the mare, the Schoonover baby inspected the creature. He pulled its ears
and kicked it with fine deliberation on the point of the nose.
“Do you aim to leave it here, Brother Schoonover?” his wife asked, when
they were ready to set forward.
“Shore. The hide ain’t no good at this season. And he’s shot all to
bits. Do you know, Sally Jo, I got a idea this is the same ol’ mountain
line what found our son? It’s like he’s the same one that eat the pore
li’l’ Mexican, too, don’t you reckon? Ol’ Bowallopus?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me none,” she answered, and shuddered. Her husband
spurned the carcass with his boot.
They got under way. High up in the sky appeared two black specks.
Brother Schoonover pointed to them.
“They’ll rip him to pieces in no time. But we’ll keep the claws and
whiskers and the end of his tail for the baby to play with. Hey, Sally
Jo?”
The specks grew larger. Soon they showed as birds, hovering on
effortless wings above the camping ground. Brother Schoonover whacked
the mare in high glee, and they set out again on their pilgrimage.
Before they had gone half a mile, the buzzards shot from the blue vault
to earth.
VIII
THE MANKILLER
All this happened in the Bad Year, which was not so many months ago. The
outfit issued daily from their camps--riding bog, skinning cattle and
driving in the helpless to the home pastures to be fed on oil-cake and
alfalfa. The cows were walking skeletons, wild of eye, ready to wheel in
impotent anger on their rescuers; or sinking weakly to the ground at the
least urging, never to rise again. Every creek was dry. Springs that
were held eternal became slimy mudholes and a trap. A well-grown man
could easily step across the San Pedro, oozing sluggishly past mauled
carcasses.
Wherever one rode he found bones of hapless creatures, or starved cows
stretched flat on their sides, waiting for death to end their
sufferings. And the flies settled in sickening, heaving clusters. Each
mire held its victim. Wobbly-legged calves wandered over the range,
crying for mothers that could never come. And the sun blazed down out of
a pale sky.
Even the saving mesquite in the draws and on the ridges was failing as
sustenance; of grass there was none. The country lay bleak and gasping
from Tombstone to the border. Not even a desert cow, accustomed to slake
her water hunger by chewing cactus, could have long survived such
blighting months. How we prayed for rain!
Manuel Salazar gave heed to the comet where he lay on his tarp, and
crossed himself to avert the death-curse which was come upon the land.
This weird luminary portended dire events and Manuel began, like a
prudent man, to take thought of his religion. There might be nothing in
religion, as Chico contended; but a man never knows, and it is the part
of wisdom to be on the safe side.
Then, one evening, when the mountains were taking on their blue sheen
and the beauty of these vast stretches smote one with a feeling akin to
pain, Archie Smith rode up to headquarters and tossed a human hand on
the porch.
“Found it in the far corner of the Zacaton Bottom,” he said.
Jim Floyd recognized it at once by the triangular scar on the palm. The
hand had been gnawed off cleanly at the wrist. Floyd wrapped the
gruesome thing in a sack, wishful to give it decent interment when
opportunity should offer.
“It’s ol’ man Greer’s,” he said. “You remember ol’ man Greer? He used to
dig postholes for the Lazy L. Where’s the rest of him, Smith?”
“I aim to go and see. Ki-yotes eat him up, don’t you reckon, Jim?”
“It sure looks that way. Pore ol’ Greer--he could dig postholes right
quick,” the boss answered.
What Archie found of the digger of postholes established nothing of the
manner of death. Both arms were gone and wolves had dragged the body;
hence, there was no real argument against the theory that old man Greer,
who indulged a taste for _tequila_, had sustained a fall from his horse
and had perished miserably within sight of the ranch. Yet Archie found
this hard to believe. Wolves do not crush in the skull of a man, and it
was the cowboy’s conviction that anyone could fall off Hardtimes, the
digger’s mount, twice or thrice a day with no other injury than the blow
to his pride.
Two days later Manuel Salazar brought in Greer’s horse, shockingly gaunt
and worried, and swelled as to the head. But what interested the outfit,
when the saddle and bridle had been removed from Hardtimes, were long,
parallel wales along neck and flank. Archie pronounced them to be the
marks of a horse’s teeth.
“That don’t show anything. He wandered off and got into a fight with
another horse,” Floyd asserted. “Yes, sir; it’s like that he done just
that.”
After which he dismissed the unfortunate Greer from his mind. The outfit
shook its head and expressed sorrow for the lonely digger, but opined
that his fate surely went to show how injurious steady application to
_tequila_ could be, more especially in cruel weather. The Mexicans, and
the nesters in outlying parts, were not satisfied with the explanation
put forward. They discussed the mystery during protracted pauses in work
and in the dark of the night. When two men met on a trail and halted to
pass the time of day, old man Greer was the subject of talk. There were
rumors of a snug fortune the digger had amassed and buried--sixty-six
thousand dollars in gold, it was. Joe Toole, who made a nice,
comfortable living by systematic theft of calves from the cattle
company, did not hesitate to hint that Greer had died a victim to its
professional gun-fighter for reasons best known to the rich corporation;
but, then, Joe was prejudiced. Soon the death grew to a murder, and no
man not of white blood would ride the Zacaton Bottom after nightfall.
Tommy Floyd talked of these and other matters to his father as the boss
was feeding Apache.
“Pshaw!” Floyd said contemptuously. “Don’t you put no stock in them
stories, Tommy, boy. Some people in this here country can smell a skunk
when they sight a dead tree.”
“But what do you guess killed him, Dad?”
“I don’t know, son. I sure wish I did,” was the troubled reply.
He punched Apache in the ribs to make him move over. The huge jack laid
back his ears and his tail whisked threateningly, but he gave place with
an awkward flop, and Floyd laughed. Others might fear Apache, but he
knew there was not the least particle of viciousness lurking in that
hammerlike head. Of all the ranch possessions--blooded horses,
thoroughbred Herefords and cowponies--he liked the jack best. It
pandered to his vanity that others should avoid the monster, or approach
him in diffidence, with suspicion and anxiety; and, in truth, Apache’s
appearance was sufficiently appalling. Great as was his blue-gray bulk,
it was dwarfed by the ponderous head; his knees were large and bulbous,
and when he opened his mouth to bray, laying bare the powerful teeth,
Apache was a spectacle to scare the intrepid. Horses would run at sight
of him; an entire pasture would squeal with fear and flee on his
approach. Yet there was not a gentler animal to handle in the million
acres of the company’s range.
Toward the fag-end of a day Tommy was eating _panocha_ on the steps of
the porch, a favorite diversion with him. While removing some particles
thereof from his cheek, in the region of his ear, he espied his father
riding homeward from the Zacaton Bottom. Something in the way the boss
swayed in the saddle brought Tommy’s head up alertly. Floyd was clinging
to the horn and the reins trailed on the ground. The boy threw his crust
away and ran to meet him. A dozen yards from the house the horse
stopped, as though he knew that the end of the journey had come for his
master.
“That black devil, Tommy!” his father gasped, and lurched outward and to
the ground.
Two of the boys came running and bore Floyd to his bed. That he had
contrived to ride home filled them with wonder at his endurance and
fortitude--nearly the whole of his right side was torn away, one arm
swung limply, and there were ragged cuts on the head. Tommy hovered
near, crying to him to open his eyes.
The boss never regained consciousness, and died at midnight.
A Mexican doctor was summoned from a border village--his American
competitor was off in the Dragoons, assisting at an increase to the
population. After a minute examination the man of medicine announced
that five ribs were broken. It was his opinion that Señor Floyd had met
with an accident, from the effects of which he had passed away. Nobody
was inclined to dispute this finding.
“Something done tromped him,” Dan Harkey asserted. “It’s like one of
them bulls got into the Bottom and went for him when he got down to
drink.”
“No,” said Archie positively; “a bull couldn’t have tore him up that
way. It looks to me like teeth done that.”
Then Tommy awoke from the benumbed state in which he had moved since the
tragedy and repeated his father’s dying words. They were very simple of
interpretation. A black man had drifted into the country from eastern
Texas, and lived, an outcast, on a place not fifteen miles from
headquarters. It was well known that Floyd had had trouble with him,
being possessed of an aggressive contempt for negroes, and twice had
made threats to run the newcomer off.
“A nigrah could easy have beat him up thataway,” Dan declared. “A nigrah
could do most anything. Yes, sir; he beat him to death--that’s what he
done. It’s like he used that old hoe of his’n.”
Word of the killing flew over the land in the marvelous fashion news is
carried in the cow-country. Within twelve hours men knew of it in the
most remote cañons of the Huachucas, and a party of nine set forth from
headquarters. But somebody had carried warning, for the lonely hut was
untenanted and the door swung loose on its rawhide hinges.
They buried Floyd on top of a hill where the wind had a free sweep, and
piled a few stones atop. Tommy fashioned a cross out of two rough
boards; and the boss sleeps there to-day. The sheriff was deeply stirred
and had notices posted throughout the territory.
$250 REWARD
For the arrest, dead or alive, of the man who brutally murdered
James Floyd, boss of the Tumbling K, sixteen miles from here,
some time yesterday evening. This man is supposed to be a negro;
about forty years of age; black; about six feet in height and
weighing close to two hundred pounds. Has a razor scar above the
left ear.
He has in his possession a .35 caliber autoloading rifle, No.
5096, and a .32-30 pistol. He may be riding a sorrel horse with
a roached mane, branded 93 on left hip.
This crime is one of the most dastardly in the criminal annals
of the Territory, and I earnestly urge every officer and other
person receiving this circular to do everything in his power to
effect the capture of this human fiend.
The above reward is only a preliminary reward, which may be
increased later to one thousand dollars, when the governor, with
whom the matter will be taken up, is heard from.
Wire me if any suspect is arrested, or if any information is
obtained whatever concerning this negro, at my expense.
[Illustration: “_The lonely hut was untenanted_”]
Two months passed, and nothing was heard or seen of the black man. The
rains held off. North and east the ranges were deluged. A blight
appeared to have fallen upon the Tumbling K. The land grew a shade
grayer, the dust spurts whirled in gleeful, savage dance, and the cattle
gave up the effort of living and lay down to die. All that the boys
could do was to distribute salt and feed and work frantically to
maintain the water supply. The emaciated brutes would eat of the
oil-cake and hay, and sweat profusely on the nose, then stiffen out and
expire with a sigh. Those that clung to life carried swollen under-jaws
from the strain of tearing at the short grass.
“Poor bastard!” Archie grunted, tailing up a cow he had already helped
to her feet three times. “It fair makes a man sick at the stummick to
see ’em. Here, you doggone ol’ she-devil! Why don’t you try for to help
yourself? Up you come! That’s it; try to hook me.”
It was no use. He shot her where she lay, and skinned her. Then, with
the wet hide dragging at the end of a rope and her calf thrown over the
fork of the saddle, he set out for headquarters. The orphan was a lusty
youngster, and Archie made him many promises, accompanied by many
strange oaths.
“Li’l’ dogy,” he said, “I’ll find a mammy for you to-night if I have to
tie up the old milch cow. Do you think you can suck a milch cow, dogy?
Sure you can. Man alive, feel of him kick! He’s a stout rascal. You’ll
be a fine steer some day, dogy.”
On a black-dark night flames leaped above the rim of the mountain, and
the Tumbling K were roused from bed to go forth with wet sacks, and rage
in their hearts, for the scum of humanity who would fire a range.
Twenty-six hours in the saddle and six more fighting the leaping,
treacherous enemy; then two hours of sweating sleep on saddle-blankets
beside their hobbled horses, and back a score of miles on desperate
trails for fresh mounts--three separate times they beat out the blaze
with sacks and back-firing. Once more, rising heavy-lidded and dripping
from the stupor of utter exhaustion, they saw it licking hungrily
through the Gap. No unlucky cigarette-stub thrown amid parched grass, no
abandoned campfire, had done this. It was the deliberate work of an
enemy.
Orders came to move the cattle down into the valley, lest they perish to
the last horn, to the last torn hoof.
“It’ll take you three days to move ’em ten miles,” the manager said;
“but never mind. Ease ’em. Ease ’em careful. The man who yells at a cow,
or pushes her along, gets his time right there. The only real way to
handle cattle is to let ’em do what they want and work ’em as you can.
Think that over, boys.”
Manuel Salazar remembered this warning as he moved his tired horse at a
snail’s pace behind a bunch of sick ones in the Zacaton Bottom. Manuel
made twenty dollars a month with consummate ease, working only seven
days in the week and only thirteen hours a day; and he would not throw
his job away lightly. Therefore he permitted the gaunt cows to straggle
as pleased them, humming to himself while they nibbled at tufts here and
there. If one turned its head to look at him it fell from sheer
weakness; therefore he held aloof. So the sad procession crept along.
It was in Manuel’s mind to save a mile by moving the bunch through the
horse pasture. He put them through the gate with no trouble and was
dreamily planning how he might steal back a hair rope Chico had stolen
from him, when the quirt slipped out of his fingers. The vaquero got
down to pick it from the ground.
“Hi! Hi!” he yelled in panic, and ducked just in time.
A black shape towered above him, striking with forefeet, reaching for
the nimble Manuel with its teeth. Its mouth yawned agape; Salazar swore
he could have rammed a lard bucket into it. The vaquero swerved from
under the deadly hoofs and hit out blindly with the quirt. The stallion
screamed his rage for the first time and lunged at him, head swinging
low, the lips flicking back from the ferocious teeth. Manuel seized a
stone, put to his hand by the blessed saints, and hurled it with
precision, striking the horse on the nose. Midnight blared from pain and
shook his royal mane in fury, but the shock stayed him and Salazar
gained his horse.
“Now,” he yelled, pulling his gun and maneuvering his mount that he
might be ready to flee, “come on, you! You want to fight? That’s music
to me.”
But Midnight did not want to fight. He had employed craft in stealing
upon the man, and now he moved off sulkily, the whites of his eyes
rolled back, a thin stream of blood trickling from his muzzle. Salazar
longed to shoot holes through his shiny black hide, but contented
himself with abuse instead. Was not the stallion worth five thousand
dollars? Who was he--Manuel, a poor vaquero--to be considered in the
same thought with so noble a beast?
“Tommy,” he said as he unsaddled at headquarters, “I’ve found who killed
your pore father. Yes, and old man Greer, too. Don’t look so pale,
Tommy.”
Tommy stalked into the manager’s office next forenoon, a very solemn and
very determined, if a short and somewhat dirty figure. He was white
under his freckles, and he talked through his teeth, jerkily, his eyes
fixed unwaveringly on the manager’s face.
“Midnight!” the manager exclaimed. “Nonsense! Why, he wouldn’t harm a
fly. That horse would never kill a man. He’s worth five thousand
dollars. Since we got him from Kentucky, two years ago, a woman could
handle him, Tommy, boy. Salazar must have been teasing him. You’ll have
to look somewhere else, Tommy.”
“You mean you ain’t going to do nothing, Mr. Chalmers?” Tommy asked in a
dry voice.
“Of course not. Midnight? Impossible. Why, that horse is worth five
thousand dollars. He couldn’t have done it.”
Tommy went back home very slowly. That night he sat beside Manuel’s
candle and cleaned and oiled a sawed-off .25-30 rifle, inherited from
the man who slept on the hill. Salazar smoked lazily and watched him
through drooping lids. The boy finished his task and leaned forward on
the stool, staring at the tiny flame, the weapon across his knees.
Of what avail to shoot Midnight? Of course it would be easy. Tommy had
acquired some degree of skill by blowing the heads off chickens whenever
any were desired for the dinner-table, and he felt assured that at two
hundred yards he could pick off the stallion with one pressure of his
finger. It would be mere child’s work to distinguish Midnight from the
mares, even on the murkiest night. But, after all--had the stallion done
the killing? He had only Manuel’s experience and suspicions to go on.
Moreover, if he took punishment into his own hands they might throw him
into a jail. Midnight was worth five thousand dollars: assuredly Mr.
Chalmers would cast Tommy out into the world to shift for himself. He
put the rifle back under his bunk.
Very discreetly Tommy entered the horse pasture at sunup--he had been
unable to sleep for scheming--and made his way down the mile-long fence
toward the corner where the mares usually grazed at that hour. He had a
six-shooter in his pocket for an emergency, but he hoped that he would
not use it. Midnight sighted him and stood rigid a full minute, twenty
paces in advance of the mares, gazing at the boy. He was a regal animal;
Tommy thought he had never seen so glorious a horse. Then the stallion
advanced with mincing steps, his head bobbing, the ears laid back. He
sidled nearer, without haste, whinnying softly. The boy waited until he
was a dozen feet distant, then threw himself flat and rolled under the
barbed-wire fence. With a rending scream Midnight reared and plunged for
him, his forefeet battering the ground where Tommy had fallen. He tore
at the earth in discomfiture and wrath, and raved up and down on the
other side of the fence, his nostrils flaring, his eyes a glare of
demoniacal hate. Tommy surveyed him in deathly quiet.
The dark came warm, with puffs of hot wind, so that the Tumbling K men
reviled the discomfort joyously, since it presaged rain. So long as the
cold nights endured there could be no relief. Tommy slipped from the
bunkhouse for a breath of air, though it was past bedtime and they had
told him to turn in.
“Apache!” he called in a low tone, gliding into the stall.
The jack cocked his monstrous ears and listened, knowing well the voice.
Tommy put a halter over his head and opened the stall door. It was
gnawed and scarred by Apache’s teeth and hoofs, and the boy wrenched it
from the hinges and laid it aslant on the ground.
“You done bust your way out, Apache,” he whispered. “You hear me, you
ol’ devil?”
He led him out into the corral and thence into the lane, talking softly
as they went. Apache raised his nose and sniffed of the wind. When they
reached the horse pasture the boy tore out the strands of wire at a spot
near the corner of the fence.
“You was fond of my Dad, wasn’t you, Apache?” Tommy quavered, working
with nervous fingers to unbuckle the halter. “Then go to it.”
The jack required no bidding. He wrenched free and stepped carefully
over the wire into Midnight’s domain. Apache never did anything in
ill-judged haste. A blur, two hundred yards off, attracted him and he
headed toward it eagerly. A moment, and he stopped; then went forward
with caution.
Midnight had seen him coming. He trotted out from his band of mares and
halted expectantly. Next instant he had recognized Apache for what he
was, and shrilled a challenge. The jack brayed like a fiend and went
forward slowly to meet him.
Now, a capable jack can whip any stallion that ever breathed. It is
really an education to watch a jack like the mighty Apache fight. There
exists the same difference between the methods of a stallion and a jack
as between those of a nervous amateur boxer and the seasoned champion. A
jack has no fear that anyone can detect, and is practically insensible
to pain. One can see at a glance what an advantage this gives him over
an opponent with any lingering predilection for longevity.
Also, a jack never fights for glory, never fights for the gallery. His
sole object is to win. Wherefore, no idle and frivolous prancing about
for him--no swift rush in, a blind striking with hoofs, a tearing with
the teeth, then out again. A jack is not constructed that way. Fighting
is a business--a serious, albeit a pleasurable, business; and he attends
to that side of it with passionate singleness of purpose. He will watch
his opportunity with the alert coolness of the professional, wasting not
an ounce of energy. When the opening comes he goes to it like the stroke
of a rattler, gets his grip and shuts his eyes and hangs on. There is
considerable of the bulldog in a jack, and if he is to be gotten off at
all, one must pry him off with a crowbar; in fact, next to a Shetland
stallion, which is the darlingest little fighter that ever tore at an
enemy’s ribs, nothing more instructive can be witnessed than a
full-sized jack in a fair field and no interruptions.
Apache had fought before--many, many times. Therefore he made for the
foe with circumspection, his head jerking sideways, his tail tucked,
ears laid flat on his neck, and his feet barely touching the ground, so
lightly did his tense muscles carry him. One evil eye measured the giant
horse with venomous composure.
Vastly different was Midnight’s attack. The stallion had pluck to spare,
but his temper was overhasty and his skill slight. Rage forever clouded
his judgment in encounter. He had learned only one plan of battle and
that was to rush and bear down his opponent. There was his rival. He
would kill him. Midnight’s was a simple creed.
His harsh scream rent the night silence, and the fight was on. Another
horse would have circled so formidable an adversary in an endeavor to
create an opening, but the black’s temper was too imperious for delay.
Straight was his rush. He bore down on the jack at the top of his speed,
his wonderful, supple body a-quiver with eagerness and anger.
Then Apache did a remarkable thing--a thing almost human in ingenuity.
What Apache didn’t know about fighting is best forgotten. Swerving ever
so slightly as the black came, he lunged to meet him, crashing shoulder
to shoulder with all the strength of his tough sinews behind the impact.
Hit sideways, taken off his balance, the force of Midnight’s own charge
contributed to his overthrow. Down he tumbled, scrambling with his feet
as he fell. Before his body touched the ground, the jack whirled and
lashed with both heels into his sides. With the same appalling speed,
Apache drove for the throat of his prostrate enemy, secured his grip and
shut his eyes, wrenching frenziedly from side to side and upward.
It is well not to tell further what Apache did to the mankiller. A jack
has about as much sense of mercy as he has of fear, and he has never
been taught any rules of warfare. When he gets his enemy where his enemy
would like to get him, he does his utmost to obliterate him from the
face of the earth. So it was that next day the Tumbling K men were
barely able to recognize the Kentucky stallion in the torn, broken,
black pulp they found in the horse pasture.