PART III

THE RAWHIDE

CHAPTER ONE

THE PASSING OF THE COLT'S FORTY-FIVE

The man of whom I am now to tell you came to Arizona in the early days

of Chief Cochise. He settled in the Soda Springs Valley, and there

persisted in spite of the devastating forays of that Apache. After a

time he owned all the wells and springs in the valley, and so,

naturally, controlled the grazing on that extensive free range. Once a

day the cattle, in twos and threes, in bands, in strings, could be seen

winding leisurely down the deep-trodden and converging trails to the

water troughs at the home ranch, there leisurely to drink, and then

leisurely to drift away into the saffron and violet and amethyst

distances of the desert. At ten other outlying ranches this daily

scene was repeated. All these cattle belonged to the man, great by

reason of his priority in the country, the balance of his even

character, and the grim determination of his spirit.

When he had first entered Soda Springs Valley his companions had called

him Buck Johnson. Since then his form had squared, his eyes had

steadied to the serenity of a great authority, his mouth, shadowed by

the moustache and the beard, had closed straight in the line of power

and taciturnity. There was about him more than a trace of the Spanish.

So now he was known as Senor Johnson, although in reality he was

straight American enough.

Senor Johnson lived at the home ranch with a Chinese cook, and Parker,

his foreman. The home ranch was of adobe, built with loopholes like a

fort. In the obsolescence of this necessity, other buildings had

sprung up unfortified. An adobe bunkhouse for the cow-punchers, an

adobe blacksmith shop, a long, low stable, a shed, a windmill and

pond-like reservoir, a whole system of corrals of different sizes, a

walled-in vegetable garden--these gathered to themselves cottonwoods

from the moisture of their being, and so added each a little to the

green spot in the desert. In the smallest corral, between the stable

and the shed, stood a buckboard and a heavy wagon, the only wheeled

vehicles about the place. Under the shed were rows of saddles, riatas,

spurs mounted with silver, bits ornamented with the same metal, curved

short irons for the range branding, long, heavy "stamps" for the corral

branding. Behind the stable lay the "pasture," a thousand acres of

desert fenced in with wire. There the hardy cow-ponies sought out the

sparse, but nutritious, bunch grass, sixty of them, beautiful as

antelope, for they were the pick of Senor Johnson's herds.

And all about lay the desert, shimmering, changing, many-tinted,

wonderful, hemmed in by the mountains that seemed tenuous and thin,

like beautiful mists, and by the sky that seemed hard and polished like

a turquoise.

Each morning at six o'clock the ten cow-punchers of the home ranch

drove the horses to the corral, neatly roped the dozen to be "kept up"

for that day, and rewarded the rest with a feed of grain. Then they

rode away at a little fox trot, two by two. All day long they

travelled thus, conducting the business of the range, and at night,

having completed the circle, they jingled again into the corral.

At the ten other ranches this programme had been duplicated. The

half-hundred men of Senor Johnson's outfit had covered the area of a

European principality. And all of it, every acre, every spear of

grass, every cactus prickle, every creature on it, practically belonged

to Senor Johnson, because Senor Johnson owned the water, and without

water one cannot exist on the desert.

This result had not been gained without struggle. The fact could be

read in the settled lines of Senor Johnson's face, and the great calm

of his grey eye. Indian days drove him often to the shelter of the

loopholed adobe ranch house, there to await the soldiers from the Fort,

in plain sight thirty miles away on the slope that led to the foot of

the Chiricahuas. He lost cattle and some men, but the profits were

great, and in time Cochise, Geronimo, and the lesser lights had

flickered out in the winds of destiny. The sheep terror merely

threatened, for it was soon discovered that with the feed of Soda

Springs Valley grew a burr that annoyed the flocks beyond reason, so

the bleating scourge swept by forty miles away. Cattle rustling so

near the Mexican line was an easy matter. For a time Senor Johnson

commanded an armed band. He was lord of the high, the low, and the

middle justice. He violated international ethics, and for the laws of

nations he substituted his own. One by one he annihilated the thieves

of cattle, sometimes in open fight, but oftener by surprise and

deliberate massacre. The country was delivered. And then, with

indefatigable energy, Senor Johnson became a skilled detective. Alone,

or with Parker, his foreman, he rode the country through, gathering

evidence. When the evidence was unassailable he brought offenders to

book. The rebranding through a wet blanket he knew and could prove;

the ear-marking of an unbranded calf until it could be weaned he

understood; the paring of hoofs to prevent travelling he could tell as

far as he could see; the crafty alteration of similar brands--as when a

Mexican changed Johnson's Lazy Y to a Dumb-bell Bar--he saw through at

a glance. In short, the hundred and one petty tricks of the

sneak-thief he ferreted out, in danger of his life. Then he sent to

Phoenix for a Ranger--and that was the last of the Dumb-bell Bar brand,

or the Three Link Bar brand, or the Hour Glass Brand, or a half dozen

others. The Soda Springs Valley acquired a reputation for good order.

Senor Johnson at this stage of his career found himself dropping into a

routine. In March began the spring branding, then the corralling and

breaking of the wild horses, the summer range-riding, the great fall

round-up, the shipping of cattle, and the riding of the winter range.

This happened over and over again.

You and I would not have suffered from ennui. The roping and throwing

and branding, the wild swing and dash of handling stock, the mad races

to head the mustangs, the fierce combats to subdue these raging wild

beasts to the saddle, the spectacle of the round-up with its brutish

multitudes and its graceful riders, the dust and monotony and

excitement and glory of the Trail, and especially the hundreds of

incidental and gratuitous adventures of bears and antelope, of thirst

and heat, of the joy of taking care of one's self--all these would have

filled our days with the glittering, changing throng of the unusual.

But to Senor Johnson it had become an old story. After the days of

construction the days of accomplishment seemed to him lean. His men

did the work and reaped the excitement. Senor Johnson never thought

now of riding the wild horses, of swinging the rope coiled at his

saddle horn, or of rounding ahead of the flying herds. His inspections

were business inspections. The country was tame. The leather chaps

with the silver conchas hung behind the door. The Colt's forty-five

depended at the head of the bed. Senor Johnson rode in mufti. Of his

cowboy days persisted still the high-heeled boots and spurs, the broad

Stetson hat, and the fringed buckskin gauntlets.

The Colt's forty-five had been the last to go. Finally one evening

Senor Johnson received an express package. He opened it before the

undemonstrative Parker. It proved to contain a pocket "gun"--a

nickel-plated, thirty-eight calibre Smith & Wesson "five-shooter."

Senor Johnson examined it a little doubtfully. In comparison with the

six-shooter it looked like a toy.

"How do you, like her?" he inquired, handing the weapon to Parker.

Parker turned it over and over, as a child a rattle. Then he returned

it to its owner.

"Senor," said he, "if ever you shoot me with that little old gun, AND I

find it out the same day, I'll just raise hell with you!"

"I don't reckon she'd INJURE a man much," agreed the Senor, "but

perhaps she'd call his attention."

However, the "little old gun" took its place, not in Senor Johnson's

hip pocket, but inside the front waistband of his trousers, and the old

shiny Colt's forty-five, with its worn leather "Texas style" holster,

became a bedroom ornament.

Thus, from a frontiersman dropped Senor Johnson to the status of a

property owner. In a general way he had to attend to his interests

before the cattlemen's association; he had to arrange for the buying

and shipping, and the rest was leisure. He could now have gone away

somewhere as far as time went. So can a fish live in trees--as far as

time goes. And in the daily riding, riding, riding over the range he

found the opportunity for abstract thought which the frontier life had

crowded aside.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SHAPES OF ILLUSION

Every day, as always, Senor Johnson rode abroad over the land. His

surroundings had before been accepted casually as a more or less

pertinent setting of action and condition. Now he sensed some of the

fascination of the Arizona desert.

He noticed many things before unnoticed. As he jingled loosely along

on his cow-horse, he observed how the animal waded fetlock deep in the

gorgeous orange California poppies, and then he looked up and about,

and saw that the rich colour carpeted the landscape as far as his eye

could reach, so that it seemed as though he could ride on and on

through them to the distant Chiricahuas. Only, close under the hills,

lay, unobtrusive, a narrow streak of grey. And in a few hours he had

reached the streak of grey, and ridden out into it to find himself the

centre of a limitless alkali plain, so that again it seemed the valley

could contain nothing else of importance.

Looking back, Senor Johnson could discern a tenuous ribbon of

orange--the poppies. And perhaps ahead a little shadow blotted the

face of the alkali, which, being reached and entered, spread like fire

until it, too, filled the whole plain, until it, too, arrogated to

itself the right of typifying Soda Springs Valley as a shimmering

prairie of mesquite. Flowered upland, dead lowland, brush, cactus,

volcanic rock, sand, each of these for the time being occupied the

whole space, broad as the sea. In the circlet of the mountains was

room for many infinities.

Among the foothills Senor Johnson, for the first time, appreciated

colour. Hundreds of acres of flowers filled the velvet creases of the

little hills and washed over the smooth, rounded slopes so accurately

in the placing and manner of tinted shadows that the mind had

difficulty in believing the colour not to have been shaded in actually

by free sweeps of some gigantic brush. A dozen shades of pinks and

purples, a dozen of blues, and then the flame reds, the yellows, and

the vivid greens. Beyond were the mountains in their glory of volcanic

rocks, rich as the tapestry of a Florentine palace. And, modifying all

the others, the tinted atmosphere of the south-west, refracting the sun

through the infinitesimal earth motes thrown up constantly by the wind

devils of the desert, drew before the scene a delicate and gauzy veil

of lilac, of rose, of saffron, of amethyst, or of mauve, according to

the time of day. Senor Johnson discovered that looking at the

landscape upside down accentuated the colour effects. It amused him

vastly suddenly to bend over his saddle horn, the top of his head

nearly touching his horse's mane. The distant mountains at once

started out into redder prominence; their shadows of purple deepened to

the royal colour; the rose veil thickened.

"She's the prettiest country God ever made!" exclaimed Senor Johnson

with entire conviction.

And no matter where he went, nor into how familiar country he rode, the

shapes of illusion offered always variety. One day the Chiricahuas

were a tableland; next day a series of castellated peaks; now an anvil;

now a saw tooth; and rarely they threw a magnificent suspension bridge

across the heavens to their neighbours, the ranges on the west. Lakes

rippling in the wind and breaking on the shore, cattle big as elephants

or small as rabbits, distances that did not exist and forests that

never were, beds of lava along the hills swearing to a cloud shadow,

while the sky was polished like a precious stone--these, and many other

beautiful and marvellous but empty shows the great desert displayed

lavishly, with the glitter and inconsequence of a dream. Senor Johnson

sat on his horse in the hot sun, his chin in his band, his elbow on the

pommel, watching it all with grave, unshifting eyes.

Occasionally, belated, he saw the stars, the wonderful desert stars,

blazing clear and unflickering, like the flames of candles. Or the

moon worked her necromancies, hemming him in by mountains ten thousand

feet high through which there was no pass. And then as he rode, the

mountains shifted like the scenes in a theatre, and he crossed the

little sand dunes out from the dream country to the adobe corrals of

the home ranch.

All these things, and many others, Senor Johnson now saw for the first

time, although he had lived among them for twenty years. It struck him

with the freshness of a surprise. Also it reacted chemically on his

mental processes to generate a new power within him. The new power,

being as yet unapplied, made him uneasy and restless and a little

irritable.

He tried to show some of his wonders to Parker.

"Jed," said he, one day, "this is a great country."

"You KNOW it," replied the foreman.

"Those tourists in their nickel-plated Pullmans call this a desert.

Desert, hell! Look at them flowers!"

The foreman cast an eye on a glorious silken mantle of purple, a

hundred yards broad.

"Sure," he agreed; "shows what we could do if we only had a little

water."

And again: "Jed," began the Senor, "did you ever notice them

mountains?"

"Sure," agreed Jed.

"Ain't that a pretty colour?"

"You bet," agreed the foreman; "now you're talking! I always, said

they was mineralised enough to make a good prospect."

This was unsatisfactory. Senor Johnson grew more restless. His

critical eye began to take account of small details. At the ranch

house one evening he, on a sudden, bellowed loudly for Sang, the

Chinese servant.

"Look at these!" he roared, when Sang appeared.

Sang's eyes opened in bewilderment.

"There, and there!" shouted the cattleman. "Look at them old newspapers

and them gun rags! The place is like a cow-yard. Why in the name of

heaven don't you clean up here!"

"Allee light," babbled Sang; "I clean him."

The papers and gun rags had lain there unnoticed for nearly a year.

Senor Johnson kicked them savagely.

"It's time we took a brace here," he growled, "we're livin' like a lot

of Oilers." [5]

[5] Oilers: Greasers--Mexicans

CHAPTER THREE

THE PAPER A YEAR OLD

Sang hurried out for a broom. Senor Johnson sat where he was, his

heavy, square brows knit. Suddenly he stooped, seized one of the

newspapers, drew near the lamp, and began to read.

It was a Kansas City paper and, by a strange coincidence, was dated

exactly a year before. The sheet Senor Johnson happened to pick up was

one usually passed over by the average newspaper reader. It contained

only columns of little two- and three-line advertisements classified as

Help Wanted, Situations Wanted, Lost and Found, and Personal. The

latter items Senor Johnson commenced to read while awaiting Sang and

the broom.

The notices were five in number. The first three were of the

mysterious newspaper-correspondence type, in which Birdie beseeches

Jack to meet her at the fountain; the fourth advertised a clairvoyant.

Over the fifth Senor Johnson paused long. It reads

"WANTED.-By an intelligent and refined lady of pleasing appearance,

correspondence with a gentleman of means. Object matrimony."

Just then Sang returned with the broom and began noisily to sweep

together the debris. The rustling of papers aroused Senor Johnson from

his reverie. At once he exploded.

"Get out of here, you debased Mongolian," he shouted; "can't you see

I'm reading?"

Sang fled, sorely puzzled, for the Senor was calm and unexcited and

aloof in his everyday habit.

Soon Jed Parker, tall, wiry, hawk-nosed, deliberate, came into the room

and flung his broad hat and spurs into the corner. Then he proceeded

to light his pipe and threw the burned match on the floor.

"Been over to look at the Grant Pass range," he announced cheerfully.

"She's no good. Drier than cork legs. Th' country wouldn't support

three horned toads."

"Jed," quoth the Senor solemnly, "I wisht you'd hang up your hat like I

have. It don't look good there on the floor."

"Why, sure," agreed Jed, with an astonished stare.

Sang brought in supper and slung it on the red and white squares of

oilcloth. Then he moved the lamp and retired.

Senor Johnson gazed with distaste into his cup.

"This coffee would float a wedge," he commented sourly.

"She's no puling infant," agreed the cheerful Jed.

"And this!" went on the Senor, picking up what purported to be plum

duff: "Bog down a few currants in dough and call her pudding!"

He ate in silence, then pushed back his chair and went to the window,

gazing through its grimy panes at the mountains, ethereal in their

evening saffron.

"Blamed Chink," he growled; "why don't he wash these windows?"

Jed laid down his busy knife and idle fork to gaze on his chief with

amazement. Buck Johnson, the austere, the aloof, the grimly taciturn,

the dangerous, to be thus complaining like a querulous woman!

"Senor," said he, "you're off your feed."

Senor Johnson strode savagely to the table and sat down with a bang.

"I'm sick of it," he growled; "this thing will kill me off. I might as

well go be a buck nun and be done with it."

With one round-arm sweep he cleared aside the dishes.

"Give me that pen and paper behind you," he requested.

For an hour he wrote and destroyed. The floor became littered with

torn papers. Then he enveloped a meagre result. Parker had watched

him in silence.

The Senor looked up to catch his speculative eye. His own eye twinkled

a little, but the twinkle was determined and sinister, with only an

alloy of humour.

"Senor," ventured Parker slowly, "this event sure knocks me hell-west

and crooked. If the loco you have culled hasn't paralysed your

speaking parts, would you mind telling me what in the name of heaven,

hell, and high-water is up?"

"I am going to get married," announced the Senor calmly.

"What!" shouted Parker; "who to?"

"To a lady," replied the Senor, "an intelligent and refined lady--of

pleasing appearance."

CHAPTER FOUR

DREAMS

Although the paper was a year old, Senor Johnson in due time received

an answer from Kansas. A correspondence ensued. Senor Johnson

enshrined above the big fireplace the photograph of a woman. Before

this he used to stand for hours at a time slowly constructing in his

mind what he had hitherto lacked--an ideal of woman and of home. This

ideal he used sometimes to express to himself and to the ironical Jed.

"It must sure be nice to have a little woman waitin' for you when you

come in off'n the desert."

Or: "Now, a woman would have them windows just blooming with flowers

and white curtains and such truck."

Or: "I bet that Sang would get a wiggle on him with his little old

cleaning duds if he had a woman ahold of his jerk line."

Slowly he reconstructed his life, the life of the ranch, in terms of

this hypothesised feminine influence. Then matters came to an

understanding, Senor Johnson had sent his own portrait. Estrella Sands

wrote back that she adored big black beards, but she was afraid of him,

he had such a fascinating bad eye: no woman could resist him. Senor

Johnson at once took things for granted, sent on to Kansas a

preposterous sum of "expense" money and a railroad ticket, and raided

Goodrich's store at Willets, a hundred miles away, for all manner of

gaudy carpets, silverware, fancy lamps, works of art, pianos, linen,

and gimcracks for the adornment of the ranch house. Furthermore, he

offered wages more than equal to a hundred miles of desert to a young

Irish girl, named Susie O'Toole, to come out as housekeeper, decorator,

boss of Sang and another Chinaman, and companion to Mrs. Johnson when

she should arrive.

Furthermore, he laid off from the range work Brent Palmer, the most

skilful man with horses, and set him to "gentling" a beautiful little

sorrel. A sidesaddle had arrived from El Paso. It was "centre fire,"

which is to say it had but the single horsehair cinch, broad,

tasselled, very genteel in its suggestion of pleasure use only. Brent

could be seen at all times of day, cantering here and there on the

sorrel, a blanket tied around his waist to simulate the long riding

skirt. He carried also a sulky and evil gleam in his eye, warning

against undue levity.

Jed Parker watched these various proceedings sardonically.

Once, the baby light of innocence blue in his eye, he inquired if he

would be required to dress for dinner.

"If so," he went on, "I'll have my man brush up my low-necked clothes."

But Senor Johnson refused to be baited.

"Go on, Jed," said he; "you know you ain't got clothes enough to dust a

fiddle."

The Senor was happy these days. He showed it by an unwonted joviality

of spirit, by a slight but evident unbending of his Spanish dignity.

No longer did the splendour of the desert fill him with a vague

yearning and uneasiness. He looked upon it confidently, noting its

various phases with care, rejoicing in each new development of colour

and light, of form and illusion, storing them away in his memory so

that their recurrence should find him prepared to recognise and explain

them. For soon he would have someone by his side with whom to

appreciate them. In that sharing he could see the reason for them, the

reason for their strange bitter-sweet effects on the human soul.

One evening he leaned on the corral fence, looking toward the Dragoons.

The sun had set behind them. Gigantic they loomed against the western

light. From their summits, like an aureola, radiated the splendour of

the dust-moted air, this evening a deep umber. A faint reflection of

it fell across the desert, glorifying the reaches of its nothingness.

"I'll take her out on an evening like this," quoth Senor Johnson to

himself, "and I'll make her keep her eyes on the ground till we get

right up by Running Bear Knob, and then I'll let her look up all to

once. And she'll surely enjoy this life. I bet she never saw a steer

roped in her life. She can ride with me every day out over the range

and I'll show her the busting and the branding and that band of

antelope over by the Tall Windmill. I'll teach her to shoot, too. And

we can make little pack trips off in the hills when she gets too

hot--up there by Deerskin Meadows 'mongst the high peaks."

He mused, turning over in his mind a new picture of his own life, aims,

and pursuits as modified by the sympathetic and understanding

companionship of a woman. He pictured himself as he must seem to her

in his different pursuits. The picturesqueness pleased him. The

simple, direct vanity of the man--the wholesome vanity of a

straightforward nature--awakened to preen its feathers before the idea

of the mate.

The shadows fell. Over the Chiricahuas flared the evening star. The

plain, self-luminous with the weird lucence of the arid lands, showed

ghostly. Jed Parker, coming out from the lamp-lit adobe, leaned his

elbows on the rail in silent company with his chief. He, too, looked

abroad. His mind's eye saw what his body's eye had always told him

were the insistent notes--the alkali, the cactus, the sage, the

mesquite, the lava, the choking dust, the blinding beat, the burning

thirst. He sighed in the dim half recollection of past days.

"I wonder if she'll like the country?" he hazarded.

But Senor Johnson turned on him his steady eyes, filled with the great

glory of the desert.

"Like the country!" he marvelled slowly. "Of course! Why shouldn't

she?"

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ARRIVAL

The Overland drew into Willets, coated from engine to observation with

white dust. A porter, in strange contrast of neatness, flung open the

vestibule, dropped his little carpeted step, and turned to assist

someone. A few idle passengers gazed out on the uninteresting, flat

frontier town.

Senor Johnson caught his breath in amazement. "God! Ain't she just

like her picture!" he exclaimed. He seemed to find this astonishing.

For a moment he did not step forward to claim her, so she stood looking

about her uncertainly, her leather suit-case at her feet.

She was indeed like the photograph. The same full-curved, compact

little figure, the same round face, the same cupid's bow mouth, the

same appealing, large eyes, the same haze of doll's hair. In a moment

she caught sight of Senor Johnson and took two steps toward him, then

stopped. The Senor at once came forward.

"You're Mr. Johnson, ain't you?" she inquired, thrusting her little

pointed chin forward, and so elevating her baby-blue eyes to his.

"Yes, ma'am," he acknowledged formally. Then, after a moment's pause:

"I hope you're well."

"Yes, thank you."

The station loungers, augmented by all the ranchmen and cowboys in

town, were examining her closely. She looked at them in a swift side

glance that seemed to gather all their eyes to hers. Then, satisfied

that she possessed the universal admiration, she returned the full

force of her attention to the man before her.

"Now you give me your trunk checks," he was saying, "and then we'll go

right over and get married."

"Oh!" she gasped.

"That's right, ain't it?" he demanded.

"Yes, I suppose so," she agreed faintly.

A little subdued, she followed him to the clergyman's house, where, in

the presence of Goodrich, the storekeeper, and the preacher's wife, the

two were united. Then they mounted the buckboard and drove from town.

Senor Johnson said nothing, because he knew of nothing to say. He

drove skilfully and fast through the gathering dusk. It was a hundred

miles to the home ranch, and that hundred miles, by means of five

relays of horses already arranged for, they would cover by morning.

Thus they would avoid the dust and heat and high winds of the day.

The sweet night fell. The little desert winds laid soft fingers on

their checks. Overhead burned the stars, clear, unflickering, like

candles. Dimly could be seen the horses, their flanks swinging

steadily in the square trot. Ghostly bushes passed them; ghostly rock

elevations. Far, in indeterminate distance, lay the outlines of the

mountains. Always, they seemed to recede. The plain, all but

invisible, the wagon trail quite so, the depths of space--these flung

heavy on the soul their weight of mysticism. The woman, until now bolt

upright in the buckboard seat, shrank nearer to the man. He felt

against his sleeve the delicate contact of her garment and thrilled to

the touch. A coyote barked sharply from a neighbouring eminence, then

trailed off into the long-drawn, shrill howl of his species.

"What was that?" she asked quickly, in a subdued voice.

"A coyote--one of them little wolves," he explained.

The horses' hoofs rang clear on a hardened bit of the alkali crust,

then dully as they encountered again the dust of the plain. Vast,

vague, mysterious in the silence of night, filled with strange

influences breathing through space like damp winds, the desert took

them to the heart of her great spaces.

"Buck," she whispered, a little tremblingly. It was the first time she

had spoken his name.

"What is it?" he asked, a new note in his voice.

But for a time she did not reply. Only the contact against his sleeve

increased by ever so little.

"Buck," she repeated, then all in a rush and with a sob, "Oh, I'm

afraid."

Tenderly the man drew her to him. Her head fell against his shoulder

and she hid her eyes.

"There, little girl," he reassured her, his big voice rich and musical.

"There's nothing to get scairt of, I'll take care of you. What

frightens you, honey?"

She nestled close in his arm with a sigh of half relief.

"I don't know," she laughed, but still with a tremble in her tones.

"It's all so big and lonesome and strange--and I'm so little."

"There, little girl," he repeated.

They drove on and on. At the end of two hours they stopped. Men with

lanterns dazzled their eyes. The horses were changed, and so out again

into the night where the desert seemed to breathe in deep, mysterious

exhalations like a sleeping beast.

Senor Johnson drove his horses masterfully with his one free hand. The

road did not exist, except to his trained eyes. They seemed to be

swimming out, out, into a vapour of night with the wind of their going

steady against their faces.

"Buck," she murmured, "I'm so tired."

He tightened his arm around her and she went to sleep, half-waking at

the ranches where the relays waited, dozing again as soon as the

lanterns dropped behind. And Senor Johnson, alone with his horses and

the solemn stars, drove on, ever on, into the desert.

By grey of the early summer dawn they arrived. The girl wakened,

descended, smiling uncertainly at Susie O'Toole, blinking somnolently

at her surroundings. Susie put her to bed in the little southwest room

where hung the shiny Colt's forty-five in its worn leather

"Texas-style" holster. She murmured incoherent thanks and sank again

to sleep, overcome by the fatigue of unaccustomed travelling, by the

potency of the desert air, by the excitement of anticipation to which

her nerves had long been strung.

Senor Johnson did not sleep. He was tough, and used to it. He lit a

cigar and rambled about, now reading the newspapers he had brought with

him, now prowling softly about the building, now visiting the corrals

and outbuildings, once even the thousand-acre pasture where his

saddle-horse knew him and came to him to have its forehead rubbed. The

dawn broke in good earnest, throwing aside its gauzy draperies of

mauve. Sang, the Chinese cook, built his fire. Senor Johnson forbade

him to clang the rising bell, and himself roused the cow-punchers. The

girl slept on. Senor Johnson tip-toed a dozen times to the bedroom

door. Once he ventured to push it open. He looked long within, then

shut it softly and tiptoed out into the open, his eyes shining.

"Jed," he said to his foreman, "you don't know how it made me feel. To

see her lying there so pink and soft and pretty, with her yaller hair

all tumbled about and a little smile on her--there in my old bed, with

my old gun hanging over her that way--By Heaven, Jed, it made me feel

almost HOLY!"

CHAPTER SIX

THE WAGON TIRE

About noon she emerged from the room, fully refreshed and wide awake.

She and Susie O'Toole had unpacked at least one of the trunks, and now

she stood arrayed in shirtwaist and blue skirt.

At once she stepped into the open air and looked about her with

considerable curiosity.

"So this is a real cattle ranch," was her comment.

Senor Johnson was at her side pressing on her with boyish eagerness the

sights of the place. She patted the stag hounds and inspected the

garden. Then, confessing herself hungry, she obeyed with alacrity

Sang's call to an early meal. At the table she ate coquettishly,

throwing her birdlike side glances at the man opposite.

"I want to see a real cowboy," she announced, as she pushed her chair

back.

"Why, sure!" cried Senor Johnson joyously. "Sang! hi, Sang! Tell

Brent Palmer to step in here a minute."

After an interval the cowboy appeared, mincing in on his high-heeled

boots, his silver spurs jingling, the fringe of his chaps impacting

softly on the leather. He stood at ease, his broad hat in both hands,

his dark, level brows fixed on his chief.

"Shake hands with Mrs. Johnson, Brent. I called you in because she

said she wanted to see a real cow-puncher."

"Oh, BUCK!" cried the woman.

For an instant the cow-puncher's level brows drew together. Then he

caught the woman's glance fair. He smiled.

"Well, I ain't much to look at," he proffered.

"That's not for you to say, sir," said Estrella, recovering.

"Brent, here, gentled your pony for you," exclaimed Senor Johnson.

"Oh," cried Estrella, "have I a pony? How nice. And it was so good of

you, Mr. Brent. Can't I see him? I want to see him. I want to give

him a piece of sugar." She fumbled in the bowl.

"Sure you can see him. I don't know as he'll eat sugar. He ain't that

educated. Think you could teach him to eat sugar, Brent?"

"I reckon," replied the cowboy.

They went out toward the corral, the cowboy joining them as a matter of

course. Estrella demanded explanations as she went along. Their

progress was leisurely. The blindfolded pump mule interested her.

"And he goes round and round that way all day without stopping,

thinking he's really getting somewhere!" she marvelled. "I think that's

a shame! Poor old fellow, to get fooled that way!"

"It is some foolish," said Brent Palmer, "but he ain't any worse off

than a cow-pony that hikes out twenty mile and then twenty back."

"No, I suppose not," admitted Estrella.

"And we got to have water, you know," added Senor Johnson.

Brent rode up the sorrel bareback. The pretty animal, gentle as a

kitten, nevertheless planted his forefeet strongly and snorted at

Estrella.

"I reckon he ain't used to the sight of a woman," proffered the Senor,

disappointed. "He'll get used to you. Go up to him soft-like and rub

him between the eyes."'

Estrella approached, but the pony jerked back his head with every

symptom of distrust. She forgot the sugar she had intended to offer

him.

"He's a perfect beauty," she said at last, "but, my! I'd never dare

ride him. I'm awful scairt of horses."

"Oh, he'll come around all right," assured Brent easily. "I'll fix him."

"Oh, Mr. Brent," she exclaimed, "don't think I don't appreciate what

you've done. I'm sure he's really just as gentle as he can be. It's

only that I'm foolish."

"I'll fix him," repeated Brent.

The two men conducted her here and there, showing her the various

institutions of the place. A man bent near the shed nailing a shoe to

a horse's hoof.

"So you even have a blacksmith!" said Estrella. Her guides laughed

amusedly.

"Tommy, come here!" called the Senor.

The horseshoer straightened up and approached. He was a lithe,

curly-haired young boy, with a reckless, humorous eye and a smooth

face, now red from bending over.

"Tommy, shake hands with Mrs. Johnson," said the Senor. "Mrs. Johnson

wants to know if you're the blacksmith." He exploded in laughter.

"Oh, BUCK!" cried Estrella again.

"No, ma'am," answered the boy directly; "I'm just tacking a shoe on

Danger, here. We all does our own blacksmithing."

His roving eye examined her countenance respectfully, but with

admiration. She caught the admiration and returned it, covertly but

unmistakably, pleased that her charms were appreciated.

They continued their rounds. The sun was very hot and the dust deep.

A woman would have known that these things distressed Estrella. She

picked her way through the debris; she dropped her head from the

burning; she felt her delicate garments moistening with perspiration,

her hair dampening; the dust sifted up through the air. Over in the

large corral a bronco buster, assisted by two of the cowboys, was

engaged in roping and throwing some wild mustangs. The sight was

wonderful, but here the dust billowed in clouds.

"I'm getting a little hot and tired," she confessed at last. "I think

I'll go to the house."

But near the shed she stopped again, interested in spite of herself by

a bit of repairing Tommy had under way. The tire of a wagon wheel had

been destroyed. Tommy was mending it. On the ground lay a fresh

cowhide. From this Tommy was cutting a wide strip. As she watched he

measured the strip around the circumference of the wheel.

"He isn't going to make a tire of that!" she exclaimed, incredulously.

"Sure," replied Senor Johnson.

"Will it wear?"

"It'll wear for a month or so, till we can get another from town."

Estrella advanced and felt curiously of the rawhide. Tommy was

fastening it to the wheel at the ends only.

"But how can it stay on that way?" she objected. "It'll come right off

as soon as you use it."

"It'll harden on tight enough."

"Why?" she persisted. "Does it shrink much when it dries?"

Senor Johnson stared to see if she might be joking. "Does it shrink?"

he repeated slowly. "There ain't nothing shrinks more, nor harder.

It'll mighty nigh break that wood."

Estrella, incredulous, interested, she could not have told why, stooped

again to feel the soft, yielding hide. She shook her head.

"You're joking me because I'm a tenderfoot," she accused brightly. "I

know it dries hard, and I'll believe it shrinks a lot, but to break

wood--that's piling it on a little thick."

"No, that's right, ma'am," broke in Brent Palmer. "It's awful strong.

It pulls like a horse when the desert sun gets on it. You wrap

anything up in a piece of that hide and see what happens. Some time

you take and wrap a piece around a potato and put her out in the sun

and see how it'll squeeze the water out of her."

"Is that so?" she appealed to Tommy. "I can't tell when they are making

fun of me."

"Yes, ma'am, that's right," he assured her.

Estrella passed a strip of the flexible hide playfully about her wrists.

"And if I let that dry that way I'd be handcuffed hard and fast," she

said.

"It would cut you down to the bone," supplemented Brent Palmer.

She untwisted the strip, and stood looking at it, her eyes wide.

"I--I don't know why--" she faltered. "The thought makes me a little

sick. Why, isn't it queer? Ugh! it's like a snake!" She flung it

from her energetically and turned toward the ranch house.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ESTRELLA

The honeymoon developed and the necessary adjustments took place. The

latter Senor Johnson had not foreseen; and yet, when the necessity for

them arose, he acknowledged them right and proper.

"Course she don't want to ride over to Circle I with us," he informed

his confidant, Jed Parker. "It's a long ride, and she ain't used to

riding yet. Trouble is I've been thinking of doing things with her

just as if she was a man. Women are different. They likes different

things."

This second idea gradually overlaid the first in Senor Johnson's mind.

Estrella showed little aptitude or interest in the rougher side of

life. Her husband's statement as to her being still unused to riding

was distinctly a euphemism. Estrella never arrived at the point of

feeling safe on a horse. In time she gave up trying, and the sorrel

drifted back to cow-punching. The range work she never understood.

As a spectacle it imposed itself on her interest for a week; but since

she could discover no real and vital concern in the welfare of cows,

soon the mere outward show became an old story. Estrella's sleek

nature avoided instinctively all that interfered with bodily

well-being. When she was cool and well-fed and not thirsty, and

surrounded by a proper degree of feminine daintiness, then she was

ready to amuse herself. But she could not understand the desirability

of those pleasures for which a certain price in discomfort must be

paid. As for firearms, she confessed herself frankly afraid of them.

That was the point at which her intimacy with them stopped.

The natural level to which these waters fell is easily seen. Quite

simply, the Senor found that a wife does not enter fully into her

husband's workaday life. The dreams he had dreamed did not come true.

This was at first a disappointment to him, of course, but the

disappointment did not last. Senor Johnson was a man of sense, and he

easily modified his first scheme of married life.

"She'd get sick of it, and I'd get sick of it," he formulated his new

philosophy. "Now I got something to come back to, somebody to look

forward to. And it's a WOMAN; it ain't one of these darn gangle-leg

cowgirls. The great thing is to feel you BELONG to someone; and that

someone nice and cool and fresh and purty is waitin' for you when you

come in tired. It beats that other little old idee of mine slick as a

gun barrel."

So, during this, the busy season of the range riding, immediately

before the great fall round-ups, Senor Johnson rode abroad all day, and

returned to his own hearth as many evenings of the week as he could.

Estrella always saw him coming and stood in the doorway to greet him.

He kicked off his spurs, washed and dusted himself, and spent the

evening with his wife. He liked the sound of exactly that phrase, and

was fond of repeating it to himself in a variety of connections.

"When I get in I'll spend the evening with my wife." "If I don't ride

over to Circle I, I'll spend the evening with my wife," and so on. He

had a good deal to tell her of the day's discoveries, the state of the

range, and the condition of the cattle. To all of this she listened at

least with patience. Senor Johnson, like most men who have long

delayed marriage, was self-centred without knowing it. His interest in

his mate had to do with her personality rather than with her doings.

"What you do with yourself all day to-day?" he occasionally inquired.

"Oh, there's lots to do," she would answer, a trifle listlessly; and

this reply always seemed quite to satisfy his interest in the subject.

Senor Johnson, with a curiously instant transformation often to be

observed among the adventurous, settled luxuriously into the state of

being a married man. Its smallest details gave him distinct and

separate sensations of pleasure.

"I plumb likes it all," he said. "I likes havin' interest in some fool

geranium plant, and I likes worryin' about the screen doors and all the

rest of the plumb foolishness. It does me good. It feels like

stretchin' your legs in front of a good warm fire."

The centre, the compelling influence of this new state of affairs, was

undoubtedly Estrella, and yet it is equally to be doubted whether she

stood for more than the suggestion. Senor Johnson conducted his entire

life with reference to his wife. His waking hours were concerned only

with the thought of her, his every act revolved in its orbit controlled

by her influence. Nevertheless she, as an individual human being, had

little to do with it. Senor Johnson referred his life to a state of

affairs he had himself invented and which he called the married state,

and to a woman whose attitude he had himself determined upon and whom

he designated as his wife. The actual state of affairs--whatever it

might be--he did not see; and the actual woman supplied merely the

material medium necessary to the reality of his idea. Whether

Estrella's eyes were interested or bored, bright or dull, alert or

abstracted, contented or afraid, Senor Johnson could not have told you.

He might have replied promptly enough--that they were happy and loving.

That is the way Senor Johnson conceived a wife's eyes.

The routine of life, then, soon settled. After breakfast the Senor

insisted that his wife accompany him on a short tour of inspection. "A

little pasear," he called it, "just to get set for the day." Then his

horse was brought, and he rode away on whatever business called him.

Like a true son of the alkali, he took no lunch with him, nor expected

his horse to feed until his return. This was an hour before sunset.

The evening passed as has been described. It was all very simple.

When the business hung close to the ranch house--as in the bronco

busting, the rebranding of bought cattle, and the like--he was able to

share his wife's day. Estrella conducted herself dreamily, with a slow

smile for him when his actual presence insisted on her attention. She

seemed much given to staring out over the desert. Senor Johnson,

appreciatively, thought he could understand this. Again, she gave much

leisure to rocking back and forth on the low, wide veranda, her hands

idle, her eyes vacant, her lips dumb. Susie O'Toole had early proved

incompatible and had gone.

"A nice, contented, home sort of a woman," said Senor Johnson.

One thing alone besides the deserts on which she never seemed tired of

looking, fascinated her. Whenever a beef was killed for the uses of

the ranch, she commanded strips of the green skin. Then, like a child,

she bound them and sewed them and nailed them to substances

particularly susceptible to their constricting power. She choked the

necks of green gourds, she indented the tender bark of cottonwood

shoots, she expended an apparently exhaustless ingenuity on the

fabrication of mechanical devices whose principle answered to the

pulling of the drying rawhide. And always along the adobe fence could

be seen a long row of potatoes bound in skin, some of them fresh and

smooth and round; some sweating in the agony of squeezing; some

wrinkled and dry and little, the last drops of life tortured out of

them. Senor Johnson laughed good-humouredly at these toys, puzzled to

explain their fascination for his wife.

"They're sure an amusing enough contraption honey," said he, "but what

makes you stand out there in the hot sun staring at them that way?

It's cooler on the porch."

"I don't know," said Estrella, helplessly, turning her slow, vacant

gaze on him. Suddenly she shivered in a strong physical revulsion. "I

don't know!" she cried with passion.

After they had been married about a month Senor Johnson found it

necessary to drive into Willets.

"How would you like to go, too, and buy some duds?" he asked Estrella.

"Oh!" she cried strangely. "When?"

"Day after tomorrow."

The trip decided, her entire attitude changed. The vacancy of her gaze

lifted; her movements quickened; she left off staring at the desert,

and her rawhide toys were neglected. Before starting, Senor Johnson

gave her a check book. He explained that there were no banks in

Willets, but that Goodrich, the storekeeper, would honour her signature.

"Buy what you want to, honey," said he. "Tear her wide open. I'm good

for it."

"How much can I draw?" she asked, smiling.

"As much as you want to," he replied with emphasis.

"Take care"--she poised before him with the check book extended--"I may

draw--I might draw fifty thousand dollars."

"Not out of Goodrich," he grinned; "you'd bust the game. But hold him

up for the limit, anyway."

He chuckled aloud, pleased at the rare, bird-like coquetry of the

woman. They drove to Willets. It took them two days to go and two

days to return. Estrella went through the town in a cyclone burst of

enthusiasm, saw everything, bought everything, exhausted everything in

two hours. Willets was not a large place. On her return to the ranch

she sat down at once in the rocking-chair on the veranda. Her hands

fell into her lap. She stared out over the desert.

Senor Johnson stole up behind her, clumsy as a playful bear. His eyes

followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay across the

slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch of ink.

"Pretty, isn't it, honey?" said he. "Glad to get back?"

She smiled at him her vacant, slow smile.

"Here's my check book," she said; "put it away for me. I'm through

with it."

"I'll put it in my desk," said he. "It's in the left-hand cubbyhole,"

he called from inside.

"Very well," she replied.

He stood in the doorway, looking fondly at her unconscious shoulders

and the pose of her blonde head thrown back against the high

rocking-chair.

"That's the sort of a woman, after all," said Senor Johnson. "No blame

fuss about her."

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ROUND-UP

This, as you well may gather, was in the summer routine. Now the time

of the great fall round-up drew near. The home ranch began to bustle

in preparation.

All through Cochise County were short mountain ranges set down,

apparently at random, like a child's blocks. In and out between them

flowed the broad, plain-like valleys. On the valleys were the various

ranges, great or small, controlled by the different individuals of the

Cattlemen's Association. During the year an unimportant, but certain,

shifting of stock took place. A few cattle of Senor Johnson's Lazy Y

eluded the vigilance of his riders to drift over through the Grant Pass

and into the ranges of his neighbour; equally, many of the neighbour's

steers watered daily at Senor Johnson's troughs. It was a matter of

courtesy to permit this, but one of the reasons for the fall round-up

was a redistribution to the proper ranges. Each cattle-owner sent an

outfit to the scene of labour. The combined outfits moved slowly from

one valley to another, cutting out the strays, branding the late

calves, collecting for the owner of that particular range all his

stock, that he might select his marketable beef. In turn each

cattleman was host to his neighbours and their men.

This year it had been decided to begin the circle of the round-up at

the C 0 Bar, near the banks of the San Pedro. Thence it would work

eastward, wandering slowly in north and south deviation, to include all

the country, until the final break-up would occur at the Lazy Y.

The Lazy Y crew was to consist of four men, thirty riding horses, a

"chuck wagon," and cook. These, helping others, and receiving help in

turn, would suffice, for in the round-up labour was pooled to a common

end. With them would ride Jed Parker, to safeguard his master's

interests.

For a week the punchers, in their daily rides, gathered in the range

ponies. Senor Johnson owned fifty horses which he maintained at the

home ranch for every-day riding, two hundred broken saddle animals,

allowed the freedom of the range, except when special occasion demanded

their use, and perhaps half a thousand quite unbroken--brood mares,

stallions, young horses, broncos, and the like. At this time of year

it was his habit to corral all those saddlewise in order to select

horses for the round-ups and to replace the ranch animals. The latter

he turned loose for their turn at the freedom of the range.

The horses chosen, next the men turned their attention to outfit. Each

had, of course, his saddle, spurs, and "rope." Of the latter the chuck

wagon carried many extra. That vehicle, furthermore, transported such

articles as the blankets, the tarpaulins under which to sleep, the

running irons for branding, the cooking layout, and the men's personal

effects. All was in readiness to move for the six weeks' circle, when

a complication arose. Jed Parker, while nimbly escaping an irritated

steer, twisted the high heel of his boot on the corral fence. He

insisted the injury amounted to nothing. Senor Johnson however,

disagreed.

"It don't amount to nothing, Jed," he pronounced, after manipulation,

"but she might make a good able-bodied injury with a little coaxing.

Rest her a week and then you'll be all right."

"Rest her, the devil!" growled Jed; "who's going to San Pedro?"

"I will, of course," replied the Senor promptly. "Didje think we'd send

the Chink?"

"I was first cousin to a Yaqui jackass for sendin' young Billy Ellis

out. He'll be back in a week. He'd do."

"So'd the President," the Senor pointed out; "I hear he's had some

experience."

"I hate to have you to go," objected Jed. "There's the missis." He

shot a glance sideways at his chief.

"I guess she and I can stand it for a week," scoffed the latter. "Why,

we are old married folks by now. Besides, you can take care of her."

"I'll try," said Jed Parker, a little grimly.

CHAPTER NINE

THE LONG TRAIL

The round-up crew started early the next morning, just about sun-up.

Senor Johnson rode first, merely to keep out of the dust. Then

followed Torn Rich, jogging along easily in the cow-puncher's "Spanish

trot" whistling soothingly to quiet the horses, giving a lead to the

band of saddle animals strung out loosely behind him. These moved on

gracefully and lightly in the manner of the unburdened plains horse,

half decided to follow Tom's guidance, half inclined to break to right

or left. Homer and Jim Lester flanked them, also riding in a slouch of

apparent laziness, but every once in a while darting forward like

bullets to turn back into the main herd certain individuals whom the

early morning of the unwearied day had inspired to make a dash for

liberty. The rear was brought up by Jerky Jones, the fourth

cow-puncher, and the four-mule chuck wagon, lost in its own dust.

The sun mounted; the desert went silently through its changes. Wind

devils raised straight, true columns of dust six, eight hundred, even a

thousand feet into the air. The billows of dust from the horses and

men crept and crawled with them like a living creature. Glorious

colour, magnificent distance, astonishing illusion, filled the world.

Senor Johnson rode ahead, looking at these things. The separation from

his wife, brief as it would be, left room in his soul for the

heart-hunger which beauty arouses in men. He loved the charm of the

desert, yet it hurt him.

Behind him the punchers relieved the tedium of the march, each after

his own manner. In an hour the bunch of loose horses lost its

early-morning good spirits and settled down to a steady plodding, that

needed no supervision. Tom Rich led them, now, in silence, his time

fully occupied in rolling Mexican cigarettes with one hand. The other

three dropped back together and exchanged desultory remarks.

Occasionally Jim Lester sang. It was always the same song of uncounted

verses, but Jim had a strange fashion of singing a single verse at a

time. After a long interval he would sing another.

"My Love is a rider

And broncos he breaks,

But he's given up riding

And all for my sake,

For he found him a horse

And it suited him so

That he vowed he'd ne'er ride

Any other bronco!"

he warbled, and then in the same breath:

"Say, boys, did you get onto the pisano-looking shorthorn at Willets

last week?

"Nope."

"He sifted in wearin' one of these hardboiled hats, and carryin' a

brogue thick enough to skate on. Says he wants a job drivin'

team--that he drives a truck plenty back to St. Louis, where he comes

from. Goodrich sets him behind them little pinto cavallos he has.

Say! that son of a gun a driver! He couldn't drive nails in a snow

bank." An expressive free-hand gesture told all there was to tell of

the runaway. "Th' shorthorn landed headfirst in Goldfish Charlie's

horse trough. Charlie fishes him out. 'How the devil, stranger,' says

Charlie, 'did you come to fall in here?' 'You blamed fool,' says the

shorthorn, just cryin' mad, 'I didn't come to fall in here, I come to

drive horses.'"

And then, without a transitory pause:

"Oh, my love has a gun

And that gun he can use,

But he's quit his gun fighting

As well as his booze.

And he's sold him his saddle,

His spurs, and his rope,

And there's no more cow-punching

And that's what I hope."

The alkali dust, swirled back by a little breeze, billowed up and

choked him. Behind, the mules coughed, their coats whitening with the

powder. Far ahead in the distance lay the westerly mountains. They

looked an hour away, and yet every man and beast in the outfit knew

that hour after hour they were doomed, by the enchantment of the land,

to plod ahead without apparently getting an inch nearer. The only

salvation was to forget the mountains and to fill the present moment

full of little things.

But Senor Johnson, to-day, found himself unable to do this. In spite

of his best efforts he caught himself straining toward the distant

goal, becoming impatient, trying to measure progress by landmarks--in

short acting like a tenderfoot on the desert, who wears himself down

and dies, not from the hardship, but from the nervous strain which he

does not know how to avoid. Senor Johnson knew this as well as you and

I. He cursed himself vigorously, and began with great resolution to

think of something else.

He was aroused from this by Tom Rich, riding alongside. "Somebody

coming, Senor," said he.

Senor Johnson raised his eyes to the approaching cloud of dust.

Silently the two watched it until it resolved into a rider loping

easily along. In fifteen minutes he drew rein, his pony dropped

immediately from a gallop to immobility, he swung into a graceful

at-ease attitude across his saddle, grinned amiably, and began to roll

a cigarette.

"Billy Ellis," cried Rich.

"That's me," replied the newcomer.

"Thought you were down to Tucson?"

"I was."

"Thought you wasn't comin' back for a week yet?"

"Tommy," proffered Billy Ellis dreamily, "when you go to Tucson next

you watch out until you sees a little, squint-eyed Britisher. Take a

look at him. Then come away. He says he don't know nothin' about

poker. Mebbe he don't, but he'll outhold a warehouse."

But here Senor Johnson broke in: "Billy, you're just in time. Jed has

hurt his foot and can't get on for a week yet. I want you to take

charge. I've got a lot to do at the ranch."

"Ain't got my war-bag," objected Billy.

"Take my stuff. I'll send yours on when Parker goes."

"All right."

"Well, so long."

"So long, Senor." They moved. The erratic Arizona breezes twisted the

dust of their going. Senor Johnson watched them dwindle. With them

seemed to go the joy in the old life. No longer did the long trail

possess for him its ancient fascination. He had become a domestic man.

"And I'm glad of it," commented Senor Johnson.

The dust eddied aside. Plainly could be seen the swaying wagon, the

loose-riding cowboys, the gleaming, naked backs of the herd. Then the

veil closed over them again. But down the wind, faintly, in snatches,

came the words of Jim Lester's song:

"Oh, Sam has a gun

That has gone to the bad,

Which makes poor old Sammy

Feel pretty, damn sad,

For that gun it shoots high,

And that gun it shoots low,

And it wabbles about

Like a bucking bronco!"

Senor Johnson turned and struck spurs to his willing pony.

CHAPTER TEN

THE DISCOVERY

Senor Buck Johnson loped quickly back toward the home ranch, his heart

glad at this fortunate solution of his annoyance. The home ranch lay

in plain sight not ten miles away. As Senor Johnson idly watched it

shimmering in the heat, a tiny figure detached itself from the mass and

launched itself in his direction.

"Wonder what's eating HIM!" marvelled Senor Johnson, "--and who is it?"

The figure drew steadily nearer. In half an hour it had approached

near enough to be recognised.

"Why, it's Jed!" cried the Senor, and spurred his horse. "What do you

mean, riding out with that foot?" he demanded sternly, when within

hailing distance.

"Foot, hell!" gasped Parker, whirling his horse alongside. "Your

wife's run away with Brent Palmer."

For fully ten seconds not the faintest indication proved that the

husband had heard, except that he lifted his bridle-hand, and the

well-trained pony stopped.

"What did you say?" he asked finally.

"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer," repeated Jed, almost with

impatience.

Again the long pause.

"How do you know?" asked Senor Johnson, then.

"Know, hell! It's been going on for a month. Sang saw them drive off.

They took the buckboard. He heard 'em planning it. He was too scairt

to tell till they'd gone. I just found it out. They've been gone two

hours. Must be going to make the Limited." Parker fidgeted, impatient

to be off. "You're wasting time," he snapped at the motionless figure.

Suddenly Johnson's face flamed. He reached from his saddle to clutch

Jed's shoulder, nearly pulling the foreman from his pony.

"You lie!" he cried. "You're lying to me! It ain't SO!"

Parker made no effort to extricate himself from the painful grasp. His

cool eyes met the blazing eyes of his chief.

"I wisht I did lie, Buck," he said sadly. "I wisht it wasn't so. But

it is."

Johnson's head snapped back to the front with a groan. The pony

snorted as the steel bit his flanks, leaped forward, and with head

outstretched, nostrils wide, the wicked white of the bronco flickering

in the corner of his eye, struck the bee line for the home ranch. Jed

followed as fast as he was able.

On his arrival he found his chief raging about the house like a wild

beast. Sang trembled from a quick and stormy interrogatory in the

kitchen. Chairs had been upset and let lie. Estrella's belongings had

been tumbled over. Senor Johnson there found only too sure proof, in

the various lacks, of a premeditated and permanent flight. Still he

hoped; and as long as he hoped, he doubted, and the demons of doubt

tore him to a frenzy. Jed stood near the door, his arms folded, his

weight shifted to his sound foot, waiting and wondering what the next

move was to be.

Finally, Senor Johnson, struck with a new idea, ran to his desk to

rummage in a pigeon-hole. But he found no need to do so, for lying on

the desk was what he sought--the check book from which Estrella was to

draw on Goodrich for the money she might need. He fairly snatched it

open. Two of the checks had been torn out, stub and all. And then his

eye caught a crumpled bit of blue paper under the edge of the desk.

He smoothed it out. The check was made out to bearer and signed

Estrella Johnson. It called for fifteen thousand dollars. Across the

middle was a great ink blot, reason for its rejection.

At once Senor Johnson became singularly and dangerously cool.

"I reckon you're right, Jed," he cried in his natural voice. "She's

gone with him. She's got all her traps with her, and she's drawn on

Goodrich for fifteen thousand. And SHE never thought of going just

this time of month when the miners are in with their dust, and Goodrich

would be sure to have that much. That's friend Palmer. Been going on

a month, you say?"

"I couldn't say anything, Buck," said Parker anxiously. "A man's never

sure enough about them things till afterwards."

"I know," agreed Buck Johnson; "give me a light for my cigarette."

He puffed for a moment, then rose, stretching his legs. In a moment he

returned from the other room, the old shiny Colt's forty-five strapped

loosely on his hip. Jed looked him in the face with some anxiety. The

foreman was not deceived by the man's easy manner; in fact, he knew it

to be symptomatic of one of the dangerous phases of Senor Johnson's

character.

"What's up, Buck?" he inquired.

"Just going out for a pasear with the little horse, Jed."

"I suppose I better come along?"

"Not with your lame foot, Jed."

The tone of voice was conclusive. Jed cleared his throat.

"She left this for you," said he, proffering an envelope. "Them kind

always writes."

"Sure," agreed Senor Johnson, stuffing the letter carelessly into his

side pocket. He half drew the Colt's from its holster and slipped it

back again. "Makes you feel plumb like a man to have one of these

things rubbin' against you again," he observed irrelevantly. Then he

went out, leaving the foreman leaning, chair tilted, against the wall.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE CAPTURE

Although he had left the room so suddenly, Senor Johnson did not at

once open the gate of the adobe wall. His demeanour was gay, for he

was a Westerner, but his heart was black. Hardly did he see beyond the

convexity of his eyeballs.

The pony, warmed up by its little run, pawed the ground, impatient to

be off. It was a fine animal, clean-built, deep-chested, one of the

mustang stock descended from the Arabs brought over by Pizarro. Sang

watched fearfully from the slant of the kitchen window. Jed Parker,

even, listened for the beat of the horse's hoofs.

But Senor Johnson stood stock-still, his brain absolutely numb and

empty. His hand brushed against something which fell, to the ground.

He brought his dull gaze to bear on it. The object proved to be a

black, wrinkled spheroid, baked hard as iron in the sunshine of

Estrella's toys, a potato squeezed to dryness by the constricting power

of the rawhide. In a row along the fence were others. To Senor

Johnson it seemed that thus his heart was being squeezed in the fire of

suffering.

But the slight movement of the falling object roused him. He swung

open the gate. The pony bowed his head delightedly. He was not tired,

but his reins depended straight to the ground, and it was a point of

honour with him to stand. At the saddle horn, in its sling, hung the

riata, the "rope" without which no cowman ever stirs abroad, but which

Senor Johnson had rarely used of late. Senor Johnson threw the reins

over, seized the pony's mane in his left hand, held the pommel with his

right, and so swung easily aboard, the pony's jump helping him to the

saddle. Wheel tracks led down the trail. He followed them.

Truth to tell, Senor Johnson had very little idea of what he was going

to do. His action was entirely instinctive. The wheel tracks held to

the southwest so he held to the southwest, too.

The pony hit his stride. The miles slipped by. After seven of them

the animal slowed to a walk. Senor Johnson allowed him to get his

wind, then spurred him on again. He did not even take the ordinary

precautions of a pursuer. He did not even glance to the horizon in

search.

About supper-time he came to the first ranch house. There he took a

bite to eat and exchanged his horse for another, a favourite of his,

named Button. The two men asked no questions.

"See Mrs. Johnson go through?" asked the Senor from the saddle.

"Yes, about three o'clock. Brent Palmer driving her. Bound for

Willets to visit the preacher's wife, she said. Ought to catch up at

the Circle I. That's where they'd all spend the night, of course. So

long."

Senor Johnson knew now the couple would follow the straight road. They

would fear no pursuit. He himself was supposed not to return for a

week, and the story of visiting the minister's wife was not only

plausible, it was natural. Jed had upset calculations, because Jed was

shrewd, and had eyes in his head. Buck Johnson's first mental numbness

was wearing away; he was beginning to think.

The night was very still and very dark, the stars very bright in their

candle-like glow. The man, loping steadily on through the darkness,

recalled that other night, equally still, equally dark, equally starry,

when he had driven out from his accustomed life into the unknown with a

woman by his side, the sight of whom asleep had made him feel "almost

holy." He uttered a short laugh.

The pony was a good one, well equal to twice the distance he would be

called upon to cover this night. Senor Johnson managed him well. By

long experience and a natural instinct he knew just how hard to push

his mount, just how to keep inside the point where too rapid exhaustion

of vitality begins.

Toward the hour of sunrise he drew rein to look about him. The desert,

till now wrapped in the thousand little noises that make night silence,

drew breath in preparation for the awe of the daily wonder. It lay

across the world heavy as a sea of lead, and as lifeless; deeply

unconscious, like an exhausted sleeper. The sky bent above, the stars

paling. Far away the mountains seemed to wait. And then,

imperceptibly, those in the east became blacker and sharper, while

those in the west became faintly lucent and lost the distinctness of

their outline. The change was nothing, yet everything. And suddenly a

desert bird sprang into the air and began to sing.

Senor Johnson caught the wonder of it. The wonder of it seemed to him

wasted, useless, cruel in its effect. He sighed impatiently, and drew

his hand across his eyes.

The desert became grey with the first light before the glory. In the

illusory revealment of it Senor Johnson's sharp frontiersman's eyes

made out an object moving away from him in the middle distance. In a

moment the object rose for a second against the sky line, then

disappeared. He knew it to be the buckboard, and that the vehicle had

just plunged into the dry bed of an arroyo.

Immediately life surged through him like an electric shock. He

unfastened the riata from its sling, shook loose the noose, and moved

forward in the direction in which he had last seen the buckboard.

At the top of the steep little bank he stopped behind the mesquite,

straining his eyes; luck had been good to him. The buckboard had

pulled up, and Brent Palmer was at the moment beginning a little fire,

evidently to make the morning coffee.

Senor Johnson struck spurs to his horse and half slid, half fell,

clattering, down the steep clay bank almost on top of the couple below.

Estrella screamed. Brent Palmer jerked out an oath, and reached for

his gun. The loop of the riata fell wide over him, immediately to be

jerked tight, binding his arms tight to his side.

The bronco-buster, swept from his feet by the pony's rapid turn,

nevertheless struggled desperately to wrench himself loose. Button,

intelligent at all rope work, walked steadily backward, step by step,

taking up the slack, keeping the rope tight as he had done hundreds of

times before when a steer had struggled as this man was struggling now.

His master leaped from the saddle and ran forward. Button continued to

walk slowly back. The riata remained taut. The noose held.

Brent Palmer fought savagely, even then. He kicked, he rolled over and

over, he wrenched violently at his pinioned arms, he twisted his

powerful young body from Senor Johnson's grasp again and again. But it

was no use. In less than a minute he was bound hard and fast. Button

promptly slackened the rope. The dust settled. The noise of the

combat died. Again could be heard the single desert bird singing

against the dawn.

CHAPTER TWELVE

IN THE ARROYO

Senor Johnson quietly approached Estrella. The girl had, during the

struggle, gone through an aimless but frantic exhibition of terror.

Now she shrank back, her eyes staring wildly, her hands behind her,

ready to flop again over the brink of hysteria.

"What are you going to do?" she demanded, her voice unnatural.

She received no reply. The man reached out and took her by the arm.

And then at once, as though the personal contact of the touch had

broken through the last crumb of numbness with which shock had overlaid

Buck Johnson's passions, the insanity of his rage broke out. He

twisted her violently on her face, knelt on her back, and, with the

short piece of hard rope the cowboy always carries to "hog-tie" cattle,

he lashed her wrists together. Then he arose panting, his square black

beard rising and falling with the rise and fall of his great chest.

Estrella had screamed again and again until her face had been fairly

ground into the alkali. There she had choked and strangled and gasped

and sobbed, her mind nearly unhinged with terror. She kept appealing

to him in a hoarse voice, but could get no reply, no indication that he

had even heard. This terrified her still more. Brent Palmer cursed

steadily and accurately, but the man did not seem to hear him either.

The tempest bad broken in Buck Johnson's soul. When he had touched

Estrella he had, for the first time, realised what he had lost. It was

not the woman--her he despised. But the dreams! All at once he knew

what they had been to him--he understood how completely the very

substance of his life had changed in response to their slow

soul-action. The new world had been blasted--the old no longer existed

to which to return.

Buck Johnson stared at this catastrophe until his sight blurred. Why,

it was atrocious! He had done nothing to deserve it! Why had they not

left him peaceful in his own life of cattle and the trail? He had been

happy. His dull eyes fell on the causes of the ruin.

And then, finally, in the understanding of how he had been tricked of

his life, his happiness, his right to well-being, the whole force of

the man's anger flared. Brent Palmer lay there cursing him

artistically. That man had done it; that man was in his power. He

would get even. How?

Estrella, too, lay huddled, helpless and defenseless, at his feet. She

had done it. He would get even. How?

He had spoken no word. He spoke none now, either in answer to

Estrella's appeals, becoming piteous in their craving for relief from

suspense, or in response to Brent Palmer's steady stream of insults and

vituperations. Such things were far below. The bitterness and anger

and desolation were squeezing his heart. He remembered the silly

little row of potatoes sewn in the green hide lying along the top of

the adobe fence, some fresh and round, some dripping as the rawhide

contracted, some black and withered and very small. A fierce and

savage light sprang into his eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE RAWHIDE

First of all he unhitched the horses from the buckboard and turned them

loose. Then, since he was early trained in Indian warfare, he dragged

Palmer to the wagon wheel, and tied him so closely to it that he could

not roll over. For, though the bronco-buster was already so fettered

that his only possible movement was of the jack-knife variety,

nevertheless he might be able to hitch himself along the ground to a

sharp stone, there to saw through the rope about his wrists. Estrella,

her husband held in contempt. He merely supplemented her wrist bands

by one about the ankles.

Leisurely he mounted Button and turned up the wagon trail, leaving the

two. Estrella had exhausted herself. She was capable of nothing more

in the way of emotion. Her eyes tight closed, she inhaled in deep,

trembling, long-drawn breaths, and exhaled with the name of her Maker.

Brent Palmer, on the contrary, was by no means subdued. He had

expected to be shot in cold blood. Now he did not know what to

anticipate. His black, level brows drawn straight in defiance, he

threw his curses after Johnson's retreating figure.

The latter, however, paid no attention. He had his purposes. Once at

the top of the arroyo he took a careful survey of the landscape, now

rich with dawn. Each excrescence on the plain his half-squinted eyes

noticed, and with instant skill relegated to its proper category of

soap-weed, mesquite, cactus. At length he swung Button in an easy lope

toward what looked to be a bunch of soap-weed in the middle distance.

But in a moment the cattle could be seen plainly. Button pricked up

his ears. He knew cattle. Now he proceeded tentatively, lifting high

his little hoofs to avoid the half-seen inequalities of the ground and

the ground's growths, wondering whether he were to be called on to rope

or to drive. When the rider had approached to within a hundred feet,

the cattle started. Immediately Button understood that he was to

pursue. No rope swung above his head, so he sheered off and ran as

fast as he could to cut ahead of the bunch. But his rider with knee

and rein forced him in. After a moment, to his astonishment, he found

himself running alongside a big steer. Button had never hunted

buffalo--Buck Johnson had.

The Colt's forty-five barked once, and then again. The steer staggered,

fell to his knees, recovered, and finally stopped, the blood streaming

from his nostrils. In a moment he fell heavily on his side--dead.

Senor Johnson at once dismounted and began methodically to skin the

animal. This was not easy for he had no way of suspending the carcass

nor of rolling it from side to side. However, he was practised at it

and did a neat job. Two or three times he even caught himself taking

extra pains that the thin flesh strips should not adhere to the inside

of the pelt. Then he smiled grimly, and ripped it loose.

After the hide had been removed he cut from the edge, around and

around, a long, narrow strip. With this he bound the whole into a

compact bundle, strapped it on behind his saddle, and remounted. He

returned to the arroyo.

Estrella still lay with her eyes closed. Brent Palmer looked up

keenly. The bronco-buster saw the green hide. A puzzled expression

crept across his face.

Roughly Johnson loosed his enemy from the wheel and dragged him to the

woman. He passed the free end of the riata about them both, tying them

close together. The girl continued to moan, out of her wits with

terror.

"What are you going to do now, you devil?" demanded Palmer, but

received no reply.

Buck Johnson spread out the rawhide. Putting forth his huge strength,

he carried to it the pair, bound together like a bale of goods, and

laid them on its cool surface. He threw across them the edges, and

then deliberately began to wind around and around the huge and unwieldy

rawhide package the strip he had cut from the edge of the pelt.

Nor was this altogether easy. At last Brent Palmer understood. He

writhed in the struggle of desperation, foaming blasphemies. The

uncouth bundle rolled here and there. But inexorably the other, from

the advantage of his position, drew the thongs tighter.

And then, all at once, from vituperation the bronco-buster fell to

pleading, not for life, but for death.

"For God's sake, shoot me!" he cried from within the smothering folds

of the rawhide. "If you ever had a heart in you, shoot me! Don't

leave me here to be crushed in this vise. You wouldn't do that to a

yellow dog. An Injin wouldn't do that, Buck. It's a joke, isn't it?

Don't go away and leave me, Buck. I've done you dirt. Cut my heart

out, if you want to; I won't say a word, but don't leave me here for

the sun--"

His voice was drowned in a piercing scream, as Estrella came to

herself and understood. Always the rawhide had possessed for her an

occult fascination and repulsion. She had never been able to touch it

without a shudder, and yet she had always been drawn to experiment with

it. The terror of her doom had now added to it for her all the vague

and premonitory terrors which heretofore she had not understood.

The richness of the dawn had flowed to the west. Day was at hand.

Breezes had begun to play across the desert; the wind devils to raise

their straight columns. A first long shaft of sunlight shot through a

pass in the Chiricahuas, trembled in the dust-moted air, and laid its

warmth on the rawhide. Senor Johnson roused himself from his gloom to

speak his first words of the episode.

"There, damn you!" said he. "I guess you'll be close enough together

now!"

He turned away to look for his horse.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE DESERT

Button was a trusty of Senor Johnson's private animals. He was never

known to leave his master in the lurch, and so was habitually allowed

certain privileges. Now, instead of remaining exactly on the spot

where he was "tied to the ground," he had wandered out of the dry

arroyo bed to the upper level of the plains, where he knew certain

bunch grasses might be found. Buck Johnson climbed the steep wooded

bank in search of him.

The pony stood not ten feet distant. At his master's abrupt appearance

he merely raised his head, a wisp of grass in the corner of his mouth,

without attempting to move away. Buck Johnson walked confidently to

him, fumbling in his side pocket for the piece of sugar with which he

habitually soothed Button's sophisticated palate. His hand encountered

Estrella's letter. He drew it out and opened it.

"Dear Buck," it read, "I am going away. I tried to be good, but I

can't. It's too lonesome for me. I'm afraid of the horses and the

cattle and the men and the desert. I hate it all. I tried to make you

see how I felt about it, but you couldn't seem to see. I know you'll

never forgive me, but I'd go crazy here. I'm almost crazy now. I

suppose you think I'm a bad woman, but I am not. You won't believe

that. Its' true though. The desert would make anyone bad. I don't

see how you stand it. You've been good to me, and I've really tried,

but it's no use. The country is awful. I never ought to have come.

I'm sorry you are going to think me a bad woman, for I like you and

admire you, but nothing, NOTHING could make me stay here any longer."

She signed herself simply Estrella Sands, her maiden name.

Buck Johnson stood staring at the paper for a much longer time than was

necessary merely to absorb the meaning of the words. His senses,

sharpened by the stress of the last sixteen hours, were trying mightily

to cut to the mystery of a change going on within himself. The phrases

of the letter were bald enough, yet they conveyed something vital to

his inner being. He could not understand what it was.

Then abruptly he raised his eyes.

Before him lay the desert, but a desert suddenly and miraculously

changed, a desert he had never seen before. Mile after mile it swept

away before him, hot, dry, suffocating, lifeless. The sparse

vegetation was grey with the alkali dust. The heat hung choking in the

air like a curtain. Lizards sprawled in the sun, repulsive. A

rattlesnake dragged its loathsome length from under a mesquite. The

dried carcass of a steer, whose parchment skin drew tight across its

bones, rattled in the breeze. Here and there rock ridges showed with

the obscenity of so many skeletons, exposing to the hard, cruel sky the

earth's nakedness. Thirst, delirium, death, hovered palpable in the

wind; dreadful, unconquerable, ghastly.

The desert showed her teeth and lay in wait like a fierce beast. The

little soul of man shrank in terror before it.

Buck Johnson stared, recalling the phrases of the letter, recalling the

words of his foreman, Jed Parker. "It's too lonesome for me," "I'm

afraid," "I hate it all," "I'd go crazy here," "The desert would

make anyone bad," "The country is awful." And the musing voice of the

old cattleman, "I wonder if she'll like the country!" They reiterated

themselves over and over; and always as refrain his own confident

reply, "Like the country? Sure! Why SHOULDN'T she?"

And then he recalled the summer just passing, and the woman who had

made no fuss. Chance remarks of hers came back to him, remarks whose

meaning he had not at the time grasped, but which now he saw were

desperate appeals to his understanding. He had known his desert. He

had never known hers.

With an exclamation Buck Johnson turned abruptly back to the arroyo.

Button followed him, mildly curious, certain that his master's

reappearance meant a summons for himself.

Down the miniature cliff the man slid, confidently, without hesitation,

sure of himself. His shoulders held squarely, his step elastic, his

eye bright, he walked to the fearful, shapeless bundle now lying

motionless on the flat surface of the alkali.

Brent Palmer had fallen into a grim silence, but Estrella still moaned.

The cattleman drew his knife and ripped loose the bonds. Immediately

the flaps of the wet rawhide fell apart, exposing to the new daylight

the two bound together. Buck Johnson leaned over to touch the woman's

shoulder.

"Estrella," said he gently.

Her eyes came open with a snap, and stared into his, wild with the

surprise of his return.

"Estrella," he repeated, "how old are you?"

She gulped down a sob, unable to comprehend the purport of his question.

"How old are you, Estrella?" he repeated again.

"Twenty-one," she gasped finally.

"Ah!" said he.

He stood for a moment in deep thought, then began methodically, without

haste, to cut loose the thongs that bound the two together.

When the man and the woman were quite freed, he stood for a moment, the

knife in his hand, looking down on them. Then he swung himself into

the saddle and rode away, straight down the narrow arroyo, out beyond

its lower widening, into the vast plains the hither side of the

Chiricahuas. The alkali dust was snatched by the wind from beneath his

horse's feet. Smaller and smaller he dwindled, rising and falling,

rising and falling in the monotonous cow-pony's lope. The heat shimmer

veiled him for a moment, but he reappeared. A mirage concealed him,

but he emerged on the other side of it. Then suddenly he was gone.

The desert had swallowed him up.