Thurston tucked the bulb of his camera down beside the bellows and
closed the box with a snap. “I wonder what old Reeve would say to that
view,” he mused aloud.
“Old who?”
“Oh, a fellow back in New York. Jove! he'd throw up his dry-point heads
and take to oils and landscapes if he could see this.”
The “this” was a panoramic view of the town and surrounding valley of
Billings. The day was sunlit and still, and far objects stood up with
sharp outlines in the clear atmosphere. Here and there the white tents
of waiting trail-outfits splotched the bright green of the prairie.
Horsemen galloped to and from the town at top speed, and a long, grimy
red stock train had just snorted out on a siding by the stockyards where
the bellowing of thirsty cattle came faintly like the roar of pounding
surf in the distance.
Thurston--quite a different Thurston from the trim, pale young man who
had followed the lure of the West two weeks before--drew a long breath
and looked out over the hurrying waters of the Yellowstone. It was good
to be alive and young, and to live the tented life of the plains; it
was good even to be “speeding fleetly where the grassland meets the sky
“--for two weeks in the saddle had changed considerably his view-point.
He turned again to the dust and roar of the stockyards a mile or so
away.
“Perhaps,” he remarked hopefully, “the next train will be ours.” Strange
how soon a man may identify himself with new conditions and new aims. He
had come West to look upon the life from the outside, and now his chief
thought was of the coming steers, which he referred to unblushingly as
“our cattle.” Such is the spell of the range.
“Let's ride on over, Bud,” Park proposed. “That's likely the Circle Bar
shipment. Their bunch comes from the same place ours does, and I want to
see how they stack up.”
Thurston agreed and went to saddle up. He had mastered the art of
saddling and could, on lucky days and when he was in what he called
“form,” rope the horse he wanted; to say nothing of the times when his
loop settled unexpectedly over the wrong victim. Park Holloway, for
instance, who once got it neatly under his chin, much to his disgust and
the astonishment of Thurston.
“I'm going to take my Kodak,” said he. “I like to watch them unload, and
I can get some good pictures, with this sunlight.”
“When you've hollered 'em up and down the chutes as many times as I
have,” Park told him, “yuh won't need no pictures to help yuh remember
what it's like.”
It was an old story with Park, and Thurston's enthusiasm struck him as
a bit funny. He perched upon a corner of the fence out of the way, and
smoked cigarettes while he watched the cattle and shouted pleasantries
to the men who prodded and swore and gesticulated at the wild-eyed
huddle in the pens. Soon his turn would come, but just now he was
content to look on and take his ease.
“For the life of me,” cried Thurston, sidling gingerly over to him, “I
can't see where they all come from. For two days these yards have never
been empty. The country will soon be one vast herd.”
“Two days--huh! this thing'll go on for weeks, m'son. And after all is
over, you'll wonder where the dickens they all went to. Montana is some
bigger than you realize, I guess. And next fall, when shipping starts,
you'll think you're seeing raw porterhouse steaks for the whole world.
Let's drift out uh this dust; you'll have time to get a carload uh
pictures before our bunch rolls in.”
As a matter of fact, it was two weeks before the Lazy Eight consignment
arrived. Thurston haunted the stockyards with his Kodak, but after the
first two or three days he took no pictures. For every day was but a
repetition of those that had gone before: a great, grimy engine shunting
cars back and forth on the siding; an endless stream of weary, young
cattle flowing down the steep chutes into the pens, from the pens to the
branding chutes, where they were burned deep with the mark of their new
owners; then out through the great gate, crowding, pushing, wild to flee
from restraint, yet held in and guided by mounted cowboys; out upon the
green prairie where they could feast once more upon sweet grasses and
drink their fill from the river of clear, mountain water; out upon the
weary march of the trail, on and on for long days until some boundary
which their drivers hailed with joy was passed, and they were free at
last to roam at will over the wind-brushed range land; to lie down in
some cool, sweet-scented swale and chew their cuds in peace.
Two weeks, and then came a telegram for Park. In the reading of it he
shuffled off his attitude of boyish irresponsibility and became in a
breath the cool, business-like leader of men. Holding the envelope still
in his hand he sought out Thurston, who was practicing with a rope. As
Park approached him he whirled the noose and cast it neatly over the
peak of the night-hawk's teepee.
“Good shot,” Park encouraged, “but I'd advise yuh to take another
target. You'll have the tent down over Scotty's ears, and then you'll
think yuh stirred up a mess uh hornets.
“Say, Bud, our cattle are coming, and I'm going to be short uh men. If
you'd like a job I'll take yuh on, and take chances on licking yuh into
shape. Maybe the wages won't appeal to yuh, but I'm willing to throw in
heaps uh valuable experience that won't cost yuh a cent.” He lowered an
eyelid toward the cook-tent, although no one was visible.
Thurston studied the matter while he coiled his rope, and no longer.
Secretly he had wanted all along to be a part of the life instead of an
onlooker. “I'll take the job, Park--if you think I can hold it down.”
The speech would doubtless have astonished Reeve-Howard in more ways
than one; but Reeve-Howard was already a part of the past in Thurston's
mind. He was for living the present.
“Well,” Park retorted, “it'll be your own funeral if yuh get fired.
Better stake yourself to a pair uh chaps; you'll need 'em on the trip.”
“Also a large, rainbow-hued silk handkerchief if I want to look the
part,” Thurston bantered.
“If yuh don't want your darned neck blistered, yuh mean,” Park flung
over his shoulders. “Your wages and schooling start in to-morrow at
sunup.”
It was early in the morning when the first train arrived, hungry,
thirsty, tired, bawling a general protest against fate and man's mode
of travel. Thurston, with a long pole in his hand, stood on the narrow
plank near the top of a chute wall and prodded vaguely at an endless,
moving incline of backs. Incidentally he took his cue from his
neighbors, and shouted till his voice was a croak-though he could
not see that he accomplished anything either by his prodding or his
shouting.
Below him surged the sea of hide and horns which was barely suggestive
of the animals as individuals. Out in the corrals the dust-cloud hung
low, just as it had hovered every day for more than two weeks; just as
it would hover every day for two weeks longer. Across the yards near the
big, outer gate Deacon Smith's crew was already beginning to brand. The
first train was barely unloaded when the second trailed in and out
on the siding; and so the third came also. Then came a lull, for the
consignment had been split in two and the second section was several
hours behind the first.
Thurston rode out to camp, aching with the strain and ravenously hungry,
after toiling with his muscles for the first time in his life; for his
had been days of physical ease. He had yet to learn the art of working
so that every movement counted something accomplished, as did the
others; besides, he had been in constant fear of losing his hold on the
fence and plunging headlong amongst the trampling hoofs below, a fate
that he shuddered to contemplate. He did not, however, mention that
fear, or his muscle ache, to any man; he might be green, but he was not
the man to whine.
When he went back into the dust and roar, Park ordered him curtly to
tend the branding fire, since both crews would brand that afternoon and
get the corrals cleared for the next shipment. Thurston thanked Park
mentally; tending branding-fire sounded very much like child's play.
Soon the gray dust-cloud took on a shade of blue in places where the
smoke from the fires cut through; a new tang smote the nostrils: the
rank odor of burning hair and searing hides; a new note crept into the
clamoring roar: the low-keyed blat of pain and fright.
Thurston turned away his head from the sight and the smell, and piled
on wood until Park stopped him with. “Say, Bud, we ain't celebrating any
election! It ain't a bonfire we want, it's heat; just keep her going and
save wood all yuh can.” After an hour of fire-tending Thurston decided
that there were things more wearisome than “hollering 'em down the
chutes.” His eyes were smarting intolerably with smoke and heat, and the
smell of the branding was not nice; but through the long afternoon he
stuck to the work, shrewdly guessing that the others were not having any
fun either. Park and “the Deacon” worked as hard as any, branding the
steers as they were squeezed, one by one, fast in the little branding
chutes. The setting sun shone redly through the smoke before Thurston
was free to kick the half-burnt sticks apart and pour water upon them as
directed by Park.
“Think yuh earned your little old dollar and thirty three cents, Bud?”
Park asked him. And Thurston smiled a tired, sooty smile that seemed all
teeth.
“I hope so; at any rate, I have a deep, inner knowledge of the joys of
branding cattle.”
“Wait 'till yuh burn Lazy Eights on wriggling, blatting calves for two
or three hours at a stretch before yuh talk about the joys uh branding.”
Park rubbed eloquently his aching biceps.
At dusk Thurston crept into his blankets, feeling that he would like the
night to be at least thirty six hours long. He was just settling into
a luxurious, leather-upholstered dream chair preparatory to telling
Reeve-Howard his Western experiences when Park's voice bellowed into the
tent:
“Roll out, boys--we got a train pulling in!”
There was hurried dressing in the dark of the bed-tent, hasty mounting,
and a hastier ride through the cool night air. There were long hours at
the chutes, prodding down at a wavering line of moving shadows, while
the “big dipper” hung bright in the sky and lighted lanterns bobbed back
and forth along the train waving signals to one another. At intervals
Park's voice cut crisply through the turmoil, giving orders to men whom
he could not see.
The east was lightening to a pale yellow when the men climbed at last
into their saddles and galloped out to camp for a hurried breakfast.
Thurston had been comforting his aching body with the promise of rest
and sleep; but three thousand cattle were milling impatiently in the
stockyards, so presently he found himself fanning a sickly little blaze
with his hat while he endeavored to keep the smoke from his tired eyes.
Of a truth, Reeve-Howard would have stared mightily at sight of him.
Once Park, passing by, smiled down upon him grimly. “Here's where yuh
get the real thing in local color,” he taunted, but Thurston was
too busy to answer. The stress of living had dimmed his eye for the
picturesque.
That night, one Philip Thurston slept as sleeps the dead. But he awoke
with the others and thanked the Lord there were no more cattle to unload
and brand.
When he went out on day-herd that afternoon he fancied that he was
getting into the midst of things and taking his place with the veterans.
He would have been filled with resentment had he suspected the truth:
that Park carefully eased those first days of his novitiate. That was
why none of the night-guarding fell to him until they had left Billings
many miles behind them.