BILLEE DOBB'S STORY
Back at the Shooting Star ranch the three others, Nort, Billee Dobb and
Yellin' Kid, were occupying themselves with the business of the day.
The Kid having reported on the condition of the "shacks," Nort decided
that a new bunk house would be necessary before the shearing season to
accommodate the extra men. He and Yellin' Kid, together with Billee
Dobb, then lazed about the place, awaiting the return of Dick and Bud.
It was eleven o'clock before Dick came riding into the yard.
"Bring any grub back with you?"
"No. The store said the buckboard would be right over, almost as soon
as I got here. Is the kitchen all cleaned out?"
"Pretty near, I guess. That's what the Mex meant when I caught him at
the door. Gee, I wish----"
He was interrupted by a rattling and creaking, and the sound of horses
beating a fast tattoo on the hard earth. Above this bedlam arose the
sound of a voice in loud and vigorous denunciation.
"Here she comes!" Nort cried. "The food! Say, that team must have
been stepping right along. Got here almost as soon as you did, Dick."
With a final roar and crash of wooden timbers, and a last invocation
to: "Hold up there, you two wildcats, or I'll bust you wide open," the
cart drew up to the ranch house door.
From its swaying side the driver, a grinning youth in a blue shirt and
red bandanna 'kerchief about his neck, climbed down.
"Get here in time?" he called. "Sure had these here babies rollin'
right along." Then without even a halt for breath he went on: "What do
you think of this here team? Best pair of ponies in the state! Lean
down, baby, 'til I smooth those ears of yours. Down, I say! Why, you
spavin-boned piece of horse meat! Come down here or I'll chew you up!
Throw your head back at me, will you? Of all the knock-kneed,
wall-eyed chunks of locoed craziness, you're the worst. Pete, you
pink-headed, glandered cayuse, drop that neck or I'll skin you alive.
That's the stuff! Best little pair of broncoes in the state, boys!"
"You sure got some vocabulary!" laughed Dick. "Think a lot of your
team, don't you--sometimes! Yes, you got here in plenty of time."
"Bring them yellow clings?" the Kid asked, anxiously.
"Yep! Two dozen cans of the best yellow cling peaches. An' flour,
bacon, an' all the rest. Help me unload, boys."
With five pairs of willing hands on the job, the wagon was quickly
relieved of its load. The food was carried into the kitchen, and left
there for the cook with an admonition to: "Get busy, Mex. We're
starved!"
"Thanks for bringing the stuff over so promptly," Dick said to the
youthful driver. "You must have hit only the high spots to get here so
quick."
"Should say I did! One time we left the ground and stayed up while a
coyote ran under the whole length of the wagon. Can't beat this here
team of mine for speed. Well, guess I'll be gettin' back. All set,
ponies? Don't strain yourselves, now. Got plenty of time. Just go
along nice an' easy. Yes, sir, boys, I love these animals like
brothers!
"Get along there, Pete. Get along, I say. Pete, you lop-eared
wangdoddle! Quit draggin' that other bronc around! Hear me? Dodgast
your hide, I'll blow your fool head right off your worthless carcass if
you don't quit that. You will, will you? How do you like the feel of
that? Now we're off! At-a-baby, get goin'! So long, boys! You,
Pete! Gosh darn your senseless hide, I'll--" the rest was lost.
"He loves 'em like brothers!" shouted the Kid, holding his sides with
laughter. "Oh, boy! 'Take your time, ponies!' Sure, they'll take
their time! Bet he's half way to Roarin' River by now. Wow, what a
driver! Ho-ho--I haven't had a laugh like this in years! 'Don't
strain yourselves!' Oh, baby!"
A cloud of dust marked the disappearance of the grinning youth with the
"best pair of ponies in the state." He left behind him an appreciative
audience.
"Hope that Mex gets a wiggle on," Nort said when the laughter had
quieted down. "He ought to be able to rustle a pretty fair meal with
all that junk."
"And in the meantime we might as well sit," Yellin' Kid suggested.
"Look over the landscape."
The punchers made their way to the corral. Without explaining, each
knew the Kid's suggestion to "sit an' look over the landscape" meant a
view from the top rail of the corral, which was several feet high.
This is the cowboy's favorite resting place while waiting for "chuck."
They will sit there and survey a perfectly familiar scene until called
off by the cook's horn or the cry to "come an' git it."
"Bud ought to be back for grub," said Dick as he swung his leg over the
top rail.
"Ought to," Nort agreed. "Said he wasn't going far."
"That might mean anything out here," Billee Dobb broke in, "from a
two-mile jaunt to a ride of twenty mile or more. Bud's O. K. though.
If he don't show up fer his meals he's got a good reason."
"You're probably right," Dick said, "but with all this trouble around
here I don't like to see anyone stay away too long. If he doesn't come
in before afternoon we'll have to take a ride around and see if we
can't spot him."
"No use crossing bridges before we come to them," Nort declared.
"After all this talk Bud will probably come riding in with a bear cub
he chased. Bud's funny that way. Anything that's a bit out of the
ordinary, and Bud will go miles out of his way to see it. Remember how
he stared at that cyclone coming until he forgot where he was?"
"I don't think he's so funny," the Kid declared in a thoughtful tone.
"Just doesn't like to miss any of the show, that's all. Me, I'm like
that sometimes. A pretty sunset gets me here somehow," and the Kid
placed his hand on his stomach in a general way.
"Have you tried eating raw onions?" Nort asked in a solicitous voice.
"They say they're awful good."
"Aw, you guys make me sick," said Yellin' Kid disgustedly. "Just as
soon as a feller gets--well--poetical like--you hop all over him."
"Ex-cuse me, Kid! I didn't know you were getting poetical. Why, if I
had known that I wouldn't have said a word. I thought you were telling
us about your indigestion."
"Go ahead--go ahead! I'll get you sometime, Nort. Billee, do you
think it's nice to run me around like that?"
"Do you good," Billee said with a grin. "When I was young an' worked
out with a bunch from Two-bar Cross--the roughest outfit you'd ever
laid eyes on--I wasn't let to open my mouth without someone hoppin'
down my throat. That was a gang, let me tell you!"
"They were the old-fashioned punchers, weren't they?" Dick asked,
winking at the Kid. "The kind that used a buck-strap and ate his
coffee out of a frying-pan."
"Buck-strap! Buck--say, boy, if any man on that there Two-bar Cross
outfit ever heard you speak of a buck-strap they wouldn't know what you
was talkin' about. No, sir! Those boys were rough customers."
A buck-strap is a leather thong fastened to the saddle in such a way
that if the pony suddenly bucks, its rider can hold himself on by
inserting his hand within this thong and pulling hard. The user of one
of these contraptions is never proud of it, needless to say.
"You used to work a lot in the summer, didn't you, Billee?" the Kid
asked with a concealed grin.
"Yes, and in the winter, too. Mostly in the winter. I remember one
time----"
"Now he's off," the Kid whispered in an aside to Dick. "This'll be
good."
"I remember once when I was ridin' for the Two-bar Cross bunch an' we
had four thousand head of cattle on the range. 'Long about December,
when the first snow starts, me an' Joe Heldig was sent out to see how
the bunch was makin' out, and if they needed anything, one of us was to
ride back an' tell the rest while the other watched. Well, we set out
about seven o'clock one morning to see if we could spot the herd.
"It was clear an' cold when we started. Not a cloud in the sky.
Thinks I, we're pretty lucky, havin' such fine weather; that late in
the season, too. Joe Heldig, he don't say nothin'. We took with us
our blankets, some sour-dough, coffee an' bacon, an' that fryin'-pan
you was talking about, Dick. We rode along easy like, not worryin' nor
nothin', an' talkin' about the best way to skin a steer, an' whether
it's best to split two pair on the draw to try for a flush. That used
to be a trick of Joe's.
"Around about noon it started to get warmer, an' off in the east a few
white clouds showed up. Me, I don't worry none, but I see Joe lookin'
kind of anxious now an' then.
"We found the bunch at three o'clock, not as far out as we figgered
they'd be. Seemed pretty contented an' easy. Had a good grazin' spot,
too. An' just as we was about to call it a day I felt something wet
drop on my nose. Then another. Joe looked at me an' I looked at him.
Snow! Know what that means on the range?
"Well, there was nothin' for it but to stick around an' see how bad it
was goin' to be. By five o'clock we knew. The flakes was comin' down
so thick you couldn't see, and a wind had sprung up. An' Joe an' me
had a bunch of cattle on our hands. I told Joe one of us better try to
make the ranch and bring back enough men to get the cattle to a
sheltered spot, so they wouldn't die. I knew we couldn't move them
alone, and where they were grazin' it was all open. So Joe started.
He knew the general direction, an' what would be sure suicide for
anyone else was just a chance for Joe, havin' lived for twenty years
right in that section.
"I could easy keep track of the cows by their moanin'. It was real
cold now, an' the poor bunch of beeves stood in the snow with their
heads held low, with icicles hanging from their eyes, groanin'
something pitiful. They never moved. Just stood there while the snow
drifted up around their haunches. What I was afraid of was a drift.
Not a drift of snow, but a drift of cattle.
"I knew those steers would only stay still a certain length of time,
then one of them would start movin' leaward, with the whole bunch
followin'. And they'd march that way into the snow, until every
blessed one of them dropped, and died where it fell. First the little
calves. Then the mothers, who'd stick by their babies until they died,
too. Then the cows of the herd who weren't so strong. An' last, some
big, proud long-horn would drop in his tracks an' die. An' there
wouldn't be nothin' left of the herd except dots in the snow along the
path. That's what we call a drift.
"I knew if they ever started driftin' I couldn't save them. I could
try to turn them by rushin' my bronc into them, but it wouldn't do no
good. It needs at least six men to do that job. An' even then, if
they once get well started, I don't think they'd turn aside fer
_nothin'_. So I just sat on my pony an' waited. The snow kept gettin'
higher, and the wind colder an' colder. The cows were moanin' heavy
now. I saw 'em shift once or twice, an' my heart went in my throat,
but they settled down once more to just breathin' hard. How I did hope
that Joe made the ranch. I sort of felt that if help didn't come soon
the drift would start. It takes so long for a cow to get the idea she
wants to move, and when she gets the notion into her head, her legs
start goin' themselves, an' keep goin' until something bigger and
stronger than she is stops her. I knew that the only thing would stop
this bunch, once they started, would be death.
"All of a sudden the moanin' of the cattle grew louder. I rode up
close to them an' saw what the reason was, and it made me catch my
breath. A big cow was steppin' slowly out, head low, right into the
gale. The drift had started.
"I rode hard at the brute that was leadin'. She never paid no
attention to me whatever. Then I drew my gun and shot her, but the cow
behind kept right on goin'. An' back of her the rest started movin'.
Unless something happened quick the show was over.
"Then I heard what I'd been hopin' an' prayin' for--a yell! Through
the screamin' of the wind I could hear Joe's voice whoopin' it up, an'
believe me, it was the most welcome sound I'd ever heard. The next
minute the whole gang from the ranch, in a flyin' wedge, rode right
into that bunch of long-horns, and split them wide open!
"That saved them. They was scared out of the drift, an' we soon drove
them down behind a hill, where the wind wouldn't get at them, and they
could reach the grass through the snow. Joe had made it just in time,
though how he found the ranch in that storm is still a mystery, even to
him."
The boys on the rail sat silent for a moment. Then out from the
kitchen of the ranch house there came the blast of a horn.
"Grub!" Yellin' Kid shouted. "Let's eat, boys!"