AT THE RANGE CAMP
It really was the very "maddest" cow Oriole Putnam had ever seen. She
was used to the old muley cow on Harbor Light Island and the spotted
cow in the stable behind Mrs. Joy's house in Littleport. Indeed, she
had milked, fed, and been friendly with both of these.
But this outlaw cow--of Hereford stock and wild-eyed and fiery enough,
now she was roused--seemed quite like a wild beast to the girl from
the Atlantic coast town. She was not at all like any cow that had
heretofore crossed Oriole's path.
That she was dangerous was proved by the way Mr. Langdon and Sadie
Brown, though laughing, had spurred out of the creature's path. Those
sharp horns certainly could do a deal of harm to a pony. That the grown
folks were not at first seriously disturbed was because they were such
good riders and understood how to manage their mounts.
But here was quite another thing. The cow aimed for the buckboard
itself, and the three children (for the driver had his hands full with
the cavorting ponies) were in real peril.
Myron and Marian were screaming--either in excitement or fear, it would
be hard to say which. Oriole uttered no word at all, but her round eyes
glared at the charging cow in terror.
That heavy body, backed by the force of the speed it had gathered,
could overturn the rangy vehicle, if nothing worse, and the buckboard
is a wagon not easily tipped over. The cow's forehead collided with the
end of the rear seat--the seat on which Oriole and the twins had been
sitting.
The buckboard groaned, was lifted up, and the spokes of the dry wheels
rattled. Long Jim, the driver, whooping loudly, sailed over the tangle
of harness that held the nigh pony.
Oriole needed nobody to tell her to jump. That was exactly what she
did--and in the very nick of time. As the cow's horns and forehead
collided with the seat the girl leaped out of the vehicle, bearing a
twin under each arm.
[Illustration: ORIOLE LEAPED, BEARING A TWIN UNDER EACH ARM.]
"Hurrah for Oriole!" shouted Harvey Langdon, wheeling his horse in a
narrow circle and charging back toward the overturned buckboard.
"What a nimble child she is!" gasped Sadie Brown.
But it needed strength as well as nimbleness to accomplish what Oriole
did. The twins were heavy, and she saved them from falling to the
ground when she landed herself so solidly. She was jarred all over by
her jump. And even then she and the twins were not safe.
The cow overturned the buckboard, wrecked one hind wheel, and plowed
right through the wreckage in her endeavor to get at the three
children. Their fluttering garments drew the attention, perhaps, of the
mother cow and occasioned such determination to get at the trio.
"Come, children! Run!" Oriole commanded, setting the twins down.
She seized their hands and they scampered over the short sward, away
from the wagon tracks. The cow became entangled in the wreckage of the
buckboard. The cowboy, Lenny, came along with his quirt and drove the
animal, bawling, away from the vicinity. The vehicle could not be used,
however, until it was repaired.
"We'll have to take these children up before us as far as the range
camp," said Mr. Langdon. "Whose outfit is it ahead, Lenny?"
"Rodney Granger's, Mr. Harvey," replied the puncher, in his drawling
way. "'Tain't more'n five mile."
But first Oriole had to watch the puncher who had roped and tied the
calf. There was something enthralling about this branding, although she
hated the idea of the poor calf being hurt. As Mr. Langdon had said,
however, there was no other way to account for the growing cattle.
The puncher had gathered a few dead branches of what was called
"mahogany bush" even while the cow was on the rampage. He now made a
small fire between two stones, cunningly arranged for a quick draft. He
thrust the crooked part of the branding iron into the hottest part of
the fire.
While the iron was heating the calf suddenly began to bawl again. The
puncher had slit one of the animal's ears--"nicked it," he said--which
Oriole thought most unnecessarily cruel. But it didn't bleed much, and
she wiped it carefully with her handkerchief.
"I should think," she said warmly, "if it's absolutely necessary to
mark 'em on the ear, that you'd have some salve, or something. I know
Ma Stafford had salve with which she anointed even the hens' feet when
they got hurt. The poor thing----"
"Well, I tell you how 'tis, Miss," said the puncher, with grave face
but twinkling eyes. "Us cowmen have to carry so much with us--camp
'quipment, and hog-strings, and a rope, and all--that we don't seem
to have no room on horseback for a medicine chest. But you speak to
Harvey Langdon 'bout it. Mebbe he'll give us a pack-mule to trail along
behind us when we're out on the range."
Oriole knew well enough this was jokingly said. And she shut her
hands together ever so tight when that white-hot iron came out of the
fire and the Three-bar mark was put upon the protesting calf. But she
just _had_ to see it done! She had watched the sea in its might, she
had suffered shipwreck and disaster, she had been through some harsh
adventures; why shouldn't she see a yearling branded and learn how it
was accomplished?
She knew girls, at least girls in Littleport, were supposed to shriek
and run away when anything unpleasant like this was done. There was a
man on State Street, a little beyond the Dexter mansion where Oriole
had lived with Mrs. Rebecca Joy, who killed pigs just before Christmas.
She had heard the poor pigs squealing and had stopped her ears with her
fingers just as Flossy Payne did.
Now Oriole thought that she had been rather foolish. The bawling calf
made a lot of noise over his split ear and burned hip; but he would
soon get over it. She was just as tender hearted as girl could be, but
she was perhaps more sensible than most.
At any rate, as before said, Oriole realized that this branding of
cattle was a necessary operation. Otherwise the calves would be lost.
For after a certain time the mother cow would drive the yearling away
from her anyway.
Then she got up astride the saddle before Harvey Langdon. Sadie Brown
carried Marian in her arms, and Lenny, the cowpuncher, bore Myron.
They rode on, leaving the other puncher and the driver to patch up the
buckboard the best way possible and come on slowly to the range camp.
The herd was sighted in half an hour--a great, reddish smudge, it
seemed at first, moving slowly across the rolling plain. But the cattle
were grazing earnestly, as night came on, and soon Oriole saw that they
ate of the newly sprung, succulent grass far from each other. Instead
of closing in together like a driven herd, the cattle covered acres
upon acres of land.
Here and there on the outskirts, statuesque in pose, was a horseman.
Riding around the herd was only followed by night, it seemed. By day
the punchers merely watched. There was nothing much to trouble the herd
here on the uplands, so far from the savage heights or gulches choked
with jungle-growth. Even the chaparral was sparse.
"And did Teddy Ford ride around these cows, and watch them feed, Mr.
Langdon?" Oriole asked doubtfully, after they had all alighted from
their horses.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the ranchman. "Teddy was cook's helper part of the
time; but he could ride. I'll say that much for the kid--he could ride.
You seem to have a deep interest in him, Oriole?"
"Yes, sir. Why shouldn't I? I--I guess he is the first cowpuncher I
ever knew. And I _do_ think they are awfully interesting."
"I'll tell the boys that," chuckled Harvey Langdon. "If there is
anything interesting about herding steers and riding mean-tempered
cayuses, I know the boys will be glad to hear it."
Nevertheless the girl from the East was not disabused of her belief
that riding after cattle must be a most romantic business. Why!
consider this eating at the range camp, and afterward rolling up in
blankets and sleeping in a wagon that looked like the pictures of those
in the old emigrant trains. Oriole was quite entranced by these new
experiences.
It seemed to her as though she had only just closed her eyes when she
opened them again and found a red and windy dawn outside the covered
wagon. How could even a dreamless night have gone so quickly? She
crept out of the roll of her blanket and peered forth from the end of
the wagon.
There was a stir already among the horses and around the cook wagon.
Red flames blinked and sputtered as though the fuel was greasy. Two or
three moving shadows marked the cook and helpers. She saw a tall and
lean man rise like a sapling out of the shadow that masked the earth
and stretch long arms like tree limbs. Then he cupped his hands like a
megaphone and shouted in the high, plainsman's drawl:
"Beds!"
He repeated the word thrice, turning slowly as he did so to all four
points of the compass. All around the camp men roused up sleepily, but
took up the cry weirdly in the half darkness:
"Beds! Beds!"
"What can it mean?" murmured Oriole, hopping out of the end of the
wagon.
She ran, all tousled of hair and sleepy-eyed as she was, to the fires
to ask. She ran into Lenny, the puncher who had come over from the
railway with them the afternoon before.
"Hullo, Sissy," he said. "What do them hombres mean yelling
that-a-way?" and he chuckled. "Why, camp's going to be moved to-day.
Bed-rolls have to be made and chucked into that wagon you been
sleepin' in. See that feller yonder, rolling his bedding and tarp to a
tight cylinder? That's what it is--all your lares and penates, as the
old Greeks called it, eh? The herd's on the way already. We'll camp
to-night by the Joppa water-hole. We'll be on our way shortly. See! The
bobtail's already eat and are saddling up."
"Dear me," asked Oriole in curiosity, "what's a bobtail?"
"The bobtail," explained Lenny, "relieves the last guard watching the
herd, so it can come in and breakfast. Watches on the range are divided
something like watches at sea. I been to sea myself," he added. "This
bobtail is something like the dog-watch--only it comes in the early
morning. There they go."
The rat, tat, tat of the ponies' hoofs announced the departure of the
small group of herdsmen who relieved the more numerous guard. From
another direction came the sound of trotting hoofs. Oriole turned to
look.
"It's the wranglers," went on Lenny, "driving up the horse herd. We-all
got to rope our mounts out o' that bunch. You don't ride yet, Sissy?"
"Oh, but I am going to!" she cried.
"I bet you. Well, there ain't so many quiet ponies in this bunch. Good
cutting-out stock, and wise old critters that can almost herd steers
by themselves. But they ain't gentled much. You'll find a good pony at
headquarters."
"Oh, I hope so!" cried Oriole. "I do want so to ride!"
The camp was becoming very lively now. And the smell of broiling steaks
and boiling coffee, together with the refined air that blew down keenly
from the mountains, sharpened Oriole's appetite to an edge. She went
nearer to the fires and saw the men forking generous steaks out of
the cook's pan, dipping up gravy, adding biscuits to the plate and a
portion of canned corn or tinned baked beans for good measure. The cups
were filled with coffee by one of the helpers, and there was condensed
milk.
"Have it black or tan?" sing-songed the helper pouring the coffee, as
the men lined up.
Delightedly Oriole joined the line, stabbed a beefsteak for herself,
and accepted the other food and a "tan" cup of coffee. But she could
not sit down on one foot as the punchers did to eat. She used the end
of a box for a table, and the cook grinned at her as he spread a clean
hand-towel for a table-cloth.
"Isn't this jolly?" cried Oriole to Harvey Langdon, who had come from
some other part of the camp and joined the breakfast line.
"Like it, do you?" rejoined the ranchman. "Are they treating you right,
Oriole?"
"Oh, yes, sir! It couldn't be nicer! I just know I'm going to enjoy
myself here on the Three-bar, Mr. Langdon," returned the girl, and he
was sure that she meant it.