Holy Smoke rode in ahead with orders from Bully Bill for all hands
finished riding to fall to and help at the branding and the dehorning.
To each man was assigned some especial post or task, and Ho was in his
element as he shouted his orders to the men, “showing off” in great
form. His left eye had flattened in a broad wink to the veterinary
surgeon, as he paused by Cheerio, turned now from the Squeezegate and
trying to recapture the enthusiasm that had animated him before he had
noted that platform.
“Hey you there! Bull ses yer to give a hand to the Doc, and there ain’t
no time neither for mannicarring your nails before fallin’ to. This
ain’t no weddin’ march, take it from me. We ain’t had no round-up for
fun. We’re here to brand and dehorn, d’ you get me?”
“Righto!”
Cheerio drew up sprightly before Dr. Murray and saluted that
grimy, nicotine-stained “vet.” The latter glimpsed him over in one
unflattering and comprehensive sweep of a pair of keen black eyes.
Then, through the corner of his mouth, he hailed young Sandy, right on
the job at the fire.
“Hey, kid, give a poke, will yer? Keep that fire agoing.”
This was a job upon which Sandy doted. From his baby years, fire had
been both his joy and his bane, for despite many threats and whippings,
the burning down of a costly barn brought a drastic punishment that was
to stick hotly in the memory of even a boy who loved fire as dearly as
did Sandy. It caused him forevermore to regard matches with respect
and an element of fear. P. D. had deliberately burned the tips of his
son’s fingers. Though Sandy feared the fire, he still loved it. With
both care and craft, therefore, he poked the fire, and pounded the huge
pieces of coal till they spluttered and burst into flames. The heat
grew intense.
The cattle were now pouring into the corrals and the riders by the
gates were cutting out such of the mothers as had gotten through,
besides certain weaklings of the herd that were to be spared the
branding. These, temporarily driven to adjoining corrals, set up
the most deafening outcries and calls for their young, while in the
calf corrals these sturdy young creatures voiced their indignant and
anguished protests.
Darting in and out of the clamouring herd, the experienced “hands”
bunched and separated them according to the bellowing orders of Holy
Smoke.
The scorching crunch of the closing Squeezegate and the first long
bawl of agony swept the pink from the cheeks of the Englishman. He was
seized with a sudden, overwhelming impulse to flee from this Place of
Horrors, but as he turned instinctively toward the gate, he saw Hilda
standing upon it. She had climbed to the third rung and, hands holding
lightly to the top rail, she watched the operations with professional
curiosity. For a moment, Cheerio suffered a pang of revolting
repugnance. That one so young and so lovely should be thus callous to
suffering seemed to him an inexcusable blemish.
It may be that Hilda sensed something of his judgment of her, for there
was a pronounced lifting of that dangerous young chin and the free
toss of the head so characteristic of her wild nature, while her dark
eyes shone defiantly. Almost unconsciously, he found himself excusing
her. She had been born to this life. Since her baby years she had been
freely among cattle and horses and men. Daughter of a cattleman, Hilda
knew that the most painful of the operations, namely, the dehorning,
was, in a measure, a merciful thing for the cattle, who might otherwise
gore each other to death. The vaccination was but a pin prick, an
assurance against the deadly blackleg. As for the branding, it was
not nearly as painful as was generally supposed, and first aid was
immediately administered to relieve the pang of the burning. It was the
only means the cattlemen had for the identification of their property.
She resented, therefore, the horror and reproach which she sensed in
the stern gaze of the Englishman. Her cool, level glance swept his
white, accusing face.
“Pretty sight, isn’t it?” she taunted. “If there’s one thing I love,”
she went on, defiantly, “it is to see a brand slapped on true!”
With a nonchalant wisp of a smile, her tossing head indicated the
stake, to which a three-month-old calf was bound, its head upturned as
the red-hot branding iron smote with a firm, quick shot upon its left
side.
The odour of burnt hide nauseated Cheerio. He felt the blood deserting
his face and lips. His knees and hands had a curiously numb sensation.
He was dizzy and almost blind. He found himself holding to the gate
rail, the critical, judging glance of the girl fixed in question upon
his face.
Like one hypnotized, he forced his gaze toward the branded calf and he
saw something then that brought his trembling hand out in a gesture
of almost entreaty and pain. A long, red spurt of blood was trickling
down the animal’s side. The old terror of blood swept over him in a
surge--a terror that had bitten into his soul upon the field of battle.
It was something constitutional, pathological, utterly beyond his
control.
Cheerio no longer saw the girl beside him, nor felt the stab of her
scornful smile. He had the impulse to cry out to her, to explain that
which had been incomprehensible to his comrades in France.
Hilda’s voice seemed to come from very far away and the tumult that
made up the bawling voices of Holy Smoke and the raging hands of the
O Bar O was utterly unintelligible to him; nor could he comprehend
that the shouts were directed at him. In a way, the shouting brought
him stark back to another scene, when, in wrath, men seemed to rush
over him and all in a black moment the world had spun around him in
a nightmare that was all made up of blood--filthy, terrifying, human
blood.
Ho’s bawling message was transmitted from bawling mouth to bawling
mouth.
“Take the rope at the south stake, and take it damn quick. Are yer
goin’ to let the bloody calf wait all the damn day for his brandin’?”
Above the tumult cut the girl’s quiet, incisive words:
“Get on your job! You’re wanted at the south stake.”
“My job? Oh, by Jove, what was it I was to do?”
His hand went vaguely across his eyes. He staggered a few paces across
the corral.
“Hold the rope!” squealed Sandy, jumping up and down by the stake. “I
gotter keep the fire goin’, and the other fellers has their hands full
at the Squeezegate.”
“Hold the bally rope! Oh, yes. Wh-wh-where is the bally thing?”
“Here! Catch him! That’s Jake! There you go, round and round. Keep
agoin’. Hold taut there! Don’t let go whatever you do. That calf’s
awful strong. If you don’t look out she’ll get away!”
Sandy’s young wrists had been barely strong enough to hold the rope
that bound the wretched calf to the stake. Pink Eye, wielding with
skill a long lariat that never failed to land upon the horns of the
desired calf and bring it to the stake, urged all hands along with
profane and impure language. Automatically and with perfect precision,
Hootmon was clapping the brand upon one calf after another and passing
them along to the “Vet,” who in turn thrust the syringe into the thigh,
the prick of the vaccination being dulled in comparison with the
fiercer pang of the branding iron. Now the rope had passed from Sandy
to Cheerio and there was a pause.
“Get a wiggle on you! Hold tight! Round this way! For the love of Saint
Peter!”
At the other end of the rope that Sandy had thrust into his hands, a
three-month-old calf pulled and fought for freedom. From its head,
where the dehorning shears had already performed their work a dark
sickening stream dripped. Sandy had twisted the rope partly around the
post but it still remained unknotted.
Someone was calling something across the corral. Cheerio found himself
going around and around the post. Suddenly a wild bawl of anguish from
the tortured animal sent him staggering back and at the same moment the
calf seemed to plunge against him and the hot blood spurted against his
face.
At that moment he clearly heard again the crisp whipping words of his
captain, scorching his soul with its bitter ring of hatred and scorn.
The rope slipped from his hand. He threw up his arm blindly, shrinking
back. His breath caught in the old craven sob. Down into deep depths of
space he sank, sickened.
Hilda McPherson had leaped down from the rail and with an inarticulate
cry, she gathered Cheerio’s head into her arms. It was the coarse
sneering voice of Holy Smoke that recalled her and forced her to see
that shining thing that was pinned to the breast of the unconscious man.
“Wearin’ her over his heart, huh!” chuckled Ho, one thick, dirty finger
upon the locket, while his knowing glance pinned the stricken one of
the girl. With a sob, Hilda drew back, and came slowly to her feet, her
eyes still looking down at the unconscious face with an element of both
terror and anguish.
He returned with a cry--a startling cry of blended agony and fear, for
the odour of blood was still in his nostrils and all about him was the
tumult of the battlefield; but all that Hilda noted was that his first
motion was that grasp at his breast. His hand closed above the locket.
He sat up unsteadily, dazedly. He even made an effort now to smile.
“That’s f-funny. Carn’t stand the blood. M-makes me f-funky.
C-c-constitutional--” His words dribbled off.
Hilda said nothing. She continued to stare down at him, but her face
had hardened.
“What t’ ’ell’s the matter?” snarled Ho. “Ain’t yer fit to stand the
gaff of a bit of brandin’ even?”
The girl’s averted face gave him no encouragement, and Cheerio went on
deliriously, slipping deeper and deeper into the mire of disgrace.
“C-carn’t stand the b-b-blood. M-makes me sick. Constitutional.
Affected me like that in France. I w-w-went f-funky when they needed me
m-most--dr-opped out, you know--r-r-r-ran away and----”
Ho, hand cupped at the back of his ear, was drinking in every word
of the broken confession, while his delighted eyes exchanged glances
with the girl. Her chin had gone to a high level. Without looking at
Cheerio, she said:
“Say no more. We have your number.”
“Better get to the bunkhouse,” said Ho. “This ain’t no place for a
minister’s son.”
Cheerio managed somehow to come to his feet. He still felt fearfully
weak and the persisting odour of blood and burnt hide made him sick
beyond endurance. Limping to the gate, he paused a moment to say to the
girl, with a pathetic attempt at lightness of speech:
“’Fraid I’m not cut out for cowboy life. I’d j-jolly well like to learn
the g-game. I d-don’t seem exactly to fit.”
She was leaning against the corral gate. Her face was turned away,
and the averted cheek was scarlet. He felt the blaze of her scornful
eyes and suffered an exquisite pang of longing to see them again as
sometimes, after the readings in the evening, humid and wide, they had
looked back at him in the twilight.
“No, you don’t fit,” she said slowly. “It takes a man with guts to
stand our life--a dead game sport, and not--not----”
She left the sentence unfinished, leaving the epithet to his
imagination. She turned her back upon him. He limped to the house. For
a long time he sat on the steps, his head in his hands.
* * * * *
Slowly there grew into his consciousness another scene. He had come
to suddenly out of just such a moment of unconsciousness as that he
had suffered at the corral. Then there had flooded over him such
an overpowering consciousness of what had befallen him that he had
staggered, with a shout, to his feet. At the psychological moment,
when his company had started forward, he had welched, stumbled back,
and, with the anguished oaths of the captain he loved ringing in his
ears, Cheerio had gone down into darkness. He had come to as one in a
resurrection, born anew, and invigorated with a passionate resolve to
compensate with his life for that error, that moment of weakness.
There was an objective to be taken at any cost. The men had gone on. He
found himself crawling across No Man’s Land. But a hundred feet away he
came to his company. Upon the ground they lay, like a bunch of sheep
without a leader. There was not an officer left, save that one who had
been his friend and who had cursed him for a renegade when he turned
back. Fearfully wounded, his captain was slowly pulling his way along
the ground, painfully worming toward that clump of wood from which the
sporadic bursts of gun fire were coming. Cheerio understood. Someone
had to put that machine-gun out of commission or they would all be
annihilated. He was crawling side by side with his captain, begging
him to turn back and to trust him to take his place. He was pleading,
arguing, threatening and forcing the wounded man down into a shell-hole
where he could not move. Now he was on his own job.
Alone, within forty or fifty yards of the machine-gun, he paused,
to take stock of what he had in the way of ammunition with him. He
found he had a single smoke bomb and resolved to use it. Getting into
a shell-hole, he unslung his rifle and placed the bomb into it and
prepared it for firing. He waited for the right wind to shift the smoke
and then carefully fired the gun.
By some remarkable stroke of fortune, it fell and exploded in such a
position that the wind carried the smoke in a heavy cloud immediately
over the German machine-gun post, rendering the operators of the
machine absolutely powerless. At that moment Cheerio leaped from the
shell-hole, and rushing forward, pulled a pin from a Mills bomb, as he
ran. When about twenty yards away, he threw the bomb into the smoke and
fell to the ground to await the explosion. It came with a terrific
crash, fragments of the bomb bursting overhead. Jumping up and grasping
his rifle firmly, he plunged into the smoke which had not yet cleared.
Suddenly he fell into a trench, and he could not restrain a cheer to
find that the machine-gun was lying on its side. It was out of action.
There was no time to survey the situation, for two of the enemy had
rushed toward him swinging their “potato mashers” as the British
soldiers were wont to call this type of bomb. Now that he realized that
he had accomplished his objective, his elation had turned to the old
sickening feeling of terror, as he watched one of the Germans pull the
little white knob and throw the grenade. It missed him and struck the
parapet of the trench. About to rush him, the Germans were restrained
by an officer who had come up unobserved until then. He would take the
Englishman prisoner. There were questions he desired to put to him.
Yelling: “Komm mit!” they pushed him to his feet, and with prods of
the bayonet, Cheerio went before the Germans.
* * * * *
His hands swept his face as if by their motion he put away that
scene that had come back so clearly to memory. No! Not even the girl
he loved--for in his misery, Cheerio faced the fact that he loved
Hilda--not even she could truthfully name him--coward!