Come-a-Seven when there was no possibility of danger? Then, at the first
hint of trouble, up would go their tails and they would run to their
mothers at their very best pace.
They were learning, too, for many things they saw carried lessons to
their youthful perceptions. They were witnesses of the finish of a
wild-cat, which a puncher roped out of a tree under which they had been
taking a nap. They saw a companion die slowly from blackleg, and another
practically eaten alive by the fearful screw-worm. For days, too, they
avoided an old cow whose head was swelled to twice its natural size. The
poor creature was the victim of a snake bite, but she survived.
* * * * *
“Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ki-yi! Git up, cattle.”
A shrill whistle brought the red-and-white to his feet with a jerk just
as the sun tinted the eastern sky to gray and gold and rose. He bellowed
an inquiry to his mother, and for a second stood irresolute. A horseman
came riding at top speed straight for them, hallooing with all his might
and waving his hat. Whereupon the calf waited for no instructions. He
let himself out for all he was worth.
The puncher rode at a hand-gallop behind and he did not drive too hard.
Instead, he gave them a shove in the direction he desired they should
travel, and, with a final shout, swung away to the right, where a bunch
of six rose up with a snort and gave him a chase. He calculated that the
cow would keep going and she did. Her slow march was marked by protests
from her hopeful offspring. Observing that the rider was busy stirring
up cattle in many directions, his baby mind could conceive of no good
reason for plugging along in a line dead ahead because this individual
had furnished the impetus for the start. So he grumbled much, but
trotted along obediently, notwithstanding; and presently his own
grievances were dissipated by the contemplation of what was happening
around him. Every patch of brush in the country appeared to be turning
out cows, calves and young steers, as a magician’s bag scatters paper
roses. In several bunches he recognized acquaintances, but they were too
concerned about the future to do more than give a hurried squall of
recognition. An enormous procession was under way and they were marching
in it, a part of it. Whither would it lead them?
Apparently this speculation was likewise a source of worry to the cows
and steers, though they all had been through much the same before. Yet,
for the most part, they went soberly, falling into the semblance of a
trail-herd as their ranks were swelled by others which the cowboys
roused up; but there were some that did not. Occasionally a heifer would
make a break to one side, only to be headed off; and once a cow, driven
too impetuously, jerked her head sideways and bowed her tail. She was
“on the prod,” and they let her go. Time after time, when the
red-and-white would turn about to gaze, a rider would come at him,
slapping his boot with his quirt and whistling. This constant
surveillance irritated Come-a-Seven.
Their ranks were swelling so fast, too, that his identity, and hence his
sense of security, was lost. Another influx of cattle caused him to
carom off his mother’s side and in puerile anger he butted at those
nearest, until he observed he was making no impression, when,
discouraged, he gave it up and moved along. His tiny troubles were
submerged in that great army. Two thousand cattle were converging upon a
plain, from nine points in an area five miles wide.
Come-a-Seven was almost too interested to be scared.
Clouds of dust welling up; a babel of sound; mighty roarings of irate
bulls, petty monarchs now on a common footing they resented; the lowing
of cows and the frightened bawling of the calves; and always a
bewildering churning and shifting like a maelstrom. Every few minutes a
stream of dirt would shoot skyward like a geyser, where a bull was
spoiling for a fight and sent his thundering challenge over the ranks.
Occasionally there was a clash and some desperate attempts at goring.
Holding this host on the round-up ground was a cordon of eight punchers,
sitting apathetically on their horses. They had little to do while their
companions worked the herd, cutting out the cows and calves to one side,
the strays and beef cattle to another. Sometimes an animal would wander
to the edge, stand staring uncertainly, then saunter forth to attain the
open; but most were driven back without trouble. One persisted and gave
a herder a furious dash to head him off; but that was all part of the
day’s work.
When the cutters penetrated the dust and came threading their way
through the noisy, restless horde, the calf became doubly uneasy. A man
on a blazed-face bay was particularly insistent. Come-a-Seven watched
him work deviously through the entire herd after a cow and her young,
and drive them forth to the open; so he tried to keep out of sight. But
it was no use. Soon the horse was close to them, and mother and son
felt, rather than saw, that they were the objects of the quiet
maneuvering that followed. Wherever they dodged and doubled the
blazed-face was sure to be there, close behind, patient, untiring. A
wave of resentment against this steady pressure broke them into a run,
and, before they knew it, the outer rim of cattle split wide open and
they were beyond the herd. In a panic they endeavored to dart back, but
the big bay interposed. Seeing this, the cow sped toward a draw where
the scrub-cedar appeared to offer chances of escape. With the speed of
light the puncher was after them, twisting, wheeling, heading her off
toward the cut-bunch. And the calf found the same indefatigable foe
between him and freedom when he emulated his mother.
“Git in, you low-lived whelp,” howled the cutter, and he spurred
furiously.
They finally gave up the contest as hopeless and trotted meekly to join
the bunch of cattle they perceived ahead of them.
There were cows which shot from the herd at a gallop and then would
break to a hesitating trot, their heads nodding loosely close to the
ground. Their gait had an odd uncertainty about it. The animals would
shrink from a weed and draw back. One stopped at perceiving a shadow and
went around it fearfully.
“Locoed,” a puncher commented. For these had eaten of the strange loco
weed and were afflicted.
By ten o’clock, the herd was worked. Fires were lighted and the branding
irons thrust into them.
The roper and flankers got into action, two sets of them, and every
minute calves emitted protesting wails as the hot irons seared their
sides. He worked like an automaton, that roper. He seemed removed from
human passions, remote from the ordinary human impulses. His loop
dropped unerringly, and back the horse would go at a trot or a lope,
with a panic-stricken, crying calf plunging, bumping along in rear,
sometimes turning somersaults--for life is too short to carry calves to
the flankers with solicitous care, though possibly the flankers would
prefer them that way.
The red-and-white edged away from the field of this gentleman’s labors
and ran straight in front of a sorrel horse.
Baw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! he cried, as something settled about his neck and a
resistless force commenced to drag him into the open.
Another roper had snared him. He humped his back and began to buck, his
legs rigid. At every leap into the air he blatted and protested. His
mother shrank back in confusion at the first outcry and lost sight of
him in the dust raised by his unwilling progress. For fully thirty yards
he was dragged in a series of hurtling leaps, with the rope cutting into
his neck so that he could scarcely breathe; and then, before he had time
to recover his faculties, a man seized the rope, ran along it until he
reached the red-and-white, and reaching over his body, flopped him in
the air. But the calf was not flanked so easily--not Come-a-Seven. Twice
he rebounded like a rubber ball, finding his feet before his antagonist
could fall on him.
“Stay-ay-ay with him, Steve! Go to him, boy!” shrieked the delighted
flankers.
“Durn his hide. He’s stout as a weaner,” Steve snorted; and he gave a
tremendous heave. At the same time he made a short spring forward with
knees crooked, which carried him under the calf as that strenuous
combatant tried to make his hoofs hit the ground first. The
red-and-white came down with a bump that sounded like the unloading of a
trunk marked, “Handle with care.” It would have broken the ribs of
anything aged three months except a calf.
“Holy cats, it’s Come-a-Seven,” Steve panted. He sat back of his head,
with a knee on the neck, and twisted one foreleg in a jiu-jitsu grip
that paralyzed all effort. Another puncher at his other extremity got a
vise-like hold of the left leg and put the other out of commission by
thrusting it far forward with his foot.
Oh-oh-oh-uh-uh-uh-ah!
The cry was almost human, and the eyes bulged and rolled with terror
until the whites showed. The iron had touched him, biting through his
coat into the flesh, while the smoke curled up with smell of burning
hair. His fright needed just that pang to get proper vocal expression,
and he used all his available breath in a frantic appeal to the mother
that bore him. It was not in vain.
“Look out! Here she comes!” yelled a flanker.
The three working over the calf looked up to see the cow trotting toward
them. There was no time to dodge. When she was within ten feet of the
group an idle flanker kicked a jet of sand into her face and she swerved
irresolutely, coming to a walk. The roper drove her back and work was
resumed on her son.
“I mind once, when I was with the Spur, a cow jumped clean over us
that-a-way,” remarked Bill Kennedy, rising from the ground. As a parting
salute he rolled the red-and-white over his hip, as a wrestler throws a
man to the mat. “Say, Jake, heel them big fellers.”
The calf was scared, and sore all over. A swallow-fork in the right ear
and a crop in the left worried him. He stood glowering in all
directions, in an effort to get his bearings; then he executed some
shuddering, half-hearted jumps, as though trying to shed the two burning
letters on his left flank, and sought his mother. He was sick, and all
the fight gone from him.
The herd was driven off and released, and the red-and-white went with
them. He tarried in a draw, enduring great pain. A fever burned him,
too, and he was low in spirits. Half of his enormous appetite was gone,
but only half. Alas, he had lost the source of supply for even the
remnant that remained. In the general confusion he had become separated
from his mother, and, as it was meal-time, the loss was doubly
distressing.
He lifted up his voice in a song of sorrow, but naught availed.
Perceiving this, he started to find her. The cow was hunting for him,
too, hunting frenziedly. And she was not alone in her grief, for at
least a dozen cows had lost their young in the turmoil of branding, and
they wandered up and down and across without cessation, lowing
pathetically, a world of distress in their tones and in their eyes. From
time to time one would sight a stray calf and make a bee line for it,
but only to give a moan of disappointment and resume her hunt.
Come-a-Seven tried to establish filial relations with every cow he met.
As a result, he got some rebuffs that would have discouraged a less
hungry youngster. For hours he searched; for hours cows wandered about
crying for their young. Twice the red-and-white essayed to feed where he
had no blood-rights and nearly had his ribs stove in for his pains.
Finally, made crafty by hunger, he softly shouldered another calf away
from her place at the mother’s side and tried to substitute. The old cow
properly kicked him for that trick.
But his hunger was short-lived; a familiar voice smote upon his ear, his
answering cry came with a glad quiver in it, and mother and son were
reunited. How she smelled of him and licked his dusty sides and neck!
And the way he went for his meal! She gave a deep rumble of content.
Even when Come-a-Seven butted cruelly with his head, in his consuming
hunger, and hurt her, she lowed in proud satisfaction.
Pain and trouble cannot last forever. In a week his wounds had healed;
he was sound and strong again. Once more began the long, idle days of
good feeding and play with his young companions. His life was a full
one. Compared with that of the barnyard variety of the genus calf, it
was as checkered as a drummer’s appears to a hot-blooded resident of a
country town.
In the winter his mother grew gaunt. The cold was intense at times, and
the snowfall was greater than the oldest bull could recall. At rare
intervals men came riding to inspect and on one visit drove some of the
weaker cattle to the home pasture, there to be fed daily. For the others
little could be done, and the red-and-white was one of them. There were
many good windbreaks on the range and the calf was tough, so he won
through somehow, though once when the snow drifted deep and the cow
could not find grass in her wanderings, grim death stared them in the
face. The calf himself went three days without a meal, yet lived. A cow
will not paw down through the snow like a horse, and mother and son saw
some of their friends perish.
Spring came at last--suddenly, like a mountain sunrise--and the earth
was exceeding glad. Worried and emaciated, they greeted the season of
hope with a sudden access of energy. In later months the red-and-white
was weaned. He learned to eat grass, of which accomplishment he was at
first inordinately proud, and he throve on it; and he had but one worry
in the world--heel flies.
It has been said that Come-a-Seven was lusty. He was an amazing big
fellow for his age. When round-up time arrived again and he was herded
with about fourteen hundred cattle, he grew chesty over the fact that he
sized up well with most of the two-year-olds. His strength and restless
energy were proportionate.
Indeed, Come-a-Seven bade fair to be a rounder. While the other cattle
would be sleeping peacefully on the bed-ground, the young red-and-white
would go up and down through the herd, trying to start some excitement.
He always chose to walk straight through the center of the recumbent
host, and where he passed all got to their feet uneasily. The tired old
cows would grumble at him and tell him to go to bed, but he was proof
against all reproaches and conscience he had none.
“Damn him,” grumbled a puncher on guard as he watched his wanderings for
the twentieth time, and for the twentieth time turned and drove back
some who tried to walk out at his prompting. “He’s playing for a
stompede.”
“I swan if it ain’t Come-a-Seven!” remarked Steve, when the
red-and-white passed very near him. “Git to bed, Come-a-Seven. I reckon
you’re a rake.”
When tired of his solitary roaming, the red-and-white would select some
young steer weaker than himself, butt him off the bed he had warmed, and
compose himself to slumber. Whereat a great sigh of satisfaction would
be heard mingled with the blowing of the cattle.
Another year passed. When the cowboys came whooping up the cattle in the
following August, the red-and-white heard the loud shoutings and saw,
with contemptuous resentment, his fellow-creatures being propelled
toward the round-up ground. Their meekness awoke hot rebellion in him.
Big he was now and of the strength of two. He decided he would not go.
A rider caught him unawares and the surprise of his first rush started
the steer in the right direction, but it failed to keep him there; for
as soon as the man departed to drive another bunch, the red-and-white
went off at a tangent. Far had he wandered in his day, and he knew some
brakes--miles, miles away--where the foot of horse seldom trod. Toward
these he headed. Two hundred, three hundred yards, and behind him he
heard the familiar scramble of the pursuer. The red-and-white flagged
his tail and let out another notch.
“Quit it, you Come-a-Seven!” Steve bawled. “Blast you, git in there.”
The two-year-old only ran the harder, but the pony gained. Then he lost
his temper and made up his mind that whether or not the cowboy overtook
him he would reach those brakes; if necessary he would turn about and
attack. His head swayed from side to side, his gait became uncertain and
he seemed worried--symptoms which were not lost on Steve. When the steer
stopped and faced about, the horse turned like a flash, and as he did so
a loud, querulous voice, raised in helpless anger, broke up Steve’s
programme. That voice changed the red-and-white’s destiny. Indirectly it
saved him from the stockyards; but, then, he would probably have saved
himself.
“Let him go, Steve! You’ll lose that other bunch,” the wagon boss cried.
“We’ll get him again.”
Steve waved his hat at the steer with a good-natured grin and shook up
his horse, departing like a rocket to his work. The red-and-white
continued on toward the brakes.
That is how he became an outlaw.
In the vast Croton brakes were scores such as he. Some of them were
grown old and hoary, and they bore many brands. A few had no brands. All
had run wild for years, and round-ups were things of the long ago. So
shy were they that it was as difficult for a man to approach them as to
stalk a herd of antelope. They kept in bands of five and six, and did
anything come near which one did not understand, they were off like
deer.
The red-and-white took to the life as his birth-right. Somewhere in him
ran a strain that drove resistlessly to solitude and the wilds; and he
was happy. More than once he had to fight, but he possessed an
unbeatable temper and had a world of craft to direct his agility and
colossal strength, so that he came from his battles with blood-dripping
horns held high and proudly.
Rough and torn and forbidding were the brakes--miles on miles of
red-walled cañons, of scrub cedar and sand-rock--but the feeding was
good for so few when one knew the best places, and the outlaw waxed ever
stronger. His horns spread, too.
Five years sped by and the outlaw fought his way to kingship.
On a December day he was startled by the noise of firing. Such sounds he
had never heard. It was not the snappy, sharp report of the six-shooter,
but louder and of heavier metal. Suddenly fear took hold of him. There
was a hunt on--a hunt of outlaws. The horns of the free steers would
bring high prices, and once in a generation a party of punchers came
thus with rifles to gather them. Come-a-Seven let out a bellow and tore
away at the head of his followers.
It was a terrible day for the outlaws of the Croton brakes. When the
bunch that trailed behind the red-and-white split and scattered, the
chase developed into mad, individual contests of speed. The outlaw could
run; the way Come-a-Seven traveled would have made an ordinary range
steer look like a muley cow. Up and down sheer bluffs that appeared too
steep to climb, he ran; and cliffs seemed to be highways to him. But,
behind, a rider spurred tenaciously, steadily diminishing the distance
that separated them, holding his fire until he could be sure of this
glorious prize. Up came the rifle--but it never sent forth its leaden
messenger.
“Gee whiz, if it ain’t ol’ Come-a-Seven!” cried Steve. “Git a-going,
boy, and keep her up! Whoopee!”
With a final spurt and shout the veteran puncher wheeled and came to a
standstill, regarding the smashing run of the big steer with a smile of
admiration. The red-and-white was already disappearing in the distance,
far, far away from all further danger of pursuit, his tail held high,
his head swaying. Steve watched him until he topped a rise and
disappeared. He had lost a goodly prize; but he was content. He chuckled
as he recalled the steer’s past misdeeds on the bed-ground.
The outlaw went back to his remotest fastnesses. He may be there yet,
boss of the Croton brakes.
V
SHIELA
A panther’s scream split the whine of the wind and Shiela reared herself
in front of the fire, her body retched by an answering challenge.
“Shee-la,” her master rebuked. “Lie down, girl.”
The wolfhound sank to the floor with a reluctant flop, but the hairs on
her neck and along her spine bristled still. She continued to rumble.
There were four men playing at cards in the bunkhouse. Cold weather had
set in and the Tumbling H outfit were eating out their hearts in winter
camps. Here at headquarters, the range boss, wagon boss, blacksmith and
cook played half the day at seven-up and pitch; and listened to Mit’s
varying accounts of high life in the East, as he had plumbed it in Fort
Worth; and raved at the climate and cursed petty annoyances with the
savage irritability of full-blooded men lacking enough to do.
“Hark to that ol’ wind,” mourned the wagon boss--he was fifty and
considered fourteen hours a day in the saddle mere child’s play--“It was
sixty-six above this morning, and now it’s zero. No wonder a man cain’t
be healthy.”
The others nodded gravely and the cook shuffled the cards.
“It’s a wonder, Steve,” he observed, “that you don’t--my deal?--you
don’t try that dog in wolf huntin’. Not by herself, but with a bunch of
’em.”
“Wait till she’s used to the country and has got her growth. Then you’ll
see.”
Mit remarked that he referred, of course, to the hunting of coyotes,
which prompted a passionate declaration from the wagon boss that the
range ought to be cleared of these pests. They killed too many calves in
bad years: poison ’em, he urged. Nobody opposed objection and they went
on with the game. Then from the mouth of the cañon came to the ears of
the players the vibrant cry of the lobo. Right upon it broke Shiela’s
roar of defiance, and the beast was at the door in a bound, whimpering
frenziedly, her terrible teeth bared. Beside her, his head three inches
short of Shiela’s breast, Friday stiffened in sympathetic rage, his
stubby tail wagging. He raised a shrill treble bark.
“Down, Shee-la! Down, girl.” Running from the table, O’Donnell led her
back to the fire.
“Friday, you come here,” the blacksmith cried. “Lay down under the
table, and don’t you go for to move!”
Not to cattle-browsed stretches of prairie land had Shiela been reared,
nor to vast sweep of hills and mesquite-flecked valleys, and of torn,
brick-red sandstone and tortuous, dry river-beds. She was a stranger in
a strange land, and her new kingdom struck to the roots of her nature.
Far as she could wander in a frivolous all-day rabbit hunt with Friday
was no sign of human habitation; and beyond that, away to the pale-blue
line that must surely be the rim of all things,--full sixty miles,--no
handiwork of man was visible. Here was an unspoiled empire, and her
master was the autocrat. For the first time in her life the wolfhound
drew the breath of unrestrained liberty, chafed hotly to the tang of the
air, cast about and trailed wild creatures whose taint stirred her to
mad longings for the chase and a fight.
How can one tell of Shiela’s beauty? A great animal and a
wonderful--light fawn in color, with a shaggy coat. Her eyes were in
general gentle and melting. But it must be confessed that her
proportions did not fit Shiela to be a comfort about the home, for she
weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds and could not go under the tallest
table without stooping. As she always forgot to stoop, her progress was
fraught with excitement.
On the day following her arrival, the cook scrambled out of bed long
before sunup to ascertain what manner of idiot could be knocking on the
door in this deserted region. Man alive, why couldn’t they walk in?
Shiela leaped on him to be fondled--the wolfhound had been wagging her
tail against the door as she lay across the threshold.
“Ef I was you,” Mit suggested civilly, “I’d lay out on the range where
you’d have room to move round. Git a nice big butte all to yourself.”
Her heart and her courage were big as her body. Following O’Donnell on a
day when he fared to Stinking Water, quite by accident she roused up a
loafer in the cañon. Shiela flew in pursuit, deaf to O’Donnell’s frantic
commands to come back. And when the wolf turned fiercely at bay to pit
her might against this daring hunter, a hundred and eighteen pounds of
dauntless pluck launched itself at her neck like a bolt from a
storm-cloud.
“She’s a dead one now,” O’Donnell groaned, circling for a shot. “She’s a
goner, sure.”