AN AWAKENING.
It was a terrible shock to the boy, and for a few moments he seemed
dazed as if by a physical blow. He had come into camp weary of body but
light and gay of heart, full of triumph, sure of a half-chaffing word of
commendation from his friend and comrade. But that friend had met a
horrible death. John's heart sank like lead, and for the time the light
went out of the sky for him. There was no joy, no sunshine, no
future--Jerry was dead!
"Where is he?" John asked of the man who brought him the sad news.
"In camp," was the answer.
John was in haste to go to his friend, yet he dreaded it with all his
soul. He forgot his triumph, his pride in his horse, his weariness, in
the one thought that filled his mind--"Jerry is dead!"
"So Jerry, great, strong, experienced Jerry, on his big bay went down,
and I, neither strong nor wise, am safe and well," John soliloquized.
In a minute or two they entered camp, and John's first question was
"Where?"
The cook nodded toward a bed outspread in the shade of a wagon.
Mr. Baker, the ranchman, was there, and as John reached the place he
pulled back the canvas covering. The boy never forgot the sight that met
his view. Jerry it was, certainly, but almost unrecognizable.
John sat down by him, overcome by his first great grief. Death he had
seen many times, horrible deaths some of them, but none had come so
close as this. Cook, perceiving his plight, brought him a cup of
steaming hot coffee, well knowing that it would put heart into him.
"Mr. Baker," said John at length, "he's got to be buried some place
where the coyotes can't get at him."
"But it's sixty miles to the ranch," objected the ranchman.
"That's nothing. Let me have a team and a wagon and I'll get him there."
After some demur, which John finally overcame, Mr. Baker allowed him to
take a big wagon and a four-horse team.
The body was laid in reverently, the horses harnessed and hitched up.
Just as John was about to take up the reins Mr. Baker came forward. "I
guess I'll go with you, Worth," he said. "Round-up's most finished and I
can do more good at home."
He climbed into the seat of the big covered wagon as he spoke; and after
tying Lightning alongside the wheel horse, John took up the lines. The
punchers stood round, hats off, their weather-beaten faces grave and
full of concern. All of them realized that this might have been _their_
fate. Their rough hearts, accustomed as they were to all the chances of
the dangerous life, were full of grief for the loss of their companion,
"who was and is not."
"So long!" they said--a farewell to living and dead.
The whip cracked, the leaders jumped, and in a few minutes the white top
of the wagon sank out of sight behind a rise. The sixty-mile funeral
journey had begun.
For some time employer and employee sat silent side by side. John's
hands were busy with the four fresh horses he was guiding, and his mind
with the real sorrow that filled it. He had never known Mr. Baker well;
that familiar relation, unknown in the East, between employer and
employed was prevented by John's absence on the range, but the boy was
grateful for the kindness Mr. Baker had shown him.
"How long have you known Jerry, Worth?" the ranchman asked at length,
touched by the boy's grief, and his interest aroused.
"Since I've worked for you only," was the answer. "Some people you never
take to and some you know and like right off; Jerry was that kind. He
always stood by me in quarrels, and many's the time he's stood a double
watch 'cause he knew I was tired and he didn't want to wake me up. Yes,
he stood by me through thick and thin."
"He was a good hand, too," interpolated Mr. Baker.
"He'd have divided his last dollar with me," continued John, more to
himself than to his hearer. "I'd have done the same with him."
All this time they were travelling at full speed. The four horses yanked
the heavy wagon along steadily over gullies and ridges, through valleys,
and over hilltops.
A couple of hours passed in this way, during which John slowed the
horses down over the rocky places and urged them forward where it was
smooth.
"What are you going to do with your money, Worth?" said Mr. Baker,
hoping to dispel some of the sadness that hung over the boy. "You've not
spent much this year, have you?"
"'Bout three hundred dollars, I guess. Jerry and I thought of starting
in with a little bunch of cows on our own hook, but----" The glance that
John gave over his shoulder into the wagon finished the sentence.
"Did you ever think of going to school?" asked the ranchman, intent on
his effort to divert the boy's thoughts.
"No, I saw a dude feller one time that had been to school all his
life"--John spoke contemptuously--"and I'd rather punch cows all my days
than be like him."
"Why? He might have been a poor specimen. My son would have been a
lawyer if he had lived, and I would a great deal rather have him one
than a cow-puncher."
John shook his head, unconvinced. A vision came to him of streets walled
in on each side by buildings so that every thoroughfare was a cañon and
every room a prison. The joy of wild freedom, fraught though it was with
danger and hard work, tingled in his veins.
[Illustration: HERDS WERE POURING IN FROM EVERY DIRECTION. (_Page
283._)]
"You know if you stay on the range," continued Mr. Baker, "it's only a
question of time when you'll be stiffened and broken down, or else, what
may be better, you'll be caught as Jerry was. If you keep on punching
cows all your life nothing will be left behind showing that you've been
in the world but a pine plank set in the ground."
For a time John's thoughts were as busy as his hands. A new idea had
been presented to him--his future. What would he do with it? He loved
the wild, free life he was now leading, and up to this time he had never
thought of working for something higher and more lasting. Mr. Baker had
stirred a part of him that had long lain dormant--ambition. His plans
heretofore had seldom carried him further than a few days or weeks, his
sole care was to do his duty and keep his job; but now he had a new
care--his future.
The horses jogged along steadily over the rough country, their driver
getting every bit of speed out of them that would allow them to last the
journey through. Most of the time Lightning went alongside the wheel
horse contentedly. With particular perversity, however, as the team was
passing through a narrow place, where there was barely enough room to
pass, Lightning began a spirited altercation with his side partner. He
shied off from him, pushed him, and bit at him till he in turn
retaliated. For a time John had his hands full, but "Lite," in his
efforts to kick holes in the unoffending side of the wheel horse, got
tangled in the harness, and so stopped the whole business. His master
extricated him with difficulty, and "Lite," instead of getting the
punishment he so richly deserved, was petted instead, whereupon he
became very good indeed and rubbed his nose affectionately against
John's sleeve, as much as to say: "I'm sorry. I'll never do it again."
"It seems to me," said Mr. Baker, after they had got started again,
"that a fellow that could tame such a wicked brute as that horse was a
few months ago could master anything, books or anything else."
"Oh, I've read some books," said John eagerly, "and I thought I knew
something till that dude feller told all about the things he knew. But
that chap couldn't ride a sway-backed cow," and John smiled, sad as he
was, at the thought.
"You struck a poor sample," the ranchman responded. "He saw you could
beat him physically, so he tried to get even with you mentally."
For a time they rode along in silence, the boy busy with his own
thoughts, which Mr. Baker was wise enough not to interrupt.
At length Smith Creek, the half-way mark of their journey, was reached,
and they stopped for water, rest, and food. The horses were unharnessed
and allowed to feed a while. Thirty miles had been covered in less than
five hours--thirty miles of diversified country, hill and plain, rock
and mud. The road was not worthy of the name, it was merely a wheel
track more or less distinct.
John was restless, the short hour of relief allowed the faithful beasts
seemed long to him, and he was more at ease when they were spinning
along the trail again. He had been living on his nerve all the morning
and the strain was beginning to tell.
Soon Mr. Baker began to talk again. He was interested in the young
companion by his side, this boy so filled with determination, so
energetic and forceful and yet so abounding in loyalty and affection, as
his grief over Jerry's death and his fondness for his horse testified;
this boy who read books and yet had such a whole-souled contempt of
affected learning as evidenced by his ill-concealed disdain of the
Eastern "dude." "You've never been East," began the ranchman, "or to
school?"
"No. I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota," was the answer. "It must be
queer," he added after a pause, and a smile lit up his tired face.
"There's lots of women there, they say, and the men get their hair cut
every month; the people have to always dress for dinner, the paper
novels say, and everybody goes to school."
Mr. Baker smiled at this description of the life and manners of the
East, and kept plying the boy with questions, put kindly, until he had
learned pretty much all there was to know about him. It was long since
John had had so much interest shown him, and it warmed his heart; it was
specially grateful at this time, when he felt that he had lost a tried
and true friend. The ranchman advised him to work out the year and save
his money, and at the end of that time doff his cowboy clothes and
manners, array himself in a "boiled shirt," enter some good-sized town,
and go to school and church.
John was rather dubious about this; "muscle work," as he called it, work
requiring a quick eye, a strong will, and the ability to endure, he knew
he could do, but about brain work and book learning he was not so
confident. The idea of wearing a "boiled shirt" made him smile.
"Those stiff-bellied things the dudes wear," said he derisively. "Me
wear one of those things!" and he laughed aloud at the thought.
Nevertheless the serious idea took deep root, and while he did not make
any promises he had a half-formed resolve to follow the old ranchman's
advice.
All this time the horses jogged along more and more wearily, and
requiring more and more urging from the youngster on the driver's seat.
The last ten miles seemed endless; it was all John could do to keep the
team going, and even tireless Lightning running alongside moved
unsteadily with fatigue.
They were glad enough when the ranch buildings appeared dimly in the
fast-deepening gloom. The sixty-mile drive was ended at last. When the
wagon entered the ranch yard John almost fell into the arms of one of
the men who had come to find out the cause of this unusually late
arrival. It was Mr. Baker who told what the wagon contained and the
story of Jerry's death.
John dragged himself to a hastily improvised bed, and, dropping down on
it, was asleep in a twinkling; the first rest for thirty-six long
fatiguing hours.
Late the next day he was awakened to attend Jerry's funeral. It was a
very simple ceremony, but the evident sincerity of the mourners' grief
made it impressive. He was laid away on a grassy knoll where several
other good men and true had been buried by their comrades. A rude rail
fence enclosed the spot--the long resting place of men who had died in
the performance of their duty.
For a time things went sadly at the ranch, for John (he did not rejoin
the round-up) missed his cow-puncher friend, his good-natured grumbling,
his ever-ready helping hand. But gradually the boy's faculty of making
firm, loyal friends helped to fill the gap that Jerry's death had made,
though no one could ever take his place.
Mr. Baker's talk about school and a future took deep root, and as the
boy turned the idea over in his mind it developed into a resolve to try
it anyway.
Life had a new meaning now for John, and he found it absorbingly
interesting. The work he had to do was a means to an end, and the
commonplace, every-day drudgery became simply a cog in the machinery,
and therefore not only bearable but interesting.
The boy's success as a breaker of horses kept him much of the time at
that work. Since he had broken Lightning all other horses seemed tame to
him in comparison. It was part of his work not only to break the horses
to the saddle but to care for them generally, brand the colts, and train
them for cow-pony work, as well as to guard them by day and night. On
these long day rides over the rolling prairie and bleak, fantastically
shaped and colored "bad lands" he would take a piece of a book in his
pocket, and when an opportunity occurred read it. He read many books
this way, tearing out and taking a few pages in his pocket each day. Mr.
Baker was fond of reading, and understood the value of education; he had
some books, and the less valuable ones he gave to his protégé; these and
the few John had been able to pick up from outfits he met and during the
infrequent visits to a town formed his text books.
As he thought and read and studied he became more and more convinced
that cowboy life was not for him: to know more about the things he had
read a few scraps about, to gain a place in the world, to learn
something and achieve something was now his firm resolve.
The summer, fall, and early winter went by quickly for the boy. Each
season had its own peculiar duties and dangers--the round-up and
branding, the driving of the steers to the railroad for the Eastern
market (a serious undertaking, involving as it might the loss of
valuable cattle through injury and drowning when fording streams), the
cutting of hay for the weaker cattle and horses, and occasional hunting
trips for fresh meat. And so the year wore round.
On New Year's day John's time was up--the time which he had set to start
out to seek his fortune. He had saved more than a year's earnings, so
the small capitalist saddled Lightning, bade his friends good-by, and
set forth, not without some misgivings, on a new quest: to get
knowledge, see the world, and, if it might be, grasp his share of its
honors.