association, too, for the outfit killed a heifer every other day and
left enough to feed half a dozen coyotes. Sometimes he had to scare away
foolish cows or steers, which, attracted by the smell of blood, would be
holding moaning wakes over the remains; and always he had to be on the
watch for the buzzards or they would forestall him.

Lightly footing it about camp one night, he startled a work-horse,
himself a night prowler, bent on stealing buns from the chuck-wagon
which he helped to haul during the day. A coyote would never attack a
horse, placing too much value on his life, but this beast was a young,
inexperienced creature and did not know that. With a snort of dismay, he
dashed off. Pleased with himself, Scartoe gave chase in pure sport,
precisely as a playful dog might have done. Twice around the camp they
ran, then through it, stampeding eleven staked horses and smashing the
guy-ropes of the fly, which fell on the cook, who never claimed to be a
Christian and had no fears of an after-life.

The punchers awoke, cursing volubly, and one of them, sleeping remote
from the others on the edge of camp, shied a boot at the wolf. He
stopped in his run, smelled of it, then bore it homeward. It would make
a fine plaything for the babies. The puncher rode twenty-seven miles to
headquarters next day, in his socks, to get a new pair of boots.

Four months passed thus pleasurably. Sometimes the family nearly
starved, at others the puppies sagged in the middle from overeating.
Always there were bones and odds and ends of hides old Scartoe had
hidden away to gnaw on in moments of leisure, but they made poor stays
to hunger.

When winter shut down on the land Scartoe got rid of wife and children.
He simply wandered off when the puppies grew big enough to care for
themselves; and he found another home in an isolated ravine. In the cold
nights that followed he took to consorting with other bachelors, roving
spirits all. Very often they hunted in bands. They were few in number,
because it is not coyote nature to run in packs, but this union gave
them strength and made them infinitely more dangerous. Two score times
they stalked and killed lonely, unprotected calves.

Later, they were so hard put to it for food that courage was born in
them. One night four surrounded an eight-months’-old steer one of them
would never have tackled singly, and slew him. It was Scartoe who
devised the plan that the three should run him by a bush, behind which
he crouched. It was Scartoe who leapt swiftly, unerringly, for the nose
and brought him down. And it was he who got the lion’s share of the
spoils.

Yet they were cowards for all that. A coyote is always a coward, even
when driven frantic by hunger.

With the storm kings holding sway, their foraging became less and less
fruitful. Several of his race departed for new hunting grounds, but
Scartoe stayed in his own domain and weathered the gales.

Twice had he to eat of his own kind. Toward break of a wintry day he and
one companion slunk homeward from an unsuccessful scout, their empty
stomachs crying aloud for flesh. They watched each other in suspicion,
for in each one the same desire was uppermost. Ahead of them, crossing
their trail, a wounded coyote dragged himself--spent, done almost to
death in a grapple with a nester’s dog. They fell upon and slew and ate
him. Later, a full month, or perhaps two, when the same companion grew
wasted and weak from hunger, and in all the forsaken country they could
not kill, when not even a field mouse rewarded long hours of hunting,
Scartoe ran at him and, with one shrewd stroke upward, slit his throat
and let out the life blood. He ate his fill and came once more into his
strength.

Only once during that time of stress did he pit his cunning against
man’s guile. That was when the snow was off the ground and a party of
visitors at the ranch-house hunted him with imported dogs. Scartoe made
the most glorious mess of his trail. He went back on it, crossed,
recrossed, waded up-stream, returned to the starting point, and employed
all the tricks his long years had taught him. Then he lay down behind a
dead prickly pear and watched the hunt; watched the chagrin of the men;
watched every movement of the dogs, nosing and worrying. Tiring of this
in half an hour, he went to his den and slept. They never untangled the
web of his weaving.

When spring came Scartoe was looking shabby. He was morose, too, and had
a longing for companionship. A week of fine weather improved him so that
he was almost the Scartoe of old; but the longing for companionship was
tenfold greater.

On a February morn he lifted up his voice to herald the dawn.

“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow.”

A joyous bark answered. It was not the call of his kind, yet it thrilled
him, for in it there was a note he knew. He stiffened and trembled with
expectation. A young collie came bounding toward him. She paused
doubtfully a dozen yards away and growled. Scartoe threw up his head,
thrust out his tail from its usual abject droop and went toward her
blithely. Then his hair bristled, his muscles tightened and he was ready
for combat.

Behind her came another coyote. He was big. Even the veteran, large as
he was, appeared small in comparison. Where the newcomer had picked up
the living that had given him such weight was a puzzle; but certain it
was he had ten pounds the better of it. Not a thought gave Scartoe to
that handicap.

The big wolf wasted no time in preliminaries. His strength and skill had
been tried in mêlées innumerable, and foes had been swept before him
like chaff. But Scartoe was a general. Like lightning he dodged the
swift rush; like lightning he ripped even as he swerved, tearing a piece
from his enemy’s neck. Coyotes will not grapple and cling with locked
jaws, as do the brave among dogs; they depend on the swift cutting
powers of their dexterous jaws. Three times they came together; three
times old Scartoe gashed his antagonist so that the blood spurted. Still
he could not quite reach the throat for the death stroke.

And then the end came. Too eager in his desire to finish the battle, he
left himself open for the merest flick of time, as he wheeled for a
fourth onslaught. With one hurtling, upward dive, the big brute gained
the jugular, and Scartoe was thrown back, his throat torn, the life
ebbing from him.

The collie frisked about the victor, playfully showing her teeth, and
they trotted away together.

An hour after sunup, the ranch-house cook, on a quest for his infant
son’s collie pet, came upon the torn, lifeless body.

“Jumping Jupiter!” he exclaimed, prayerfully. “It’s ol’ Scartoe.”



                                  III
                                CORAZÓN


                     A man is as good as his nerves
                                     --Cowboy maxim.

With manes streaming in the wind, a band of bronchos fled across the
grama flats, splashed through the San Pedro, and whirled sharply to the
right, heading for sanctuary in the Dragoons. In the lead raced a big
sorrel, his coat shimmering like polished gold where the sun touched it.

“That’s Corazón,” exclaimed Reb. “Head him or we’ll lose the bunch.”

The pursuers spread out and swept round in a wide semicircle. Corazón
held to his course, a dozen yards in advance of the others, his head
high. The chase slackened, died away. With a blaring neigh, the sorrel
eased his furious pace and the entire band came to a trot. Before them
were the mountains, and Corazón knew their fastnesses as the street
urchin knows the alleys that give him refuge; in the cañons the bronchos
would be safe from man. Behind was no sign of the enemy. His nose in the
wind, he sniffed long, but it bore him no taint. Instead, he nickered
with delight, for he smelled water. They swung to the south, and in less
than five minutes their hot muzzles were washed by the bubbling waters
of Eternity Spring.

Corazón drew in a long breath, expanding his well-ribbed sides, and
looked up from drinking. There in front of him, fifty paces away, was a
horseman. He snorted the alarm and they plunged into a tangle of
sagebrush. Another rider bore down and turned them back. To right and
left they darted, then wheeled and sought desperately to break through
the cordon at a weak spot, and failed. Wherever they turned, a cowboy
appeared as by magic. At last Corazón detected an unguarded area and
flew through it with the speed of light.

“Now we’ve got ’em,” howled Reb. “Don’t drive too close, but keep ’em
headed for the corral.”

Within a hundred yards of the gate, the sorrel halted, his ears cocked
in doubt. The cowboys closed in to force the band through. Three times
the bronchos broke and scattered, for to their wild instincts the fences
and that narrow aperture cried treachery and danger. They were gathered,
with whoops and many imprecations, and once more approached the
entrance.

“Drive the saddle bunch out,” commanded the range boss.

Forth came the remuda of a hundred horses. The bronchos shrilled
greeting and mingled with them, and when the cow-ponies trotted meekly
into the corral, Corazón and his band went too, though they shook and
were afraid.

For five years Corazón had roamed the range--ever since he had
discovered that grass was good to eat, and so had left the care of his
tender-eyed mother. Because he dreaded the master of created things and
fled him afar, only once during that time had he seen man at close
quarters. That was when, as a youngster, he was caught and branded on
the left hip. He had quickly forgotten that; until now it had ceased to
be even a memory.

But now he and his companion rovers were prisoners, cooped in a corral
by a contemptible trick. They crowded around and around the stout
enclosure, sometimes dropping to their knees in efforts to discover an
exit beneath the boards. And not twenty feet away, the dreaded axis of
their circlings, sat a man on a horse, and he studied them calmly. Other
men, astride the fence, were uncoiling ropes, and their manner was
placid and businesslike. One opined dispassionately that “the sorrel is
shore some horse.”

“You’re damn whistlin’,” cried the buster over his shoulder, in hearty
affirmation.

Corazón was the most distracted of all the band. He was in a frenzy of
nervous fear, his glossy coat wet and foam-flecked. He would not stand
still for a second, but prowled about the wooden barrier like a jungle
creature newly prisoned in a cage. Twice he nosed the ground and crooked
his forelegs in an endeavor to slide through the six inches of clear
space beneath the gate, and the outfit laughed derisively.

“Here goes,” announced the buster in his expressionless tones. “You-all
watch out, now. Hell’ll be poppin’.”

At that moment Corazón took it into his head to dash at top speed
through his friends, huddled in a bunch in a corner. A rope whined and
coiled, and, when he burst out of the jam, the noose was around his
neck, tightening so as to strangle him. Madly he ran against it, superb
in the sureness of his might. Then he squalled with rage and pain and an
awful terror. His legs flew from under him, and poor Corazón was jerked
three feet into the air, coming down on his side with smashing force.
The fall shook a grunt out of him, and he was stunned and breathless,
but unhurt. He staggered to his feet, his breath straining like a
bellows, for the noose cut into his neck and he would not yield to its
pressure.

Facing him was the man on the bay. His mount stood with feet braced,
sitting back on the rope, and he and his rider were quite collected and
cool and prepared. The sorrel’s eyes were starting from his head; his
nostrils flared wide, gaping for the air that was denied him, and the
breath sucked in his throat. It seemed as if he must drop. Suddenly the
buster touched his horse lightly with the spur and slackened the rope.
With a long sob, Corazón drew in a life-giving draught, his gaze fixed
in frightened appeal on his captor.

“Open the gate,” said Mullins, without raising his voice.

He flicked the rope over Corazón’s hind quarters, and essayed to drive
him into the next corral, to cut him off from his fellows. The sorrel
gave a gasp of dismay and lunged forward. Again he was lifted from the
ground, and came down with a thud that left him shivering.

“His laig’s done bust!” exclaimed the boss.

“No; he’s shook up, that’s all. Wait awhile.”

A moment later Corazón raised his head painfully; then, life and courage
coming back with a rush, he lurched to his feet. Mullins waited with
unabated patience. The sorrel was beginning to respect that which
encircled his neck and made naught of his strength, and when the buster
flipped the rope again, he ran through the small gate, and brought up
before he had reached the end of his tether.

Two of the cowboys stepped down languidly from the fence, and took
position in the center of the corral.

“Hi, Corazón! Go it, boy!” they yelled, and spurred by their cries, the
horse started off at a trot. Reb tossed his loop,--flung it carelessly,
with a sinuous movement of the wrist,--and when Corazón had gone a few
yards, he found his forefeet ensnared. Enraged at being thus cramped, he
bucked and bawled; but, before Reb could settle on the rope, he came to
a standstill and sank his teeth into the strands. Once, twice, thrice he
tugged, but could make no impression. Then he pitched high in air, and--

“NOW!” shrieked Reb.

They heaved with might and main, and Corazón flopped in the dust. Quick
as a cat, he sprang upright and bolted; but again they downed him, and,
while Reb held the head by straddling the neck, his confederate twined
dexterously with a stake-rope. There lay Corazón, helpless and almost
spent, trussed up like a sheep for market: they had hog-tied him.

It was the buster who put the hackamore on his head. Very deliberately
he moved. Corazón sensed confidence in the touch of his fingers; they
spoke a language to him, and he was soothed by the sureness of
superiority they conveyed. He lay quiet. Then Reb incautiously shifted
his position, and the horse heaved and raised his head, banging Mullins
across the ear. The buster’s senses swam, but instead of flying into a
rage, he became quieter, more deliberate; in his cold eyes was a
vengeful gleam, and dangerous stealth lurked in his delicate
manipulation of the strands. An excruciating pain shot through the
sorrel’s eye: Mullins had gouged him.

“Let him up.” It was the buster again, atop the bay, making the rope
fast with a double half-hitch over the horn of the saddle.

Corazón arose, dazed and very sick. But his spirit was unbreakable.
Again and again he strove to tear loose, rearing, falling back, plunging
to the end of the rope until he was hurled off his legs to the ground.
When he began to weary, Mullins encouraged him to fight, that he might
toss him.

“I’ll learn you what this rope means,” he remarked, as the broncho
scattered the dust for the ninth time, and remained there, completely
done up.

In deadly fear of his slender tether, yet alert to match his strength
against it once more, should opportunity offer, Corazón followed the
buster quietly enough when he rode out into the open. Beside a sturdy
mesquite bush that grew apart from its brethren, Mullins dismounted and
tied the sorrel. As a farewell he waved his arms and whooped. Of course
Corazón gathered himself and leaped--leaped to the utmost that was in
him, so that the bush vibrated to its farthest root; and of course he
hit the earth with a jarring thump that temporarily paralyzed him.
Mullins departed to put the thrall of human will on others.

Throughout the afternoon, and time after time during the interminable
night, the sorrel tried to break away, but with each sickening failure
he grew more cautious. When he ran against the rope now, he did not run
blindly to its limit, but half wheeled, so that when it jerked him back
he invariably landed on his feet. Corazón was learning hard, but he was
learning. And what agonies of pain and suspense he went through!--for
years a free rover, and now to be bound thus, by what looked to be a
mere thread, for he knew not what further tortures! He sweated and
shivered, seeing peril in every shadow. When a coyote slunk by with
tongue lapping hungrily over his teeth, the prisoner almost broke his
neck in a despairing struggle to win freedom.

In the chill of the dawn they led him into a circular corral. His
sleekness had departed; the barrel-like body did not look so well
nourished, and there was red in the blazing eyes.

“I reckon he’ll be mean,” observed the buster, as though it concerned
him but little.

“No-o-o. Go easy with him, Carl, and I think he’ll make a good hoss,”
the boss cautioned.

While two men held the rope, Mullins advanced along it foot by foot,
inch by inch, one hand outstretched, and talked to Corazón in a low,
careless tone of affectionate banter. “So you’d like for to kill me,
would you?” he inquired, grinning. All the while he held the sorrel’s
gaze.

Corazón stood still, legs planted wide apart, and permitted him to
approach. He trembled when the fingers touched his nose; but they were
firm, confident digits, the voice was reassuring, and the gentle rubbing
up, up between the eyes and ears lulled his forebodings.

“Hand me the blanket,” said Mullins.

He drew it softly over Corazón’s back, and the broncho swerved, pawed,
and kicked with beautiful precision. Whereupon they placed a rope around
his neck, dropped it behind his right hind leg, then pulled that member
up close to his belly; there it was held fast. On three legs now, the
sorrel was impotent for harm. Mullins once more took up the blanket but
this time the gentleness had flown. He slapped it over Corazón’s
backbone from side to side a dozen times. At each impact the horse
humped awkwardly, but, finding that he came to no hurt, he suffered it
in resignation.

That much of the second lesson learned, they saddled him. Strangely
enough, Corazón submitted to the operation without fuss, the only
untoward symptoms being a decided upward slant to the back of the saddle
and the tucking of his tail. Reb waggled his head over this exhibition.

“I don’t like his standing quiet that away; it ain’t natural,” he
vouchsafed. “Look at the crick in his back. Jim-in-ee! he’ll shore
pitch.”

Which he did. The cinches were tightened until Corazón’s eyes almost
popped from his head; then they released the bound leg and turned him
loose. What was that galling his spine? Corazón took a startled peep at
it, lowered his head between his knees, and began to bawl. Into the air
he rocketed, his head and forelegs swinging to the left, his hind
quarters weaving to the right. The jar of his contact with the ground
was appalling. Into the air again, his head and forelegs to the right,
his rump twisted to the left. Round and round the corral he went,
blatting like an angry calf; but the thing on his back stayed where it
was, gripping his body cruelly. At last he was fain to stop for breath.

“Now,” said Mullins, “I reckon I’ll take it out of him.”

There has always been for me an overwhelming fascination in watching
busters at work. They have underlying traits in common when it comes to
handling the horses--the garrulous one becomes coldly watchful, the
Stoic moves with stern patience, the boaster soothes with soft-crooned
words and confident caress. Mullins left Corazón standing in the middle
of the corral, the hackamore rope strung loose on the ground, while he
saw to it that his spurs were fast. We mounted the fence, not wishing to
be mixed in the glorious turmoil to follow.

“I wouldn’t top ol’ Corazón for fifty,” confessed the man on the
adjoining post.

“Mullins has certainly got nerve,” I conceded.

“A buster has got to have nerve.” The range boss delivered himself
laconically. “All nerve and no brains makes the best. But they get stove
up and then--”

“And then? What then?”

“Why, don’t you know?” he asked in surprise. “Every buster loses his
nerve at last, and then they can’t ride a pack-hoss. It must be because
it’s one fool man with one set of nerves up ag’in a new hoss with a new
devil in him every time. They wear him down. Don’t you reckon?”

The explanation sounded plausible. Mullins was listening with a faintly
amused smile to Reb’s account of what a lady mule had done to him; he
rolled a cigarette and lighted it painstakingly. The hands that held the
match were steady as eternal rock. It was maddening to see him stand
there so coolly while the big sorrel, a dozen feet distant, was a-quake
with dread, blowing harshly through his crimson nostrils whenever a
cowboy stirred--and each of us knowing that the man was taking his life
in his hands. An unlooked-for twist, a trifling disturbance of poise,
and, with a horse like Corazón, it meant maiming or death. At last he
threw the cigarette from him and walked slowly to the rope.

“So you’re calling for me?” he inquired, gathering it up.

Corazón was snorting. By patient craft Reb acquired a grip on the
sorrel’s ears, and, while he hung there, bringing the head down so that
the horse could not move, Mullins tested the stirrups and raised himself
cautiously into the saddle.

“Let him go.”

While one could count ten, Corazón stood expectant, his back bowed, his
tail between his legs. The ears were laid flat on the head and the
forefeet well advanced. The buster waited, the quirt hanging from two
fingers of his right hand. Suddenly the sorrel ducked his head and
emitted a harsh scream, leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the
ground. He came down with the massive hips at an angle to the shoulders,
thereby imparting a double shock; bounded high again, turned back with
bewildering speed as he touched the earth; and then, in a circle perhaps
twenty feet in diameter, sprang time after time, his heels lashing the
air. Never had such pitching been seen on the Anvil Range.

“I swan, he just misses his tail a’ inch when he turns back!” roared a
puncher.

Mullins sat composedly in the saddle, but he was riding as never before.
He whipped the sorrel at every jump and raked him down the body from
shoulder to loins with the ripping spurs. The brute gave no signs of
letting up. Through Mullins’ tan of copper hue showed a slight pallor.
He was exhausted. If Corazón did not give in soon, the man would be
beaten. Just then the horse stopped, feet a-sprawl.

“Mullins,”--the range boss got down from the fence,--“you’ll kill that
hoss. Between the cinches belongs to you; the head and hind quarters is
the company’s.”

For a long minute Mullins stared at the beast’s ears without replying.

“I reckon that’s the rule,” he acquiesced heavily. “Do you want that
somebody else should ride him?”

“No-o-o. Go ahead. But, remember, between the cinches you go at him as
you like--nowhere else.”

[Illustration: “_Leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground_”]

The buster slapped the quirt down on Corazón’s shoulder, but the broncho
did not budge; then harder. With the first oath he had used, he jabbed
in the spurs and lay back on the hackamore rope. Instead of bucking,
Corazón reared straight up, his feet pawing like the hands of a drowning
man. Before Mullins could move to step off, the sorrel flung his head
round and toppled backward.

“No, he’s not dead.” The range boss leaned over the buster and his hands
fumbled inside the shirt. “The horn got him here, but he ain’t dead.
Claude, saddle Streak and hit for Agua Prieta for the doctor.”

When we had carried the injured man to the bunk-house, Reb spoke from
troubled meditation:

“Pete, I don’t believe Corazón is as bad as he acts with Mullins. I’ve
been watching him. Mullins, he didn’t--”

“You take him, then; he’s yours,” snapped the boss, his conscience
pricking because of the reproof he had administered. If the buster had
ridden him his own way, this might not have happened.

That is how the sorrel came into Reb’s possession. Only one man of the
outfit witnessed the taming, and he would not talk; but when Reb came to
dinner from the first saddle on Corazón, his hands were torn and the
nail of one finger hung loose.

“I had to take to the horn and hang on some,” he admitted.

Ay, he had clung there desperately while the broncho pitched about the
river-bed, whither Reb had retired for safety and to escape spectators.
But at the next saddle Corazón was less violent; at the third,
recovering from the stunning shocks and bruisings of the first day, he
was a fiend; and then, on the following morning, he did not pitch at
all. Reb rode him every day to sap the superfluous vigor in Corazón’s
iron frame and he taught him as well as he could the first duties of a
cowhorse. Finding that his new master never punished him unless he
undertook to dispute his authority, the sorrel grew tractable and began
to take an interest in his tasks.

“He’s done broke,” announced Reb; “I’ll have him bridle-wise in a week.
He’ll make some roping horse. Did you see him this evening? I swan--”

They scoffed good-naturedly; but Reb proceeded on the assumption that
Corazón was meant to be a roping horse, and schooled him accordingly. As
for the sorrel, he took to the new pastime with delight. Within a month
nothing gave him keener joy than to swerve and crouch at the climax of a
sprint and see a cow thrown heels over head at the end of the rope that
was wrapped about his saddle-horn.

The necessity of contriving to get three meals a day took me elsewhere,
and I did not see Corazón again for three years. Then, one Sunday
afternoon, Big John drew me from El Paso to Juarez on the pretense of
seeing a grand, an extraordinary, a most noble bull-fight, in which the
dauntless Favorita would slay three fierce bulls from the renowned El
Carmen ranch, in “competency” with the fearless Morenito Chico de San
Bernardo; and a youth with a megaphone drew us both to a steer-roping
contest instead. We agreed that bull-fighting was brutal on the Sabbath.

“I’ll bet it’s rotten,” remarked Big John pessimistically, as we took
our seats. “I could beat ’em myself.”

As he scanned the list, his face brightened. Among the seventeen ropers
thereon were two champions and a possible new one in Raphael Fraustro,
the redoubtable vaquero from the domain of Terrazas.

“And here’s Reb!” roared John--he is accustomed to converse in the
tumult of the branding-pen--“I swan, he’s entered from Monument.”

Shortly afterwards the contestants paraded, wonderfully arrayed in silk
shirts and new handkerchiefs.

“Some of them ain’t been clean before in a year,” was John’s caustic
comment. “There’s Slim; I KNOW he hasn’t.”

They were a fine-looking body of men, and two of my neighbors complained
that I trampled on their feet. The horses caught the infection of
excitement from the packed stands and champed on their bits and
caracoled and waltzed sideways in a manner highly unbecoming a staid
cow-pony.

There was one that did not. So sluggish was his gait and general
bearing, in contrast to the others, that the crowd burst into laughter.
He plodded at the tail-end of the procession, his hoofs kicking up the
dust in listless spurts, his nose on a level with his knees. I rubbed my
eyes and John said, “No, it ain’t--it can’t be--”; but it was. Into that
arena slouched Corazón, entered against the pick of the horses of the
Southwest; and Reb was astride him.

We watched the ropers catch and tie the steers in rapid succession, but
the much-heralded ones missed altogether, and to John and me the
performance lagged. We were waiting for Reb and Corazón.

They came at last, at the end of the list. When Corazón ambled up the
arena to enter behind the barrier, the grandstand roared a facetious
welcome; the spectacle of this sad-gaited nag preparing to capture a
steer touched its risibilities.

“Listen to me,” bawled a fat gentleman in a wide-brimmed hat, close to
my ear. “You listen to me! They’re all fools. That’s a cowhorse. No
blasted nonsense. Knows his business, huh? You’re damn whistlin’!”

Assuredly, Corazón knew his business. The instant he stepped behind the
line he was a changed horse. The flopping ears pricked forward, his neck
arched, and the great muscles of his shoulders and thighs rippled to his
dainty prancing. He pulled and fretted on the bit, his eyes roving about
in search of the quarry; he whinnied an appeal to be gone. Reb made
ready his coil, curbing him with light pressure.

Out from the chute sprang a steer, heading straight down the arena.
Corazón was frantic. With the flash of the gun he breasted the
barrier-rope and swept down on him in twenty strides. Reb stood high in
the stirrups; the loop whirled and sped; and, without waiting to see how
it fell, but accepting a catch in blind faith, the sorrel started off at
a tangent.

Big John was standing up in his place, clawing insanely at the hats of
his neighbors and banging them on the head with his programme.

“Look at him--just look at him!” he shrieked.

The steer was tossed clear of the ground and came down on his left side.
Almost before he landed, Reb was out of the saddle and speeding toward
him.

“He’s getting up. HE’S GETTING UP. Go to him, Reb!” howled John and I.

The steer managed to lift his head; he was struggling to his knees. I
looked away, for Reb must lose. Then a hoarse shout from the multitude
turned back my gaze. Corazón had felt the slack on the rope and knew
what it meant. He dug his feet into the dirt and began to walk slowly
forward--very slowly and carefully, for Reb’s task must not be spoiled.
The steer collapsed, falling prone again, but the sorrel did not stop.
Once he cocked his eye, and seeing that the animal still squirmed,
pulled with all his strength. The stands were rocking; they were a sea
of tossing hats and gesticulating arms and flushed faces; the roar of
their plaudits echoed back from the hills. And it was all for Corazón,
gallant Corazón.

“Dam’ his eyes--dam’ his ol’ eyes!” Big John babbled over and over,
absolutely oblivious.

Reb stooped beside the steer, his hands looping and tying with deft
darting twists even as he kept pace with his dragged victim.

“I guess it’s--about--a--hour,” he panted.

Then he sprang clear and tossed his hands upward, facing the judges’
stand. After that he walked aimlessly about, mopping his face with a
handkerchief; for to him the shoutings and the shifting colors were all
a foolish dream, and he was rather sick.

Right on the cry with which his master announced his task done, Corazón
eased up on the rope and waited.

“Mr. Pee-ler’s time,” bellowed the man with the megaphone presently, “is
twenty-one seconds, ty-ing the world’s re-cord.”

So weak that his knees trembled, Reb walked over to his horse.
“Corazón,” he said huskily, and slapped him once on the flank.

Nothing would do the joyous crowd then but that Reb should ride forth to
be acclaimed the victor. We sat back and yelled ourselves weak with
laughter, for Corazón, having done his work, refused resolutely to
squander time in vain parade. The steer captured and tied, he had no
further interest in the proceedings. The rascal dog-trotted reluctantly
to the center of the arena in obedience to Reb, then faced the audience;
but, all the time Reb was bowing his acknowledgments, Corazón sulked and
slouched, and he was sulking and shuffling the dust when they went
through the gate.

“Now,” said John, who is very human, “we’ll go help Reb spend that
money.”

As we jostled amid the outgoing crowd, several cowboys came alongside
the grandstand rail, and Big John drew me aside to have speech with
them. One rider led a spare horse and when he passed a man on foot, the
latter hailed him:

“Say, Ed, give me a lift to the hotel?”

“Sure,” answered Ed, proffering the reins.

The man gathered them up, his hands fluttering as if with palsy, and
paused with his foot raised toward the stirrup.

“He won’t pitch nor nothing, Ed?” came the quavered inquiry. “You’re
shore he’s gentle?”

“Gentler’n a dog,” returned Ed, greatly surprised.

“You ain’t fooling me, now, are you, Ed?” continued the man on the
ground. “He looks kind of mean.”

“Give him to me!” Ed exploded. “You kin walk.”

From where we stood, only the man’s back was visible. “Who is that
fellow?” I asked.

“Who? Him?” answered my neighbor. “Oh, his name’s Mullins. They say he
used to be able to ride anything with hair on it, and throw off the
bridle at that. I expect that’s just talk. Don’t you reckon?”



                                   IV
                               THE OUTLAW


Steve was recounting an episode of Hell’s Acre.

“And jist as I was fighting my horse to make him go through that
scrub-oak, he done stubbed his toe in the sand. Up she come with a
whoof--one of them ol’ long-horns. That cow had hid herself there. Yes,
sir; but she didn’t quite git her horns covered.”

Reb said he could well believe it. No longer ago than last Tuesday,
while chasing some stubborn cattle, he had chanced upon a cow lying flat
behind a bush. A jackrabbit was burying her under leaves, for better
concealment.

Whereupon the two got to horse and rode away, leaving behind them a
thoughtful silence.

There was a water-gap to be repaired and they headed for the Salt Fork
of the Brazos.

“Wait a minute,” said Steve. “Look there.”

A cow stood on the crest of a rise--a lean, dun creature, with distended
eyes. When they approached, she trotted off to the right, mumbling
anxiously. They did not follow. Then she stopped, her head erect and
nostrils dilated, to watch them. The two ambled forward and she kept
near, very, very anxious.

“She’s got a calf hid out somewheres,” Reb remarked.

He surveyed the immediate country leisurely, confident of what he would
discover. Two hundred yards in front was a patch of mesquite, and they
made for it. Behind a bush they found the calf--a sturdy, red-and-white
baby with a specially black, moist nose. It flattened out when Steve
stood over it.

“Git up,” he commanded, “I want to see more of you. I bet them hoofs of
yours is soft.”

The calf hugged the ground. He raised the sagging body by the brisket
and tail, none too gently. When he let go, the little fellow collapsed,
spread out like a jellyfish. He must have marveled as he lay there,
rolling his wide, questioning eyes upward, what strange beings these
were, for he was just one day old and had never seen a man.

“Come a li’l’ seven,” Steve cried joyously. “Look a-here, Reb. See his
face.”

Between the youngster’s eyes was a crimson splash which made a perfect
7. Reb examined the peculiar marking with interest and suggested that
Come-a-Seven might bring the little devil luck as a name.

The calf resented all this handling and raised his voice in a plaintive
bawl. As they loped away on their errand, the cow crashed through the
bushes to her offspring’s side. She nosed him solicitously, rumbling
caresses.

Come-a-Seven inherited all the hardiness of his race--indeed, in later
years, Reb vowed that he was tougher’n the oldest man in the world. Half
an hour after his advent into this vale of tears he could walk. It was
not a gait to justify boasting, because his forelegs showed a tendency
to give at unexpected places, but he saved himself from a fall by
leaning against his mother’s shoulder. He next made the circuit of the
cow twice in a clumsy hunt for the fount of his food supply and finally
reached it in an extremely awkward position. Nevertheless, she watched
him pridefully, her sight blurred with happiness; and braced against her
hind leg, he fed like a glutton. Feeling full and reckless therefrom, he
humped his back in abandon and tried to cavort, but came down with a
jarring thump.

The young mother did her duty by him like a Scotch washerwoman with nine
children. He breakfasted at dawn--drank until he could drink no more.
Afterwards she went off to graze, leaving the calf behind some screening
hush. It was seldom she strayed so far that she was not within sight or
call: there is danger to toddling calves that lie out on the range
unprotected.

How fast his strength grew! At five days of age he could have butted
into a wooden fence at half-speed without any especially ill effects,
save to the fence. Yet his mother’s care never abated. She would go over
him every night with eager tenderness and was ever aggressively on the
alert to defend. For she would have fought anything on four legs for the
life of that loose-jointed, red-and-white blatherskite she held to be
prince of his race.

The cattle grazed in scattered bunches over some hundred thousand acres
of the east range--they are not so companionable as horses and do not
herd so closely in their feeding. Nor will the bulls take such
responsibilities upon their shoulders as do stallions with the mares and
colts. Come-a-Seven, in fact, never saw his father, to his knowledge.
That ponderous, morose scion of Hereford stock lived his own life in his
own way, spending half the day sleeping in the shade of a cottonwood;
and he did not worry about family matters. His scores of children might
fare as best they could. In the meantime he had his amusements. Besides,
what on earth were their mothers for?

On his eighth day Come-a-Seven started out to see something of the
world. No great variety offered within his ken--a rolling expanse,
green-gray, gashed by numerous brick-red gullies; hundreds of scraggy
mesquite bushes and some prickly-pear; two or three regal cottonwoods on
the bank of a creek, whose sandy bed was a third of a mile wide; beyond,
a butte lifting from the earth like a monstrous mushroom. That was what
he saw--that, and big blue blotches of shadows moving over the country
like an army of specters. Piles of tumbled white clouds gave promise of
rain at a later date.

Upon this the red-and-white gazed, his head moving from side to side in
jerks, ears twitching, tail straight out as when he fed. He was trying
to get up nerve to sally farther afield. As a starter and a spur to
courage he curveted clumsily, but was brought up short by the sight of
another calf of about his own age, standing not a dozen yards away,
surveying him with the liveliest interest. Come-a-Seven tried to look
hostile, even threatening, but his curiosity got the better of him,
because the calf into whose face he glared had the merest stump of a
tail.

Advancing a step, he intimated in his own peculiar, gruff calf-manner
that the abbreviated member puzzled him. If Come-a-Seven had ever dodged
a coyote, he would not have been so ignorant. The other evinced no
resentment and they approached in amicable fashion, made a playful butt
at each other and became fast friends. After that they would loaf about
together in the hot summer days, making trouble for the other calves and
stirring up bickerings and feuds.

None of them was of a serious nature. The nearest approach to a tragic
ending happened when the red-and-white smashed, full tilt, into a
six-months’-old half-brother, of whose relationship he was ignorant--not
that this would have made any difference--and knocked him off the steep
wall of a tank into the water. He had to run at that, for the other was
a husky, ardent calf, and he was angry all through. When he scrambled
out, he went hunting for the red-and-white, but by that time the
offender was safely under his mother’s eye, which fact he flaunted
brazenly.

Who ever saw a braver pair? Who so bold as the tailless one and
Come-a-Seven when there was no possibility of danger? Then, at the first
hint of trouble, up would go their tails and they would run to their
mothers at their very best pace.

They were learning, too, for many things they saw carried lessons to
their youthful perceptions. They were witnesses of the finish of a
wild-cat, which a puncher roped out of a tree under which they had been
taking a nap. They saw a companion die slowly from blackleg, and another
practically eaten alive by the fearful screw-worm. For days, too, they
avoided an old cow whose head was swelled to twice its natural size. The
poor creature was the victim of a snake bite, but she survived.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ki-yi! Git up, cattle.”

A shrill whistle brought the red-and-white to his feet with a jerk just
as the sun tinted the eastern sky to gray and gold and rose. He bellowed
an inquiry to his mother, and for a second stood irresolute. A horseman
came riding at top speed straight for them, hallooing with all his might
and waving his hat. Whereupon the calf waited for no instructions. He
let himself out for all he was worth.

The puncher rode at a hand-gallop behind and he did not drive too hard.
Instead, he gave them a shove in the direction he desired they should
travel, and, with a final shout, swung away to the right, where a bunch
of six rose up with a snort and gave him a chase. He calculated that the
cow would keep going and she did. Her slow march was marked by protests
from her hopeful offspring. Observing that the rider was busy stirring
up cattle in many directions, his baby mind could conceive of no good
reason for plugging along in a line dead ahead because this individual
had furnished the impetus for the start. So he grumbled much, but
trotted along obediently, notwithstanding; and presently his own
grievances were dissipated by the contemplation of what was happening
around him. Every patch of brush in the country appeared to be turning
out cows, calves and young steers, as a magician’s bag scatters paper
roses. In several bunches he recognized acquaintances, but they were too
concerned about the future to do more than give a hurried squall of
recognition. An enormous procession was under way and they were marching
in it, a part of it. Whither would it lead them?

Apparently this speculation was likewise a source of worry to the cows
and steers, though they all had been through much the same before. Yet,
for the most part, they went soberly, falling into the semblance of a
trail-herd as their ranks were swelled by others which the cowboys
roused up; but there were some that did not. Occasionally a heifer would
make a break to one side, only to be headed off; and once a cow, driven
too impetuously, jerked her head sideways and bowed her tail. She was
“on the prod,” and they let her go. Time after time, when the
red-and-white would turn about to gaze, a rider would come at him,
slapping his boot with his quirt and whistling. This constant
surveillance irritated Come-a-Seven.

Their ranks were swelling so fast, too, that his identity, and hence his
sense of security, was lost. Another influx of cattle caused him to
carom off his mother’s side and in puerile anger he butted at those
nearest, until he observed he was making no impression, when,
discouraged, he gave it up and moved along. His tiny troubles were
submerged in that great army. Two thousand cattle were converging upon a
plain, from nine points in an area five miles wide.

Come-a-Seven was almost too interested to be scared.

Clouds of dust welling up; a babel of sound; mighty roarings of irate
bulls, petty monarchs now on a common footing they resented; the lowing
of cows and the frightened bawling of the calves; and always a
bewildering churning and shifting like a maelstrom. Every few minutes a
stream of dirt would shoot skyward like a geyser, where a bull was
spoiling for a fight and sent his thundering challenge over the ranks.
Occasionally there was a clash and some desperate attempts at goring.
Holding this host on the round-up ground was a cordon of eight punchers,
sitting apathetically on their horses. They had little to do while their
companions worked the herd, cutting out the cows and calves to one side,
the strays and beef cattle to another. Sometimes an animal would wander
to the edge, stand staring uncertainly, then saunter forth to attain the
open; but most were driven back without trouble. One persisted and gave
a herder a furious dash to head him off; but that was all part of the
day’s work.

When the cutters penetrated the dust and came threading their way
through the noisy, restless horde, the calf became doubly uneasy. A man
on a blazed-face bay was particularly insistent. Come-a-Seven watched
him work deviously through the entire herd after a cow and her young,
and drive them forth to the open; so he tried to keep out of sight. But
it was no use. Soon the horse was close to them, and mother and son
felt, rather than saw, that they were the objects of the quiet
maneuvering that followed. Wherever they dodged and doubled the
blazed-face was sure to be there, close behind, patient, untiring. A
wave of resentment against this steady pressure broke them into a run,
and, before they knew it, the outer rim of cattle split wide open and
they were beyond the herd. In a panic they endeavored to dart back, but
the big bay interposed. Seeing this, the cow sped toward a draw where
the scrub-cedar appeared to offer chances of escape. With the speed of
light the puncher was after them, twisting, wheeling, heading her off
toward the cut-bunch. And the calf found the same indefatigable foe
between him and freedom when he emulated his mother.

“Git in, you low-lived whelp,” howled the cutter, and he spurred
furiously.

They finally gave up the contest as hopeless and trotted meekly to join
the bunch of cattle they perceived ahead of them.

There were cows which shot from the herd at a gallop and then would
break to a hesitating trot, their heads nodding loosely close to the
ground. Their gait had an odd uncertainty about it. The animals would
shrink from a weed and draw back. One stopped at perceiving a shadow and
went around it fearfully.

“Locoed,” a puncher commented. For these had eaten of the strange loco
weed and were afflicted.

By ten o’clock, the herd was worked. Fires were lighted and the branding
irons thrust into them.

The roper and flankers got into action, two sets of them, and every
minute calves emitted protesting wails as the hot irons seared their
sides. He worked like an automaton, that roper. He seemed removed from
human passions, remote from the ordinary human impulses. His loop
dropped unerringly, and back the horse would go at a trot or a lope,
with a panic-stricken, crying calf plunging, bumping along in rear,
sometimes turning somersaults--for life is too short to carry calves to
the flankers with solicitous care, though possibly the flankers would
prefer them that way.

The red-and-white edged away from the field of this gentleman’s labors
and ran straight in front of a sorrel horse.

Baw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! he cried, as something settled about his neck and a
resistless force commenced to drag him into the open.

Another roper had snared him. He humped his back and began to buck, his
legs rigid. At every leap into the air he blatted and protested. His
mother shrank back in confusion at the first outcry and lost sight of
him in the dust raised by his unwilling progress. For fully thirty yards
he was dragged in a series of hurtling leaps, with the rope cutting into
his neck so that he could scarcely breathe; and then, before he had time
to recover his faculties, a man seized the rope, ran along it until he
reached the red-and-white, and reaching over his body, flopped him in
the air. But the calf was not flanked so easily--not Come-a-Seven. Twice
he rebounded like a rubber ball, finding his feet before his antagonist
could fall on him.

“Stay-ay-ay with him, Steve! Go to him, boy!” shrieked the delighted
flankers.

“Durn his hide. He’s stout as a weaner,” Steve snorted; and he gave a
tremendous heave. At the same time he made a short spring forward with
knees crooked, which carried him under the calf as that strenuous
combatant tried to make his hoofs hit the ground first. The
red-and-white came down with a bump that sounded like the unloading of a
trunk marked, “Handle with care.” It would have broken the ribs of
anything aged three months except a calf.

“Holy cats, it’s Come-a-Seven,” Steve panted. He sat back of his head,
with a knee on the neck, and twisted one foreleg in a jiu-jitsu grip
that paralyzed all effort. Another puncher at his other extremity got a
vise-like hold of the left leg and put the other out of commission by
thrusting it far forward with his foot.

Oh-oh-oh-uh-uh-uh-ah!

The cry was almost human, and the eyes bulged and rolled with terror
until the whites showed. The iron had touched him, biting through his
coat into the flesh, while the smoke curled up with smell of burning
hair. His fright needed just that pang to get proper vocal expression,
and he used all his available breath in a frantic appeal to the mother
that bore him. It was not in vain.

“Look out! Here she comes!” yelled a flanker.

The three working over the calf looked up to see the cow trotting toward
them. There was no time to dodge. When she was within ten feet of the
group an idle flanker kicked a jet of sand into her face and she swerved
irresolutely, coming to a walk. The roper drove her back and work was
resumed on her son.

“I mind once, when I was with the Spur, a cow jumped clean over us
that-a-way,” remarked Bill Kennedy, rising from the ground. As a parting
salute he rolled the red-and-white over his hip, as a wrestler throws a
man to the mat. “Say, Jake, heel them big fellers.”

The calf was scared, and sore all over. A swallow-fork in the right ear
and a crop in the left worried him. He stood glowering in all
directions, in an effort to get his bearings; then he executed some
shuddering, half-hearted jumps, as though trying to shed the two burning
letters on his left flank, and sought his mother. He was sick, and all
the fight gone from him.

The herd was driven off and released, and the red-and-white went with
them. He tarried in a draw, enduring great pain. A fever burned him,
too, and he was low in spirits. Half of his enormous appetite was gone,
but only half. Alas, he had lost the source of supply for even the
remnant that remained. In the general confusion he had become separated
from his mother, and, as it was meal-time, the loss was doubly
distressing.

He lifted up his voice in a song of sorrow, but naught availed.
Perceiving this, he started to find her. The cow was hunting for him,
too, hunting frenziedly. And she was not alone in her grief, for at
least a dozen cows had lost their young in the turmoil of branding, and
they wandered up and down and across without cessation, lowing
pathetically, a world of distress in their tones and in their eyes. From
time to time one would sight a stray calf and make a bee line for it,
but only to give a moan of disappointment and resume her hunt.

Come-a-Seven tried to establish filial relations with every cow he met.
As a result, he got some rebuffs that would have discouraged a less
hungry youngster. For hours he searched; for hours cows wandered about
crying for their young. Twice the red-and-white essayed to feed where he
had no blood-rights and nearly had his ribs stove in for his pains.
Finally, made crafty by hunger, he softly shouldered another calf away
from her place at the mother’s side and tried to substitute. The old cow
properly kicked him for that trick.

But his hunger was short-lived; a familiar voice smote upon his ear, his
answering cry came with a glad quiver in it, and mother and son were
reunited. How she smelled of him and licked his dusty sides and neck!
And the way he went for his meal! She gave a deep rumble of content.
Even when Come-a-Seven butted cruelly with his head, in his consuming
hunger, and hurt her, she lowed in proud satisfaction.

Pain and trouble cannot last forever. In a week his wounds had healed;
he was sound and strong again. Once more began the long, idle days of
good feeding and play with his young companions. His life was a full
one. Compared with that of the barnyard variety of the genus calf, it
was as checkered as a drummer’s appears to a hot-blooded resident of a
country town.

In the winter his mother grew gaunt. The cold was intense at times, and
the snowfall was greater than the oldest bull could recall. At rare
intervals men came riding to inspect and on one visit drove some of the
weaker cattle to the home pasture, there to be fed daily. For the others
little could be done, and the red-and-white was one of them. There were
many good windbreaks on the range and the calf was tough, so he won
through somehow, though once when the snow drifted deep and the cow
could not find grass in her wanderings, grim death stared them in the
face. The calf himself went three days without a meal, yet lived. A cow
will not paw down through the snow like a horse, and mother and son saw
some of their friends perish.

Spring came at last--suddenly, like a mountain sunrise--and the earth
was exceeding glad. Worried and emaciated, they greeted the season of
hope with a sudden access of energy. In later months the red-and-white
was weaned. He learned to eat grass, of which accomplishment he was at
first inordinately proud, and he throve on it; and he had but one worry
in the world--heel flies.

It has been said that Come-a-Seven was lusty. He was an amazing big
fellow for his age. When round-up time arrived again and he was herded
with about fourteen hundred cattle, he grew chesty over the fact that he
sized up well with most of the two-year-olds. His strength and restless
energy were proportionate.

Indeed, Come-a-Seven bade fair to be a rounder. While the other cattle
would be sleeping peacefully on the bed-ground, the young red-and-white
would go up and down through the herd, trying to start some excitement.
He always chose to walk straight through the center of the recumbent
host, and where he passed all got to their feet uneasily. The tired old
cows would grumble at him and tell him to go to bed, but he was proof
against all reproaches and conscience he had none.

“Damn him,” grumbled a puncher on guard as he watched his wanderings for
the twentieth time, and for the twentieth time turned and drove back
some who tried to walk out at his prompting. “He’s playing for a
stompede.”

“I swan if it ain’t Come-a-Seven!” remarked Steve, when the
red-and-white passed very near him. “Git to bed, Come-a-Seven. I reckon
you’re a rake.”

When tired of his solitary roaming, the red-and-white would select some
young steer weaker than himself, butt him off the bed he had warmed, and
compose himself to slumber. Whereat a great sigh of satisfaction would
be heard mingled with the blowing of the cattle.

Another year passed. When the cowboys came whooping up the cattle in the
following August, the red-and-white heard the loud shoutings and saw,
with contemptuous resentment, his fellow-creatures being propelled
toward the round-up ground. Their meekness awoke hot rebellion in him.
Big he was now and of the strength of two. He decided he would not go.

A rider caught him unawares and the surprise of his first rush started
the steer in the right direction, but it failed to keep him there; for
as soon as the man departed to drive another bunch, the red-and-white
went off at a tangent. Far had he wandered in his day, and he knew some
brakes--miles, miles away--where the foot of horse seldom trod. Toward
these he headed. Two hundred, three hundred yards, and behind him he
heard the familiar scramble of the pursuer. The red-and-white flagged
his tail and let out another notch.

“Quit it, you Come-a-Seven!” Steve bawled. “Blast you, git in there.”

The two-year-old only ran the harder, but the pony gained. Then he lost
his temper and made up his mind that whether or not the cowboy overtook
him he would reach those brakes; if necessary he would turn about and
attack. His head swayed from side to side, his gait became uncertain and
he seemed worried--symptoms which were not lost on Steve. When the steer
stopped and faced about, the horse turned like a flash, and as he did so
a loud, querulous voice, raised in helpless anger, broke up Steve’s
programme. That voice changed the red-and-white’s destiny. Indirectly it
saved him from the stockyards; but, then, he would probably have saved
himself.

“Let him go, Steve! You’ll lose that other bunch,” the wagon boss cried.
“We’ll get him again.”

Steve waved his hat at the steer with a good-natured grin and shook up
his horse, departing like a rocket to his work. The red-and-white
continued on toward the brakes.

That is how he became an outlaw.

In the vast Croton brakes were scores such as he. Some of them were
grown old and hoary, and they bore many brands. A few had no brands. All
had run wild for years, and round-ups were things of the long ago. So
shy were they that it was as difficult for a man to approach them as to
stalk a herd of antelope. They kept in bands of five and six, and did
anything come near which one did not understand, they were off like
deer.

The red-and-white took to the life as his birth-right. Somewhere in him
ran a strain that drove resistlessly to solitude and the wilds; and he
was happy. More than once he had to fight, but he possessed an
unbeatable temper and had a world of craft to direct his agility and
colossal strength, so that he came from his battles with blood-dripping
horns held high and proudly.

Rough and torn and forbidding were the brakes--miles on miles of
red-walled cañons, of scrub cedar and sand-rock--but the feeding was
good for so few when one knew the best places, and the outlaw waxed ever
stronger. His horns spread, too.

Five years sped by and the outlaw fought his way to kingship.

On a December day he was startled by the noise of firing. Such sounds he
had never heard. It was not the snappy, sharp report of the six-shooter,
but louder and of heavier metal. Suddenly fear took hold of him. There
was a hunt on--a hunt of outlaws. The horns of the free steers would
bring high prices, and once in a generation a party of punchers came
thus with rifles to gather them. Come-a-Seven let out a bellow and tore
away at the head of his followers.

It was a terrible day for the outlaws of the Croton brakes. When the
bunch that trailed behind the red-and-white split and scattered, the
chase developed into mad, individual contests of speed. The outlaw could
run; the way Come-a-Seven traveled would have made an ordinary range
steer look like a muley cow. Up and down sheer bluffs that appeared too
steep to climb, he ran; and cliffs seemed to be highways to him. But,
behind, a rider spurred tenaciously, steadily diminishing the distance
that separated them, holding his fire until he could be sure of this
glorious prize. Up came the rifle--but it never sent forth its leaden
messenger.

“Gee whiz, if it ain’t ol’ Come-a-Seven!” cried Steve. “Git a-going,
boy, and keep her up! Whoopee!”

With a final spurt and shout the veteran puncher wheeled and came to a
standstill, regarding the smashing run of the big steer with a smile of
admiration. The red-and-white was already disappearing in the distance,
far, far away from all further danger of pursuit, his tail held high,
his head swaying. Steve watched him until he topped a rise and
disappeared. He had lost a goodly prize; but he was content. He chuckled
as he recalled the steer’s past misdeeds on the bed-ground.

The outlaw went back to his remotest fastnesses. He may be there yet,
boss of the Croton brakes.



                                   V
                                 SHIELA


A panther’s scream split the whine of the wind and Shiela reared herself
in front of the fire, her body retched by an answering challenge.

“Shee-la,” her master rebuked. “Lie down, girl.”

The wolfhound sank to the floor with a reluctant flop, but the hairs on
her neck and along her spine bristled still. She continued to rumble.

There were four men playing at cards in the bunkhouse. Cold weather had
set in and the Tumbling H outfit were eating out their hearts in winter
camps. Here at headquarters, the range boss, wagon boss, blacksmith and
cook played half the day at seven-up and pitch; and listened to Mit’s
varying accounts of high life in the East, as he had plumbed it in Fort
Worth; and raved at the climate and cursed petty annoyances with the
savage irritability of full-blooded men lacking enough to do.

“Hark to that ol’ wind,” mourned the wagon boss--he was fifty and
considered fourteen hours a day in the saddle mere child’s play--“It was
sixty-six above this morning, and now it’s zero. No wonder a man cain’t
be healthy.”

The others nodded gravely and the cook shuffled the cards.

“It’s a wonder, Steve,” he observed, “that you don’t--my deal?--you
don’t try that dog in wolf huntin’. Not by herself, but with a bunch of
’em.”

“Wait till she’s used to the country and has got her growth. Then you’ll
see.”

Mit remarked that he referred, of course, to the hunting of coyotes,
which prompted a passionate declaration from the wagon boss that the
range ought to be cleared of these pests. They killed too many calves in
bad years: poison ’em, he urged. Nobody opposed objection and they went
on with the game. Then from the mouth of the cañon came to the ears of
the players the vibrant cry of the lobo. Right upon it broke Shiela’s
roar of defiance, and the beast was at the door in a bound, whimpering
frenziedly, her terrible teeth bared. Beside her, his head three inches
short of Shiela’s breast, Friday stiffened in sympathetic rage, his
stubby tail wagging. He raised a shrill treble bark.

“Down, Shee-la! Down, girl.” Running from the table, O’Donnell led her
back to the fire.

“Friday, you come here,” the blacksmith cried. “Lay down under the
table, and don’t you go for to move!”

Not to cattle-browsed stretches of prairie land had Shiela been reared,
nor to vast sweep of hills and mesquite-flecked valleys, and of torn,
brick-red sandstone and tortuous, dry river-beds. She was a stranger in
a strange land, and her new kingdom struck to the roots of her nature.
Far as she could wander in a frivolous all-day rabbit hunt with Friday
was no sign of human habitation; and beyond that, away to the pale-blue
line that must surely be the rim of all things,--full sixty miles,--no
handiwork of man was visible. Here was an unspoiled empire, and her
master was the autocrat. For the first time in her life the wolfhound
drew the breath of unrestrained liberty, chafed hotly to the tang of the
air, cast about and trailed wild creatures whose taint stirred her to
mad longings for the chase and a fight.

How can one tell of Shiela’s beauty? A great animal and a
wonderful--light fawn in color, with a shaggy coat. Her eyes were in
general gentle and melting. But it must be confessed that her
proportions did not fit Shiela to be a comfort about the home, for she
weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds and could not go under the tallest
table without stooping. As she always forgot to stoop, her progress was
fraught with excitement.

On the day following her arrival, the cook scrambled out of bed long
before sunup to ascertain what manner of idiot could be knocking on the
door in this deserted region. Man alive, why couldn’t they walk in?
Shiela leaped on him to be fondled--the wolfhound had been wagging her
tail against the door as she lay across the threshold.

“Ef I was you,” Mit suggested civilly, “I’d lay out on the range where
you’d have room to move round. Git a nice big butte all to yourself.”

Her heart and her courage were big as her body. Following O’Donnell on a
day when he fared to Stinking Water, quite by accident she roused up a
loafer in the cañon. Shiela flew in pursuit, deaf to O’Donnell’s frantic
commands to come back. And when the wolf turned fiercely at bay to pit
her might against this daring hunter, a hundred and eighteen pounds of
dauntless pluck launched itself at her neck like a bolt from a
storm-cloud.

“She’s a dead one now,” O’Donnell groaned, circling for a shot. “She’s a
goner, sure.”

Had the wolfhound been more wary, she would have fared better. She could
not have slain her foe; the dog does not breathe that can go to the
death-grapple with a loafer wolf in the flush of his strength; and
Shiela knew neither the amazing quickness of the wild, nor how to guard
against those slashing counter-attacks. The lobo could dodge and rip
simultaneously, using her jaws from any direction. Even when bowled over
by the hound’s unreckoning rush, she tore Shiela’s throat with a
backward thrust of her muzzle and was free in a twinkling. Badly cut in
several places, dazed by the speed of the combat, the wolfhound was soon
forced to let her go.

Shiela and Friday were fast friends, albeit the diversity of dimensions
was productive of intermittent rancor. It was Friday’s wont to rush at
her fiercely, to seize one powerful leg in his mouth and worry it,
whereat Shiela would hit him a playful pat that sent him reeling ten
yards. But Friday came of a staunch breed, and he returned to the sport
again and again. Often the wolfhound would stretch herself out on the
ground, and thus recumbent, the fox-terrier could almost reach her head.
Over Shiela would roll, lying on her back with legs in the air, while
Friday snorted and grunted valorously as he shook her by the throat or
the ear. But the fun always ended in the same way: a clumsy blow would
catch Friday full on the head and he would dash off to his master with
cries of pain.

“Steve oughtn’t for to keep her round headquarters,” the blacksmith
remonstrated to Dick. “She’s shore too big. Pore li’l Friday! When she
gits into my shop, Dick, I swan her ol’ tail is like to send my tools
flying which-ways.”

“Where’d he keep her, then? He cain’t turn her out on the range to eat
grass,” sneered Dick.

The blacksmith was silenced, but there was born in him a dislike of the
hound. It happened that, when next the terrier came yelping from play,
O’Donnell had ridden off to a tank. The blacksmith issued from the shop
and hurled a bolt at Shiela. She dodged, but did not run, and the
bristles on her neck stiffened in warning.

Aside from the manager, who spent much of the year with his family in
Denver, the blacksmith was the only married man with the Tumbling H
outfit. He had a son three years of age. Oscar was the child’s name,--a
sturdy, ruddy-cheeked youngster he was--and from the outset he was the
apple of Shiela’s eye. The boy could pull her ears or tail with absolute
impunity, and into the yawning cavity she would open to his teasing, he
would thrust a chubby fist.

“Oscar! Oscar! My baby, don’t,” his mother would cry. But Shiela was
infinitely tender with him, and the two would roll on the ground in a
tight embrace, while the child thumped a tattoo on the wolfhound’s ribs.

It befell on a morning that they indulged in this frolic until both were
in a state of unbridled excitement. Crowing with delight, the baby
staggered to his feet and tried to butt Shiela with his head. Forgetting
for a fraction of time how fragile was this cherished morsel of
humanity, the wolfhound struck out joyously with her paw, bowling him
over like a ninepin. As he went backward, the boy essayed to break his
fall on the ground by thrusting out his left arm; it doubled under him
and snapped at the elbow.

A single wailing cry brought his father running from the smithy. Oscar
lay white-faced, the wolfhound nosing him eagerly in an endeavor to stir
the baby to a resumption of play. Flinging a curse at the dog, the
blacksmith picked up his son and carried him to his mother. Ten minutes
passed, which Shiela spent in vain efforts to ascertain what kept her
playmate from her, and Peck emerged from the bunkhouse with a shotgun.
The quick-sensing Shiela disappeared without further ado around a corner
of the saddle-shed; but, as the blacksmith followed on a run,
O’Donnell’s voice stayed him.

“What’re you doing with that gun, Peck?”

“Shiela done broke Oscar’s arm, and I aim to git even--that’s what.”

“Don’t be a fool!” the boss cried sharply.

Peck faced him, his lips twitching.

“I may do more’n shoot a bitch, Steve,” he said, and his voice was calm
now.

“You don’t mean that, Peck.” The range boss continued to advance, his
eyes on the troubled eyes of the blacksmith. “Shee-la and little Oscar
have always been friends. Didn’t she pull him out of the creek only last
week? She couldn’t have smashed his arm on purpose. You can’t blame a
dog for an accident.”

The blacksmith cursed Shiela to the eightieth generation; but O’Donnell
smiled and tapped the barrel of the gun with his forefinger. There would
be no shooting of man or dog now, he knew.

“Put it away, Peck. We’ll forget all about it. I’ll ride over to Deadeye
and bring the doctor myself.”

The blacksmith wavered and obeyed.

Little Oscar was soon able to toddle about, with his arm in a cast and a
sling. But Peck’s dislike for the hound grew to hate. In the short
winter days and long winter nights he watched and brooded, waiting for
an opportunity to make her suffer. His hostility to the soft-eyed,
affectionate Shiela took the form of an intense nervous sensibility to
her every movement--one sees precisely the same symptoms in persons who
are unhappily cooped up for any length of time. Soon the bigness of the
animal grated on his nerves, so that whatever she did excited in him
childish spleen. Even when Shiela ate, Peck could not look at her
magnificent satisfaction without falling into a paroxysm of loathing.

Once he spread pieces of meat cunningly about the saddle-shed where she
was wont to loll while the child slept in the afternoons. Shiela espied
and swallowed these tidbits with much relish, and stalked away to get a
drink, feeling unaccountably thirsty. There was no water in the trough;
and that saved her life. Soon a tremor came upon the wolfhound, so that
she swayed uncertainly, her nose close to the ground, froth slathering
her muzzle.

At this moment Oscar rocketed from the bunkhouse at his usual ungainly
gallop. The boy knew exactly what to do. Had he not endured agony, too?
There was only one sure remedy for belly-pains, and it stood on a shelf
in the kitchen--he never passed the shelf without a certain creeping of
the flesh. How he forced castor oil upon the dog is one of those modern
miracles that are wrought for babes and the inebriated. At any rate,
with only one arm free, he administered a glorious dose, and, feeling
full of pity for the tortures of which she mumbled so weakly, he
followed it with generous hunks of greasy bacon purloined from the big
brown crockery jar in the pantry. Shiela became violently ill and Oscar
feared for her life.

“Dick! Dick! She sick. Hurry, oh hurry!” Oscar ran to summon help.

Shiela survived, and O’Donnell devoted the better part of a day to
impassioned dissertations on the folly of leaving strychnine baits for
coyotes round the saddle-shed.

One evening in midwinter, the range boss, Dick, the cook, and Peck sat
in the bunkhouse, as usual, trifling with a pile of dominos. Shiela lay
dozing in front of the fire. The wolfhound had shown considerable
restlessness of late and Dick had cautioned O’Donnell to chain her up.
It came Mit’s turn to play and, as he was ponderously miring himself,
the night silence was rent by the hunting cry of the loafer. So near was
it, so savagely compelling, that the men sent the benches back in amaze.
The effect on Shiela was extraordinary. She was at the door, scratching
for her liberty, whining, turning appealing eyes to O’Donnell that he
should open.

Dick gazed at the range boss and waggled his wise bald head. “You better
lock her up, Steve, or you’ll shore lose that ol’ dog.”

She was locked in the smithy the next evening, and in the morning the
shed was empty. O’Donnell was positive that the staple and chain on the
door had been secure when he left her the night before; yet now the
staple dangled free, with a splinter attached. Reflecting that the
hound’s weight made this feat possible, he ceased to speculate; and in
the blacksmith’s soul entered peace. Shiela had fled.

The Wednesday following fell blustery, with a bullying wind, and the
range boss sat late at his table, working over a cattle tally by the
light of a lantern. A timid scratching on the door-sill disturbed him,
and he listened curiously. There it was again, this time accompanied by
a plaintive whine. He reached the handle in a stride.

“Shee-la! Shee-la, old girl!” His glad cry brought Mit running. Shiela
slunk into the room and crossed to the fire, which she sniffed
doubtfully and then lay down in front of it. Down her throat and across
her left shoulder burned cherry-colored slashes. She touched her tongue
to them and began to clean her soiled coat, while O’Donnell stood
watching, lost in wonder. The wolfhound growled as he moved, but he
laughed affectionately and stooped to the fearfully lowered head.

“So you’ve come back--like the prodigal,” he whispered. “Poor, poor
Shee-la!”

“Mit,” he bawled the next instant, “kill the spotted calf, or the fatted
heifer, or whatever else will do. She’s hungry.”

Not being conversant with the tale of the erring son, the cook roared
back a request to Steve to have sense--didn’t he know there wasn’t a
calf in the pen?

“Bring some beef, then,” laughed the boss.

The animal’s eyes followed her master furtively. He noted that
flickering gleam with a pang--the fear and suspicion of the hunted in
it. So much had three days with the wild linked up the slack chain of
her blood tie. Then presently she licked his hand, and the look that
answered his was soft and appealing as of old.

“Here’s enough to choke her,” announced Mit cheerily, entering with a
slab of beef.

The hound sprang at him and the cook, taking no chances, hurled the raw
meat into the air. She caught it as it touched the floor and tore into
it with the desperate zest of the famished.

The days drifted one into another, and the Tumbling H men rose and ate
and slept, and rose again, which is the sum of many lives. Of work there
could be little until the spring rains fell. Would the good days of the
roundup never come? Oh, the sweltering hours in the saddle, and the
bellowings of mighty herds, and the choking dust of the corrals in
branding!

Shiela was carefully guarded. In the first of the mild weather she
contributed to the bustling cheer of the bunkhouse a litter of four
lusty pups. It was as much as a man’s life was worth to go nearer than
six feet to the tugging little rascals; but the boy Oscar, who did not
know this, proceeded calmly to inspect and caress them. The mother
flared in a sudden, quaping rage, but instantly sank back and became
reconciled to the extent of permitting the baby, quite undaunted by his
first reception, to stroke her progeny with his pudgy hands. She watched
him jealously.

Summer rushed upon the land, and the Tumbling H outfit got to horse and
rode forth. In November O’Donnell shipped seven thousand head of steers
to help stay the world’s maw, and in December there were four men
playing at cards again in the bunkhouse.

“Steve,”--the cook cleared his throat as he riffled the cards,--“is it
my deal? Shore. Say, Steve, one of Shiela’s pups is killing chickens.
He’d ’a got a turkey too, only I done seen him.”

“You ought for to have killed ’em all when they were teeny pups, Steve,”
broke in the blacksmith. “What was the use of keeping two? Anyone kin
see they’re more wolf than dog.”

“It’s your play,” the boss said evenly.

Shiela had the run of quarters, but her broad-jowled, heavy-shouldered
pups were chained in the smithy. Just what to do with them was a
problem. Shiela had exhibited no special affection since they were
weaned, and it needed only the merest glance to detect the bar sinister.
Had only the eyes been visible, there was that in their glint which
betrayed the wolf. Yet, in the tawny coats and a certain lithe spring in
gathering for a stride, the youngsters favored their mother.

A loafer wolf made a foray from the cañon on a Sunday night, when the
range boss and Mit played seven-up and the blacksmith poisoned life with
a concertina. He killed a milch-pen calf close to headquarters; yet so
silent was the raid that the men heard nothing of it, though Shiela
cried protests to be gone and growled at intervals. In the smithy the
pups bayed deep-voiced greetings. They leaped and snapped their teeth,
and gnawed and raved to be free. Forgetting that O’Donnell had unchained
them, Dick went to the door to still the brutes. They hurled themselves
over him.

“Here’s where the trouble starts, Shee-la,” observed her master
dubiously. She wagged her tail and looked up at him in curiosity, for
she had practically forgotten the pups.

It was a bitter winter, and the cattle sickened and died in hundreds.
The men rode range in all weathers, setting out oil-cake and salt; but
what help could be given to thirty thousand head? Carrion waxed fat. And
then, one day in Deadeye, whither he had journeyed for supplies at the
first hint of spring, the range boss stumbled on a strange tale. The
wolves were out, bolder and stronger than they had been in a generation.
They were making no stealthy, lone hunts,--a swift leap from the dark
upon a helpless thing, and then the gorge,--but waged an almost
systematic war of pillage. The leader was a shaggy veteran of speckled
gray that ran with a limp; and with him--the men of Deadeye hoped they
might perish horribly were this not so--with him there ran two
fawn-colored wolves like no lobo of the west country. They were,
perhaps, slightly shorter than a cowhorse; that is, of course, a strong
roping horse, not a stunted pony.

“Shee-la, you’ve surely done it now,” O’Donnell told her with a sigh.
She thrust her moist muzzle into his hand to be petted.

In less than seven days’ time Padden reported from a division camp that
he had come on the carcass of a freshly killed heifer near a salt
trough. The wolves had hamstrung the poor brute and had fallen to their
grim feast before life was extinct, he thought; which is not unusual.
O’Donnell vowed a war of extermination.

The mail-carrier came upon the pack casting about beside the trail, at
fault in running an antelope. They let him approach within two hundred
yards, gazing insolently, then flitted swiftly through a jungle of
mesquite trees. His story was that beside the wily gray scoundrel that
led, raced two tall creatures, half wolf, half dog, which ran with a
long, springy stride foreign to lobo locomotion.

“It’s Shiela’s pups,” the blacksmith exclaimed venomously, when the
mail-carrier related this experience at dinner.

“Yes, they’re Shee-la’s pups,” O’Donnell admitted; and, “Poor Shee-la!”
he said. Then raising his voice with decision:

“Johnson, you tell them in Deadeye that I’ll give fifty dollars each for
those pups, and fifty for the old gray fellow. Put up a notice in the
post-office. Or--wait, I’ll write one for you.”

The result of this placard was an egress from Deadeye of eight ambitious
hunters, who went their several ways, wishful to earn two months’ pay by
a lucky shot. They straggled back empty-handed at the end of a week.
While they were thus engaged, the pack ranged wide. They killed at Cedar
Creek, but were compelled to abandon their prey, and slew again before
daylight on a nester’s place on the outskirts of Deadeye. Here, too,
they let the life out of an interfering collie. Long immunity had made
them contemptuous--or was it that they gave ear to the counsels of
man-raised mates? They raided the Tumbling H headquarters in quest of
certain turkeys that were Mit’s solace in dark days, and from ambuscade
the cook slew his finest gobbler with buckshot, in a berserker effort to
shoot one lissome marauder.

Shiela and Friday led uneventful lives amid all this harrying and
turmoil of pursuit. They frisked and wrestled on the baked, cracked
ground, or basked in the sun until it grew too hot and the flies became
unbearable in attack, when they would slouch to the cool of the long
bunk-room. Shiela had forgotten all about her degenerate offspring, and
held herself fearlessly and with pride as an honest dog.

More than once she and the terrier took jaunts over the low hills toward
the cañon, in spite of the watch on her goings-out. It might be a rabbit
they pursued, or the zigzagging trail of a coyote; or it might be that
rare scent, the antelope’s. One afternoon they disported themselves,
chasing some half-wild hogs that roamed the range.

A long-snouted porker of tender years was rooting about a patch of
bear-grass, when suddenly he cocked his impudent nose and appeared to
listen intently. Shiela and Friday stopped short in a game of tag, to
watch. The pig did not turn his head, but continued to stand at
attention, his ears twitching. What could it mean? Shiela crept closer.
With a speed that left her dumbfounded, the pig sprang sidewise on to a
spot his glance had certainly not been regarding, and simultaneously
tore with his jaws at a writhing, earth-colored coil. Shiela drew off
respectfully and in trepidation, while he devoured his victim with
beautiful hog voracity. It was the dreaded rattler, which he had killed
with two lightning strokes of forefeet and jaws.

So the days passed.

In the meantime, O’Donnell had other things than Shiela or wolves to
think about. The manager had resigned, and the boss added to the
superintendence of the active work of the range, the conduct of the
business of the Tumbling H company, the sale and the shipping of
Tumbling H cattle. He was an enthusiast on improving the breed of his
cattle and horses; and his anger was deep, therefore, when late in the
autumn his men found the remains of a young stallion. He was a splendid
beast, but newly come from Kentucky, and ignorant of perils and the
necessity for perpetual vigilance. Apparently he had been cut out from
the band he lorded it over,--sheer foolhardiness, this--and, alone in
the battle against heavy odds, had been pulled down. That he died full
of fight was sufficiently evident: the battered body of an exceptionally
large young wolf lay on the ground beside his own.

Shiela sniffed at the carcass of this creature, then moved away
unconcernedly, circling for another scent; but the hide caught
O’Donnell’s gaze and held it. The coat was of a peculiar tawny hue,
running in spots to red. There was something in the lines of the body
and legs that struck a reminiscent chord in his memory. He glanced from
it to Shiela, turning the body over with his foot.

“If that isn’t one of your litter, old girl, I’m much mistaken,” he
said.

Shiela, then, must atone. With all the dogs of Deadeye to help, she
should hunt these bold ravagers. Hers was the crime; hers must be the
expiation, even at the cost of life.

“Well, old girl,” he said, as he ambled away from headquarters three
days later, with Shiela beside him, “here’s your one chance to wipe out
your little slip. A lot of us humans don’t get that, my lady. So go to
it and clear your name, Shee-la.”

There were twenty-five dogs on hand at the rendezvous, about thirteen
more than were needed, and they ranged from bloodhounds and greyhounds
to a wheezy water-spaniel, which thought he knew a scent when he struck
it, and whose master fondled the same delusion of him. His presence led
to a dispute at the outset, because the spaniel persisted in messing
about and mugging a trail, and his owner pig-headedly abetted him. The
owner was set in argument, and carried a long, smooth-bore rifle.
However, both were persuaded to go home, quite convinced that spiteful
jealousy was at the bottom of this attitude.

“So that’s Shiela?” queried a Gourd puncher. “I reckon you ought to kill
her, O’Donnell. It’s her pup and his father what’s raising all the hell.
She might run away ag’in and--”

“She’s my dog, Joe,” the boss cut in.

Hard upon his words, old Rags gave tongue and went away on a warm scent.
Luck was with the hunters. Within two miles the dogs were running free,
their noses in the air, making the ridges ring to their eager yelping;
and a wolf, a tawny, limber-limbed wolf, smashed through a tangle of
weeds and briars at the head of a gulch and streaked across the open
country. The pack laid themselves out in pursuit, Shiela and the
greyhounds running silently.

The wolfhound was well up with the leaders. A dozen strides would have
brought the quarry to bay, when a speckled gray shape burst into view
beneath her feet and departed at a tangent to her line of running,
heading for a shallow draw. Shiela and one greyhound swerved and dashed
after him. The others of the pack kept on behind the flagging fugitive.

Everything was against the gray. He was old, and the combats and the
hunts of years had stiffened his muscles. He was full fed and heavy;
slumbering, he had blundered into the chase when he could have lain low.
The two silent things behind carried in their sinewy bodies the speed
and stamina of generations of dogs whose special business in life it had
been to run. A wall of earth faced them, the bank of a dried stream, and
he must scale it in his flight. Well he knew that the race was over. He
must fight, and as well here as elsewhere. When it comes to the last
test of courage, the king of wolves is indeed a king.

A rapid glance over his shoulder showed him the greyhound almost at his
flank. He reached the bank by a desperate spurt, whirled, and with one
rending stroke, cast back the first pursuer, coughing in the throes of
death. But the shock of the charge shook him for an instant and in that
fraction of time he was unprepared to withstand the crushing velocity of
Shiela’s onslaught. On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he
received her. She went straight for his throat, and the grip being an
eminently satisfactory one, she did not release it.

[Illustration: “_On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he received
her_”]

To and fro the big gray dragged her, over and over, tearing with his
forefeet to pry her off, snapping his wide jaws in futile efforts to
seize his enemy. His hind claws ripped unavailingly along the
wolfhound’s sides; he writhed and twisted to gain an inch of freedom for
his head--only an inch, and he could reach her shoulder. Once only
Shiela growled, a deep, rumbling note of content. She knew what she had
to do, and she felt this to be the right way. Slowly her jaws tightened
and she hung to him soundlessly. The rasping snarls grew fainter; the
tremendous heavings and lurchings slackened. The old lord of the cañon
had made his last fight.

It was O’Donnell who drove her off. Blown but triumphant, he raced from
the slaughter of the first quarry, and gave a long whistle of
incredulity at sight of the slain.

“Father and son--father and son in one day,” he exclaimed. Then, “Poor
Shee-la.”

As they trotted cheerily homeward, the wolfhound kept close to
O’Donnell’s horse, and whenever she glanced up at him, frisking clumsily
the while, he grinned down at her.

“You’ve wiped out your fault, Shee-la. You’ve done more than most,” he
observed seriously, as they neared the ranch. “I thought once I’d have
to send you away. Or--or send you out on the long trail.” Shiela leaped
playfully at his horse’s bridle. “But we’ll stick together. Only,” he
drew a deep breath, “we’ll take a holiday. We’ll go back--back home to
County Mayo, old girl.”



                                   VI
                                 MOLLY


It may be there are persons who will scoff at the assertion that there
is more of sentiment in a cow than in any creature of four legs that
walks the earth. Cavilers, these--hard-shelled individuals who look at
the gentle bovine through the eye of commercialism, not gifted to see
beyond her barnyard activities toward the nourishment of mankind. It is
reasonably established that one may approach a horse in comradely
security, confident of fair play. The rules as to hybrids are these: you
walk up to a mule in a spirit of veneration and religious preparedness,
wearing a sickly aspect of confidence. And you quaver soothing words and
carry a club behind your back.

But toward a cow--ah, that is different. Here is a mainstay of life, a
pillar and prop of civilization. Here is--well, a cow is a cow. Why,
there was the time when three hundred furiously anxious, bawling mothers
smashed out of a stout wooden corral on the Turkey Track range and laid
a straight course across seven leagues of territory, in quest of their
helpless progeny, mercilessly cooped in cars at a railroad siding,
awaiting shipment to an Arizona butcher. They kept two well-grown men
atop a water-tank for five hours, and--but to attempt a citation of
cases would be idle. This is the simple tale of Molly.

She was not an especially pretty animal, Molly--just plain cow, dun in
color, with a Jersey strain somewhere among her remote forebears. Yet,
one could not gaze on Molly for long without a feeling of profound
respect pervading his soul. It was not because one could see with half
an eye that she gave large quantities of milk; that was merely the
performance of her natural functions. Nor was it that her wistful regard
suggested all the sorrows of her sex. Molly in some way made a subtle
appeal to sympathy that cannot be voiced.

As a matter of fact, she ought to have been the pampered occupant of a
clover field by day and of a stall by night. Instead, she was roaming
the zacaton flats of the Tumbling K and losing herself among the
blackbrush ridges, in vague wonder that the world was grown so large.
Designed to be a respectable milch-cow on a dairy farm, here she was in
the heart of a wilderness, and all because of a boy.

He came among us, pink and white and fearfully clean; and he was the
owner’s son. There were eleven thousand cows in our domain, but milk had
been a thing of rumor to the outfit, perhaps because it is inconvenient
to milk on horseback. Now, however, Vance shoved his legs under the
boards at the bunk-house and objected to clear, biting coffee. So, when
he departed blacker than a Mexican, with a two months’ beard and
overalls sustained by a strand of rope,--babbling wild things of a bath
he would take, a bath that would endure for a day and a night,--we still
had Molly.

“That cow’s got a mind, I tell you,” Uncle Henry assured the outfit at
supper. “She’s got a mind jist like you or me, Dave, only better than
yourn. Pass them frijoles.”

Perhaps Molly did have a mind. At any rate, she was humanly lonesome. To
be the only one of her kind in a tract of five thousand acres--they kept
her in the horse pasture--was depressing to a companionable disposition.
The bronchos on the river flats and mesquite-clothed hills were shy,
wild creatures, subject to alarms and foolish panic. With mild wonder
she would watch them break into a run at a sound or a strange scent.
They were masterful, too, always driving her away from the water-holes
and the salt until they had had their fill. Instinctively she was afraid
when one of them approached with careless confidence that she would give
place. Yet, though unhappy, Molly never overlooked her duty, and each
morning and each evening she stood quiet while Uncle Henry milked her,
occasionally rumbling a note of satisfaction or sweeping at a fly with
cautious backward swings of her head. Uncle Henry was becoming too stiff
for hard riding, and now spent most of his time trying to persuade
himself and others that the odd jobs he applied himself to were of his
own choosing.

One morning Molly awoke to turmoil. Wondrous noises came to her on the
west wind, and she arose and walked to the imprisoning fence. Truly the
Tumbling K was become a Babel. In the wide, browned valleys, on the
mesas, and far into the fastnesses of the Mules, bulls and cows and
clumsy calves were on the march, with riders hanging in rear. Molly
could hear the churning of the hosts on the round-up ground, and to her
nostrils was wafted the taint of the dust belching heavenward in clouds.
For the Tumbling K range was to be divided, and eight thousand head must
be turned over to the retiring partner.

Where did all the cattle come from? Molly had never dreamed there were
such hordes of her kind in the world. Armies of them filed by in long
lines, the cowboys on flank and in rear shouting, whistling, spurring
into the press in their efforts to urge the herds forward. Molly stood
at the barb-wire fence most of the day, staring at this rally of her
species. Sometimes she bawled a troubled greeting.

And the little calves! Many a toddling new-born, strayed from its mother
and solicitous of protection, staggered out to sniff at the kindly
disposed creature that nosed it so tenderly from the other side of a
four-strand barrier. All night the trampling of sleepless thousands and
the bawling of steers and worried cows came to disturb Molly’s slumbers.
The bed-ground for the herds was not four hundred yards distant from the
pasture fence. She could see tiny intermittent lights move slowly about
them in a wide circle, where the men on guard smoked as they rode their
rounds.

Next day her heart was filled with forebodings and uneasiness. Hundreds
of cattle were driven into an extensive corral within the confines of
her pasture, and thence, in small groups, they went into a chute,
propelled by the whoops and outcries of sundry reckless horsemen who
crowded their rear. Molly watched and wondered. She saw these cattle
forced singly into a narrow runway; she saw them caught fast in a
squeezer, heard their bellows of consternation and fright; and then
there reached her the stinging odor of burned hair, when the branding
irons seared the flesh. Upon which Molly would flip her tail in the air
and lope away. But she always returned; much as she feared it, she could
not leave this anguished assemblage.

It was Uncle Henry who discovered that the arrival of the herds was
demoralizing our faithful benefactor. She no longer grazed sedately;
even the succulent grama-grass of the creek-bottom failed to hold her,
and she walked the barb-wire ceaselessly day and night. Her weight fell
off in alarming fashion, and when, on the third evening, Uncle Henry
approached with outstretched hand and honeyed speech, and the milk-pail
cunningly concealed, she shook her big, patient head and moved off. He
followed, and she quickened her pace.

“Consarn your fat haid!” roared Uncle Henry, never a patient man. “Hold
still or I’ll take the hide off’n you.”

He tore after Molly, threatening dire visitations. Now, it takes an
extremely clever person to circumvent a determined cow, when he is on
foot and she has five thousand acres in which to manœuver, and Uncle
Henry returned to headquarters, howling for somebody to lend him a horse
and he would drag that old fool clear to Texas. We went without milk
that night, and grumbled and swore precisely as if we had had nothing
else all our lives.

                 *        *        *        *        *

“Hi-yi! Bear down on him, cowboys. More frijoles here!”

With a yell, Big John sprang to the lever of the squeezer and threw all
his strength on it, gripping a plunging steer about the middle as he
strove to win through the chute.

“Hot iron! Hot iron!” the wagon boss shrieked. “Somebody build that fire
up. All right. That’s got him, Cas.”

Molly hung about near the corral, gazing on these frenzied activities in
consternation. It was early morning and low-hanging mists were shredding
before the sun.

Some calves passed through the chute by inadvertence. Being too small
for the squeezer to hold, they were noosed as they came out, and branded
on the ground. One was so tiny that the men at work beside the runway,
idly rolling cigarettes during a halt in the operations, failed
altogether to perceive him above the heavy lower boarding. As a result,
he sauntered into the open, and there was no noose ready to snare. His
ears were twitching with curiosity, and he moved his legs as if they
were stiff and his feet hurt, as indeed they did, because he had come
many weary miles and he was not three days old.

“Hi-yi! There goes a calf!” yelled the punchers. “Go to him, John. He’s
just your size.”

Big John grinned, spat on his hands, and made a dive for the fugitive.
“The li’l’ rascal,” he chuckled, grabbing for its tail. Instead of
taking to the open and falling a prey to a roper, the calf lunged
sideways and went under the horse-pasture fence. He was so short that he
easily bowed his back and slid beneath the wire. The outfit sent up a
shout of laughter, and exhorted John to stay with him; but the giant
remained where he was, gazing fixedly at the fugitive. Molly was on the
other side of the fence.

To her side the white-face bolted, confident of sanctuary. For a cow,
Molly was terribly agitated. She turned about and about, trying to
obtain a really good look at this forward baby who greeted her as his
mother. The calf, on his part, kept close in an endeavor to secure his
supper, being very hungry and properly careless as to where he got it.
Molly smelled and sniffed at him, and edged off in intense nervousness.
Evidently quite positive in his own mind that he had found what he had
been seeking, the calf gave over all useless fuss and set himself
resolutely to obtain a meal.

“Let him go, John,” the boss called. “We lost his mother over on the
Magayan. Molly’ll look after him. Look out! Bear down on him, cowboys!
It’s that big ol’ bull.”

Molly was thrilling to long-pent yearnings, and the vapors of
self-delusion welled up to befog her instincts. After five minutes of
nosing, the Jersey came to the conclusion that this must be her son, and
yielded to his hungry importunities. With a deep murmur of content, she
walked away, followed by her adopted baby. And behind a sage-brush, safe
from interference, she fed him. The outfit watched them go in amazement,
prophesying many things.

One of the few things they did not foretell came to pass next morning.
Molly had hidden the calf behind some soapweed while she went to graze a
few rods off, and, the dawn being still gray and the air stinging cold,
we picked that particular bunch of weed for a bonfire to provide warmth
while the wrangler was bringing up the horses. When the match flared,
the calf on the other side of the shooting sparks staggered to his feet.

Ba-a-a-a-aw!

“It’s the little ’un,” John whooped.

He said no more, because at that moment came the dull pounding of hoofs
on grass, and there was Molly, her head held high, turning her gaze
jerkily from one to another, after the manner of cows when preparing to
charge. We forgot about the fire for the moment and headed for the
corral fence, streaming across country twenty strong, with Molly in hot
pursuit. Big John eluded her by dodging dexterously behind a bush,
leaving a portion of his overalls with the cow, and she abandoned the
chase at once, returning to her charge. Him she licked and caressed with
many mumbled endearments, making sure that he was unhurt. The calf took
all this stoically and as a matter of course, considering it his due,
and fell to breakfast. Molly gazed across at her late friends sitting
spectrally astride the fence, and all the anger was gone from her eyes.
They were large and melting with tenderness.

A crippled horse was shot that day,--the broncho-buster threw him too
hard, breaking a leg,--and to the carcass a coyote skulked when night
shut down. About eleven o’clock Molly got to her knees, in which
position she remained a few seconds, meditating; then rose to walk
about, nibbling at the grass. All cattle get up in this manner between
eleven o’clock and midnight to graze for a few minutes and then lie down
on the other side. This may be the basis of an old superstition that
“good cows say their prayers.”

Molly, with the warmth of the snuggling calf still on her side, wandered
farther than she intended. Abruptly she thrust her nose into the wind
and sniffed. It was a stale, penetrating stench, and inherited knowledge
warned her there was danger. Back ran Molly in a tremor of anxiety, her
head wagging from side to side in her efforts to glimpse the marauder.
Behind a clump of bear-grass crouched a coyote, his foxlike nose pointed
toward the spot where snoozed her unprotected son. Inch by inch he slunk
forward; now his muscles grew taut for the leap.

Whoo-oo-oo-huh! snorted Molly, smashing down upon him.

The wolf straightened and wheeled with a flash of gray, and sprang, all
in one movement. So marvelously quick was he that escape would have been
certain ninety-nine times in a hundred. A bull would have borne down on
him with lowered head and eyes shut, like a runaway freight train; a cow
charges with eyes open, and Molly, consumed with mother-wrath, ripped
sideways with her sharp horns as the hunter swerved. A shapeless bundle
of brown-gray fur was tossed into the air, and when it struck the ground
and rebounded, Molly went at it again. This time she caught him full
with her horns, and, quite by chance, followed stumblingly on his ribs
with her forefeet. The coyote squirmed away from this terrible avenger,
snapping futilely at her muzzle, and a cry from the calf distracted the
Jersey from a burning desire to complete the good work. When she
abandoned him to run to her adopted son, the wolf made as if to flee;
but he was hurt unto death, and sank down miserably under a mesquite,
his glinting eyes searching the brush for foes. And through the long
night he panted out his life, until at dawn the last spark flickered.

“It’s a big ol’ ki-yote”--John stirred the carcass with his boot--“A
bull done ripped him.”

“There aren’t any bulls in the horse pasture,” the boss retorted. “Only
Molly.”

By one impulse the outfit turned in their saddles to look for her. There
stood the Jersey a hundred paces off, feeding tranquilly on mesquite
pods. Toddling at her heels was a red, white-faced calf of sturdy frame
and curly coat. Molly was behaving as if she had never done anything
more exciting in her life than eat bran mash.

“Good ol’ Molly,” they called back, as they rode to the bunk-house for
dinner. Molly, hearing the familiar name, lifted her head to regard the
cavalcade soberly.

We went without milk cheerfully enough now and speculated at every meal
as to the probable course Molly would pursue as the calf grew. There was
little else to talk about. Some vowed she would get over her
hallucination quickly and abandon the youngster. Uncle Henry thought
differently.

“She’s a better mother to him than his own would have been. I never done
saw a range cow look after her calf like Molly does that rascal. And
ain’t he fat!” he exclaimed.

The wagon boss conceived it to be in the line of his duty to brand the
calf. A man was despatched to rope him. He returned presently to say
that Molly would not permit him to get near. “She went on the peck and
gored my horse.” He exhibited a red wale along his mount’s flank.

“You can’t rope a calf away from its mother?” the boss exclaimed,
dumbfounded. “Pshaw! You’d better go back to cotton-pickin’, Cas.”

He spurred away to bring in the culprit himself. What were cowboys
coming to nowadays? He would show them! We mounted the corral fence the
better to view proceedings, and waxed merry of spirit when Molly chased
the boss six separate times. Molly would not be frightened or enticed
away from her son, but turned to confront this unexpected enemy when he
galloped at her. As for the calf, he glued himself to Molly’s side and
would not budge therefrom.

“Will we stretch her out, Pink?” we shouted.

“No,” the boss roared.

He made another try and almost got his rope over the calf; but the
Jersey went at him just then and gave him something else to do. So the
boss ambled back, grinning sheepishly behind his sandy mustache.

“I reckon”--he cleared his throat--“I reckon that’s one on me, boys. Let
him go just now. We’ll get him in the spring.”

Uncle Henry was the only human being that the Jersey would permit within
five yards of her baby. He entertained a sort of proprietary affection
for the cow, and she reciprocated save when such cordial relationship
clashed with her love for the adopted one. At such moments Uncle Henry
was not to be considered, of course, and she was as ready to put him on
the fence or speed him round a bush as any other member of the Tumbling
K outfit.

Upon a day in September, he was on his way back from patching the line
fence, when he espied Molly trotting distractedly about a narrow draw.
She stopped to stare as he approached, then resumed her agitated run.
From time to time she dashed to the brink of an arroyo to gaze down.
Uncle Henry watched her, surmising from the stores of his experience
what had happened.

“She’ll jist about go on the prod and rip me if I try to git him out.”

Molly took a few steps toward him, lowed pitifully, and returned to look
down at the unfortunate calf. He advanced with caution, anticipating a
rush; but Molly only lowed again and made way for him.

“I swan, she wants me to pull him out,” said Uncle Henry in a reverent
tone. “If that don’t beat every--”

He alighted and walked to the arroyo’s rim. Ten feet below, on the sandy
bottom of a hole whose precipitous sides prevented him climbing out, lay
the white-face. Uncle Henry deftly dropped a noose over its head, and
dragged the kicking youngster to safety. When he went to remove the
rope, Molly suffered him to handle her son, though she glared in swift
suspicion when Uncle Henry threw him to the ground and knelt on his body
to free the loop from his neck.

“Boys,” said the boss at supper one night, “Molly has got to go.”

“Oh-ho! Ho, indeed!” Uncle Henry retorted with fine sarcasm. “Oh, yes,”
he added, unable to think of anything better to say.

The boss shook his head sadly over the clamor that ensued. He spoke of
the matter as a man of feeling would acquaint a wife of her husband’s
taking-off; but it had to be. An order had come to deliver Molly to
Bockus, the butcher at Blackwater.

What! Lose Molly? The boss was locoed, or worse. Had he by any chance
secured a bottle, of whose whereabouts we were in ignorance? We would
buy the cow ourselves first.

It was an off-day. The branding was done, and the Tumbling K outfit was
awaiting the arrival of a purchase of four thousand steers from the
South. Thus it came about that twelve of us rode into Blackwater, and
Big John was spokesman. John was not much of a speaker, being given to
profanity when a congestion of language threatened, but he had a grand
theme, and talked about Molly in a way that made us cough.

“Bless my heart,” cried the owner of the Tumbling K, when the nub of the
matter was revealed. “Bless my heart!”

He gaped, then squeezed the mighty muscles of Big John’s shoulder and
laughed. All this fuss about a cow--one forlorn dun cow. The puncher
grinned in his turn, shuffling his feet; for they knew and understood
each other, these two, having been associated for eighteen years. That
is why Bockus received the strange explanation he did when he called to
protest against the delay in delivering Molly.

“It’s just this way,” the cattleman observed, slipping an elastic band
about his tally-book. “If I let you have that cow for thirty, I lose
precisely nine hundred and thirty-seven dollars. No; Molly stays.”

“Nine hundred and--Why, man, you’re crazy! How’s that?”

“Ask those strikers of mine,” came the answer, accompanied by a chuckle.
“Great weather, isn’t it? How is veal selling to-day?”

“But look a-here, Vance, let me have the calf, anyway. You owe me that
much,” the fat Bockus protested.

“All right. Send out for him, though,” said the cattleman.

It happened that Bockus despatched a youth with a pair of mules hitched
to a wagon, for the calf. He was a wily urchin, and a glance satisfied
him that Molly’s son could be taken from her only by craft. Accordingly
he loafed all of one forenoon in the horse pasture with his wagon close
at hand, and when the unsuspecting Jersey strayed off some hundreds of
yards to secure better grazing, he made a sudden descent upon the
white-face, locked his fingers about its nose so that the calf could not
utter a sound, threw and tied him, then heaved the outraged victim into
the wagon and made off. Molly returned shortly, and missing the apple of
her eye, set out on a search of the immediate vicinity. In the distance
a wagon raised the dust of the Blackwater trail, going rapidly. The boy
did not feel any too secure even with a fence between them, and lashed
his mules, shrilling oaths at the gawky beasts.

The cow brought up at the fence, every sense on the alert to detect the
presence of the calf in the fast-disappearing vehicle. Some subtle
intuition told Molly he was there, and she retreated a few steps. Then,
with a crash, she went through the four strands of wire, and, with a
long gash in her left shoulder dripping blood, started after them at a
swinging trot.

Brother Ducey was conducting an open-air revival service among the
mining population of Blackwater. He was a powerful exhorter, was the
brother, and, as most of his congregation were women, with a sprinkling
of men who would presently go on the night shift six hundred feet into
the bowels of the earth, his picture of a lurid, living perdition had
them swaying and rocking on the benches. Their groans and lamentations
rolled up the street.

“You’re all a-going to hell!” he shouted. “Your feet are on the hot
bricks now. Hell is--” And, again-- “Hell--”

Brother Ducey broke off and glared wrathfully at an imp of a boy who
drove a clanking wagon at top speed completely around the meeting-place,
making for the slaughter-house beyond.

Then Molly arrived and took no such devious route. She went straight
through the congregation, overturning the mourners’ bench, and, unable
to differentiate between friends and foes, headed for the rostrum.
Brother Ducey waved his arms wildly and squalled “Shoo!” But, as Molly
would not “shoo,” he scaled a tree with the speed of a lizard, from
which vantage-point he besought somebody to shoot the animal.

The Jersey did not pause to trifle with these hysterical worshipers. Her
business was to find her baby, and she was almost up with him. In truth,
the cow was an awesome sight as she charged anew after the wagon, the
blood trailing from her shoulder, froth flaking her muzzle. Evidently
the butcher’s assistant found her so.

“I can’t beat her to the gate!” he gasped, with a glance backward.

Whereupon he wheeled again and galloped his team in front of Bockus’
store. There he abandoned them, springing through the door just as Molly
swept down the road. The calf bawled a greeting and the Jersey began to
circle the wagon, occasionally prodding at the mules just to be on the
safe side in the event of their having had anything to do with this
theft. They kicked at her in return, but did not offer to run away.

“Somebody rope her! Somebody rope her!” Bockus cried, dancing up and
down in his shop. “No, don’t shoot. Them locoed Tumbling K’s will wipe
out the town if you do.”

Alas, there was nobody in Blackwater competent to do it. They were a
peaceful, industrious mining folk, and a cow was a dubious thing to
them, to be handled respectfully in the best of moods. And an enraged
animal like Molly! Blackwater suspended business, shut up shop, and hid
indoors or took refuge on the roof.

From time to time Molly abandoned the wagon temporarily to seek revenge
where it might be given to her. In this way she made forays over half
the town, and put Bill Terry, the postmaster, through a new plate-glass
window that Tom Zeigler had imported at enormous expense. Tom swore that
Vance would have to pay for it.

“Send for one of them fool cowboys!” Bockus screamed, after an hour of
this.

His boy stole forth on an emaciated pony, and, eluding the cow by a
burst of speed, brought Blackwater’s prayerful appeal to the Tumbling K
headquarters.

We rode in and roped Molly. Then certain of us did some trafficking with
Bockus, Big John laying down the terms, with the result that the cord
around the calf’s legs was loosed and he was restored to his mother.

All the blind savagery was departed from Molly now. She sauntered over
to a patch of grass and began to eat, with the calf at her heels, and
the stare she turned on the citizens of Blackwater was noncommittal,
even kindly.

Her departure took on something of the character of a pageant. Brother
Ducey was induced to make an oration--or he could not be restrained--at
any rate, Brother Ducey delivered a speech setting forth the
extraordinary qualities of the cow. It was really a remarkable tribute,
but all the notice Molly took was to flick one ear as she masticated a
bunch of grass.

“And, brethern and sisters, what does this brave creature teach us?
Hey?” he demanded, in conclusion.

“I dunno,” mumbled a gentleman at whom he was staring, in a hopeless
tone.

“I ask you-all ag’in, what she done taught us when she come a-seeking of
her young in the very heart of our meetin’? Why, it’s plain as the mole
on Lon Rainey’s face,” cried Brother Ducey. “I forgive her a-chasing of
me up that cottonwood,--it’s a right good thing it was so handy,--and
Miz Ducey kin sew the pants. But what did this noble animal show? Jist
what I was praying of you-all to reveal, brethern and sisters. She
showed love and devotion, and a generous sacrifice for somebody else
besides her own self. That’s what she done showed. You-all do likewise.
Brother Perry will now pass the hat.”

We took Molly back to the Tumbling K and turned her into the horse
pasture. She came peaceably enough, six of us acting as escort of honor.
She is there now, followed everywhere she goes by a husky red calf with
a white face. Molly is firmly persuaded that he is her son and the pride
of the range.



                                  VII
                         THE BABY AND THE PUMA


The wagon jolted and whined over rough ground, winding among giant
pines. Off to the right followed a tawny shape, flitting from blotch of
shadow to screening bush, blending with the blurred outlines of tree and
rock. The moon was hidden and Brother Schoonover drove with
circumspection, lest his ark and all his possessions be wrecked in the
wilderness.

“Doggone that moon. It ain’t never working when you need it right bad,”
cried Brother Schoonover, cracking his whip. “That limb was like to
blind me. Stead-ay, Glossy. Now, girl--now.”

The puma crouched flat on hearing the voice. Then the wagon drew out of
sight beyond a tope of trees and he sprang to the shelter of a mesquite.
There he peered again at the nester’s outfit going down the valley
through the dark. It labored heavily; Brother Schoonover’s tones reached
him, raised in sharp rebuke of the mare; and presently he slunk in
pursuit.

Don’t imagine that Bowallopus--such was he dubbed from that night of
adventure--was stalking prey. Nothing was farther removed from his
purpose. He was dreadfully afraid, but curiosity overrode fear! Time and
again he halted to abandon the game and go about the serious things of
life, but could not. The wagon and its inmates had him fast.

Bowallopus was not even hungry, but he trailed along in rear. Perhaps
there lurked a sneaking hope far back in that hard skull of his that
something might transpire toward the further easement of his stomach,
but it never for a moment dulled his caution.

The nester whistled at the mare and urged her forward, and twice the
harsh scream of the brakes stayed Bowallopus rigid in his tracks. It
should not be held against Brother Schoonover that he forgot on three
occasions the Biblical limitations as regards profane words, because the
night was deceptive and he was far from water. All he had on earth was
with him there in the wagon, and he could descry no suitable place to
camp. The family spring-bed was slung from ropes off the floor under the
arched canvas top, and on it his wife slept. Curled warmly in the hollow
of her arm was the baby. Sometimes the lurchings of their home rolled
him quite away from her side, to return him on the rebound. He slept
placidly, being a seasoned traveler.

Just before descending a gulch to cross a dried creek-bed, Brother
Schoonover drove slap against a large rock, being now far off any
trails. The wagon careened to the point of overturning and the baby slid
from his mother’s arms. Mrs. Schoonover had raised the canvas for
purposes of ventilation--she suffered from an affection of the
lungs--and he shot downward through the hole. Being utterly helpless, he
was unhurt. He hit the ground lightly and the wheel missed him a full
half-inch.

Of course the shock woke the baby, but he was so astonished for a minute
that he could only hold his breath ready for what might befall. When he
did let out a yell, the wagon was thumping over the stones, with the
driver standing up to beat the mare, and the couple in it could not have
heard a steam calliope ten yards off.

Bowallopus vanished when the brown bundle dropped. A hundred paces and
he halted in a thicket, arrested by a gurgling treble cry. The puma had
seen children before, playing near the shack of a Mexican woodchopper,
and he knew that note of distress. Very cautiously he crept back and
began to circle.

    The felidae steal upon their prey noiselessly, treading on the
    soft elastic pads of the soles of the feet, without risk of
    betrayal from the rustle caused by non-retractile claws. When
    within a short distance, they crouch and spring, bounding many
    times their length upon their unsuspecting victims, which, borne
    down by the descending weight of the fierce foe, are at once
    fastened upon by the deadly grip of the well-armed jaw and by
    the united action of eighteen fully-extended piercing claws.

So says an old school book--or it may be an ancient natural history--and
it is very illuminating and authoritative. But it happens that
Bowallopus belonged to a class of felidae which does not prey upon man
or the children of men, and he did none of these things. He waited until
the groaning of the wagon died away, his head up, keen for sound or
sight of danger. A puma relies more on his ears and eyes than on his
nose to apprise him of enemy or victim. Then he went forward stealthily,
moving in a wide semicircle.

The baby threshed about with his chubby arms and howled, whereat
Bowallopus shrank back, hissing like an enraged gander, his tail lashing
from side to side. Perhaps the threatening noise chilled the boy to
silence; at any rate he broke off in his wail and lay quiet. The lion
went nearer. He stood above the brown bundle, his muscles ready for
combat or instant flight, and eyed it suspiciously. Much as a house cat
would pick up a questionable bit of loot from the floor, Bowallopus
seized the dress in his teeth and lifted the baby. Schoonover, Jr.,
waved a pudgy hand in lively terror and slapped the beast on the nose.
Horribly surprised, Bowallopus dropped him and sprang back. Then he
gathered himself to leap.

“Hi!” yelled Brother Schoonover.

The lion snarled as he turned to flee, but the nester had stopped in his
run and was down on one knee. Bowallopus cleared the distance between
him and some brush with a magnificent, sinuous jump, but as he went, a
crashing sound smote his ears and sharp burning pains ripped along loins
and back. Brother Schoonover had loaded his old smooth-bore with
bird-shot that day to the end that he might pot a dog-rabbit or a brace
of wild doves for supper, and Bowallopus received the entire charge.

Without paying the slightest heed to the fleeing puma, the nester threw
down his weapon and clasped his son. Instantly the baby shrieked his
loudest, and “God, he ain’t hurt a bit,” cried Brother Schoonover in a
great voice. He was shaking like a cottonwood leaf and his fright
impelled the child to further outcry, so contagious is fear. And now
Mrs. Schoonover came running, unable to remain longer in the wagon with
bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh lying helpless somewhere in the
dark along the trail--she could see him dead. She prayed audibly as she
ran.

“Give him to me,” she said, snatching the baby from his sire as though
he had been much to blame.

“It weren’t my fault, Sally Jo,” he protested.

“You drive most awful reckless, Brother Schoonover,” returned his wife,
and hugged her son closer.

“He ain’t hurt a mite. Just scared,” she announced, after a wondrous
inspection by touch of hand. “Something done tore his dress.”

“A big ol’ line had him, Sally Jo,” the nester exclaimed. “I swan he was
a monster. He went a-smashing up among the bushes and rocks.”

“You didn’t kill him? You done let him go and he most had eat our
child?” shrilled Mrs. Schoonover.

“I reckon I done missed, Sally Jo. There, there, girl--it’s all right
now. You cain’t hurt a line with birdshot. It won’t even tickle him.
This here shot would bounce off’n a kitten’s hide, this here would.”

They went back to the wagon, Mrs. Schoonover carrying the baby. The
nester opined that he had had enough of driving for one night and they
would camp here.

“It’s hard on Glossy, but I’ll go find her water first thing in the
morning”--he poked a finger playfully among his son’s ribs--“So that ol’
line was like to git you, boy? Ol’ Bowallopus was a-looking you over for
a meal?”

Brother Schoonover hobbled the mare and they went to rest.

Bowallopus lay on a flat rock amid the lower ridges next day, sunning
himself. He was not far from home and felt perfectly secure. In a gulch,
washed out by floods numberless generations ago, was a large hole that
led into a shallow cave. There was in front a sandstone ledge much to
the beast’s liking, and here the puma resided, as a stinging odor
proclaimed.

He was very handsome, was Bowallopus. On his side, he measured eight
feet ten inches from the tip of his nose to tip of tail, and his weight
could not have been less than two hundred and forty pounds. Just now the
superb richness of his reddish brown coat was marred by unsightly clots
in the region of his rump, and he was constantly reminded thereof by a
gnawing and itching of innumerable tiny spots. The irritation meant that
the wounds were healing, but Bowallopus’s temper was very bad
nevertheless. He licked his sores tenderly and settled himself to bask
in the glare, lids drooping.

Five miles away, Brother Schoonover was digging with might and main into
the side of a low hill, for he had found a spring bubbling from the rock
and was now engaged in fashioning a dugout for a home.

Bowallopus went up the valley early that evening, being minded to kill.
And before darkness closed down he arrived at a butte about three miles
from his lair.

The huge cat crawled warily to a ledge and composed himself to wait. At
the other side of the butte vague figures were moving, and Bowallopus
could hear plainly the crisp munching of grass. These were the range
mares wearing the Anvil brand, and he had taken toll of their young many
times before. In the position he had selected they could not wind him;
and along the base of the butte ran a trail down which the mares went to
drink.

The sun sank back of the mountains. A big roan stallion which ruled the
band gave over eating and lay down to roll. Invigorated by this
exercise, he whinnied joyously and started for the pool. One mare, with
her colt, followed at his heels. The others began to close in, slowly,
then in groups, until they were moving in loose array towards water. The
leader picked the butte trail, paused to pull a tempting tuft, and
rounded a bend. Then he snorted an alarm and swerved outward.

Bowallopus let him go--he was too formidable for attack--but the mare
and her colt were below him. On the stallion’s warning he hurled himself
downward, a yellow streak in the gloom, and bore the luckless colt to
the ground. The crunch of its broken spine was drowned in the rumble of
flying hoofs. Bowallopus gripped his prey by the neck and started
homewards. Twice he was compelled to stop to obtain a fresh hold, but he
dragged the carcass to the washout.

It happened that he made a foray early one evening to Wolf Creek in
quest of a deer.

Sometimes, if he were exceedingly crafty, and wind and bough of tree
were right, he could slay when a deer stole timidly to drink. Bowallopus
went down the valley, alert and noiseless as was his wont. Suddenly he
stiffened, the hairs on neck and back pringling.

Here was a fence. There could be no doubt of that. It was a very crude
contrivance of one strand of wire, but he could see the posts standing
in a ghostly, wavering line. Bowallopus walked along it, tensely
expectant. In the distance a tiny light shone like a fallen star, and
Bowallopus paused often to stare. This was the lantern in Brother
Schoonover’s house. He had fenced a quarter-section, or had enclosed it
sufficiently to conform with the law, and now occupied a one-roomed
dugout constructed of logs and earth. The Brother was fully determined
to prove up on this claim, and already indulged in dreams of how the
place would look when green under Kaffir corn, and a red-roofed house on
the hill back of them. He had longed all his life for a house with a red
roof, for it could be descried so far and looked so cheery.

The puma made the circuit of the place and watched and listened.
Presently the light went out and all was still. He did not tarry long,
being seized of a feeling of unrest. All heart for the hunt was gone
from him and he struck northward, intent on putting distance between
himself and this newest invader of his domain. While the dark was yet
young, he scaled a pine tree--a tree bole was to the lion as greensward
to the antelope--and sat comfortably on a thick limb. Once he tilted his
nose and sent his screech vibrating to the topmost hills. It was a
rending cry like the scream of a woman in mortal pain--no animal but a
horse in its death agony can produce a sound more terrifying. After a
while he descended and went northward once more; but there was no
yowling from Bowallopus now. He had to find something to eat, and
stealth alone could accomplish that end.

Yet he was back at the fence next night and on many nights succeeding.
The dugout and its dwellers recurred again and again to tempt his
curiosity, however far he raided. Bowallopus had no desire to forage
there, but he simply could not keep away. And gradually the feeling of
anxiety over their presence became a fixed dread, an obsession.

Brother Schoonover acquired a dog from a passing Mexican freighter and
owned the mongrel for exactly seven days and six nights. Most of that
period was spent by the canine back of the shack, tied to a post. Then
he was released and ventured too far in the dusk, and Bowallopus
gathered him in. When the nester found the remains he forgot all about
the spirit of kindly charity for which he had been so strong in a two
days’ debate with Brother Ducey in Texas, and railed against all created
things save those man had domesticated.

After this episode Bowallopus absented himself from the vicinity of the
Schoonover home for a space. He went up into the mountains, where he
contrived to get considerable veal and young beef. Winter was coming
upon the land and a calf did not hug his mother’s side so closely of a
night, being grown and prideful.

In the sheen of a late November gloaming, he dropped from a jutting rock
on the rim of The Hatter and padded along a burro trail. This was the
way down the big mountain which the woodchoppers took; thence they drove
their patient beasts of burden seventy long miles to town. Bowallopus
slunk beside the well-worn path, one eye cocked for trouble. He was
ferociously hungry; his stomach clamored for food; and at sight of a
scurrying jackrabbit, a peculiar pulsating ache started back of his
jowl.

Abruptly he drew back and flopped downward behind a thorny bush. Below,
on the shoulder of The Hatter, clung a shack of boughs and sod. A man
was even then hammering on its roof, while a woman passed him up bits of
old tin. Half way between the puma and the hut, a small boy was toiling
under a pile of fagots, tied over his back.

All this Bowallopus saw, but what interested him most was an object
nearer at hand. Not twenty feet away a Mexican baby played in the dirt,
crowing with delight over possession of a captive lizard. The child was
perhaps two years old and much too naked for that time of year, but she
was hearty and cared naught for that. Her brother had brought her up the
trail, leaving her to amuse herself as best she might whilst he gathered
firewood. Naturally he forgot all about the toddler, the job not being
to his liking.

Bowallopus listened and watched and waited. The baby rolled in the dust.
The man and woman were busily engaged and the boy had been sent to fetch
a bucket of water. A bull-bat flew over the puma’s head. A hush crept
over The Hatter.

It may be that he shut his eyes when he launched himself and struck,
though she was so very, very little. There was no cry to betray--only
the throaty snarls of the puma, now turned mankiller and more horribly
afraid and fearfully daring than he had ever been in his life.

“A big ol’ mountain line done eat a Mexican baby up yonder,” Brother
Schoonover reported to his wife.

“You keep buckshot in that gun, Brother Schoonover; do you hear? Oh, my
li’l’ lamb! What if that wicked lion had eat you up?” Her son did not
appear at all disturbed by the speculation, but thumped on her breast
with his fists.

There was a tremendous to-do up and down the country for eighty leagues.
The manager of the Anvil offered a hundred dollars reward for the
murderer’s hide and the cowboys of the region blazed away at every
bobcat that showed a hair within their line of vision. Even Richter’s
sheep herders bestirred themselves to set traps, but all to no avail.
And the victim being a native child, the killing soon ceased to be a
live topic.

The winter arrived in the wake of a norther. It blustered for a
fortnight, then set in to be bitterly cold. Bowallopus fared well, and
grew ever more malignant and furtive. One rib was cracked owing to
misjudgment of distance, but accidents are likely to occur to the best
of hunters. In diving from a tree for the back of a colt, he missed and
came down close to the mare. In a flash he gathered himself and leaped
again, but the mother’s heels crashed full on his side and she went away
at full speed, her son running a good second. On another occasion a
young bull caught him with a headlong rush, unprepared on his kill, and
would have made short work with so excellent a start, had not Bowallopus
sought safety in the fleetness of his legs. He was a sapient animal and
knew when he had enough.

Spring came at last, and Bowallopus had a fight. It was a family
affair--his wife was not wholly blameless--and it is better for all
concerned to say only that he came off the victor. A young puma had
wandered into his ridges from the south and west, and he never went
back. When a mountain lion does fight, it is worth going many miles to
see.

Some years it will rain so hard in this part of the cow country that the
nesters can but sit and watch their puny efforts at raising corn seep
away; but the cattle rejoice exceedingly. It must be admitted, however,
that this happens extremely seldom. Generally the land bakes under
cloudless skies from February to June and the earth opens in cracks, as
though gasping for breath.

Brother Schoonover broke his ground and planned to raise a bumper crop
of corn, the signs being propitious. He made two trips to town, three
days each way by wagon, in order to make all ready. Bowallopus used
often to see him toiling long after sunset; the puma spent many hours of
the dark in sinister vigil beyond the fence, where he could see the
light burning steadily in the dugout. Again he would prowl completely
around the claim, keeping always off the wire, for that solitary strand
was associated with man. Once he topped the hill back of the home in
late afternoon, though it was seldom he went abroad in daylight, and hid
behind a boulder. The Schoonover baby was crawling near the door, on
hands and knees. Bowallopus never once removed his gaze from him in a
full hour.

His own domestic affairs had progressed of late. Three sons had been
born to his wife, who hid them on a day when she detected a certain
glint in her lord’s eyes. Bowallopus discovered their hiding-place and
slew the cubs and ate them.

Rain should have fallen in June, but it did not. July passed, and the
country quivered under a white ball that was the sun. The cattle gave up
the hopeless fight. In the valley the air reeked of carcasses. Brother
Schoonover finished a weary day in his waste fields in August, and said
to his wife:

“Well, Sally Jo, I reckon we’ll be moving agin.”

“No, no; don’t say so. Have we really got to go, Jed? We’re always
moving. This is a right cruel country, ain’t it, Jed? Nowhere for a
person to get along nice and quiet.”

He made no reply, but picked his son from the floor and set him on his
knee. Then he stared out over his bare acres and began to laugh.

“Don’t,” she entreated. “That’s awful. It ain’t so bad as that, Jed.”

“We’ve done nothing but move for six years, Sally Jo. Or I reckon it’s
nearer eight, counting them over in the Nations? And I made certain this
place would do and we’d have a home.”

“Jed,” she said, putting a hand awkwardly on his shoulder. “Can’t we
stay? Ain’t there no way? Perhaps you could get a job somewhere--with
the Anvil boys. Oh, anything, so’s we don’t have to move again. It’ll be
so soon now. I’ll never live through it, I know.”

He eyed her anxiously, dandling the baby the while.

“That’s one of the reasons,” he said. “You ought to be near where a
doctor can be got handy, Sally Jo. No, we’ll have to give this up. I’ll
take you back to my folks for the winter. We ought for to be there
anyway. The ol’ man, he’s getting feeble, and first thing we know, he’ll
be leaving that farm to Sam instead of me, Sally Jo. Cheer up, girl;
we’ll find another place.”

“All right,” she returned hopelessly.

Two nights later they made camp among giant pines in the valley. The
mare grazed near, hobbled to prevent her straying. Brother Schoonover
lighted the fire and his wife cooked supper of bacon and bread and
coffee. That must suffice until they reached town--and afterwards, more
of the same diet, for the family treasury was down to eleven dollars.

They washed the pots and tin plates, and put the baby to bed in the
wagon. Then the couple knelt down and Brother Schoonover offered up a
prayer. He always prayed to his Maker in a loud voice before retiring,
invoking benedictions on the entire world and all the dwellers thereon.
Only two exceptions did he ever make and he made those
religiously--nothing could induce him to intercede for reigning
monarchs, and he made special mention of the Republican party only that
they might be excluded from the general benefits to accrue.

When they were rising to their feet, Sally Jo clutched her husband’s
arm.

“What’s that, Jed? There--back of them mesquite.”

“I cain’t see nothing. Where?”

“Don’t you see? Look along my finger. There, it’s moving again. It looks
like a dog, Jed.”

Her husband saw now and sucked in his breath. Off to the right a tawny
shape flitted from blotch of shadow to screening bush, blending with the
blurred outline of tree and rock.

“Hush,” he cautioned, tiptoeing to the wagon.

The reliable smooth-bore lay on the seat. Brother Schoonover slipped the
shell out without a sound and put in another loaded with buckshot. That
done, he lay down under the wagon and pretended to be asleep, but the
gun protruded through the spokes of a wheel and the Brother occasionally
sighted along the barrel. It was dark, but there was a pale glow from
the stars, which would suffice for the work in hand.

“When he gits in line with that pine tree,” he murmured.

A mountain lion was circling the camp. He had stumbled upon the nester’s
outfit by chance and had no business there, but curiosity beat down
doubts and caution. He had glimpsed the baby near the fire and had
cringed to earth momentarily. Now, he was the more eager. The sight of
the couple on their knees and the man’s harsh tones drove him back a few
yards, and he had inadvertently moved from shadow while one might count
three; but now all was quiet. He lay in the gloom surveying the camp.
The mare cropped the grass noisily on the far side and the puma
determined to take a closer look over there.

He emerged so eerily from nowhere that Brother Schoonover almost doubted
his senses when he saw a head and neck between the sights in line with
the tree. There was a flash and a terrific roar. Brother Schoonover was
knocked backward by the kick of the gun, and his wife cried out. The
baby awoke and squalled in affright.

The puma made a convulsive leap high into the air, hitting out blindly
with his mighty paws. He came down with claws tearing into the earth,
and whirled about and crouched to meet the unseen enemy. Mrs. Schoonover
cowered in the wagon, covering the baby’s head with her apron that he
might not hear the uproar.

“I got you, hey?” Brother Schoonover shouted, furiously elated. “Well,
here’s another of the same kind.”

He held the gun firmly against his shoulder and sent a charge straight
between the eyes glaring at him like two living coals. The puma lurched
forward and stretched out. He coughed once, his muscles jerking; then
stiffened.

In the morning, a mountain lion lay on the edge of camp, his hide
riddled with shot. Still, he was very handsome. He measured eight feet
ten inches from the tip of his nose to tip of tail, and his weight could
not have been less than two hundred and forty pounds.

While his mother prepared breakfast and his father watered and harnessed
the mare, the Schoonover baby inspected the creature. He pulled its ears
and kicked it with fine deliberation on the point of the nose.

“Do you aim to leave it here, Brother Schoonover?” his wife asked, when
they were ready to set forward.

“Shore. The hide ain’t no good at this season. And he’s shot all to
bits. Do you know, Sally Jo, I got a idea this is the same ol’ mountain
line what found our son? It’s like he’s the same one that eat the pore
li’l’ Mexican, too, don’t you reckon? Ol’ Bowallopus?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me none,” she answered, and shuddered. Her husband
spurned the carcass with his boot.

They got under way. High up in the sky appeared two black specks.
Brother Schoonover pointed to them.

“They’ll rip him to pieces in no time. But we’ll keep the claws and
whiskers and the end of his tail for the baby to play with. Hey, Sally
Jo?”

The specks grew larger. Soon they showed as birds, hovering on
effortless wings above the camping ground. Brother Schoonover whacked
the mare in high glee, and they set out again on their pilgrimage.

Before they had gone half a mile, the buzzards shot from the blue vault
to earth.



                                  VIII
                             THE MANKILLER


All this happened in the Bad Year, which was not so many months ago. The
outfit issued daily from their camps--riding bog, skinning cattle and
driving in the helpless to the home pastures to be fed on oil-cake and
alfalfa. The cows were walking skeletons, wild of eye, ready to wheel in
impotent anger on their rescuers; or sinking weakly to the ground at the
least urging, never to rise again. Every creek was dry. Springs that
were held eternal became slimy mudholes and a trap. A well-grown man
could easily step across the San Pedro, oozing sluggishly past mauled
carcasses.

Wherever one rode he found bones of hapless creatures, or starved cows
stretched flat on their sides, waiting for death to end their
sufferings. And the flies settled in sickening, heaving clusters. Each
mire held its victim. Wobbly-legged calves wandered over the range,
crying for mothers that could never come. And the sun blazed down out of
a pale sky.

Even the saving mesquite in the draws and on the ridges was failing as
sustenance; of grass there was none. The country lay bleak and gasping
from Tombstone to the border. Not even a desert cow, accustomed to slake
her water hunger by chewing cactus, could have long survived such
blighting months. How we prayed for rain!

Manuel Salazar gave heed to the comet where he lay on his tarp, and
crossed himself to avert the death-curse which was come upon the land.
This weird luminary portended dire events and Manuel began, like a
prudent man, to take thought of his religion. There might be nothing in
religion, as Chico contended; but a man never knows, and it is the part
of wisdom to be on the safe side.

Then, one evening, when the mountains were taking on their blue sheen
and the beauty of these vast stretches smote one with a feeling akin to
pain, Archie Smith rode up to headquarters and tossed a human hand on
the porch.

“Found it in the far corner of the Zacaton Bottom,” he said.

Jim Floyd recognized it at once by the triangular scar on the palm. The
hand had been gnawed off cleanly at the wrist. Floyd wrapped the
gruesome thing in a sack, wishful to give it decent interment when
opportunity should offer.

“It’s ol’ man Greer’s,” he said. “You remember ol’ man Greer? He used to
dig postholes for the Lazy L. Where’s the rest of him, Smith?”

“I aim to go and see. Ki-yotes eat him up, don’t you reckon, Jim?”

“It sure looks that way. Pore ol’ Greer--he could dig postholes right
quick,” the boss answered.

What Archie found of the digger of postholes established nothing of the
manner of death. Both arms were gone and wolves had dragged the body;
hence, there was no real argument against the theory that old man Greer,
who indulged a taste for _tequila_, had sustained a fall from his horse
and had perished miserably within sight of the ranch. Yet Archie found
this hard to believe. Wolves do not crush in the skull of a man, and it
was the cowboy’s conviction that anyone could fall off Hardtimes, the
digger’s mount, twice or thrice a day with no other injury than the blow
to his pride.

Two days later Manuel Salazar brought in Greer’s horse, shockingly gaunt
and worried, and swelled as to the head. But what interested the outfit,
when the saddle and bridle had been removed from Hardtimes, were long,
parallel wales along neck and flank. Archie pronounced them to be the
marks of a horse’s teeth.

“That don’t show anything. He wandered off and got into a fight with
another horse,” Floyd asserted. “Yes, sir; it’s like that he done just
that.”

After which he dismissed the unfortunate Greer from his mind. The outfit
shook its head and expressed sorrow for the lonely digger, but opined
that his fate surely went to show how injurious steady application to
_tequila_ could be, more especially in cruel weather. The Mexicans, and
the nesters in outlying parts, were not satisfied with the explanation
put forward. They discussed the mystery during protracted pauses in work
and in the dark of the night. When two men met on a trail and halted to
pass the time of day, old man Greer was the subject of talk. There were
rumors of a snug fortune the digger had amassed and buried--sixty-six
thousand dollars in gold, it was. Joe Toole, who made a nice,
comfortable living by systematic theft of calves from the cattle
company, did not hesitate to hint that Greer had died a victim to its
professional gun-fighter for reasons best known to the rich corporation;
but, then, Joe was prejudiced. Soon the death grew to a murder, and no
man not of white blood would ride the Zacaton Bottom after nightfall.

Tommy Floyd talked of these and other matters to his father as the boss
was feeding Apache.

“Pshaw!” Floyd said contemptuously. “Don’t you put no stock in them
stories, Tommy, boy. Some people in this here country can smell a skunk
when they sight a dead tree.”

“But what do you guess killed him, Dad?”

“I don’t know, son. I sure wish I did,” was the troubled reply.

He punched Apache in the ribs to make him move over. The huge jack laid
back his ears and his tail whisked threateningly, but he gave place with
an awkward flop, and Floyd laughed. Others might fear Apache, but he
knew there was not the least particle of viciousness lurking in that
hammerlike head. Of all the ranch possessions--blooded horses,
thoroughbred Herefords and cowponies--he liked the jack best. It
pandered to his vanity that others should avoid the monster, or approach
him in diffidence, with suspicion and anxiety; and, in truth, Apache’s
appearance was sufficiently appalling. Great as was his blue-gray bulk,
it was dwarfed by the ponderous head; his knees were large and bulbous,
and when he opened his mouth to bray, laying bare the powerful teeth,
Apache was a spectacle to scare the intrepid. Horses would run at sight
of him; an entire pasture would squeal with fear and flee on his
approach. Yet there was not a gentler animal to handle in the million
acres of the company’s range.

Toward the fag-end of a day Tommy was eating _panocha_ on the steps of
the porch, a favorite diversion with him. While removing some particles
thereof from his cheek, in the region of his ear, he espied his father
riding homeward from the Zacaton Bottom. Something in the way the boss
swayed in the saddle brought Tommy’s head up alertly. Floyd was clinging
to the horn and the reins trailed on the ground. The boy threw his crust
away and ran to meet him. A dozen yards from the house the horse
stopped, as though he knew that the end of the journey had come for his
master.

“That black devil, Tommy!” his father gasped, and lurched outward and to
the ground.

Two of the boys came running and bore Floyd to his bed. That he had
contrived to ride home filled them with wonder at his endurance and
fortitude--nearly the whole of his right side was torn away, one arm
swung limply, and there were ragged cuts on the head. Tommy hovered
near, crying to him to open his eyes.

The boss never regained consciousness, and died at midnight.

A Mexican doctor was summoned from a border village--his American
competitor was off in the Dragoons, assisting at an increase to the
population. After a minute examination the man of medicine announced
that five ribs were broken. It was his opinion that Señor Floyd had met
with an accident, from the effects of which he had passed away. Nobody
was inclined to dispute this finding.

“Something done tromped him,” Dan Harkey asserted. “It’s like one of
them bulls got into the Bottom and went for him when he got down to
drink.”

“No,” said Archie positively; “a bull couldn’t have tore him up that
way. It looks to me like teeth done that.”

Then Tommy awoke from the benumbed state in which he had moved since the
tragedy and repeated his father’s dying words. They were very simple of
interpretation. A black man had drifted into the country from eastern
Texas, and lived, an outcast, on a place not fifteen miles from
headquarters. It was well known that Floyd had had trouble with him,
being possessed of an aggressive contempt for negroes, and twice had
made threats to run the newcomer off.

“A nigrah could easy have beat him up thataway,” Dan declared. “A nigrah
could do most anything. Yes, sir; he beat him to death--that’s what he
done. It’s like he used that old hoe of his’n.”

Word of the killing flew over the land in the marvelous fashion news is
carried in the cow-country. Within twelve hours men knew of it in the
most remote cañons of the Huachucas, and a party of nine set forth from
headquarters. But somebody had carried warning, for the lonely hut was
untenanted and the door swung loose on its rawhide hinges.

They buried Floyd on top of a hill where the wind had a free sweep, and
piled a few stones atop. Tommy fashioned a cross out of two rough
boards; and the boss sleeps there to-day. The sheriff was deeply stirred
and had notices posted throughout the territory.

                              $250 REWARD

    For the arrest, dead or alive, of the man who brutally murdered
    James Floyd, boss of the Tumbling K, sixteen miles from here,
    some time yesterday evening. This man is supposed to be a negro;
    about forty years of age; black; about six feet in height and
    weighing close to two hundred pounds. Has a razor scar above the
    left ear.

    He has in his possession a .35 caliber autoloading rifle, No.
    5096, and a .32-30 pistol. He may be riding a sorrel horse with
    a roached mane, branded 93 on left hip.

    This crime is one of the most dastardly in the criminal annals
    of the Territory, and I earnestly urge every officer and other
    person receiving this circular to do everything in his power to
    effect the capture of this human fiend.

    The above reward is only a preliminary reward, which may be
    increased later to one thousand dollars, when the governor, with
    whom the matter will be taken up, is heard from.

    Wire me if any suspect is arrested, or if any information is
    obtained whatever concerning this negro, at my expense.

[Illustration: “_The lonely hut was untenanted_”]

Two months passed, and nothing was heard or seen of the black man. The
rains held off. North and east the ranges were deluged. A blight
appeared to have fallen upon the Tumbling K. The land grew a shade
grayer, the dust spurts whirled in gleeful, savage dance, and the cattle
gave up the effort of living and lay down to die. All that the boys
could do was to distribute salt and feed and work frantically to
maintain the water supply. The emaciated brutes would eat of the
oil-cake and hay, and sweat profusely on the nose, then stiffen out and
expire with a sigh. Those that clung to life carried swollen under-jaws
from the strain of tearing at the short grass.

“Poor bastard!” Archie grunted, tailing up a cow he had already helped
to her feet three times. “It fair makes a man sick at the stummick to
see ’em. Here, you doggone ol’ she-devil! Why don’t you try for to help
yourself? Up you come! That’s it; try to hook me.”

It was no use. He shot her where she lay, and skinned her. Then, with
the wet hide dragging at the end of a rope and her calf thrown over the
fork of the saddle, he set out for headquarters. The orphan was a lusty
youngster, and Archie made him many promises, accompanied by many
strange oaths.

“Li’l’ dogy,” he said, “I’ll find a mammy for you to-night if I have to
tie up the old milch cow. Do you think you can suck a milch cow, dogy?
Sure you can. Man alive, feel of him kick! He’s a stout rascal. You’ll
be a fine steer some day, dogy.”

On a black-dark night flames leaped above the rim of the mountain, and
the Tumbling K were roused from bed to go forth with wet sacks, and rage
in their hearts, for the scum of humanity who would fire a range.
Twenty-six hours in the saddle and six more fighting the leaping,
treacherous enemy; then two hours of sweating sleep on saddle-blankets
beside their hobbled horses, and back a score of miles on desperate
trails for fresh mounts--three separate times they beat out the blaze
with sacks and back-firing. Once more, rising heavy-lidded and dripping
from the stupor of utter exhaustion, they saw it licking hungrily
through the Gap. No unlucky cigarette-stub thrown amid parched grass, no
abandoned campfire, had done this. It was the deliberate work of an
enemy.

Orders came to move the cattle down into the valley, lest they perish to
the last horn, to the last torn hoof.

“It’ll take you three days to move ’em ten miles,” the manager said;
“but never mind. Ease ’em. Ease ’em careful. The man who yells at a cow,
or pushes her along, gets his time right there. The only real way to
handle cattle is to let ’em do what they want and work ’em as you can.
Think that over, boys.”

Manuel Salazar remembered this warning as he moved his tired horse at a
snail’s pace behind a bunch of sick ones in the Zacaton Bottom. Manuel
made twenty dollars a month with consummate ease, working only seven
days in the week and only thirteen hours a day; and he would not throw
his job away lightly. Therefore he permitted the gaunt cows to straggle
as pleased them, humming to himself while they nibbled at tufts here and
there. If one turned its head to look at him it fell from sheer
weakness; therefore he held aloof. So the sad procession crept along.

It was in Manuel’s mind to save a mile by moving the bunch through the
horse pasture. He put them through the gate with no trouble and was
dreamily planning how he might steal back a hair rope Chico had stolen
from him, when the quirt slipped out of his fingers. The vaquero got
down to pick it from the ground.

“Hi! Hi!” he yelled in panic, and ducked just in time.

A black shape towered above him, striking with forefeet, reaching for
the nimble Manuel with its teeth. Its mouth yawned agape; Salazar swore
he could have rammed a lard bucket into it. The vaquero swerved from
under the deadly hoofs and hit out blindly with the quirt. The stallion
screamed his rage for the first time and lunged at him, head swinging
low, the lips flicking back from the ferocious teeth. Manuel seized a
stone, put to his hand by the blessed saints, and hurled it with
precision, striking the horse on the nose. Midnight blared from pain and
shook his royal mane in fury, but the shock stayed him and Salazar
gained his horse.

“Now,” he yelled, pulling his gun and maneuvering his mount that he
might be ready to flee, “come on, you! You want to fight? That’s music
to me.”

But Midnight did not want to fight. He had employed craft in stealing
upon the man, and now he moved off sulkily, the whites of his eyes
rolled back, a thin stream of blood trickling from his muzzle. Salazar
longed to shoot holes through his shiny black hide, but contented
himself with abuse instead. Was not the stallion worth five thousand
dollars? Who was he--Manuel, a poor vaquero--to be considered in the
same thought with so noble a beast?

“Tommy,” he said as he unsaddled at headquarters, “I’ve found who killed
your pore father. Yes, and old man Greer, too. Don’t look so pale,
Tommy.”

Tommy stalked into the manager’s office next forenoon, a very solemn and
very determined, if a short and somewhat dirty figure. He was white
under his freckles, and he talked through his teeth, jerkily, his eyes
fixed unwaveringly on the manager’s face.

“Midnight!” the manager exclaimed. “Nonsense! Why, he wouldn’t harm a
fly. That horse would never kill a man. He’s worth five thousand
dollars. Since we got him from Kentucky, two years ago, a woman could
handle him, Tommy, boy. Salazar must have been teasing him. You’ll have
to look somewhere else, Tommy.”

“You mean you ain’t going to do nothing, Mr. Chalmers?” Tommy asked in a
dry voice.

“Of course not. Midnight? Impossible. Why, that horse is worth five
thousand dollars. He couldn’t have done it.”

Tommy went back home very slowly. That night he sat beside Manuel’s
candle and cleaned and oiled a sawed-off .25-30 rifle, inherited from
the man who slept on the hill. Salazar smoked lazily and watched him
through drooping lids. The boy finished his task and leaned forward on
the stool, staring at the tiny flame, the weapon across his knees.

Of what avail to shoot Midnight? Of course it would be easy. Tommy had
acquired some degree of skill by blowing the heads off chickens whenever
any were desired for the dinner-table, and he felt assured that at two
hundred yards he could pick off the stallion with one pressure of his
finger. It would be mere child’s work to distinguish Midnight from the
mares, even on the murkiest night. But, after all--had the stallion done
the killing? He had only Manuel’s experience and suspicions to go on.
Moreover, if he took punishment into his own hands they might throw him
into a jail. Midnight was worth five thousand dollars: assuredly Mr.
Chalmers would cast Tommy out into the world to shift for himself. He
put the rifle back under his bunk.

Very discreetly Tommy entered the horse pasture at sunup--he had been
unable to sleep for scheming--and made his way down the mile-long fence
toward the corner where the mares usually grazed at that hour. He had a
six-shooter in his pocket for an emergency, but he hoped that he would
not use it. Midnight sighted him and stood rigid a full minute, twenty
paces in advance of the mares, gazing at the boy. He was a regal animal;
Tommy thought he had never seen so glorious a horse. Then the stallion
advanced with mincing steps, his head bobbing, the ears laid back. He
sidled nearer, without haste, whinnying softly. The boy waited until he
was a dozen feet distant, then threw himself flat and rolled under the
barbed-wire fence. With a rending scream Midnight reared and plunged for
him, his forefeet battering the ground where Tommy had fallen. He tore
at the earth in discomfiture and wrath, and raved up and down on the
other side of the fence, his nostrils flaring, his eyes a glare of
demoniacal hate. Tommy surveyed him in deathly quiet.

The dark came warm, with puffs of hot wind, so that the Tumbling K men
reviled the discomfort joyously, since it presaged rain. So long as the
cold nights endured there could be no relief. Tommy slipped from the
bunkhouse for a breath of air, though it was past bedtime and they had
told him to turn in.

“Apache!” he called in a low tone, gliding into the stall.

The jack cocked his monstrous ears and listened, knowing well the voice.
Tommy put a halter over his head and opened the stall door. It was
gnawed and scarred by Apache’s teeth and hoofs, and the boy wrenched it
from the hinges and laid it aslant on the ground.

“You done bust your way out, Apache,” he whispered. “You hear me, you
ol’ devil?”

He led him out into the corral and thence into the lane, talking softly
as they went. Apache raised his nose and sniffed of the wind. When they
reached the horse pasture the boy tore out the strands of wire at a spot
near the corner of the fence.

“You was fond of my Dad, wasn’t you, Apache?” Tommy quavered, working
with nervous fingers to unbuckle the halter. “Then go to it.”

The jack required no bidding. He wrenched free and stepped carefully
over the wire into Midnight’s domain. Apache never did anything in
ill-judged haste. A blur, two hundred yards off, attracted him and he
headed toward it eagerly. A moment, and he stopped; then went forward
with caution.

Midnight had seen him coming. He trotted out from his band of mares and
halted expectantly. Next instant he had recognized Apache for what he
was, and shrilled a challenge. The jack brayed like a fiend and went
forward slowly to meet him.

Now, a capable jack can whip any stallion that ever breathed. It is
really an education to watch a jack like the mighty Apache fight. There
exists the same difference between the methods of a stallion and a jack
as between those of a nervous amateur boxer and the seasoned champion. A
jack has no fear that anyone can detect, and is practically insensible
to pain. One can see at a glance what an advantage this gives him over
an opponent with any lingering predilection for longevity.

Also, a jack never fights for glory, never fights for the gallery. His
sole object is to win. Wherefore, no idle and frivolous prancing about
for him--no swift rush in, a blind striking with hoofs, a tearing with
the teeth, then out again. A jack is not constructed that way. Fighting
is a business--a serious, albeit a pleasurable, business; and he attends
to that side of it with passionate singleness of purpose. He will watch
his opportunity with the alert coolness of the professional, wasting not
an ounce of energy. When the opening comes he goes to it like the stroke
of a rattler, gets his grip and shuts his eyes and hangs on. There is
considerable of the bulldog in a jack, and if he is to be gotten off at
all, one must pry him off with a crowbar; in fact, next to a Shetland
stallion, which is the darlingest little fighter that ever tore at an
enemy’s ribs, nothing more instructive can be witnessed than a
full-sized jack in a fair field and no interruptions.

Apache had fought before--many, many times. Therefore he made for the
foe with circumspection, his head jerking sideways, his tail tucked,
ears laid flat on his neck, and his feet barely touching the ground, so
lightly did his tense muscles carry him. One evil eye measured the giant
horse with venomous composure.

Vastly different was Midnight’s attack. The stallion had pluck to spare,
but his temper was overhasty and his skill slight. Rage forever clouded
his judgment in encounter. He had learned only one plan of battle and
that was to rush and bear down his opponent. There was his rival. He
would kill him. Midnight’s was a simple creed.

His harsh scream rent the night silence, and the fight was on. Another
horse would have circled so formidable an adversary in an endeavor to
create an opening, but the black’s temper was too imperious for delay.
Straight was his rush. He bore down on the jack at the top of his speed,
his wonderful, supple body a-quiver with eagerness and anger.

Then Apache did a remarkable thing--a thing almost human in ingenuity.
What Apache didn’t know about fighting is best forgotten. Swerving ever
so slightly as the black came, he lunged to meet him, crashing shoulder
to shoulder with all the strength of his tough sinews behind the impact.
Hit sideways, taken off his balance, the force of Midnight’s own charge
contributed to his overthrow. Down he tumbled, scrambling with his feet
as he fell. Before his body touched the ground, the jack whirled and
lashed with both heels into his sides. With the same appalling speed,
Apache drove for the throat of his prostrate enemy, secured his grip and
shut his eyes, wrenching frenziedly from side to side and upward.

It is well not to tell further what Apache did to the mankiller. A jack
has about as much sense of mercy as he has of fear, and he has never
been taught any rules of warfare. When he gets his enemy where his enemy
would like to get him, he does his utmost to obliterate him from the
face of the earth. So it was that next day the Tumbling K men were
barely able to recognize the Kentucky stallion in the torn, broken,
black pulp they found in the horse pasture.

All night long Apache brayed and screeched. The noise of his triumph
would set a soul to quaking. It pierced Manuel’s dreams and he muttered
in his sleep a prayer for protection from the Evil One. The jack pranced
around and around his victim, and up and down the pasture, wild with the
joy of battle, magnificent in his superb strength and the pride of
victory. Toward dawn he abandoned the carcass and drove off the
terror-stricken mares as the just spoils of the conqueror.

Big white clouds boiled up back of the mountains that afternoon, with a
stiff wind from the southeast behind them; and at sunset the heavens
opened of their blessed treasure. Manuel and Tommy lay in the bunkhouse
listening to the thunder of rain on the sod roof. A burro came to the
door and poked his patient head inside, seeking warmth and a friendly
dry spot.

“Come in!” cried Manuel cheerily. “Take a chair. Tommy, give him your
bed. Ain’t that music, though? Hark! Oh, the cattle! Can’t you see them
soaking in it, boy?”

A yellow mongrel ousted the doubtful burro from the doorway and began
nosing about for a place to rest his uneasy rump. The roof was leaking
in strong, hearty streams, and Salazar sprawled on his back, letting the
water run on to his chest. He was smiling placidly. Tommy snuggled into
the blankets and pictured to himself a new land of much grass, and
clear-eyed, contented cows and high-tailed calves.

“The curse is lifted,” Manuel observed piously. “Yes, sir. The dear God
sent the jack to kill that stallion. How else could it be? What do you
think, Tommy, boy?”

“I reckon so,” said Tommy.



                                   IX
                                NEUTRIA


My name is Neutria. It means Beaver, and they gave it me because I tuck
my tail. Nobody but Chappo ever called me a pretty horse, but Chappo
once said in my hearing that my ugly roan hide covered more beauty than
all the girls of Sonora possessed; and Chappo really knew everything
worth knowing.

He was not my first master. There was another, to speak of whom is
pain--a tall man, with only one eye, and a long, sandy mustache, stained
of the tobacco he chewed perpetually. This person owned my mother and we
lived in a small pasture among the lesser hills of the San José range.
What he did to sustain life was never quite plain to us, because the
land he held remained uncultivated and he spent much time by himself in
his dirty shack, drinking from a demijohn which he kept hidden under
some sacks in a corner. Oftentimes he would come from his drinking and
drive us into a corral he had constructed of ocatilla. There he would
beat my mother, and chase us about and about. I was very young then and
he spared me. She was terribly afraid of him, and whenever he roared at
her, even though it was in the sixty-acre field, where he could be
evaded, she fell to trembling and would walk falteringly to the halter
he held out.

There were nights when he forgot us entirely and left us in a small
wooden pen, without anything to eat or drink. Occasionally a calf was
dragged up and shoved in with us, and it would bawl for a day and a
night for the mother from whose side it had been torn. After a while he
would brand the little creature with his own mark of the inverted
pitchfork. In this manner he gathered a respectable bunch of cattle,
though I know of two cows only which he ever bought.

This is not the place to tell how he broke me to the saddle. He made me
obey him, but he did not break my spirit, even though my sides were
bloody from his savage anger. Although Sloan branded all else he could
get, on me he never put the iron.

“What for you haven’t got the Pitchfork on that li’l’ horse, Sloan?” a
cowboy asked him one day at Buzzard’s Feast.

“He don’t need it, this hoss don’t. He’s so doggone ornery nobody’d
steal him,” said my master.

Later I heard the other--a roaring, swaggering boy, with a kind eye and
soothing hands--tell a friend that the only animal Sloan did not brand
was the one which he owned legally.

Whenever the strength was in me, I fought him. He was a powerful man,
with a punishing knee-grip and a poise that was almost unshakable,
whatever his condition. But oppression begets cunning, and ride as he
might, there were times when I could hurl him off. If a horse take
thought when he starts his pitch, instead of bucking in blind, raving
anger, there is a chance that he will have the victory. I mastered a
trick of rocketing straight into the air and whirling about back under
the rider, before my feet touched the ground. This is difficult, but
imparts a really terrific shock; even Sloan could not withstand it. Of
course he would beat and spur me almost to death when he was able to
walk again. If that method of fighting him failed, there was another,
dangerous to horse and rider alike. I would rear high, with my head
thrown back, whereupon Sloan would kick his feet free of the stirrups
lest he be caught under me when I toppled. Then, before he could
recover, my head would shoot down between my forelegs and once more I
would go to pitching. It was very efficacious, this stratagem, and the
pleasure of it was much enhanced if the ground was rocky or there were
cactus and mesquite into which he could be flung.

In spite of the endless cruelty to which Sloan subjected me, he taught
me much. Whatever else he might be, he was a cowman; but he knew and
practiced a lot that no honest cowman should know. Sometimes he would
reverse the shoes on my feet that the impress on the ground might appear
to be a trail leading in the opposite direction to his line of travel.
He rode much at night, so that I became expert at picking my way down
rock-cluttered declivities in the blackest of the dark. Once when he
fled before a body of horsemen which had discovered three calves hogtied
in a box cañon, I managed to distance them. Thereupon he alighted and
muffled my hoofs with gunny-sacks, that he might follow a stony
creek-bed without sound.

“Damn, but you kin climb out when you want to,” he said grudgingly, when
we were safe at home.

Because I learned quickly and never forgot, Sloan held his hand from
killing me in any of his outbursts of rage. At least a dozen times did
he tie me fast to a snubbing-post and belabor my head and neck and ribs
with a stout club, until I grew sick from pain and my glazing eyes
warned him that he had touched the limit of my endurance. Then he would
desist, for I was of value to him. These fits of frenzy were occasioned
by the most trifling happenings. Perhaps when he came to drive in my
mother and me, we did not move fast enough--she was growing very old--or
she exhibited a too great fear. Then he would rope us and proceed to
torture until his temper waned.

I come now to the time he killed my mother and I won a brief freedom.
The weather had been murderously hot. From January to July no drop of
rain fell and our hills grew sullenly naked and brown. Sloan’s spring
ceased its flow. He did not discover that for two days, being stupefied,
and we were terribly wasted when he turned us out to find water for
ourselves.

There was no grass. The earth showed gray as the rocks and as bare, and
the rocks gave back the heat in shimmering waves. Where the ground had
cracked under the sun, giant fissures gaped for the feet of the unwary.
Five miles from home we saw some cows stumbling hopelessly out of a
cañon and learned that there, too, the water had failed. Their dried
skins drew tight over their bones and the panic of desperation glared
from their eyes. One prodded at my mother as we passed, refusing to give
place as cattle do to horses, then sank weakly to the ground. Later she
stretched out on her side, and we knew that the end was near.

Turkey buzzards strutted everywhere, gorged to apathy. They would
cluster on a carcass, unwinking and insolent, and watch us nosing in
quest of a bite to eat. Fires had ravaged the lower ridges, and trees
and brush were stripped clean. To remain here meant slow death, and we
fared higher.

We met with cattle on the upper slopes, spent and picking their path
with care. A heifer slipped and rolled downward almost beneath our feet.
There were many orphan calves, bawling impotently against echoing
cañons’ walls, and carrion-crows hung soundlessly in flocks, their
shadows flitting swiftly over the earth in front of us. We came on the
body of a horse at a dried waterhole. He had plunged from a ledge in his
exhaustion, to die helplessly in sight of the place he sought. Crows had
torn out the eyes.

But I would not let my mother become disheartened. All these creatures
were moving downward, and some propelling force has always driven me
upward in time of stress. So I led her far among the peaks. It was
desolate enough, of a certainty--so barren that my poor, tottering
mother wanted to go back, though she knew well that the homeward stretch
was beyond her strength--but I urged her forward.

We came at last to four peaks, away up in those mountains, and threading
a defile, emerged into a cuplike draw among them; and there were
mesquite in profusion and many green things. And more precious than all,
a tiny spring bubbled behind a boulder at the north end. It would not
water more than four head, but it sufficed, and we tarried on its edge
all of one evening.

For forty days we stayed in our random home and gained in flesh and in
strength. Then, one hot, sticky evening, great banks of mist surged
upward and massed around our beloved peaks, and the rain broke from the
press and drenched the hills. We turned our backs to the driving
torrents, clamped our tails and let the cool water soak into our
crackling hides.

What a difference in the land when the sun showed again, clear and warm!
It was as a dead thing come to life. Tender shoots thrust their heads
above the hard ground; the trees stopped their complaints, and nodded
and rustled jauntily to a southwest breeze, for the sap stirred within
them and soon they would put forth new leaves. A ground squirrel emerged
from a hole, blinked impudently at us, and then dashed off across the
rocks, reckless from sheer joy of being alive. We sniffed of the good,
fresh wind and headed for the lower reaches, for there would be rare
grazing now that the rains had washed the valleys. Thus we came to live
close to our old home.

Sloan came riding on an October day.

“Crackee, but you two is fat,” he shouted gleefully.

He had a new horse, a high, long-backed sorrel with the legs of a racer.
I knew the breed,--a steel-dust valley horse, built for speed and
helpless as a wagon among our crags. Sloan drove us in and got down to
put a halter on the mare.

My mother had never concealed her dread of him. It moved him always to
an excess of fury, but she had learned terror in youth and it held her
through all her years. Now she snorted, her limbs a-tremble, and drew
back. The sweat stood out on her muzzle and dyed her neck.

“What,” Sloan bellowed, “you ol’ she-devil, you ain’t learned to quit
dodging yet? Then, by God, I’ll learn you.”

He swung a breast-yoke with all his force, smashing my mother squarely
between the ears. The mare gave a moan, a long sigh, and sank slowly to
the ground, the eyelids flickering. I saw her legs stiffen.

He kicked her where she lay and started for me, but I rushed by him,
lashing with my shoeless heels as I went. They caught him full in the
chest. I can hear yet the grunt he gave at the impact; then over he
went.

He had put up only two bars of the corral gate. I took them with a rush
and headed for the high hills. Sloan scrambled to his feet, coughing and
swearing, and ran to the sorrel. In the saddle, he fired twice, but
though the bullets slashed the ground ahead of me, I never wavered. He
let out a shout and spurred after, making ready his rope as he came. It
made my blood dance to see these futile efforts. For a valley horse is
to a mountain horse as a house kitten is to a wild-cat. It is true that
an exceptional valley horse, if turned loose in the hills young enough,
may in three years’ time develop into a fair mountain pony--with good
schooling, that is. Even then he will lack something of our depth of
chest and perfection of feet. But put a valley horse, green, in the
mountains, and he will stand and shiver and sweat, not daring to
venture. So I was elated when Sloan came pounding behind, knowing full
well that the sorrel could never follow where I would lead.

The chase led up a rocky cañon filled with post-oak, along a mesa,
through a gap, skirted a summit, and dipped downward into another cañon.
Now we were straightened out for my familiar peaks. Suddenly I became
aware that the pursuers had dropped back, and, easing in my run, I saw
Sloan beating the sorrel over the head with his rope. He was ever thus,
blaming his mount on the least excuse.

Two days and a night I fled. Of course it was necessary to pause for a
few hours to eat grass and to drink, but fear of Sloan kept me moving. I
struck south, then westward. Fences delayed my flight considerably in
the valleys, but I had had experience with them, and roamed along until
I discovered a spot where the wires were partially down and could be
jumped, or until I found a watergap. I suppose I covered one hundred and
sixty miles, but not all in a straight line by any means, and at sundown
of the second day I was in a goodly range of hills. Here I rested.

A band of bronchos wandered into a draw where I fed that night, and I
joined them. We roved where we willed, and the rain fell abundantly and
the grass was green and plentiful.

Why is it one can never be entirely happy? If one be breast-high in
succulent zacaton, a fly will mar the feast. I have observed a mare in a
field of alfalfa, neglecting what she could have without effort, to
stretch unavailingly through the fence after a tuft of tough
Johnson-grass; in fact, I have done that myself. Here was I with
millions of virgin acres in which to wander; all I could eat; agreeable
companions. Yet I pined to hear a man’s voice. That sounds inexplicable,
but it is the truth. Even Sloan’s harsh bass tones would have been
welcome, after six months of freedom. Man’s companionship had been bred
in me, and though his presence might bring terror, yet I longed for it,
and the master-grip of his hand.

Winter passed and the long, dry season opened in a blaze of heat. A
horseman bore down on us one day, from the south, and we massed swiftly
for escape. Within a mile, two more riders appeared, and my companions
increased their pace to a gallop. Only I, of all the band, knew what
this meant. The others were bronchos who had never felt the rope and
they ran blindly, ignorant of the cordon closing in from every
direction. But I was cleverer. Suddenly darting from the herd, I sped
within sixty feet of a cowboy--not close enough for his loop--and gained
the mouth of a cañon. Up this I spurted, the rider in hot chase.

How often are pride and conceit confounded. The cañon narrowed--narrowed
to sheer walls fifty feet apart--and there ahead of me, blocking my
path, was a cliff of red-streaked rock. Water trickled down its face.
That much I perceived, and then it rushed upon me that the race was run.
I turned short about and tried to go by him as I had passed Sloan, but
he threw his rope and caught me cleanly. Sloan had taught me the lesson
of the rope--taught it in bitter vindictiveness--and I followed my
captor without struggle.

“Done got a maverick,” he announced, when he rejoined his comrades.

“He’s been rode before, Chappo,” another said. “Look at the way he
follows. And there’s been a cinch sore on his left side. Look.”

“I cain’t see it,” Chappo said obstinately. “He’s a maverick, I’m
a-telling you. And he’s my horse, because I done found him.”

When he had me in the corral at headquarters, Chappo walked fearlessly
to my head. Of course I began to quiver, for well I knew what this
portended.

“You pore son-of-a-gun,” he muttered, and stopped. “So he done beat you
over the haid?”

He scratched my ears and rubbed my head lightly between the eyes. All
the while, he talked to me in a low tone, with a sort of laugh behind
it. Chappo was a small man, no higher than a fence post, but there was
something in his touch that made me fear and yet want him to keep on
rubbing. When he attempted to put the bridle on, I stood rigid,
expectant. Surely the beating would come now. It did not. Instead, he
said, “You ol’ rascal, you,” and jabbed me in the ribs with his thumb.
Now, here is a curious thing. A man can jab you with his thumb so that
it hurts, and he can jab you in the same place with the same force and
it will only tickle pleasantly. Everything depends on the spirit in
which it is done. Chappo’s thumb was very agreeable and I laid back my
ears and pretended to nip at him.

“I’ll top you,” he said, “and then I’ll put the Box C on you.”

It amused me vastly to hear this mite of a man tell so confidently how
he would ride me, when even the terrible Sloan could not keep the saddle
at times. Just to scare him, I bowed my back when he slapped the blanket
on. Then I rolled my eyes backward to note the effect. He was grinning,
actually grinning--and his hat did not show above my withers. Next, he
threw on the saddle, and the curve in my spine was unmistakable; but he
merely hummed a tune and began to cinch me tightly, with careless
freedom, just as if we had been friends all our years. It surprised me
so much that I suffered his impertinence in quiet.

There were some cowboys on the fence, watching.

“Want me to ear him, Chappo?” one asked.

“No-oo. Me and him’s friends already. Ain’t we?” He made me walk a few
steps, still grinning as he inspected the significant upward tilt of the
saddle. “Look at his tail, boys. We’ll shore have to call him Beaver.”

“Call him Neutria,” one cried.

My new master nodded and then stood directly in front. I tried to look
away, but his eyes drew mine in spite of me, and when he backed off, I
followed, though he exerted no pressure on the bit. There was nothing
hard and there was nothing mean in those eyes; a devil lurked in
Sloan’s. Chappo’s were clear and very good-natured, yet oddly
compelling.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Now we know each other, me and you,
Neutria.”

He pulled my head around by the cheek of the bridle and next moment was
atop. I remained motionless. The grip of his knees was curiously at
variance with his bulk: somehow that grip raised a doubt in my mind that
I could shed him.

Next second I was pitching, more from force of habit than from any wish
to hurt this youth. What was the matter? No spurs gored my sides; I felt
no sting of quirt. Instead, Chappo merely swayed in the saddle and he
whooped me on to further effort, hitting my shoulders gleefully with his
hat. This was too much--a wight of one hundred and twenty pounds to make
game of me! I paused for breath and to gather strength.

“Hey, you ain’t quitting?” he inquired. “Wipe her up, li’l’ feller. Fly
at it.”

After that it was imperative I should do my best--Sloan could never have
kept his seat when I let myself loose to his challenge. Every trick his
brutality had taught me I employed, and only once did Chappo waver. He
was riding on his spurs now, yet he had to grab desperately for the
horn; but he righted himself with a laugh and renewed his yelling. At
last I was compelled to stop.

“You’re shore a dandy, Neutria,” he panted. “Let’s call it an even
break.”

That suited me admirably. It would have been a shame to injure the boy.

I never pitched with Chappo again. He was always kind to me, save once
only. That was when he placed the Box C on my left hip with a red-hot
iron. It pained horribly, but I realized that all horses had to go
through this ordeal and that Chappo did not mean to be brutal.

What times we had that summer and autumn! It was a year of frequent
rains, and horses and cattle were sleek and fat and rollicking. Chappo
and I would go out from camp twice each week and prowl the mountains the
livelong day. Perhaps a long-eared calf would be roused up--he is one
that has escaped branding--and my master would settle himself and take
down his rope even as I flashed in pursuit, over rocks and brush, down
cañons’ sides, up cliffs, shooting through defiles. It is something to
be a mountain horse, though it is I who say it; no other horse in the
world could have carried Chappo at full speed where I carried him after
mavericks. And he never faltered.

“Wherever you put your doggone feet is good enough for me, Neutria,” he
said once, at the bottom of a perilous descent.

Chappo was an excellent cowhand, more skilled than Sloan. He would
seldom miss a throw in the wildest country, and when he had the calf
roped, down he would jump and hogtie it before one could count thirty.
Then I would fall to grazing while he built a fire, heated his
running-iron and put the company brand on the captive. There were days
when we caught four or five in this manner. It was glorious sport.

And then, of course, there was the fall roundup, when all our
riders--twenty-two in number--swept the range in daily drives. We
collected more than nineteen thousand head of cattle; some of the
long-horned steers Chappo and I brought in had not set eyes on a man
since they were suckling calves. It was good to chase these outlaws,
they being stout and hearty on the rope, and it nerved me to see
Chappo’s fearlessness and confidence. He would tie to one of the big
brutes without hesitation, whatever the nature of the ground, trusting
implicitly to me to throw it. If a steer had dragged me down, it would
have meant maiming for Chappo and me, so I was ever on my guard. I
always contrived to throw them, even though some weighed two hundred
pounds heavier than I.

I was Chappo’s top horse--that is to say, his best saddler. Consequently
it was me he rode to town on the rare occasions he could get there. I
took the best of care of him.

On one occasion when he had spent an entire morning in town visiting
various places of call with friends, Chappo bet fifty dollars I could
throw an enormous bull they had in a feeding-pen. It was an intensely
foolish wager; besides, he hadn’t the money, and was earning only forty
dollars a month. The sight of this bull--a Hereford--appalled me for a
moment, for he was a monstrous fellow, blocky and solid; but Chappo
patted my neck and whispered to me, and when he let his noose fly, I
darted off with taut muscles, unafraid, yet ready for the tremendous jar
that would come with the tightened rope. What a giant he was! When he
lunged, the girth nearly cut me in two, and for the fraction of a second
I thought my feet would fly from under me and that Chappo would be
ignominiously prostrated in the dust. Then, at the critical moment, we
gave him slack, let him run to the end of it, wheeled like a striking
snake, and with a cunning heave, flopped him ponderously on the ground.
It broke his neck and they put Chappo in the calaboose. The boss got him
out only after much ceremony and considerable loose talk and the payment
of moneys.

Chappo dearly loved to go to town. He was always in excellent humor on
these trips and would attempt feats that reflected more credit on his
stoutness of heart than on his head. On a night, he tried to make me
climb the steps of the hotel veranda and enter the bar. Had it been
anyone but Chappo, I would have pitched him off without more ado, such
was the childishness of this display. But because it was Chappo and I
could feel from his legs that all was not right with him, I meekly
ascended the steps and walked into the bar, taking heed where I placed
my feet. A crowd of loafers cheered me and filled a large bowl, that I
might drink, but Chappo would have none of this.

He sang much on the road back to camp. It was dark as a panther’s lair.
Chappo would hum and drone a few lines, then relapse into abrupt
silences. I kept every sense alert, for his safety depended on me. Once,
when he sagged in the saddle, I stopped until he got settled again.
After that he rode with firmer seat, but his good humor seemed to have
vanished. We reached a point where a cow trail, a mere thread so faint
that it was barely discernible, led off from the main trail.

“Here, you,” Chappo said, jerking me about, “who’s running this show?
Hey? Doggone your fat haid. This is a cut-off.”

The trail was new to me, but I took it obediently. It led in the general
direction of camp, but became vaguer as we proceeded. Finally it merged
into the brown of a hillside.

“Hell!” Chappo exclaimed. “Where’s that cussed trail gone to, Neutria?
Well, let’s hit across country, boy. What’s twenty miles between two of
us?”

We struck over a hill at a trot. Suddenly my heart gave a leap and every
hair on my body seemed to tingle. Just in time I sat back on my
haunches. Chappo swore and struck me sharply with the spur.

“What’s the matter with you, you ol’ rascal? I swan. . . . Seen a
skunk?” he cried.

I began to shiver, and that sobered him. It was too dark to make out
anything and he lighted a match. A gulf yawned beneath us, where the
hill dropped away to a jumble of rocks. Chappo sucked in his breath and
let the match fall. Then he turned me around.

“Neutria,” was all he said, but let his hand rest for a long minute on
my withers.

We were following the Gap trail on a day in late autumn when, in
rounding a bend, we almost collided with a rider.

“Hel-lo,” came in surprised accents. It was Sloan, on his sorrel.

“Howdy,” Chappo said. “Nice and cool, ain’t it?”

“Whose hoss is that?”

“He’s my horse. Finest cowhorse in these here mountains.” Chappo would
often boast thus. It was unwise, but it made me very proud nevertheless.

“Huh-huh. And who might you be?”

“The Emp’ror of Rooshia.”

“Sure. You might be, but you ain’t. You got papers for this here hoss?”

“No, I ain’t got no papers for him. Don’t you see the Box C on him?
That’s papers enough.” Chappo was careless and bold, but I knew he was
anxious.

“You got to have papers in Mexico. That’s my hoss, son.”

“Yes?” said Chappo. “Where’s your papers, then?”

“I kin prove he’s mine,” Sloan said evenly. “I’ll be obliged for that
hoss, pardner.”

My master thought a moment. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sloan.”

“Yes? I’ve heard of you, Sloan. The company knows you, too. There ain’t
no use in gitting mad. Let’s talk business.”

“All right, son. But that’s my hoss and I’ll be obliged for him.”

“Sloan, I’m going to tell you about Neutria here. I caught him with a
bunch of bronchos. He was a maverick, so I done put my brand on him.
What’ll you take for him?”

“I won’t take nothing.” I recognized that surly bass growl. He had been
drinking.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. To save trouble, I’ll buy him off’n you. Me
and him is friends. So I’ll give you seventy-five dollars gold for this
here li’l’ horse. That’s a good price, Sloan. I’ll raise the money in a
week.”

“No, you won’t, young feller. You won’t give me seventy-five dollars,
nor you won’t give me seventy-five thousand dollars. That’s my hoss. I
won’t sell him. Him and me’s got a li’l’ account to square up, and--”

“Then it’s up to you to prove he’s yours,” Chappo answered. I scarcely
knew his voice, it had gone so hard and cold.

“You don’t believe this hoss is mine?”

“Not me. You rustle calves, Sloan, and--”

“I love a thief,” Sloan said, “but I hate a liar.”

What happened then was beyond my powers of perception. I felt Chappo
reach to his hip. There was a flash that singed my face, and Sloan sat
his sorrel with a smoking six-shooter in his hand. My master tumbled
sideways, twisting the saddle as he fell, and struck the ground on his
shoulders.

“Don’t shoot, Sloan,” he begged, “I ain’t got my gun. You’ve done for me
anyway. Don’t.”

But Sloan slued his horse that he might obtain a clear shot, and pulled
twice on him with deliberate aim.

“Now,” he cried clutching my reins, “now I’ll settle with you.”

I reared straight up and plunged forward at him. The headstall snapped
and the bit dropped from my mouth. With the smack of my shod hoofs on
his flank, the sorrel began to pitch, and Sloan dropped his gun.

With that I ran--ran as I had never run before in my life. When utterly
worn out, I slowed to a walk and endeavored to rid myself of the saddle,
which galled me badly. For a long time it resisted every effort, but I
did not despair. Chappo’s fall had turned it underneath my belly and
there it was in reach of my hind feet. Before dawn I had kicked and torn
the thing from my sides, and was free and unencumbered.

Why tell of my frantic wanderings during the next two days? The spot
where my master had fallen drew me irresistibly. I could not leave; but
I feared Sloan more than ever and spent the hours in cautious circlings
of the vicinity of the Gap. At last I could bear it no longer.

The moon was shining as I lightly trod the Gap trail. Going warily as a
coyote, I was brought to a standstill by a strong taint. I sniffed and
was fearfully expectant, but still advanced. Something was swinging from
the lowest limb of an elm. A rope creaked mournfully to the swinging. I
snorted and made a circuit of the thing, approaching gingerly. A gust of
wind turned the object, so that the moon lighted its every line.

It was Sloan.

A hundred yards beyond, I came on a small pile of rocks. They had laid
Chappo where he fell. Above the rocks was a rude cross, fashioned of
mesquite boughs.

I am a free rover now. Sometimes I run with the wild horses. Again I go
off for solitary pilgrimages into the mountain fastnesses.

Often I steal back at night to the Gap trail. And there, beside the pile
of stones and the cross, I whinny--whinny again. But Chappo never
answers.

                                THE END


                 *        *        *        *        *

Transcriber’s Notes:

Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Inconsistencies in
hyphenation have been retained. Obvious typesetting errors have been
corrected without note.

[End of _The Untamed_, by George Pattullo]





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