toward the water; nothing could stop their flight; but still the drivers
dashed at them, ever fighting, never wearying, never ceasing.
At the last incline, where a gentle slope led down to a dark break in
the desert, the rout became a stampede. Left and right flanks swung
round, the line lengthened, and round the struggling horses, knee-deep
in woolly backs, split the streams to flow together beyond in one
resistless river of sheep. Mescal forced Bolly out of danger; Dave
escaped the right flank, August and Hare swept on with the flood, till
the horses, sighting the dark canyon, halted to stand like rocks.
“Will they run over the rim?” yelled Hare, horrified. His voice came to
him as a whisper. August Naab, sweat-stained in red dust, haggard, gray
locks streaming in the wind, raised his arms above his head, hopeless.
The long nodding line of woolly forms, lifting like the crest of a
yellow wave, plunged out and down in rounded billow over the canyon rim.
With din of hoofs and bleats the sheep spilled themselves over the
precipice, and an awful deafening roar boomed up from the river, like
the spreading thunderous crash of an avalanche.
How endless seemed that fatal plunge! The last line of sheep, pressing
close to those gone before, and yet impelled by the strange instinct of
life, turned their eyes too late on the brink, carried over by their own
momentum.
The sliding roar ceased; its echo, muffled and hollow, pealed from the
cliffs, then rumbled down the canyon to merge at length in the sullen,
dull, continuous sound of the rapids.
Hare turned at last from that narrow iron-walled cleft, the depth of
which he had not seen, and now had no wish to see; and his eyes fell
upon a little Navajo lamb limping in the trail of the flock, headed for
the canyon, as sure as its mother in purpose. He dismounted and seized
it to find, to his infinite wonder and gladness, that it wore a string
and bell round its neck. It was Mescal's pet.
X. RIDING THE RANGES
THE shepherds were home in the oasis that evening, and next day the
tragedy of the sheep was a thing of the past. No other circumstance of
Hare's four months with the Naabs had so affected him as this swift
inevitable sweeping away of the flock; nothing else had so vividly told
him the nature of this country of abrupt heights and depths. He
remembered August Naab's magnificent gesture of despair; and now the man
was cheerful again; he showed no sign of his great loss. His tasks were
many, and when one was done, he went on to the next. If Hare had not had
many proofs of this Mormon's feeling he would have thought him callous.
August Naab trusted God and men, loved animals, did what he had to do
with all his force, and accepted fate. The tragedy of the sheep had been
only an incident in a tragical life--that Hare divined with awe.
Mescal sorrowed, and Wolf mourned in sympathy with her, for their
occupation was gone, but both brightened when August made known his
intention to cross the river to the Navajo range, to trade with the
Indians for another flock. He began his preparations immediately. The
snow-freshets had long run out of the river, the water was low, and he
wanted to fetch the sheep down before the summer rains. He also wanted
to find out what kept his son Snap so long among the Navajos.
“I'll take Billy and go at once. Dave, you join George and Zeke out on
the Silver Cup range. Take Jack with you. Brand all the cattle you can
before the snow flies. Get out of Dene's way if he rides over, and avoid
Holderness's men. I'll have no fights. But keep your eyes sharp for
their doings.”
It was a relief to Hare that Snap Naab had not yet returned to the
oasis, for he felt a sense of freedom which otherwise would have been
lacking. He spent the whole of a long calm summer day in the orchard and
the vineyard. The fruit season was at its height. Grapes, plums, pears,
melons were ripe and luscious. Midsummer was vacationtime for the
children, and they flocked into the trees like birds. The girls were
picking grapes; Mother Ruth enlisted Jack in her service at the pear-
trees; Mescal came, too, and caught the golden pears he threw down, and
smiled up at him; Wolf was there, and Noddle; Black Bolly pushed her
black nose over the fence, and whinnied for apples; the turkeys
strutted, the peafowls preened their beautiful plumage, the guinea-hens
ran like quail. Save for those frowning red cliffs Hare would have
forgotten where he was; the warm sun, the yellow fruit, the merry
screams of children, the joyous laughter of girls, were pleasant
reminders of autumn picnic days long gone. But, in the face of those
dominating wind-scarred walls, he could not forget.
That night Hare endeavored to see Mescal alone for a few moments, to see
her once more with unguarded eyes, to whisper a few words, to say good-
bye; but it was impossible.
On the morrow he rode out of the red cliff gate with Dave and the pack-
horses, a dull ache in his heart; for amid the cheering crowd of
children and women who bade them good-bye he had caught the wave of
Mescal's hand and a look of her eyes that would be with him always. What
might happen before he returned, if he ever did return! For he knew now,
as well as he could feel Silvermane's easy stride, that out there under
the white glare of desert, the white gleam of the slopes of Coconina,
was wild life awaiting him. And he shut his teeth, and narrowed his
eyes, and faced it with an eager joy that was in strange contrast to the
pang in his breast.
That morning the wind dipped down off the Vermillion Cliffs and whipped
west; there was no scent of river-water, and Hare thought of the
fatality of the sheep-drive, when, for one day out of the year, a
moistened dank breeze had met the flock on the narrow bench. Soon the
bench lay far behind them, and the strip of treacherous sand, and the
maze of sculptured cliff under the Blue Star, and the hummocky low
ridges beyond, with their dry white washes. Silvermane kept on in front.
Already Hare had learned that the gray would have no horse before him.
His pace was swift, steady, tireless. Dave was astride his Navajo mount,
an Indian-bred horse, half mustang, which had to be held in with a firm
rein. The pack train strung out far behind, trotting faithfully along,
with the white packs, like the humps of camels, nodding up and down.
Jack and Dave slackened their gait at the foot of the stony divide. It
was an ascent of miles, so long that it did not appear steep. Here the
pack-train caught up, and thereafter hung at the heels of the riders.
From the broad bare summit Jack saw the Silver Cup valley-range with
eyes which seemed to magnify the winding trail, the long red wall, the
green slopes, the dots of sage and cattle. Then he made allowance for
months of unobstructed vision; he had learned to see; his eyes had
adjusted themselves to distance and dimensions.
Silver Cup Spring lay in a bright green spot close under a break in the
rocky slope that soon lost its gray cliff in the shaggy cedared side of
Coconina.
The camp of the brothers was situated upon this cliff in a split between
two sections of wall. Well sheltered from the north and west winds was a
grassy plot which afforded a good survey of the valley and the trails.
Dave and Jack received glad greetings from Zeke and George, and
Silvermane was an object of wonder and admiration. Zeke, who had often
seen the gray and chased him too, walked round and round him, stroking
the silver mane, feeling the great chest muscles, slapping his flanks.
“Well, well, Silvermane, to think I'd live to see you wearing a saddle
and bridle! He's even bigger than I thought. There's a horse, Hare!
Never will be another like him in this desert. If Dene ever sees that
horse he'll chase him to the Great Salt Basin. Dene's crazy about fast
horses. He's from Kentucky, somebody said, and knows a horse when he
sees one.”
“How are things?” queried Dave.
“We can't complain much,” replied Zeke, “though we've wasted some time
on old Whitefoot. He's been chasing our horses. It's been pretty hot and
dry. Most of the cattle are on the slopes; fair browse yet. There's a
bunch of steers gone up on the mountain, and some more round toward the
Saddle or the canyon.”
“Been over Seeping Springs way?”
“Yes. No change since your trip. Holderness's cattle are ranging in the
upper valley. George found tracks near the spring. We believe somebody
was watching there and made off when we came up.”
“We'll see Holderness's men when we get to riding out,” put in George.
“And some of Dene's too. Zeke met Two-Spot Chance and Culver below at
the spring one day, sort of surprised them.”
“What day was that?”
“Let's see, this's Friday. It was last Monday.”
“What were they doing over here?”
“Said they were tracking a horse that had broken his hobbles. But they
seemed uneasy, and soon rode off.”
“Did either of them ride a horse with one shoe shy?”
“Now I think of it, yes. Zeke noticed the track at the spring.”
“Well, Chance and Culver had been out our way,” declared Dave. “I saw
their tracks, and they filled up the Blue Star waterhole--and cost us
three thousand sheep.”
Then he related the story of the drive of the sheep, the finding of the
plugged waterhole, the scent of the Colorado, and the plunge of the
sheep into the canyon.
“We've saved one, Mescal's belled lamb,” he concluded.
Neither Zeke nor George had a word in reply. Hare thought their silence
unnatural. Neither did the mask-like stillness of their faces change.
But Hare saw in their eyes a pointed clear flame, vibrating like a
compass-needle, a mere glimmering spark.
“I'd like to know,” continued Dave, calmly poking the fire, “who hired
Dene's men to plug the waterhole. Dene couldn't do that. He loves a
horse, and any man who loves a horse couldn't fill a waterhole in this
desert.”
Hare entered upon his new duties as a range-rider with a zeal that
almost made up for his lack of experience; he bade fair to develop into
a right-hand man for Dave, under whose watchful eye he worked. His
natural qualifications were soon shown; he could ride, though his seat
was awkward and clumsy compared to that of the desert rangers, a fault
that Dave said would correct itself as time fitted him close to the
saddle and to the swing of his horse. His sight had become
extraordinarily keen for a new-comer on the ranges, and when experience
had taught him the land-marks, the trails, the distances, the difference
between smoke and dust and haze, when he could distinguish a band of
mustangs from cattle, and range-riders from outlaws or Indians; in a
word, when he had learned to know what it was that he saw, to trust his
judgment, he would have acquired the basic feature of a rider's
training. But he showed no gift for the lasso, that other essential
requirement of his new calling.
“It's funny,” said Dave, patiently, “you can't get the hang of it. Maybe
it's born in a fellow. Now handling a gun seems to come natural for some
fellows, and you're one of them. If only you could get the rope away as
quick as you can throw your gun!”
Jack kept faithfully at it, unmindful of defeats, often chagrined when
he missed some easy opportunity. Not improbably he might have failed
altogether if he had been riding an ordinary horse, or if he had to try
roping from a fiery mustang. But Silvermane was as intelligent as he was
beautiful and fleet. The horse learned rapidly the agile turns and
sudden stops necessary, and as for free running he never got enough. Out
on the range Silvermane always had his head up and watched; his life had
been spent in watching; he saw cattle, riders, mustangs, deer, coyotes,
every moving thing. So that Hare, in the chasing of a cow, had but to
start Silvermane, and then he could devote himself to the handling of
his rope. It took him ten times longer to lasso the cow than it took
Silvermane to head the animal. Dave laughed at some of Jack's exploits,
encouraged him often, praised his intent if not his deed; and always
after a run nodded at Silvermane in mute admiration.
Branding the cows and yearlings and tame steers which watered at Silver
Cup, and never wandered far away, was play according to Dave's version.
“Wait till we get after the wild steers up on the mountain and in the
canyons,” he would say when Jack dropped like a log at supper. Work it
certainly was for him. At night he was so tired that he could scarcely
crawl into bed; his back felt as if it were broken; his legs were raw,
and his bones ached. Many mornings he thought it impossible to arise,
but always he crawled out, grim and haggard, and hobbled round the camp-
fire to warm his sore and bruised muscles. Then when Zeke and George
rode in with the horses the day's work began. During these weeks of his
“hardening up,” as Dave called it, Hare bore much pain, but he continued
well and never missed a day. At the most trying time when for a few days
he had to be helped on and off Silvermane--for he insisted that he would
not stay in camp--the brothers made his work as light as possible. They
gave him the branding outfit to carry, a running-iron and a little pot
with charcoal and bellows; and with these he followed the riders at a
convenient distance and leisurely pace.
Some days they branded one hundred cattle. By October they had August
Naab's crudely fashioned cross on thousands of cows and steers. Still
the stock kept coming down from the mountain, driven to the valley by
cold weather and snow-covered grass. It was well into November before
the riders finished at Silver Cup, and then arose a question as to
whether it would be advisable to go to Seeping Springs or to the canyons
farther west along the slope of Coconina. George favored the former, but
Dave overruled him.
“Father's orders,” he said. “He wants us to ride Seeping Springs last
because he'll be with us then, and Snap too. We're going to have trouble
over there.”
“How's this branding stock going to help the matter any, I'd like to
know?” inquired George. “We Mormons never needed it.”
“Father says we'll all have to come to it. Holderness's stock is
branded. Perhaps he's marked a good many steers of ours. We can't tell.
But if we have our own branded we'll know what's ours. If he drives our
stock we'll know it; if Dene steals, it can be proved that he steals.”
“Well, what then? Do you think he'll care for that, or Holderness
either?”
“No, only it makes this difference: both things will then be barefaced
robbery. We've never been able to prove anything, though we boys know;
we don't need any proof. Father gives these men the benefit of a doubt.
We've got to stand by him. I know, George, your hand's begun to itch for
your gun. So does mine. But we've orders to obey.”
Many gullies and canyons headed up on the slope of Coconina west of
Silver Cup, and ran down to open wide on the flat desert. They contained
plots of white sage and bunches of rich grass and cold springs. The
steers that ranged these ravines were wild as wolves, and in the tangled
thickets of juniper and manzanita and jumbles of weathered cliff they
were exceedingly difficult to catch.
Well it was that Hare had received his initiation and had become inured
to rough, incessant work, for now he came to know the real stuff of
which these Mormons were made. No obstacle barred them. They penetrated
the gullies to the last step; they rode weathered slopes that were
difficult for deer to stick upon; they thrashed the bayonet-guarded
manzanita copses; they climbed into labyrinthine fastnesses, penetrating
to every nook where a steer could hide. Miles of sliding slope and
marble-bottomed streambeds were ascended on foot, for cattle could climb
where a horse could not. Climbing was arduous enough, yet the hardest
and most perilous toil began when a wild steer was cornered. They roped
the animals on moving slopes of weathered stone, and branded them on the
edges of precipices.
The days and weeks passed, how many no one counted or cared. The circle
of the sun daily lowered over the south end of Coconina; and the black
snow-clouds crept down the slopes. Frost whitened the ground at dawn,
and held half the day in the shade. Winter was close at the heels of the
long autumn.
As for Hare, true to August Naab's assertion, he had lost flesh and
suffered, and though the process was heartbreaking in its severity, he
hung on till he hardened into a leather lunged, wire-muscled man,
capable of keeping pace with his companions.
He began his day with the dawn when he threw off the frost-coated
tarpaulin; the icy water brought him a glow of exhilaration; he drank in
the spiced cold air, and there was the spring of the deer-hunter in his
step as he went down the slope for his horse. He no longer feared that
Silvermane would run away. The gray's bell could always be heard near
camp in the mornings, and when Hare whistled there came always the
answering thump of hobbled feet. When Silvermane saw him striding
through the cedars or across the grassy belt of the valley he would
neigh his gladness. Hare had come to love Silvermane and talked to him
and treated him as if he were human.
When the mustangs were brought into camp the day's work began, the same
work as that of yesterday, and yet with endless variety, with ever-
changing situations that called for quick wits, steel arms, stout
hearts, and unflagging energies. The darkening blue sky and the sun-
tipped crags of Vermillion Cliffs were signals to start for camp. They
ate like wolves, sat for a while around the camp-fire, a ragged, weary,
silent group; and soon lay down, their dark faces in the shadow of the
cedars.
In the beginning of this toil-filled time Hare had resolutely set
himself to forget Mescal, and he had succeeded at least for a time, when
he was so sore and weary that he scarcely thought at all. But she came
back to him, and then there was seldom an hour that was not hers. The
long months which seemed years since he had seen her, the change in him
wrought by labor and peril, the deepening friendship between him and
Dave, even the love he bore Silvermane--these, instead of making dim the
memory of the dark-eyed girl, only made him tenderer in his thought of
her.
Snow drove the riders from the canyon-camp down to Silver Cup, where
they found August Naab and Snap, who had ridden in the day before.
“Now you couldn't guess how many cattle are back there in the canyons,”
said Dave to his father.
“I haven't any idea,” answered August, dubiously.
“Five thousand head.”
“Dave!” His father's tone was incredulous.
“Yes. You know we haven't been back in there for years. The stock has
multiplied rapidly in spite of the lions and wolves. Not only that, but
they're safe from the winter, and are not likely to be found by Dene or
anybody else.”
“How do you make that out?”
“The first cattle we drove in used to come back here to Silver Cup to
winter. Then they stopped coming, and we almost forgot them. Well,
they've got a trail round under the Saddle, and they go down and winter
in the canyon. In summer they head up those rocky gullies, but they
can't get up on the mountain. So it isn't likely any one will ever
discover them. They are wild as deer and fatter than any stock on the
ranges.”
“Good! That's the best news I've had in many a day. Now, boys, we'll
ride the mountain slope toward Seeping Springs, drive the cattle down,
and finish up this branding. Somebody ought to go to White Sage. I'd
like to know what's going on, what Holderness is up to, what Dene is
doing, if there's any stock being driven to Lund.”
“I told you I'd go,” said Snap Naab.
“I don't want you to,” replied his father. “I guess it can wait till
spring, then we'll all go in. I might have thought to bring you boys out
some clothes and boots. You're pretty ragged. Jack there, especially,
looks like a scarecrow. Has he worked as hard as he looks?”
“Father, he never lost a day,” replied Dave, warmly, “and you know what
riding is in these canyons.”
August Naab looked at Hare and laughed. “It'd be funny, wouldn't it, if
Holderness tried to slap you now? I always knew you'd do, Jack, and now
you're one of us, and you'll have a share with my sons in the cattle.”
But the generous promise failed to offset the feeling aroused by the
presence of Snap Naab. With the first sight of Snap's sharp face and
strange eyes Hare became conscious of an inward heat, which he had felt
before, but never as now, when there seemed to be an actual flame within
his breast. Yet Snap seemed greatly changed; the red flush, the swollen
lines no longer showed in his face; evidently in his absence on the
Navajo desert he had had no liquor; he was good-natured, lively, much
inclined to joking, and he seemed to have entirely forgotten his
animosity toward Hare. It was easy for Hare to see that the man's evil
nature was in the ascendancy only when he was under the dominance of
drink. But he could not forgive; he could not forget. Mescal's dark,
beautiful eyes haunted him. Even now she might be married to this man.
Perhaps that was why Snap appeared to be in such cheerful spirits.
Suspense added its burdensome insistent question, but he could not bring
himself to ask August if the marriage had taken place. For a day he
fought to resign himself to the inevitability of the Mormon custom, to
forget Mescal, and then he gave up trying. This surrender he felt to be
something crucial in his life, though he could not wholly understand it.
It was the darkening of his spirit; the death of boyish gentleness; the
concluding step from youth into a forced manhood. The desert
regeneration had not stopped at turning weak lungs, vitiated blood, and
flaccid muscles into a powerful man; it was at work on his mind, his
heart, his soul. They answered more and more to the call of some
outside, ever-present, fiercely subtle thing.
Thenceforth he no longer vexed himself by trying to forget Mescal; if
she came to mind he told himself the truth, that the weeks and months
had only added to his love. And though it was bitter-sweet there was
relief in speaking the truth to himself. He no longer blinded himself by
hoping, striving to have generous feelings toward Snap Naab; he called
the inward fire by its real name--jealousy--and knew that in the end it
would become hatred.
On the third morning after leaving Silver Cup the riders were working
slowly along the slope of Coconina; and Hare having driven down a bunch
of cattle, found himself on an open ridge near the temporary camp.
Happening to glance up the valley he saw what appeared to be smoke
hanging over Seeping Springs.
“That can't be dust,” he soliloquized. “Looks blue to me.”
He studied the hazy bluish cloud for some time, but it was so many miles
away that he could not be certain whether it was smoke or not, so he
decided to ride over and make sure. None of the Naabs was in camp, and
there was no telling when they would return, so he set off alone. He
expected to get back before dark, but it was of little consequence
whether he did or not, for he had his blanket under the saddle, and
grain for Silvermane and food for himself in the saddle-bags.
Long before Silvermane's easy trot had covered half the distance Hare
recognized the cloud that had made him curious. It was smoke. He thought
that range-riders were camping at the springs, and he meant to see what
they were about. After three hours of brisk travel he reached the top of
a low rolling knoll that hid Seeping Springs. He remembered the springs
were up under the red wall, and that the pool where the cattle drank was
lower down in a clump of cedars. He saw smoke rising in a column from
the cedars, and he heard the lowing of cattle.
“Something wrong here,” he muttered. Following the trail, he rode
through the cedars to come upon the dry hole where the pool had once
been. There was no water in the flume. The bellowing cattle came from
beyond the cedars, down the other side of the ridge. He was not long in
reaching the open, and then one glance made all clear.
A new pool, large as a little lake, shone in the sunlight, and round it
a jostling horned mass of cattle were pressing against a high corral.
The flume that fed water to the pool was fenced all the way up to the
springs.
Jack slowly rode down the ridge with eyes roving under the cedars and up
to the wall. Not a man was in sight.