THE CROSSING
From lonely ranches along the Salagua and Verde, from the Sunflower
and up the Alamo, from all the sheeped-out and desolate Four Peaks
country the cowboys drifted in to Hidden Water for the round-up,
driving their extra mounts before them. Beneath the brush _ramada_ of
the ranch house they threw off their canvas-covered beds and turned
their pack horses out to roll, strapping bells and hobbles on the bad
ones, and in a day the deserted valley of Agua Escondida became alive
with great preparations. A posse of men on fresh mounts rode out on
Bronco Mesa, following with unerring instinct the trail of the Dos S
horses, balking their wild breaks for freedom and rushing them
headlong into the fenced pasture across the creek. As the hired hands
of the Dos S outfit caught up their mounts and endeavored to put the
fear of God into their hearts, the mountain boys got out the keg of
horseshoes and began to shoe--every man his own blacksmith.
It was rough work, all around, whether blinding and topping off the
half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought "cowboy"
shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away
limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it
all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity never failed. The
solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of
them. They were starved for company and excitement; obsessed by
strange ideas which they had evolved out of the tumuli of their past
experience and clung to with dogged tenacity; warped with egotism;
stubborn, boastful, or silent, as their humor took them, but now all
eager to break the shell and mingle in the rush of life.
In this riot of individuals Jefferson Creede, the round-up boss,
strode about like a king, untrammelled and unafraid. There was not a
ridge or valley in all the Four Peaks country that he did not know,
yet it was not for this that he was boss; there was not a virtue or
weakness in all that crowd that he was not cognizant of, in the back
of his scheming brain. The men that could rope, the men that could
ride, the quitters, the blowhards, the rattleheads, the lazy, the
crooked, the slow-witted--all were on his map of the country; and as,
when he rode the ridges, he memorized each gulch and tree and odd
rock, so about camp he tried out his puppets, one by one, to keep his
map complete.
As they gathered about the fire that evening it was Bill Lightfoot who
engaged his portentous interest. He listened to Bill's boastful
remarks critically, cocking his head to one side and smiling whenever
he mentioned his horse.
"Yes, sir," asserted Bill belligerently, "I mean it--that gray of mine
can skin anything in the country, for a hundred yards or a mile. I've
got money that says so!"
"Aw, bull!" exclaimed Creede scornfully.
"Bull, nothin'," retorted Lightfoot hotly. "I bet ye--I bet ye a
thousand dollars they ain't a horse in Arizona that can keep out of my
dust for a quarter!"
"Well, I know you ain't got no thousand dollars--ner ten," sneered
Creede. "Why don't you bet yearlings? If you'd blow some of that hot
air through a tube it'd melt rocks, I reckon. But talk cow, man; we
can all savvy that!"
"Well, where's the horse that can beat me?" demanded Lightfoot,
bristling.
"That little sorrel out in the pasture," answered Creede laconically.
"I'll bet ye!" blustered Lightfoot. "Aw, rats! He ain't even broke
yet!"
"He can run, all right. I'll go you for a yearling heifer. Put up or
shut up."
And so the race was run. Early in the morning the whole _rodeo_ outfit
adjourned to the _parada_ ground out by the pole corrals, the open
spot where they work over the cattle. Hardy danced his sorrel up to
the line where the gray was waiting, there was a scamper of feet, a
streak of dust, and Bill Lightfoot was out one yearling heifer. A
howling mob of cowboys pursued them from the scratch, racing each
other to the finish, and then in a yell of laughter at Bill Lightfoot
they capered up the canyon and spread out over The Rolls--the _rodeo_
had begun.
As the shadow of the great red butte to the west, around which the
wagon road toiled for so many weary miles, reached out and touched the
valley, they came back in a body, hustling a bunch of cattle along
before them. And such cattle! After his year with the Chiricahua
outfit in that blessed eastern valley where no sheep as yet had ever
strayed Hardy was startled by their appearance. Gaunt, rough, stunted,
with sharp hips and hollow flanks and bellies swollen from eating the
unprofitable browse of cactus and bitter shrubs, they nevertheless
sprinted along on their wiry legs like mountain bucks; and a peculiar
wild, haggard stare, stamped upon the faces of the old cows, showed
its replica even in the twos and yearlings. Yet he forbore to ask
Creede the question which arose involuntarily to his lips, for he
knew the inevitable answer.
Day after day, as they hurriedly combed The Rolls for what few cattle
remained on the lower range, the cowmen turned their eyes to the river
and to the canyons and towering cliffs beyond, for the sheep; until at
last as they sat by the evening fire Creede pointed silently to the
lambent flame of a camp fire, glowing like a torch against the
southern sky.
"There's your friends, Rufe," he said, and the cowmen glanced at Hardy
inquiringly.
"I might as well tell you fellers," Creede continued, "that one reason
Rufe come up here was to see if he couldn't do somethin' with these
sheepmen."
He paused and looked at the circle of faces with a smile that was
almost a sneer.
"You fellers wouldn't back me up when it come to fightin'--none except
Ben Reavis and the Clark boys--so I told the old judge we might as
well lay down, and to send up some smooth _hombre_ to try and jockey
'em a little. Well, Hardy's the _hombre_; and bein' as you fellers
won't fight, you might as well look pleasant about it. What's that you
say, Bill?"
He turned with a sardonic grin to Lightfoot, who had already been
reduced to a state of silence by the relentless persecutions of the
_rodeo_ boss.
"I never said nawthin'," replied Lightfoot sullenly. "But if you'd've
gone at 'em the way we wanted to," he blurted out, as the grin
broadened, "instead of tryin' to move the whole outfit by daylight,
I'd've stayed with you till hell froze over. I don't want to git sent
up fer ten years."
"No," said Creede coolly, "ner you never will."
"Well, I don't see what you're pickin' on me fer," bellowed Lightfoot,
"the other fellers was there too. Why don't you sass Ensign or Pete a
while?"
"For a durned good reason," replied Creede steadily. "They never _was_
for fightin', but you, with that yawp of yours, was always a-hollerin'
and ribbin' me on to fight, and then, when the time come, you never
said 'Boo!' at 'em. Tucked your young cannon into the seat of your
pants and flew, dam' ye, and that's all there was to it. But that's
all right," he added resignedly. "If you fellers don't want to fight
you don't have to. But, dam' it, keep shut about it now, until you
mean business."
As to just who this man Hardy was and what he proposed to do with the
sheep the members of the Four Peaks round-up were still in ignorance.
All they knew was that he could ride, even when it came to drifting
his horse over the rocky ridges, and that Jeff Creede took him as a
matter of course. But, for a superintendent, he never seemed to have
much to say for himself. It was only when he walked up to his sorrel
pony in that gentle, precise way he had, and went through the familiar
motions of climbing a "bad one" that they sensed, dimly, a past not
without experience and excitement. Even in the preoccupation of their
own affairs and doings they could not fail to notice a supple strength
in his white hands, a military precision in his movements, and above
all a look in his eyes when he became excited--the steady resolute
stare with which his militant father had subdued outlaw horses, buck
soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well.
It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue
when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to
being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike
Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came
from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and
without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up to him.
Even after his mission was announced, Hardy made no change in his
manner of life. He rode out each day on the round-up, conning the lay
of the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally,
frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did
his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the
random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked
interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment,
whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to
do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not
know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions
in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns;
they had cut their huddled bands at night and scattered them for the
coyotes; they had caught unwary Mexican _borregueros_ in forbidden
pastures and administered "shap lessons," stretching them over
bowlders and spanking them with their leather leggings; they had
"talked reason" to the bosses in forceful terms; they had requested
them politely to move; they had implored them with tears in their
eyes--and still like a wave of the sea, like a wind, like a scourge of
grasshoppers which cannot be withstood, the sheep had come on, always
hungry, always fat, always more.
Nor was there any new thing in hospitality. The last bacon and bread
had been set upon the table; baled hay and grain, hauled in by day's
works from the alfalfa fields of Moroni and the Salagua, had been fed
to the famished horses of the very men who had sheeped off the grass;
the same blanket had been shared, sometimes, alas, with men who were
"crumby." And it was equally true that, in return, the beans and meat
of chance herders had been as ravenously devoured, the water casks of
patient "camp-rustlers" had been drained midway between the river and
camp, and stray wethers had showed up in the round-up fry-pans in the
shape of mutton. Ponder as he would upon the problem no solution
offered itself to Hardy. He had no policy, even, beyond that of common
politeness; and as the menacing clamor of the sheep drifted up to them
from the river the diplomat who was to negotiate the great truce began
to wonder whether, after all, he was the man of the hour or merely
another college graduate gone wrong.
On the opposite side of the river in bands of two and three thousand
the cohorts of the sheep gathered to make the crossing--gathered and
waited, for the Salagua was still high. At the foot of the high
cliffs, from the cleft canyon of which water flowed forth as if some
rod had called it from the rock, the leaders of the sheepmen were
sitting in council, gazing at the powerful sweep of the level river,
and then at the distant sand bar where their charges must win the
shore or be swept into the whirlpool below. Ah, that whirlpool! Many a
frightened ewe and weakling lamb in years past had drifted helplessly
into its swirl and been sucked down, to come up below the point a
water-logged carcass. And for each stinking corpse that littered the
lower bar the boss sheep owner subtracted five dollars from the sum of
his hard-earned wealth. Already on the flats below them the willows
and burro bushes were trembling as eager teeth trimmed them of their
leaves--in a day, or two days, the river bottom would be fed bare; and
behind and behind, clear to the broad floor of the desert, band after
band was pressing on to the upper crossing of the Salagua.
As Hardy rode up over the rocky point against which the river threw
its full strength and then, flung inexorably back, turned upon itself
in a sullen whirlpool, he could see the sheep among the willows, the
herders standing impassive, leaning upon their guns as more rustic
shepherds lean upon their staves, and above, at the head of the
crossing, the group of men, sitting within the circle of their horses
in anxious conference. If any of them saw him, outlined like a
sentinel against the sky, they made no sign; but suddenly a man in a
high Texas hat leaped up from the group, sprang astride his mule and
spurred him into the cold water. For the first twenty feet the mule
waded, shaking his ears; then he slumped off the edge of a submerged
bench into deeper water and swam, heading across the stream but
drifting diagonally with the current until, striking bottom once more,
he struggled out upon the sand spit. The rider looked eagerly about,
glanced up casually at the man on the point below, and then plunged
back into the water, shouting out hoarse orders to his Mexicans, who
were smoking idly in the shade of overhanging rocks. Immediately they
scrambled to their feet and scattered along the hillside. The stroke
of axes echoed from the crags above, and soon men came staggering down
to the river, dragging the thorny limbs of _palo verdes_ behind them.
With these they quickly constructed a brush fence in the form of a
wing, running parallel to the cliff and making a chute which opened
into the river.
Then with a great braying and bleating a huddle of sheep moved
unwillingly along it, led by bold goats with crooked horns and
resolute beards, and pushed forward by that same reckless rider on his
black mule, assisted by a horde of shouting Mexicans. But at the touch
of the cold water, two days from the snow beds of the White Mountains,
even the hardy bucks stepped back and shook their heads defiantly. In
vain with showers of rocks and flapping tarpaulins the herders stormed
the rear of the press--every foot was set against them and the sheep
only rushed about along the edge of the herd or crowded in
close-wedged masses against the bluff. At last a line of men leaped
into the enclosure, holding up a long canvas wagon-cover and,
encircling the first section of the leaders, shoved them by main force
into the river.
Instantly the goats took water, swimming free, and below them the man
on the black mule shouted and waved his broad Texas hat, heading them
across the stream. But the timid sheep turned back behind him, landing
below the fence against all opposition, and the babel of their braying
rose higher and higher, as if in protest against their unlucky fate.
Again and again the herders, stripped to their underclothes, pushed
the unwilling sheep into the current, wading out to their chins to
keep them headed across; each time the sodden creatures evaded them
and, drifting with the current, landed far below on the same side,
whence they rushed back to join their fellows.
Upon the opposite shore the goats stood shivering, watching the
struggle with yellow, staring eyes which showed no trace of fear. Like
brave generals of a craven band they were alone in their hardihood
and, with their feet upon the promised land, were doomed either to
proceed alone or return to their companions. So at last they did,
plunging in suddenly, while the man on the mule spurred in below in a
vain effort to turn them back.
That night by the camp fire Hardy mentioned the man on a black mule.
"My old friend, Jasp Swope," explained Creede suavely, "brother of
Jim, the feller I introduced you to. Sure, Jasp and I have had lo-ong
talks together--but he don't like me any more." He twisted his nose
and made a face, as if to intimate that it was merely a childish
squabble, and Hardy said no more. He was growing wise.
The next morning, and the next, Jasper Swope made other attempts at
the crossing; and then, as the snow water from the high mountains
slipped by and the warm weather dried up by so much each little
stream, he was able at last to ford the diminished river. But first,
with that indomitable energy which marked him at every move, he
cleared a passage along the base of the cliff to a place where the
earth-covered moraine broke off at the edge of the water. Here a broad
ledge shot down to the river like a toboggan slide, with a six-foot
jump off at the bottom.
Once on this chute, with the strong tug of the canvas wagon-covers
behind, there was nothing for the sheep to do but to take the plunge,
and as his brawny herders tumbled them head over heels into the deep
current Swope and his helpers waded out in a line below, shunting each
ewe and wading toward the farther shore. There on the edge of the
sand spit they huddled in a bunch, gathering about the hardier bucks
and serving as a lure for those that followed. As cut after cut was
forced into the stream a long row of bobbing heads stretched clear
across the river, each animal striving desperately to gain the
opposite bank and landing, spent and puffing, far below. A Mexican boy
at intervals drove these strays up the shore to the big bunch and then
concealed himself in the bushes lest by his presence he turn some
timid swimmer back and the whirlpool increase its toll. So they
crossed them in two herds, the wethers first, and then the ewes and
lambs--and all the little lambs that could not stem the stream were
floated across in broad pieces of tarpaulin whose edges were held up
by wading men.
From Lookout Point it was a majestic spectacle, the high cliffs, the
silvery river gliding noiselessly out from its black canyon, the white
masses of sheep, clustering on either side of the water--and as the
work went ahead merrily the Mexicans, their naked bodies gleaming like
polished bronze in the ardent sun, broke into a wild refrain, a love
song, perhaps, or a _cancion_ of old Mexico. Working side by side with
his men Jasper Swope joined in the song himself, and as they returned
empty-handed he seized the tallest and strongest of them and ducked
him in the water while his retainers roared with laughter. And Hardy,
sitting unnoticed upon his horse, began to understand why these
low-browed barbarians from Mexico were willing to fight, and if need
be to die, for their masters. The age of feudalism had returned--the
lords of the sheep went forth like barons, sharing every hardship and
leading the way in danger, and their men followed with the same
unthinking devotion that the Myrmidons showed for noble Achilles or
the Crusaders for their white-crossed knights.
Upon this and many other feats Hardy had ample leisure to meditate,
for the sheepmen regarded him no more than if he had been a monument
placed high upon the point to give witness to their victory. As the
sheep crossed they were even allowed to straggle out along the slopes
of the forbidden mesa, untended by their shepherds; and if the upper
range was the special reserve of the cowmen the sheep owners showed no
knowledge of the fact. For two days the grazing herd crept slowly
along the mesquite-covered flat toward Lookout Point, and on the third
morning they boiled up over the rocks and spewed down into the valley
of the Alamo.
"Well," observed Creede, as he watched the slow creeping of the flock,
"here's where I have to quit you, Rufe. In a week this ground around
here will be as level as a billiard table and they won't be enough
horse feed in the valley to keep a burro. The town herd pulls out for
Bender this mornin' and the rest of us will move up to Carrizo
Creek."
He hurried away to oversee the packing, but when all was ready he
waved the boys ahead and returned to the conversation.
"As I was sayin' a while ago, you won't see nothin' but sheep around
here now for the next two weeks--and all I want to say is, keep 'em
out of the pasture, and f'r God's sake don't let 'em corral in the
brandin' pens! They're dirty enough already, but if you git about six
inches of sheep manure in there and then mill a few hundred head of
cattle around on top of it, the dust would choke a skunk. Our cows
ain't so over-particular about that sheep smell, but if we poor
cowboys has got to breathe sheep and eat sheep and spit up sheep every
time we brand, it's crowdin' hospitality pretty strong. But if they
want grub or clothes or tabac, go to it--and see if you can't keep 'em
off the upper range."
He paused and gazed at Hardy with eyes which suggested a world of
advice and warning--then, leaving it all unsaid, he turned wearily
away.
"I look to find you with a sprained wrist," he drawled, "when I come
back--throwin' flapjacks for them sheepmen!" He made the quick motion
of turning a pancake in midair, smiled grimly, and galloped after the
long line of horses and packs that was stringing along up the Bronco
Mesa trail. And, having a premonition of coming company, Hardy went in
by the fireplace and put on a big kettle of beef. He was picking over
another mess of beans when he heard the clatter of hoofs outside and
the next moment the door was kicked violently open.
It was Jasper Swope who stood on the threshold, his high Texas hat
thrust far back upon his head--and if he felt any surprise at finding
the house occupied he gave no expression to it.
"Hello, there!" he exclaimed. "I thought you folks was all gone!"
"Nope," replied Hardy, and continued his work in silence.
"Cookin' for the outfit?" queried Swope, edging in at the door.
"Nope," replied Hardy.
"Well, who the hell air ye cookin' fer then?" demanded Swope, drawing
nearer. "'Scuse me if I pry into this matter, but I'm gittin'
interested." He paused and showed a jagged set of teeth beneath his
bristling red mustache, sneeringly.
"Well, I'll tell you," answered Hardy easily. "I thought some white
man might come along later and I'd ask him to dinner." He fixed his
eyes upon the sheepman with an instant's disapproval and then resumed
his cookery. As for Swope, his gray eyes flashed sudden fire from
beneath bushy eyebrows, and then a canny smile crept across his lips.
"I used to be a white man, myself," he said, "before I lost my soap.
What's the chance to git a bite of that bymeby?" He threw his hand out
toward the pot of beef, which was sending out odors of a rich broth,
flavored with onions and chili.
Hardy looked at him again, little shrimp of a man that he was, and
still with disapproval.
"D'ye call that a white man's way of entering another man's house?" he
inquired pointedly.
"Well," temporized Swope, and then he stopped. "A man in my line of
business gits in a hurry once in a while," he said lamely. "But I'm
hungry, all right," he remarked, _sotto voce_.
"Yes," said Hardy, "I've noticed it. But here--sit down and eat."
The sheepman accepted the dish of beef, dipped out a spoonful of
beans, broke off a slab of bread, and began his meal forthwith,
meanwhile looking at Hardy curiously.
"What's that you say you've noticed?" he inquired, and a quizzical
smile lurked beneath his dripping mustache as he reached over and
hefted the coffeepot.
"I've noticed," replied Hardy, "that you sheepmen get in a hurry once
in a while. You can't stop to knock on a door so you kick it open;
can't stop to go around a ranch, so you go through it, and so on."
"Ah," observed Swope slyly, "so that's what's bitin' you, eh? I reckon
you must be that new superintendent that Jim was tellin' about."
"That's right," admitted Hardy, "and you're Mr. Swope, of course.
Well, I'll say this for you, Mr. Swope, you certainly know how to get
sheep across a river. But when it comes to getting along with cowmen,"
he added, as the sheepman grinned his self-approval, "you don't seem
to stack up very high."
"Oh, I don't, hey?" demanded Swope defiantly. "Well, how about the
cowmen? Your friend Creede gets along with sheepmen like a house
afire, don't he? Him and a bunch of his punchers jumped on one of my
herders last Fall and dam' nigh beat him to death. Did you ever hear
of a sheepman jumpin' on a cowboy? No, by Gad, and you never will! We
carry arms to protect ourselves, but we never make no trouble."
He paused and combed the coffee grounds out of his heavy red mustache
with fingers that were hooked like an eagle's talons from clutching at
sheep in the cold water.
"I don't doubt, Mr. Superintendent," he said, with sinister
directness, "that these cowmen have filled you up about what bad
_hombres_ we are--and of course it ain't no use to say nothin'
now--but I jest want to tell you one thing, and I want you to remember
it if any trouble should come up; we sheepmen have never gone beyond
our legal rights, and we've got the law behind us. The laws of the
United States and the statutes of this Territory guarantee us the
right to graze our sheep on public lands and to go where we dam'
please--and we'll go, too, you can bank on that."
He added this last with an assurance which left no doubt as to his
intentions, and Hardy made no reply. His whole mind seemed centred on
a handful of beans from which he was picking out the rocks and little
lumps of clay which help to make up full weight.
"Well!" challenged Swope, after waiting for his answer, "ain't that
straight?"
"Sure," said Hardy absently.
Swope glared at him for a moment disapprovingly.
"Huh, you're a hell of a cowman," he grunted. "What ye goin' to do
about it?"
"About what?" inquired Hardy innocently.
"Aw, you know," replied Swope impatiently. "How about that upper
range?" He shoved back his chair as he spoke, and his eyes lit up in
anticipation of the battle.
"Well," responded Hardy judicially, "if you've got the legal right to
go up there, and if you're goin' where you dam' please, anyhow, it
don't look like I could do anything." He paused and smiled patiently
at the sheepman.
"You know very well, Mr. Swope," he said, "that if you want to go up
on that mesa and sheep off the feed we haven't got any legal means of
preventing you. But you know, too, that there isn't more than enough
feed for what cows the boys have left. If you want to go up there,
that's your privilege--and if you want to go out over The Rolls,
that's all right, too."
"Of course you don't give a dam'!" said Swope satirically.
"I guess you know how I feel, all right," returned Hardy, and then he
lapsed into silence, while Swope picked his teeth and thought.
"Where'd you come from?" he said at last, as if, forgetting all that
had passed, his mind had come back from a far country, unbiassed by
the facts.
"Over the mountains," replied Hardy, jerking his thumb toward the
east.
"Don't have no sheep over there, do they?" inquired Swope.
"Nope, nothing but cattle and horses."
"Ump!" grunted the sheepman, and then, as if the matter was settled
thereby, he said: "All right, pardner, bein' as you put it that way, I
reckon I'll go around."