“TWEN-TY—SEV-EN—HUN-DRED—CAT-TLE!”
Sheriff Daniels clung resolutely to the trail of that broken-shoed
pony. He discovered, finally, who the man was that had ridden it
away from the ranch where it was stolen. The thief was traced into
old Mexico, then into a little place in Arizona, brought back from
there, tried and convicted of that and of the killing. Every one
supposed that it was he who had been at the Three Sorrows that day.
His trial brought out the fact that the Romero brothers were the
others in the affair. They disappeared from Lame Jones County and
stayed away.
The matter was cleared up now; Pearse Masters could have come back
openly now, if he’d wanted to. But he didn’t—he didn’t even write. A
whole year rolled round, and Hilda had heard nothing from him or of
her Sunday pony. Yet in the cattle country, where the distances were
so great, people sometimes borrowed a horse and kept it for more
than a year, waiting for the time when it would be convenient to
return it by some friend traveling in the necessary direction.
Of course, feeling as he did about Uncle Hank, Pearse himself would
never ride up to the Three Sorrows leading Sunday. Yet, in her own
mind, Hilda never gave up the hope that some time she would find a
way to bring the two together and make them friends. Nobody, she
felt sure, could really know Uncle Hank and not love and trust him.
As time went on, and there was no Pearse and no word from him, and
here was Uncle Hank, more than ever part of everything good and
comfortable, Hilda slipped into a position of even greater
confidence with him. It was as though she tried to make up to him
for having liked—for still so very much liking—a person who thought
badly of him. Those long talks on the door-stone in the evening
would have surprised some people. Hank laid all his plans and ideas
before the slim girl as he never would have thought of doing before
her father. Hilda was going to be a ranchwoman. The Sorrows would
belong to her and to her brother. She loved it all; she had the
feeling for it; and the old man believed that a sense of
responsibility could only come with a knowledge of what the
responsibilities were.
So, in March of the year when Hilda was fourteen, she knew as well
as Hank did what the financial situation was on the ranch, and why
it had come to a point where her guardian was almost at his wit’s
end to go on. He had saved everywhere he could, doing with less help
than he needed always, getting more out of his men by good
treatment, making up the lack by extra work of his own, buying
supplies with careful judgment, hesitating over every expense except
those that Miss Valeria demanded—no use hesitating with Aunt Val;
she always got what she wanted in the end. But the Sorrows had never
been able to run enough cows, as the cattle country phrased it. Hank
had helped out wherever he could by taking other men’s stock to
pasture, “on the shares,” or “for the third calf.” He had paid off
the smaller mortgage and kept up the interest on the larger one.
He stood one afternoon near the side door of the ranch house, gazing
out across the fields of the Sorrows, green as an emerald and sweet
with the evening song of meadow larks. Hilda came up to him, slipped
her hand into his and looked up into his face as though she had
said, “What is it, Uncle Hank?”
“Pasture for ten thousand cattle,” he sighed, “and I reckon we’re
a-doing well if we can count up twenty-eight hundred in all. Well,
honey, we’ll make out somehow—we always have made out so far—but I
wish the Lord would show me how.”
A big, six-mule freight wagon was just pulling up at the lower gate.
They watched with interest while Slew-foot Crosby, the freighter,
climbed down from the driver’s seat and started toward the house.
When Slew caught sight of the two he raised a letter in his hand and
shook it high above his head.
“Howdy, Hilda. Hey, Pearsall; I brought this out from Dawn for you!”
he shouted.
“Hmm,” said Hank, “who’d be writing to me? Miss Valeria’s home, and
Burch.”
Drawing up, Crosby handed him the envelope and waited to share any
interest that might be in its contents.
Pearsall turned the letter over curiously a time or two.
“Looks like I ought to know that there handwriting,” he meditated,
scratching one ear reflectively. “Now, who in time is it makes them
kind of tails to the—? Hm-mm. El Capitan,” he squinted at the
postmark. “Huh—El Capitan. Well, I don’t know as—”
“Why don’t you open it?” suggested Hilda, and Crosby winked at her
and added:
“Yes, rip ’er up and have a look at the inside.”
Without further ado, Hank inserted his thumb and “ripped her up.”
Carefully he drew forth and unfolded a soiled, dog-eared sheet of
paper and stood studying it for some moments in silence, Hilda
watching, Slew shifting from one foot to the other. Gradually the
manager’s face changed, losing its anxious lines, taking on a
half-surprised, half-incredulous expression. He looked out again
over the green levels.
“Lord! Lord!” he whispered. “Why, this almost scares me.”
“What, Uncle Hank? What?” demanded Hilda, and the patient Crosby
thanked her with a glance.
“All right, Pettie. Ye see, Slew, this here’s from my old pardner,
Tracey Jacox, that I used to run cattle with down yonder on the
Pecos. He—Trace, he’s had some difficulty there at Capitan. He’s
wrote for me to come and get his bunch of cattle and keep ’em—that
is, till he—”
“Till he gets out,” supplied Crosby, with prompt intelligence.
“Well, yes—till he gets out,” assented the other mildly.
Crosby’s eyes followed Pearsall’s across the tremendous sweep of
green pastures. He knew well what was in the manager’s mind.
“Comes in mighty good. I brought you something worth while this
time, didn’t I? Well, so long! I got to pull my freight.”
He walked away down the long line of box elders to his patient
mules. Left behind, the old man stood murmuring over and over:
“Twen-ty—sev-en—hun-dred—cat-tle! Twen-ty—sev-en—hun-dred! Why,
Pettie, it looks like a hand stretched right down to a drowning man.
For, as sure as my name’s Pearsall, I didn’t know whichaway to turn
this spring.”
“And we’re to keep the cattle how long, Uncle Hank?”
The old man took out the penciled scrawl, and she read with him:
El Capitan, Sandoval Co., Texas,
March 28, 18—.
Mr. dere Hank Pearsall,
Ime in a little trubble and I write to know if you are
thare at the Sorers if so would like to have you come
imedietly and git my bunch of catel. Ime in a little
trubble. he was a poplar man and the jury was pretty
strong for hanging but my lawyer was a good one and I
will be glad if you can come imedietly. Thare is 2700 of
the catel most all grade Herefords and you can keep them
on the Sorers thare till I get out that will be four
years and I know Hank you will do right by me. my lawyer
is pade and I want to see the catel in your Hands before
I go and I will be glad to see you imedietly the sooner
the better.
Your old pardner,
Tracey Jacox.
“Reckless feller!” muttered Hank, and shook his head. “I always told
him he’d shoot up the wrong man some time.”
He put the letter carefully back into his pocket, and they went to
the house together.
That evening it was known at headquarters, and by the next morning
it had flown all over the Sorrows that the boss was going to take an
outfit down the trail to Sandoval County and bring home the herd.
“We’ll have to have, at the very least, twelve riders and a horse
wrangler,” he said. “I’ll be cook and foreman both—that’s fourteen
men in all. Four of us ll go from here, and I’ll hire ten men in
Sandoval. It’ll take a hundred and twenty-five horses to handle that
trail herd—and _I’ve got ’em_! Ain’t I glad now I kept all the
ponies! It sure took nerve to do it. I’ll not have to buy a
horse—not one. I feel like patting myself on the head for my
smartness. Pettie, I’ll give you that job of patting. You might
start on it right away.”
“How long will you be gone, Uncle Hank?” Hilda asked, in a voice
whose utterance seemed somehow to displace very little ordinary
atmosphere.
“Well, it won’t take more’n four or five days to get there—flying
light. Then there’s the counting, road-branding, signing up
contracts, hiring the new hands and getting supplies—I reckon it’ll
take nearly two weeks to make the trip home with the herd. Say, jest
about three weeks in all, Pettie.”
“Oh—three weeks!” whispered Hilda, and he looked at her curiously,
but said nothing more.
Such an outburst of vitality the ranch had not known for years.
There was an inspiring rush of preparation, a great looking to
stirrup leathers, re-cinching of saddles, mending and overhauling of
equipment, and almost more skylarking and horse-play. Out at the
corrals, Shorty and two other boys who were to make the trip, stole
up behind one another and knocked each other sprawling by way of a
delicate intimation that the situation was humorous. They scuffled
and rolled over and over like bear cubs, hammering one another
joyously. All day, while working furiously, they turned again and
again from their occupation to fight at the trembling of an eyelash.
Shorty came wheezing out of one of these encounters with a black eye
and bleeding knuckles, the shirt on his back torn to strips. But his
only complaint was:
“Darn you, Buster—this is the best shirt I got,” with the husky
threat, added, “I’ll wear you to a frazzle—when I get my breath.”
Burch and Miss Valeria were the only ones who seemed to be out of it
all. The little lady looked up mildly once or twice at the extra
amount of noise and bustle going on about her, then relaxed into her
book or the endless piece of Battenburg which never seemed to get
itself finished under her slim, aristocratic white hands. Burch was
a silent boy, who cared enough about his books to have made a very
good student and whose deportment would always have been rated
one hundred if he hadn’t had such a queer way of taking an idea
into his head, saying nothing about it, and putting it into
execution—whatever it was—without any one’s permission.
There was the time when the school clock got out of order, and Burch
took it out of its case to oil it. Miss Belle caught him with it
just when he dipped it in a bath of kerosene. He wouldn’t say he was
sorry. It went on all morning till the young teacher said she was
going to whip him—and expel him from school. Even that didn’t move
Burch to say anything but:
“I wish you’d let me oil the clock now and put it back in the case
and put the hands on. It’ll run all right now.”
But Miss Belle wouldn’t even do that, and Hilda, crazy with anxiety,
had ridden after Uncle Hank, begging him to come quick and not to
let Aunt Val know. She’d been locked out of the school room. She
thought Miss Belle was in there whipping Burchie. Miss Belle
wouldn’t listen to her when she told her he was always learning
about machinery; and maybe he really could fix the clock.
She and Uncle Hank had come into the school room to find a boy that
had been whipped, a clock that was ticking away in good order—and a
teacher who was hysterical.
“He ought to have told me that the watchmaker there in Fort Worth
had showed him what to do—let him help him at such things,” she
said.
Uncle Hank agreed to that, but when they were climbing on their
ponies to leave, Burch said:
“Aw—people talk too much. Anyhow, she didn’t ask me if any one had
taught me how to fix a clock. I told her I could do it. After she
whipped me, she cried and let me show her. She doesn’t hit very
hard. It didn’t hurt very much.”
“And you see, Burch,” Uncle Hank put in, “you shouldn’t never have
touched the clock without permission. Long as you done that, I’m
glad to see you are willing to take a licking for it.”
This was Hilda’s brother, very dear to her, yet caring for almost
none of the things she cared for. He wasn’t interested in
ponies—because they were live creatures, not machines.
“But you’re going to live on a ranch when you grow up,” Hilda
argued.
“No, I’m not. I think I’ll be an engineer of some kind. I’d like
building bridges. You can stay here and be the ranchman.”
And so it was only Hilda who, drifting about the house or garden,
lingering at the corral, like a little woebegone shadow, took no
part in the joy. She followed Hank as though she could not let him
from her sight, hastening to bring what he needed before he asked
for it, stooping to pick up a thing he dropped, anticipating his
wish with a low-spoken word. He was used to having Hilda hang about
him—but not this Hilda. Also she was getting to be of a size and age
when she very commonly had some more or less important concerns of
her own which took her apologetically from him at intervals. Now,
whatever he was doing, he knew she was there; he was aware of just
the look he would meet in those dark eyes if he glanced up. If the
old man wheeled suddenly and faced it, this haunter of his trail
would turn aside hastily and at once be occupied with other
business. But Hank knew that he was watched.
The start was to be made in the morning. After supper Hilda sat down
on the side-door stone, where so many of her interviews with Uncle
Hank took place, waiting for him and trying hard not to weep. He
came out noisily, man-fashion, calling back some last remark over
his shoulder to Shorty O’Meara, and dropping suddenly beside her
with a great sigh, mingled of weariness, relief, content.
“Well, it was short notice, but we’re sure ready, and we’re ready
good. Pettie,”—he spoke aloud and cheerfully—“I don’t know as I ever
in my life looked forward to anything with more pleasure than I do
to going down to El Capitan and bringing back them cows.”
Slowly it was borne in upon him that he was getting no response. In
the silence came a choking sound. There was no need of words. He sat
awhile, mute. It’d occur to him that he might say, “_You_ don’t want
to go—a little lady like you—on a long, hard, lonesome, messy trip
with nobody but a lot of rough boys that can’t talk a lick of
grammar.” But the uselessness of it, as well as the hollow
insincerity, held him silent. The old man acted a mother’s part by
his orphans, but he possessed none of the age-honored mothers’
tricks. Now he got up suddenly and went into the house, where Miss
Valeria sat reading, and blurted out to that lady:
“I reckon I’m the most forsaken old fool that ever trod
shoe-leather. But I can’t stand it any longer. Pettie’ll have to go
with me down the trail.”
Following close behind, as she had been following all day, Hilda
heard those last words. She dared not explode into a joyous whoop,
for her aunt’s bewildered face promised resistance. Miss Van Brunt
took off her delicate, gold-rimmed glasses nervously and rubbed her
eyes, as though, perhaps, looked at without their medium, Hank might
change his mind.
“I—why, really, Mr. Pearsall,” she began, with her small bustle of
feminine authority, “you are very kind to think of bothering
yourself with the child. If it were Burch, now—but I’m afraid it’s
rather a long trip for a little girl—and—”
“Aw, let her go,” mumbled Burch, looking up from the table, where he
was busy over a book and some diagrams. “I don’t want to. It suits
her. She likes it.”
“—and certainly not a proper sort of a trip—for a little girl.”
“Burch!” Hilda exploded. “Why, Burch can’t ride.” Her aunt looked
bewildered. “Oh, I know—he can sit up on a horse. But he wouldn’t be
of the least bit of use to a trail outfit, would he, Uncle Hank? And
I can help you lots—can’t I?”
“I didn’t understand from Mr. Pearsall that you were to help with
the work,” Miss Valeria said severely. “I think the work must be a
great deal more unsuitable for you than the trip itself.”
“Oh, please, Aunt Valeria—dear Aunt Valeria!” entreated Hilda,
surging up to her aunt’s knee. “I’ll be so good. When we come back
I’ll study anything you want me to, and not read so many stories.”
“Well, your music—but then we’ve no piano,” Miss Val sighed. “And I
believe you said, Mr. Pearsall—”
She broke off, looking up with a slightly aggrieved expression at
the tall ranch manager. She had announced to him that Hilda must
have a piano, and for once Hank had been resolute in refusing to
sell some ponies and purchase the instrument.
“We’ll get a piano all right, now, Miss Valeria,” he assured her.
“Them horses, that I had the nerve to hang on to, gives us plenty
for the drive. You see, it would take a hundred and twenty-five
ponies to handle a trail herd of that size, and I don’t know where
in Texas I’d ’a’ got the money to buy with right now. By next
spring, if we have luck, I could set you a row of pianos plumb
acrost the room.”
“I hardly think we’ll need more than one,” Miss Valeria said,
somewhat hastily. “But about Hilda—”
“Run along upstairs and pack your war bag, Pettie. We’ll start soon
as it’s light in the morning,” said Hank to the child; and Hilda
flew to obey, leaving him to conclude the argument with Miss Van
Brunt.