THE SIX HUNDRED
It is an unwritten law of the Hills that all cattle bought by the pound
are to be weighed out of their beds, that is, in the early morning
before they have begun to graze. This is the hour set by immemorial
custom.
We were in the saddle while the sun was yet abed. The cattle were on two
great boundaries of a thousand acres, sleeping in the deep blue grass on
the flat hill-tops. Jud and two of Marsh's drivers took one line of the
ridges, and Marsh and I took the other.
The night was lifting when we came out on the line of level hill-tops,
and through the haze the sleeping cattle were a flock of squatting
shadows. As we rode in among them the dozing bullocks arose awkwardly
from their warm beds and stretched their great backs, not very well
pleased to have their morning rest broken.
We rode about, bringing them into a bunch, arousing some morose old
fellow who slept by himself in a corner of the hill, or a dozen
aristocrats who held a bedchamber in some windless cove, or a straying
Ishmaelite hidden in a broom-sedge hollow,--all displeased with the
interruption of their forty winks before the sunrise. Was it not enough
to begin one's day with the light and close it with the light? What did
man mean by his everlasting inroads on the wholesome ways of nature? The
Great Mother knew what she was about. All the people of the fields could
get up in the morning without this cursed row. Whoever was one of them
snoozing in his trundle-bed after the sun had flashed him a good
morning?
The home-life of the steer would be healthy reading in any family. He
never worries, and his temper has no shoal. Either he is contented and
goes about his business, or he is angry and he fights. He is clean, and
as regular in his habits as a lieutenant of infantry. To bed on the
highlands when the dark comes, and out of it with the sun. A drink of
water from the brook, and about to breakfast.
We gathered the cattle into a drove, and started them in a broken line
across the hills toward the road, the huge black muleys strolling along,
every fellow at his leisure. The sun peeping through his gateway in the
east gilded the tops of the brown sedge and turned the grass into a sea
of gold. Through this Eldorado the line of black cattle waded in deep
grasses to the knee,--curly-coated beasts from some kingdom of the
midnight in mighty contrast to this golden country. I might have been
the Merchant's Son transported by some wicked fairy to a land of
wonders, watching, with terror in his throat, the rebellious jins under
some enchantment of King Solomon travelling eastward to the sun.
Now a hungry fellow paused to gather a bunch of the good-tasting grass
and was butted out of the path, and now some curly-shouldered
belligerent roared his defiant bellow and it went rumbling through the
hills. We drove the cattle through the open gate of the pasture and down
a long lane to the scales.
Nicholas Marsh seemed another man, and I felt the first touch of triumph
come with the crisp morning. Woodford was losing. We had the cattle and
there remained only to drive them in. It is a wonderful thing how the
frost glistening on a rail, or a redbird chirping in a thicket of purple
raspberry briers, can lift the heart into the sun. Marks and his crew
were creatures of a nightmare, gone in the daylight, hung up in the dark
hollow of some oak tree with the bat.
Marsh and the drivers went ahead of the cattle to the scales, and I
followed the drove, stopping to close the gate and fasten it with its
wooden pin to the old chestnut gate-post. High up on this gate-post was
a worn hole about as big as a walnut, door to the mansion of some
speckled woodpecker. As I whistled merrily under his sill, the master of
this house stepped up to his threshold and leered down at me.
He looked old and immoral, with a mosaic past, the sort of woodpecker
who, if born into a higher estate, would have guzzled rum and gambled
with sailors. His head was bare in spots, his neck frowsy, and his
eyelids scaly. "Young sir," this debauched old Worldly Wiseman seemed to
say, "you think you're a devil of a fellow merely because it happens to
be morning. Gad sooks! You must be very young. When you get a trifle
further on with the mischief of living, you will realise that a
bucketful of sunlight doesn't run the devil out of business. Damme,
sirrah! Please to clear out with your accursed whistling."
I left him to cool his head in the morning breezes.
Nicholas Marsh was waiting for me at the scales when I arrived. He
wished me to see that they were balanced properly. He adjusted the beam,
adding a handful of shot or a nail or an iron washer to the weights.
Then we put on the fifty-pound test, and then a horse. When we were
satisfied that the scales were in working order, we weighed the cattle
four at a time. I took down the weights as Marsh called them, and when
we had finished, the drove was turned into the road toward the river.
Marsh grasped my hand when I turned to leave him. "Quiller," he said,
"it's hard to guard against a liar, but I do not believe there was ever
a time when I would have refused you these cattle. Your brother has done
me more than one conspicuous kindness. I would trust him for the cattle
if he did not own an acre."
"Mr. Marsh," I said, "what lie did Woodford tell you?"
"I was told," he replied, "that Mr. Ward had transferred all of his
land, and as these cattle would lose a great deal of money, he did not
intend to pay this loss. I was shown a copy of the court record, or what
purported to be one, to prove that statement. I do not think that I ever
quite believed, but the proof seemed good, and I saw no reason for the
lie."
He stopped a moment and swept the iron-grey locks back from his face.
"Now," he continued, "I know the reason for that lie. And I know the
paper shown me was spurious. It was high-handed rascality, but I cannot
connect it with Woodford. It may have emanated from him, but I do not
know that. The man who told me disclaimed any relation with him."
"Twiggs!" I said.
"No," he answered, "it was not Twiggs. The man was a heifer buyer from
the north country. I would scarcely know him again."
"Not Twiggs!" I cried, "he was here last night."
"I know it," Marsh answered calmly. "He brought me this letter from Miss
Cynthia. Will you carry it back to her, and say that your brother's word
is good enough for Nicholas Marsh?"
He put his hand into his coat and handed me Cynthia's letter; and I
stuffed it into my pockets without stopping to think. I tried to thank
him for this splendid fidelity to Ward, but somehow I choked with the
words pushing each other in my throat. He saw it, wished me a safe
drive, and rode away to his house.
He was a type which the Hills will do ill to forget in the rearing of
their sons, a man whose life was clean, and therefore a man difficult to
wrong. I should have been sorry to stand before Nicholas Marsh with a
lie in my mouth. He is gone now to the Country of the Silences. He was a
just man, and to such, even the gods are accustomed to yield the wall.
I followed slowly after the drove, the broad dimensions of Woodford's
plan at last clear in my youthful mind. He had put Ward in his bed, and
out of the way. Then he had sent a stranger to these men with a
dangerous lie corroborated by a bit of manufactured evidence,--a lie
calculated to put any cattleman on his guard, and one that could not be
tracked back to its sources.
Then, to make it sure, Twiggs had come riding like the devil's imps with
some new warning from Cynthia. How could such planning fail? And failed
it had not but for the honour of this gentleman, or perhaps some design
of the Unknowable behind the machinery of the world.
Generation of intriguers! Here are the two factors that wreck you. The
high captains of France overlooked the one in the prosecution of an
obscure subordinate. And Absalom, the first great master of practical
politics, somehow overlooked the other.
In my pocket was the evidence of Cynthia's perfidy, with the envelope
opened, travelling home, as lies are said to. Ward might doubt the
attitude of this woman when she smoothed matters with that dimpled mouth
of hers, or crushed me out with her steel-grey eyes; but he would
believe what she had written when he saw it. Then a doubt began to arise
like the first vapour from the copper pot of the Arabian fisherman.
Could I show it to Ward? Marsh had sent it to Cynthia. Could I even look
at it? I postponed the contest with that genie.
Suicide is not a more deliberate business than cattle driving. A bullock
must never be hurried, not even in the early morning. He must be kept
strolling along no faster than he pleases. If he is hurried, one will
presently have him panting with his tongue out, or down in a fence
corner with the fat melted around his heart. Yet if he is allowed his
natural gait, he will walk a horse to death.
Remember, he carries fifteen hundred pounds, and there are casks of
tallow under his black hide. Besides that, he is an aristocrat
accustomed to his ease. In large droves it is advisable to keep the herd
in as long and narrow a line as possible, and to facilitate the driving,
a few bullocks are usually separated from the others and kept moving in
the van as a sort of pace-setter.
It is surprising how readily the drove falls into the spirit of this
strolling march, some battle-scarred old bull leading, and the others
following him in the dust.
It is said that neither fools, women, nor children can drive cattle. The
explanation of this adage is not here assumed, nor its community of
relation. I know the handling of these great droves is considered
business for an expert. The cattle owner would no sooner trust a herd to
men picked up by the roadway than the trainmaster would trust the
limited express to a stranger in the railroad station.
If the cattle are hot they must be rested, in water if possible; if
there is no water, then under some shade. Throw down the fence and turn
them into the stranger's field. If the stranger is a person of good
sense, he will be glad to assist your necessity. If not, he must yield
to it.
These are laws of the Hills, always remembered as the lawyer remembers
the "statute of frauds." It is impossible to go too slow. Watch the
mouth of the bullock. He is in no danger until his tongue lolls out at
the corner like a dog's. Then rest him. Let no man go through your
drove. He must stop until it passes him. If he refuses, he must be
persuaded. If one bullock runs back, let him alone; he will follow. But
if two, turn them at once with a swift dash of the cattle-horse. Never
run a steer. If the cattle are frightened, sing to them, and ride
through the drove. Old-fashioned, swinging, Methodist hymns are best.
Make it loud. The cattle are not particular about the tune.
I have heard the profane Ump singing Old Hundred and riding the Bay
Eagle up and down in a bunch of frightened cattle, and it was a piece of
comedy for the gods. I have heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom,
bellowing the doxology to a great audience of Polled-Angus muleys on the
verge of a stampede. And I have sung myself, many a time, like a circuit
rider with a crowded mourner's bench.
One thing more: know every bullock in your drove. Get his identity in
your mind as you get the features of an acquaintance, so that you would
recognise him instantly if you met him coming up at the end of the
earth. A driver in the Hills would not be worth his salt who did not
know every head of his cattle. Suppose his herd breaks into a field
where there are others of the same breed, or he collides with another
drove, or there is a tremendous mix at a tavern. The facility with which
a cattle man learns to recognise every steer in a drove of hundreds is
an eighth wonder of the world to a stranger. Anyone of us could ride
through a drove of cattle, and when he reached the end know every steer
that followed him in the road, and I have seen a line reaching for
miles.
Easy with your eyebrows, my masters. When men are trained to a craft
from the time they are able to cling to a saddle, they are very apt to
exhibit a skill passing for witchcraft with the uninitiated. I have met
many a grazier, and I have known but one who was unable to recognise the
individual bullock in his drove, and his name was a byword in the Hills.
Jud and the Cardinal followed the drove, and I rode slowly through the
cattle, partly to keep the long line thin, but chiefly to learn the
identity of each steer. I looked for no mark, nor any especial feature
of the bullock, but caught his identity in the total as the head waiter
catches the identity of a hat. I looked down at each bullock for an
instant, and then turned to the next one. In that instant I had the cast
of his individuality forever. The magicians of Pharaoh could not
afterwards mislead me about that bullock. This was not esoteric skill.
Any man in the Hills could do it. Indeed it was a necessity. There was
not a branded bullock in all this cattle land. What need for the
barbaric custom when every man knew his cattle as he knew his children?
Later on, when little men came, at mid-life, to herding on the plains,
they were compelled to burn a mark on their cattle. But we who had bred
the beef steer for three-quarters of a century did no such child's play.
How the crowd at Roy's tavern would have roared at such baby business. I
have seen at this tavern a great mix of a dozen herds, that looked as
like as a potful of peas, separated by an idle loafer sitting on a
fence, calling out, "That one's Woodford's, an' that one's Alkire's an'
that one's Maxwell's, an' the Polled-Angus muley belongs to Flave
Davisson, an' the old-fashioned one is Westfield's. He must have got him
in Roane or Nicholas. An' the Durham's Queen's, an' the big Holstein
belongs to Mr. Ward, an' the red-faced Hereford is out of a Greenbrier
cow an' goes with the Carper's."
By the time I had gotten through the drove we had reached the
crossroads, and I found Ump waiting with the two hundred cattle of
Westfall. The Bay Eagle was watching the steers, and Ump was sitting
sidewise in his saddle with his hands around his knees.
I hailed him. "Did you have a hard job?"
"Easy as rollin' off a log," he answered. "I thought King David would
throw his coat, but he was smooth-mouthed an' cross-legged as a
peddler."
"Did Twiggs get in?" I asked.
"Beat me by a neck," answered the hunchback. "But I passed him comin'
out an' I lit in to him."
"Fist and skull?" said I.
"Jaw," said he. "I damned every Carper into fiddlestrings from old Adam
to old Columbus."
"What did he say?"
"He said we was the purtiest bunch of idiots in the kingdom of
cowtails."