BATTLING THE ELEMENTS
The shadows of the little rolling hills still sprawled across the
intervening valleys when Curtis Conrad started back at a gallop over the
road which his outfit had been slowly traversing for four days. To his
foreman, Hank Peters, he had said that he had been thrown and gored by a
steer and must go to Golden to have his collar bone set, and ordered him
to stay where he was, cutting out and branding, that day and night, and
camp the day after at Five Cottonwoods, where he would rejoin them.
The men puzzled and gossiped about the accident to their employer. "I
don't see how it was possible," said Peters, "for such a thing to happen
to a man that's got the boss's gumption about cow-brutes."
"None of 'em was on the prod when I got to the pond," Red Jack declared.
"Jose, you was with him. Did you see the scrimmage?"
"I did not see the boss when he was down," Gonzalez replied in his
precise, slightly accented English. "I was at the spring and heard him
yell and I ran down to the pond at once, for I thought he needed help. I
stumbled and fell and sprained my shoulder--it hurts me yet--so that
when I reached the pond he was on his feet again and trying to drive the
cattle into the water. I helped him and then we went back to where his
shoes were. That was where Jack saw us. His arm bled a good deal there."
"Somethin' happened," observed Hank Peters, "and if the boss says it was
a steer on the prod, I sure reckon it was. But the thing that's
troublin' me most is what started them critters off. I didn't see or
hear a blamed thing likely to set 'em goin'. Did any of you?"
"I didn't," Texas Bill spoke up; "but Andy was there first. Did you see
what it was, Andy?"
Andy Miller, the new hand, stopped to draw several deep whiffs from his
newly lighted pipe before he replied. "No; I couldn't make out anything,
and I was right at the edge of 'em, too. They jumped and started all at
once, as crazy as I ever see a bunch of critters."
"Mebbe you skeered 'em some, they not bein' used to you," suggested
Billy Kid.
Andy grinned. "Well, I sure ain't boastin' none about the beauty of my
phiz, but no gal ain't told me yet that I was ugly enough to stampede a
herd of cow-brutes," and the subject was dropped with the laugh that
followed.
Conrad's mare, larger and of better breed than the cow ponies, put the
ground rapidly under her feet throughout the early morning. Though never
trained for range work and used only for riding, he always took her on
the round-up, in readiness for emergencies. His habit of talking to
himself, engendered by much solitary riding, was often varied by
one-sided conversations with the mare, and whatever the subject which
occupied his thoughts and found fragmentary utterance in speech, his
sentences were interspersed with frequent remarks to Brown Betty.
Apparently she found this custom as companionable as he did, for she was
sure to protest at a long period of silence.
"So, ho, my pretty Brown B.," said Conrad gently, as he patted the
mare's sleek neck, "that's the pace to give 'em!" A sharp twinge in his
shoulder set his lips together, and an oath, having Congressman Baxter
as its objective, came from between his teeth. "I'll write that damned
Baxter a letter," he broke out savagely, "that will singe his eyelashes
when he reads it!"
His thoughts went back to the subject which so frequently occupied
them--his lifelong, vengeful quest of the man who had despoiled his
father, wrought destruction upon their home, and changed the current of
his own life. His heart waxed hot as he recalled his interview with
Rutherford Jenkins. Never for an instant had he doubted that Jenkins's
statement was a deliberate lie. Smiling grimly, he stroked the mare's
mane. "I was a fool, wasn't I, Betty, to suppose I'd get straight goods
out of him. It cost me five hundred dollars to find out that he's a
skunk,--which I knew before. I deserved all I got, didn't I, Betty, for
not having more gumption."
The frontiersman's caution, which grows almost instinctive in one who
rides much alone over plain and mountain, sent his eyes now and again to
search the long stretch of road that trailed its faint gray band across
the hills behind and before him and to scan the sun-flooded reach from
horizon to horizon. A red stain accentuated the meeting line of sky and
plain in the west.
"Betty Brown, do you see that red mark yonder?" he said, gently pulling
her ear. "That means a sand-storm, and we've got to hike along at a
pretty stiff pace while we can. What do you think about it, my lady?"
The mare raised her head and gave a little snort. "Smell it, don't you?"
he went on as he patted her approvingly. "Well, that's where you're
smarter than I am, for I reckon I shan't be able to do that for another
hour."
He fell silent again, thinking of the Delafield matter and Jenkins's
assertion that Bancroft was Delafield. "He sure knows who Delafield is,"
was his conclusion, announced aloud, "but he's not going to tell. He's
probably blackmailing the man, whoever he is, and he won't take any
chances that would be likely to spoil his income. Well, that proves that
Delafield is somebody in New Mexico rich enough and prominent enough to
make it worth while for Jenkins to keep his knowledge to himself. I've
got that much for my five hundred, anyway. Lord, Betty, wasn't I a
tenderfoot!" and he swore under his breath, half angrily, half amusedly,
as he turned again to study the road and the plain. The heat haze was
rising, and the clear white sunlight was master of earth and sky. Far to
one side he noted the silvery lake of a mirage. But the red line had
mounted higher, and become a low, dirty-red wall that seemed to fence
the western expanse from north to south. "It sure looks like a bad one,
Betty, and I'm afraid we shan't be able to get home to-night after all.
But we'll make Adobe Springs anyway, if it doesn't catch us too soon."
The pain in his shoulder brought his mind back to the conviction that
Baxter had instigated the assault upon him, and he began searching for
the motive. Did the Congressman think his political opposition important
enough to make his taking off desirable? Suddenly he slapped his thigh
and broke out aloud: "Lord! what if Baxter should be Delafield! He
sure ought to be if there's anything in the eternal fitness of things.
If he should be--ah-h," and he broke off with a hard, unmirthful
laugh. Ransacking his memory for all he knew of Baxter's life he
presently shook his head regretfully. "No; the facts are against it.
There's nothing in that lead. It's a pity, though, for it would be a
satisfaction--to say nothing of the public benefit--to knock 'em both
off the roost at one pop." His mind busied itself with conjectures about
Delafield's identity, as he considered first one and then another of the
more prominent men in the Territory. He was silent so long that the mare
tossed her head impatiently and whinnied. Curtis smiled and stroked her
mane.
"Hello, old girl!" he said aloud, "getting lonesome, are you, and you
want to be talked to. Oh, you're spoiled, Betty B., that's what you are.
We'll go up the hill and see Miss Bancroft, won't we, Betty, while we're
in Golden; and we'll take that cactus to her, and help her plant it. And
she'll come out to the fence to see you, Betty; and she'll give you a
lump of sugar, and pat your nose, and look as sweet as a pink rose with
brown velvet eyes. She's a bully fine girl and we like her, don't we,
Betty Brown? The way she sticks by her father is great; he couldn't help
being a first-class fellow, could he, B. B., with such a daughter as
that?"
The red wall was rising in the sky, devouring its sunlit blue and
spreading out into smoky-red, angry-looking clouds. A high wind, hot
and dry, swept across the plain from the west. All the cattle within
Conrad's range of vision had turned their heads to the east and,
although they were still grazing, moved only in that direction. Seeing a
herd of antelope headed the same way, Curtis took the red bandanna from
his neck and waved it toward them. As the bright signal floated in the
wind their leader turned, stared, and began to walk back, the whole herd
following with raised heads and gaze fixed in fascinated interest. He
flaunted the red square and they came steadily on, until presently the
warning of danger in the hot wind and the odor of the approaching storm
overcame the compulsion of curiosity, and they wheeled again, away from
the threatened peril.
The small life of the plain was fleeing before the furnace-like breath
of those red, surging clouds. Jackrabbits leaped across the road on
fleet legs, and occasionally Conrad saw coyotes, singly or in packs,
running eastward as for their lives. Fat carrion crows hurried their
unwieldy flight and, higher in the air, a frequent lone hawk sailed out
of the west, while now and then a road-runner cut across his path with
hasting feet.
"It's going to be a bad one, I guess," Curtis muttered, jamming his
soft hat down closer on his head. The mare seemed to be trying of her
own accord to escape the storm, and her swinging lope was steadily
leaving the miles behind. "Keep it up, Betty, keep it up," he said
encouragingly. "I want to reach Adobe Springs and get this message to
Baxter off my mind. My shoulder's aching, old girl, but it ain't aching
a bit more than I am to tell him what I think of him."
Soon the sand-storm was upon them, concealing the landscape and covering
the sky with its clouds. Upon man and beast it beat as bitterly as a
sand-blast. It pelted and stung Conrad's face and neck, and filled his
eyes and ears and nostrils until he was forced now and again to pull his
hat over his face for a moment's respite in which to draw a less choking
breath. "It looks as if all Arizona had got up and dusted, and was
hell-bent to get out of here," he jested grimly, as he bent over the
mare's neck and encouraged her with voice and gentle stroke. "That shows
good sense, Betty, though it's mighty hard on us. Come right along, old
girl; we must get to Adobe Springs."
[Illustration: "UPON MAN AND BEAST THE SAND-STORM BEAT BITTERLY"]
As the air grew thicker there shone from the sky, instead of the vivid
white sunshine of a few hours before, only a dim, diffused, lurid
light. Even to Curtis, sitting quartering in the saddle with his back
twisted toward the wind, Brown Betty's ears were barely visible. For a
while he allowed the mare to follow the road herself, until he found
that her sense of duty must be supplemented by authority. For, under the
discomfort of the belaboring wind and stinging sand, she began to yield
to her instinct to turn tail and drift before the storm. Then he knew
that he must keep a firm hand on the bridle, and his attention at the
highest pitch, or they would soon be wandering helplessly over the
plain. He walked long distances beside the mare, with his body shielding
her head and with speech and caress keeping up her courage. Their
progress was slow, for the force of the storm was so great that, though
it beat against them from the side, they could struggle through it only
at a walk.
Hour after hour went by, and the only sign of its passage was that a
dim, yellowish centre of illumination, that had once been the sun, crept
slowly across the sky. As the day grew older Conrad's pain from his
injury became more acute. Most of the time he felt it only as an
insistent background to the keen outward discomfort of stinging sand and
pounding wind. But when an occasional sharper twinge brought it more
vividly to his consciousness he swore a little between his teeth, and
thought of the letter he was going to write to Dellmey Baxter. The
particles of sand filled his hair and encrusted his face and neck until
they were of a uniform brick-red. Constant effort and encouragement were
necessary to keep Brown Betty in the road, and finally he was compelled
to walk at her head most of the time and with a guiding hand on her
bridle counteract the unflagging urge of her instinct to drift before
the blast.
Thus they battled their way through the hot, beating wind and
suffocating sand, while that vague core of light moved athwart the dirty
heavens, dropped slowly down the western sky, and was swallowed up in
the denser banks of dusk above the horizon. It had been too dark before
for the discernment of objects, but a yellowish glare had filtered
through the sand-laden air, lending a lurid, semi-translucence to the
atmosphere. Now even that was gone, leaving a desert enveloped in pitchy
darkness, while the wind roared about the ears of the travellers and
pounded their bodies as with cudgels and the sand pelted their skins.
Most of the time Curtis depended upon the feel of the road under his
feet to maintain his direction, but now and then it was necessary for
him to get down on his hands and knees in order to recover the track
from which they had begun to stray. Once his fingers came in contact
with a small feathered body. The bird tried to start up under his hand.
He knew it must be disabled and placed it inside his shirt. Thus they
plodded on through the night and the storm, the pain in his shoulder
growing keener and the torture of the wind and sand ever more
nerve-racking.
At last the mare raised her head and gave a long whinny. Conrad felt
sure that she was announcing their near approach to the food and shelter
within the adobe houses. "What is it, Betty? Do you know where we are?"
he asked, and she rubbed her nose against his face, nickered, and pulled
at the bridle with the evident desire to turn from the direction they
were pursuing. Curtis knew they were in a little hollow, and thought it
might be that into which the road dipped after leaving the houses.
"All right, Betty," he said. "I'll follow your lead a little way, but be
cautious, old girl, and don't tie up to any lying hunches." He
slackened his hold on the bridle, and the mare started off eagerly. They
climbed a hill, and presently Conrad was aware of a black mass before
him. Putting out his hand he felt an adobe wall. The mare crowded close
against it, and stopped. She had left the road, which took the hill at a
long sloping angle from the foot of the rise, and had climbed straight
up the steep incline. He felt his way around the corner, unfastened the
door, and entered. An emphatic "Whew!" gave vent to his feeling of
relief. The mare, close at his heels, snorted in response, and Curtis,
smiling in the dark, threw his arm across her neck in fellowship and
said, "Feels good, doesn't it, Betty B., to get out of that hurricane
from hell?"
By the light of a lantern he led the mare to the spring, stabling her
afterward in one of the houses. "In the best society, Betty Brown," he
explained, "it's not considered good form for horses to sleep in men's
houses. But you deserve the best I can give you to-night, blest if you
don't, old girl, and you shall have it, too." He gathered together, for
her food and her bed, the alfalfa hay from several of the bunks, and
found for her also a small measure of oats. Then, having attended to
her wants, he looked about for something to stay his own hunger.
It was his custom to keep some canned provisions in the place, as the
station was much used by his men. On a little smouldering fire in one
corner of the room, he made some tea in a tin can. A frying-pan hung
against the wall, and in it, awkwardly fumbling with his one useful
hand, he contrived to warm a stew of tinned _chile con carne_ and pilot
bread. Fine sand drifted in and settled in a red dust over the food as
he ate, and he could feel its grit between his teeth.
The bird he had carried in his bosom he found to be a Southwestern
tanager. Its pinkish-red plumage shone with a silvery radiance in the
lamplight. One of its legs was broken, and one wing had been injured.
"I'll take it to Miss Bancroft," he said aloud, "and she'll care for it
till it can shift for itself again, poor little devil!"
With intense satisfaction Conrad at last sat down to the letter in which
he had all day been longing to express his feelings. "I wonder," he
thought, "if Dellmey Baxter did it because he don't like the things I
say about him. Well, he'll have to get used to it, then, for I'm not
going to quit." There was a grim smile on his face as he wrote:
"I consider it the square thing to tell you that I am onto the game
of your man, Jose Gonzalez. We had our first set-to this morning,
in which he winged me, but I got the best of him. I could have
killed him if I had wanted to, but he is such a good cowboy I hated
to do him up. I am going to keep him in my employ, but I want you
to understand, distinctly, that if he makes another crack at me I
shall go to Santa Fe as quick as I can get there and make a
Christmas gift of you to the devil before you know what's
happening.
"Yours truly,
"CURTIS CONRAD.
"P. S. I am still shouting for Johnny Martinez for Congress. C. C."
"There!" he exclaimed, as he sealed the envelope and threw it down
contemptuously; "I sure reckon he won't be so anxious for me to turn up
my toes with my boots on after he reads that."
The pain in Conrad's arm and shoulder had become so keen that he could
not sleep. He lay in his bunk listening to the rattling of the door and
the rage of the wind against the house, seeking to keep his mind from
the stabbing pain long enough to sink into unconsciousness. But no
sooner did his eyelids begin to close down heavily than a fresh throb
made him start up again wide awake. This irritated him more than did the
other suffering, and finally he jumped up angrily, found a copy of
Lecky's "History of European Morals," and, with the muttered comment,
"This is about what I need to-night," settled himself on an empty
cracker box and read the night away. Toward morning he became aware that
the wind was abating, and a little later that less sand was drifting
into his retreat.
Breakfast was eaten and Brown Betty cared for by lamplight and with the
first dim rays of morning he set out once more upon the road. The bird
was again in his bosom, and the cactus, wrapped in old newspapers,
rested at the back of his saddle. The storm had passed, but the air was
still full of dust particles through which the sun shone, red and smoky.
Curtis knew that these would settle gradually with the passing hours and
the sky become as clear as usual. Already he could see the road for
several rods in front of him, and that was all he needed to keep it
flying under Brown Betty's feet.
At the ranch house Mrs. Peters told him that a man had been there
looking for work and described his appearance. "Yes; he overtook us at
Rock Springs, and I hired him," Conrad said. Then, remembering the
account Andy Miller had given of his previous situation, he asked her if
the man had said where he came from.
"No," she replied; "he didn't say where he'd been working; but he came
from toward Golden."
The superintendent thought the discrepancy rather curious, but decided
it was nothing more than a not unusual cowboy eccentricity of statement.
He resumed his journey with no misgivings, and mid-afternoon found him
arguing with the physician at Golden that he might just as well start
back to the round-up that same night.