THE INVISIBLE MENACE
At the close of the second day the big trail herd halted at the edge of
the vast level over which it had come. The herd had been driven forty
miles. Cattle, men, and horses had passed through a country which was
familiar to them; a country featured by long grama grass, greasewood,
and cactus plants.
There was no timber on the plains. The gray of the grama grass and the
bare stretches of alkali shone white in the glare of a sun that swam in
a cloudless sky of deepest azure. Except for the men, the cattle, the
horses, and the two slow-moving, awkward-looking canvas-covered wagons,
there had been no evidence of life on the great plain. In a silence
unbroken save by the clashing of horns, the bleating and bawling of the
cattle, the ceaseless creaking of the wagons, and the low voices of the
men, the cavalcade moved eastward.
The wind that swept over the plains was chill. It carried a tang that
penetrated; that caused the men, especially in the early morning, to
turn up the collars of their woolen shirts as they rode; a chill that
brought a profane protest from the tawny-haired giant who had disclosed
to Lawler the whereabouts of Joe Hamlin that night in the Circle L
bunkhouse.
The first camp had been made on the Wolf--at a shallow about five miles
north of the Two Bar, Hamlin's ranch. And with the clear, sparkling,
icy water of the river on his face, and glistening beads of it on his
colorless eyelashes, the giant had growled to several of his brother
cowboys, who were likewise performing their ablutions at the river:
"This damn wind is worse'n a Kansas regular. You lean ag'in' it an' it
freezes you; you turn your back to it an' you've got to go to clawin'
icicles out of your back. Why in hell can't they have a wind that's got
some sense to it?"
"It ain't c-cold, Shorty," jibed a slender puncher with a saturnine eye
and a large, mobile mouth.
"Kells," grinned the giant; "your voice is froze, right now!"
And yet the men enjoyed the cold air. It had a tonic effect upon them;
they were energetic, eager, and always ravenously hungry. The cook
offered testimony on that subject, unsolicited.
"I never seen a bunch of mavericks that gobbled more grub than this here
outfit!" he stated on the second morning. "Or that swilled more coffee,"
he added. "Seems like all they come on this drive for is to eat!"
Toward the close of the second day corrugations began to appear in the
level. Little ridges and valleys broke the monotony of travel; rocks
began to dot the earth; the gray grass disappeared, the barren stretches
grew larger and more frequent, and the yucca and the lancelike octilla
began to appear here and there. The trend of the trail had been upward
all afternoon--gradual at first, hardly noticeable. But as the day drew
to a close the cattle mounted a slope, progressing more slowly, and the
horses hitched to the wagons began to strain in the harness.
The rise seemed to be endless--to have no visible terminus. For it went
up and up until it melted into the horizon; like the brow of a hill
against the sky. But when, after hours of difficult travel, herd and men
gained the summit, a broad, green-brown mesa lay before them.
The mesa was miles wide, and ran an interminable distance eastward.
Looking back over the way they had come, the men could see that the
level over which they had ridden for the past two days was in reality
the floor of a mighty valley. Far away into the west they could see a
break in the mesa--where it sloped down to merge into the plains near
Willets. The men knew that beyond that break ran the steel rails that
connected the town with Red Rock, their destination. But it was plain to
them that the rails must make a gigantic curve somewhere in the
invisible distance, or that they ran straight into a range of low
mountains that fringed the northern edge of the mesa.
Lawler enlightened the men at the camp fire that night.
"The railroad runs almost straight from Willets," he said. "There's a
tunnel through one of the mountains, and other tunnels east of it. And
there's a mountain gorge with plenty of water in it, where the railroad
runs on a shelving level blasted out of the wall. The mountains form a
barrier that keeps Willets and the Wolf River section blocked in that
direction. It's the same south of here, the only difference being that
in the south there is no railroad until you strike the Southern Pacific.
And that's a long distance to drive cattle."
When the herd began to move the following morning, Blackburn sent them
over the mesa for several miles, and then began to head them down a
gradual slope, leaving the mesa behind. There was a faint trail, narrow,
over which in other days cattle had been driven. For the grass had been
trampled and cut to pieces; and in some places there were still prints
of hoofs in the baked soil.
The slope grew sharper, narrowing as it descended, and the cattle moved
down it in a sinuous, living line, until the leaders were out of sight
far around a bend at least a mile distant.
Blackburn was at the head of the herd with three men, riding some little
distance in front of the cattle, inspecting the trail. Lawler and the
others were holding the stragglers at the top of the mesa, endeavoring
to prevent the crowding and confusion which always results when massed
cattle are being held at an outlet. It was like a crowd of eager humans
attempting to gain entrance through a doorway at the same instant. The
cattle were plunging, jostling. The concerted impulse brought the
inevitable confusion--a jam that threatened frenzy.
By Lawler's orders the men drew off, and the cattle, relieved of the
menace which always drives them to panic in such a situation, began to
filter through and to follow their leaders down the narrow trail.
Down, always down, the trail led, growing narrower gradually, until at
last cattle and men were moving slowly on a rocky floor with the sheer
wall of the mesa on one side and towering mountains on the other.
The clatter of hoofs, the clashing of horns, the bellowing, the rumble
of the wagons over the rocks and the ring of iron-shod hoofs, created a
bedlam of sound, which echoed and re-echoed from the towering walls
until the uproar was deafening.
Shorty, the tawny-haired giant, was riding close to Lawler.
He never had ridden the trail, though he had heard of it. He leaned over
and shouted to Lawler:
"Kinney's cañon, ain't it?"
Lawler nodded.
"Well," shouted Shorty; "it's a lulu, ain't it?"
For a short time the trail led downward. Then there came a level
stretch, smooth, damp. The day was hours old, and the sun was directly
overhead. But down in the depths of the cañon it was cool; and a strong
wind blew into the faces of the men.
The herd was perhaps an hour passing through the cañon; and when Lawler
and Shorty, riding side by side, emerged from the cool gloom, they saw
the cattle descending a shallow gorge, going toward a wide slope which
dipped into a basin of mammoth size.
Lawler knew the place; he had ridden this trail many times in the years
before the coming of the railroad; and when he reached the crest of the
slope and looked out into the hazy, slumbering distance, he was not
surprised, though his eyes quickened with appreciation for its beauty.
Thirty miles of virgin land lay before him, basking in the white
sunlight--a green-brown bowl through which flowed a river that shimmered
like silver. The dark bases of mountains loomed above the basin at the
eastern edge--a serrated range with lofty peaks that glowed white in the
blue of the sky. South and north were other mountains--somber, purple
giants with pine-clad slopes and gleaming peaks--majestic, immutable.
Looking down from where he sat on Red King, Lawler could see the head of
the herd far down the ever-broadening trail. The leaders were so far
away that they seemed to be mere dots--black dots moving in an emerald
lake.
The cattle, too, had glimpsed the alluring green that spread before
them; and at a little distance from Lawler and several of the other men
they were running, eager for the descent.
"She's a whopper, ain't she?" said Shorty's voice at Lawler's side.
"I've seen a heap of this man's country, but never nothin' like that. I
reckon if the Lord had spread her out a little mite further she'd have
took in mighty near the whole earth. It's mighty plain he wasn't
skimpin' things none, anyway, when he made this here little hollow."
He grinned as he rode, and then waved a sarcastic hand toward the
cattle.
"Look at 'em runnin'! You'd think, havin' projected around this here
country for a year or so, they'd be better judges. They're thinkin'
they'll be buryin' their mugs in that right pretty grass in about
fifteen seconds, judgin' from the way they're hittin' the breeze toward
it. An' it'll take them half a day to get down there."
Shorty was a better judge of distance than the cattle. For it was
afternoon when the last of the herd reached the level floor of the
basin. They spread out, to graze industriously; the men not caring,
knowing they would not stray far from such a wealth of grass.
By the time the chuck-wagon had come to a halt and the cook had
clambered stiffly from his seat to prepare the noonday meal, Lawler and
the others saw the horse-wrangler and his assistant descending the long
slope with the _remuda_. The horses had fallen far behind, and Lawler
rode to meet them, curious to know what had happened.
When he rode up, the horse-wrangler, a man named Garvin--a stocky
individual with keen, inquiring eyes--advanced to meet him.
"Boss," he said, shortly; "there's somethin' mighty wrong goin' on
behind us. Me an' Ed--my helper--has been kind of hangin' back, bein'
sort of curious. They's a bunch of ornery-lookin' guys trailin' us. I
first saw 'em after we'd struck the bottom of that cañon. They was just
comin' around that big bend, an' I saw 'em. They lit out, turnin'
tail--mebbe figurin' I hadn't seen 'em; but pretty soon I seen 'em
again, sort of sneakin' behind us. I reckon if they was square guys they
wouldn't be sneakin' like that--eh?"