Thurston, dressed immaculately in riding clothes of the latest English
cut, went airily down the stairs and discovered that he was not early,
as he had imagined. Seven o'clock, he had told himself proudly, was not
bad for a beginner; and he had smiled in anticipation of Hank Graves'
surprise which was fortunate, since he would otherwise have been cheated
of smiling at all. For Hank Graves, he learned from the cook, had eaten
breakfast at five and had left the ranch more than an hour before; the
men also were scattered to their work.
Properly humbled in spirit, he sat down to the kitchen table and ate his
belated breakfast, while the cook kneaded bread at the other end of the
same table and eyed Thurston with frank amusement. Thurston had never
before been conscious of feeling ill at ease in the presence of a
servant, and hurried through the meal so that he could escape into the
clear sunshine, feeling a bit foolish in the unaccustomed bagginess of
his riding breeches and the snugness of his leggings; for he had never
taken to outdoor sports, except as an onlooker from the shade of a grand
stand or piazza.
While he was debating the wisdom of writing a detailed description of
yesterday's tragedy while it was still fresh in his mind and stowing it
away for future “color,” Park Holloway rode into the yard and on to the
stables. He nodded at Thurston and grinned without apparent cause, as
the cook had done. Thurston followed him to the corral and watched him
pull the saddle off his horse, and throw it carelessly to one side. It
looked cumbersome, that saddle; quite unlike the ones he had inspected
in the New York shops. He grasped the horn, lifted upon it and said,
“Jove!”
“Heavy, ain't it?” Park laughed, and slipped the bridle down over the
ears of his horse and dismissed him with a slap on the rump. “Don't yuh
like the looks of it?” he added indulgently.
Thurston, engaged in wondering what all those little strings were for,
felt the indulgence and straightened. “How should I know?” he retorted.
“Anyone can see that my ignorance is absolute. I expect you to laugh at
me, Mr. Holloway.”
“Call me Park,” said he of the tawny hair, and leaned against the fence
looking extremely boyish and utterly incapable of walking calmly down
upon a barking revolver and shooting as he went. “You're bound to learn
all about saddles and what they're made for,” he went on. “So long as
yuh don't get swell-headed the first time yuh stick on a horse that
side-steps a little, or back down from a few hard knocks, you'll be all
right.”
Thurston had not intended getting out and actually living the life he
had come to observe, but something got in his nerves and his blood and
bred an impulse to which he yielded without reserve. “Park, see
here,” he said eagerly. “Graves said he'd turn me over to you, so you
could--er--teach me wisdom. It's deuced rough on you, but I hope you
won't refuse to be bothered with me. I want to learn--everything. And I
want you to find fault like the mischief, and--er--knock me into shape,
if it's possible.” He was very modest over his ignorance, and his voice
rang true.
Park studied him gravely. “Bud,” he said at last, “you'll do. You're
greener right now than a blue-joint meadow in June, but yuh got the
right stuff in yuh, and it's a go with me. You come along with us after
that trail-herd, and you'll get knocked into shape fast enough. Smoke?”
Thurston shook his head. “Not those.”
“I dunno I'm afraid yuh can't be the real thing unless yuh fan your
lungs with cigarette smoke regular.” The twinkle belied him, though.
“Say, where did you pick them bloomers?”
“They were made in New York.” Thurston smiled in sickly fashion. He had
all along been uncomfortably aware of the sharp contrast between his own
modish attire and the somewhat disreputable leathern chaps of his host's
foreman.
“Well,” commented Park, “you told me to find fault like the mischief,
and I'm going to call your bluff. This here's Montana, recollect, and I
raise the long howl over them habiliments. The best thing you can do is
pace along to the house and discard before the boys get sight of yuh.
They'd queer yuh with the whole outfit, sure. Uh course,” he went on
soothingly when he saw the resentment in Thurston's eyes, “I expect
they're real stylish--back East--but the boys ain't educated to stand
for anything like that; they'd likely tell yuh they set like the hide
on the hind legs of an elephant--which is a fact. I hate to say it, Kid,
but they sure do look like the devil.”
“So would you, in New York,” Thurston flung back at him.
“Why, sure. But this ain't New York; this here's the Lazy Eight corral,
and I'm doing yuh a favor. You wouldn't like to have the boys shooting
holes through the slack, would yuh? You amble right along and get some
pants on--and when you've wised up some you'll thank me a lot. I'm going
on a little jaunt down the creek, before dinner, and you might go along;
you'll need to get hardened to the saddle anyway, before we start for
Billings, or you'll do most uh riding on the mess-wagon.”
Thurston, albeit in resentful mood, went meekly and did as he was
commanded to do; and no man save Park and the cook ever glimpsed those
smart riding clothes of English cut.
“Now yuh look a heap more human,” was the way Park signified his
approval of the change. “Here's a little horse that's easy to ride and
dead gentle if yuh don't spur him in the neck, which you ain't liable
to do at present; and Hank says you can have this saddle for keeps. Hank
used to ride it, but he out-growed it and got one longer in the seat.
When we start for Billings to trail up them cattle, of course you'll get
a string of your own to ride.”
“A string? I'm afraid I don't quite understand.”
“Yuh don't savvy riding a string? A string, m'son, is ten or a dozen
saddle-horses that yuh ride turn about, and nobody else has got any
right to top one; every fellow has got his own string, yuh see.”
Thurston eyed his horse distrustfully. “I think,” he ventured, “one will
be enough for me. I'll scarcely need a dozen.” The truth was that he
thought Park was laughing at him.
Park slid sidewise in the saddle and proceeded to roll another
cigarette. “I'd be willing to bet that by fall you'll have a good-sized
string rode down to a whisper. You wait; wait till it gets in your
blood. Why, I'd die if you took me off the range. Wait till yuh set out
in the dark, on your horse, and count the stars and watch the big dipper
swing around towards morning, and listen to the cattle breathing close
by--sleeping while you ride around 'em playing guardian angel over their
dreams. Wait till yuh get up at daybreak and are in the saddle with
the pink uh sunrise, and know you'll sleep fifteen or twenty miles from
there that night; and yuh lay down at night with the smell of new grass
in your nostrils where your bed had bruised it.
“Why, Bud, if you're a man, you'll be plumb spoiled for your little
old East.” Then he swung back his feet and the horses broke into a lope
which jarred the unaccustomed frame of Thurston mightily, though he kept
the pace doggedly.
“I've got to go down to the Stevens place,” Park informed him. “You
met Mona yesterday--it was her come down on the train with me, yuh
remember.” Thurston did remember very distinctly. “Hank says yuh compose
stories. Is that right?”
Thurston's mind came back from wondering how Mona Stevens' mouth looked
when she was pleased with one, and he nodded.
“Well, there's a lot in this country that ain't ever been wrote about, I
guess; at least if it was I never read it, and I read considerable. But
the trouble is, them that know ain't in the writing business, and them
that write don't know. The way I've figured it, they set back East
somewhere and write it like they think maybe it is; and it's a hell of a
job they make of it.”
Thurston, remembering the time when he, too, “set back East” and wrote
it like he thought maybe it was, blushed guiltily. He was thankful that
his stories of the West had, without exception, been rejected as of
little worth. He shuddered to think of one of them falling into the
hands of Park Holloway.
“I came out to learn, and I want to learn it thoroughly,” he said, in
the face of much physical discomfort. Just then the horses slowed for a
climb, and he breathed thanks. “In the first place,” he began again when
he had readjusted himself carefully in the saddle, “I wish you'd tell me
just where you are going with the wagons, and what you mean by trailing
a herd.”
“Why, I thought I said we were going to Billings,” Park answered,
surprised. “What we're going to do when we get there is to receive a
shipment of cattle young steer that's coming up from the Panhandle which
is a part uh Texas. And we trail 'em up here and turn 'em loose this
side the river. After that we'll start the calf roundup. The Lazy Eight
runs two wagons, yuh know. I run one, and Deacon Smith runs the other;
we work together, though, most of the time. It makes quite a crew,
twenty-five or thirty men.”
“I didn't know,” said Thurston dubiously, “that you ever shipped cattle
into this country. I supposed you shipped them out. Is Mr. Graves buying
some?”
“Hank? I guess yes! six thousand head uh yearlings and two year-olds,
this spring; some seasons it's more. We get in young stock every year
and turn 'em loose on the range till they're ready to ship. It's cheaper
than raising calves, yuh know. When yuh get to Billings, Bud, you'll see
some cattle! Why, our bunch alone will make seven trains, and that ain't
a commencement. Cattle's cheap down South, this year, and seems like
everybody's buying. Hank didn't buy as much as some, because he runs
quite a bunch uh cows; we'll brand six or seven thousand calves this
spring. Hank sure knows how to rake in the coin.”
Thurston agreed as politely as he could for the jolting. They had
again struck the level and seven miles, at Park's usual pace, was
heartbreaking to a man not accustomed to the saddle. Thurston had
written, just before leaving home, a musical bit of verse born of his
luring dreams, about “the joy of speeding fleetly where the grassland
meets the sky,” and he was gritting his teeth now over the idiotic
lines.
When they reached the ranch and Mona's mother came to the door and
invited them in, he declined almost rudely, for he had a feeling that
once out of the saddle he would have difficulty in getting into it
again. Besides, Mona was not at home, according to her mother.
So they did not tarry, and Thurston reached the Lazy Eight alive, but
with the glamour quite gone from his West. If he had not been the son of
his father, he would have taken the first train which pointed its
nose to the East, and he would never again have essayed the writing
of Western stories or musical verse which sung the joys of galloping
blithely off to the sky-line. He had just been galloping off to a
sky-line that was always just before and he had not been blithe; nor did
the memory of it charm. Of a truth, the very thought of things Western
made him swear mild, city-bred oaths.
He choked back his awe of the cook and asked him, quite humbly, what
was good to take the soreness from one's muscles; afterward he had crept
painfully up the stairs, clasping to his bosom a beer bottle filled with
pungent, home-made liniment which the cook had gravely declared “out uh
sight for saddle-galls.”
Hank Graves, when he heard the story, with artistic touches from the
cook, slapped his thigh and laughed one of his soundless chuckles. “The
son-of-a-gun! He's the right stuff. Never whined, eh? I knew it. He's
his dad over again, from the ground up.” And loved him the better.