THE LONE HERD
“AND I’ll bet this is the sorriest herd of cows that ever was made on
the soil of Texas!” There was grief in the tones of old Jim Nabours as
he turned away from the dusty flat where the circling riders were
holding the main body of the T.L. gathering. For many days the men had
been riding mesquite thicket, timbered flat and open glade, sweeping in
the cattle in a general rodeo for the making of the trail herd. This was
the result.
“About one in ten of what we’d orto of had, and what she still thinks
she’s got,” he added, speaking to his own trail segundo, bearded young
Del Williams, as they pulled up and looked back at the cattle.
Williams nodded.
“It’s been a system,” said he. “Some one’s stripped the whole upper
range. We’d orto had fifty riders instead of ten—and not a Mexican in
the lot—to ride the upper water fronts. I got my own suspicions.”
“And me. But what’s the use? The war come and we couldn’t help it. But
even if cows wasn’t worth a damn we ought to of knew how many we didn’t
have. Till now, I never really did.”
Williams nodded. A tall, well-favored youth he was, with the gravity of
the returned soldier. He still, fault of better, wore the Confederate
gray. His garb was worn and patched, like that of the foreman.
“They robbed that range after the old man was killed and afore we-all
got here in charge. For over two years Del Sol was let plumb alone.
Laguna del Sol! Best range in Texas, and the onliest place in all Texas
that ain’t boiling over with cows right now! Fours? Long threes? Beeves?
How could we pick? We was lucky to get what we did, even with quite some
few that don’t show T.L. any too damned plain.
“Oh, there’s over four thousand head,” Williams went on; “four thousand
three hundred and forty-two is what we made it when we tallied ’em in.
But sufferin’ snakes!”
“Uh-huh. There’s steers there that looks like old Colonel Cortés in the
face—bet there’s a thousand head that dates back beyond the Spanish
Conquest. There’s yearlings here is ten years old, and the rest
perportionate. Spring calves and fours and threes and laws knows
what—that’s one fine outfit to drive a thousand miles, huh?”
“Well,” said Williams soberly, “we got to tell the boss we just made it
mixed, so’s’t she could suit every buyer. And damned if I don’t think
she could—unless’n a buyer wanted a even lot of good fours for beeves.”
“Of course,” assented Nabours. “If only she wasn’t so hard to fool and
so sot in her ways!
“Is the new chute ready?” he asked, settling back into the saddle as he
uncoiled a leg from around the horn. “We’ve got to get ’em in the road
brand.”
“The boys got the wings done this morning,” replied Williams. “It won’t
take forever to put our Fishhook road brand over the T.L. But I’ll bet a
horse there’s mossy horns in there’ll brand as hard as a tarrypin, and
calves that’ll take two to hold the brand.”
In a lesser flat, a couple of miles from the home corrals, new corrals
and a branding chute had hurriedly been put up by the T.L. hands for the
quicker process of working the trail herd. The material was mesquite
posts set deep, with cross poles lashed on with hide. A nail was a thing
unknown. The two men rode along the fenced lines approvingly.
“The sher’f’s a cow hand, all right,” said Nabours. “Just how he finds
time to quit the sher’f’s office is what he ain’t explained, no more’n a
lot of other things. But cows he does know. He’s coming in now.”
The rider who approached them from the farther side of the flat was not
easily recognizable as the same young man who had ridden alone into the
Del Sol gate a fortnight or more ago. His garb now was the loose wool of
the average cattle hand of the place and day, his checkerboard trousers
thrust into his bootlegs. Chaparajos he did not now wear, nor did any
Saxon Texans when they could avoid it. There was at that time no
standardized cowboy, nor any uniform for him. Indeed, the very name of
“cowboy” was unknown on the lower range. The Del Sol ranch hands were
for the most part sons of neighboring ranches, most of them lank,
whiskered, taciturn young men, and for the most part seedy of apparel.
They came in what garb they were able to get, and they utterly lacked
uniformity, beyond the fact that each could ride, rope and brand, and
all were able to live on food that would have killed men less hardy.
One of such company might have been Dan McMasters now as he plodded
forward, mounted on a stout _grulla_ of his own string—a blue-crane
horse such as would sometimes be seen in any large remuda. He had
appeared at Del Sol a week earlier than he had promised, but had
forbidden the men to announce him at the house. He had lived with the
cattle hands, and wished his presence to be unknown, he said, until
after the herd was on its way. All for reasons which he did not declare.
He was taciturn and mysterious as ever to Jim Nabours, and the latter
also grew chary of speech. Low as his own resources were, it did not
wholly please him that, stacked up in two newly arrived trail wagons
near the home corral, were supplies enough to run the outfit through to
Abilene. It pleased him no more that if the Del Sol remuda now carried
under its own road brand another brand, that brand should be the
McMasters Circle Arrow, which was ranged in Gonzales County, far below.
Del Sol had never borrowed, never been obliged.
“_Amigos! Caballeros!_” McMasters waved a hand as he drew near.
Del Williams looked at him in silence, nor was Nabours at first much
more communicative.
“Well,” he said at length, “that there bunch of cows is what we call our
trail herd. I expect they’d all hold still and let us brand ’em
standing. The boss don’t suspect nothing but what this here herd is all
select fours. Well, let her think so. Grass is up strong here, and we’ll
not ketch it as we move north. So let’s push this here Noah’s-ark outfit
into the pens and get it in the Fishhook soon’s the Lord’ll let us!”
“Well, we’ve all done our best,” commented McMasters.
Nabours looked at him dourly.
“Ef we wasn’t broke,” said he, “you couldn’t of done as much as I’ve let
you. Anyhow I didn’t take all the beans and molasses you sont
up—there’s half in your wagon yet, and I want you to send it back home.
Besides, I won’t take no wagon from you; we got our own carts, and
them’s good enough. Horses, now—why, yes, I’ll take the loan of them,
fer maybe you can sell ’em north. I don’t want to hit Aberlene with a
bunch of sore backs. Ef you got some horses, anywheres, why, there you
are; but ef you’ve et up all the chuck, why, where are you? We maybe
couldn’t never pay that back—I don’t know. So you jest send you own
wagon back home while you got it.”
“Well, all right,” replied McMasters, slightly changing color. “You
know, of course, I’m not pushing anything on you. I don’t want your
employer to know anything about it. And I know you-all have done your
best.”
“Yes, I reckon we have. We’re not hardly leaving a hen wrangler at Del
Sol—taking the whole force and family and most of the furniture, down
to Miss Taisie’s trunk. Buck Talley, our Senegambian chief, he’d of died
if he hadn’t got to go on as cook. Milly can drive one carreta, and old
Anita don’t know nothing better’n to set on the seat of a carreta and
talk Spanish to them oxens. Ef we don’t make Aberlene it’s because there
ain’t no Aberlene. Here we come, forty-five hundred cows, ef ye don’t
mind calling ’em that, sixteen more or less human cow hands, nineteen
kinds of rifles and six-shooters, a hundred and fifteen saddle ponies
and the only red-headedest boss in all Texas, which is a girl. God bless
our home!
“Speaking of hair, did either of you-all ever notice Miss Taisie’s sort
of hair?” he demanded, suddenly turning.
McMasters made no comment. Del Williams only looked at Nabours.
“Well, you see, her hair is plumb long and plumb straight, except at the
far end it curls up, like a drake’s tail. You see that? You know what
that means? Well, any woman that has hair like that can practice magic.
I read that in a dream book oncet. Them sort is witches, and it’s no
manner of use trying to stop ’em. That’s what the book said. Living
along twenty-two year with Miss Taisie, taking out three I spent in the
war, I’m here to say the book didn’t tell no lie. So here we all are,
sixteen fools that can’t no ways help theirselves, all along of the boss
having that kind of red hair that curls up on the end. Well, like you
say, we all done our best. I can’t look fifty horses and two wagons of
grub in the mouth—not yet.
“Del, ride back and tell the boys to throw the herd all closter to the
road chute. Let’s get as many as we can in the iron before she gets too
dark to work. We’ll put half at roping and branding on the flat and the
balance can work ’em through the chute.”
The three turned toward the dust cloud where the main herd was held by
the men. A rider was coming out, top speed.
“Hello!” began Nabours. “What’s a-eating him?”
The horseman drew up his mount squatting, throwing up a hand—old
Sanchez, all his life a Del Sol rider, and the only Mexican allowed to
go with the trail herd.
“_Pronto, Señor Jeem!_” he called. “_Los hombres—baja_!” He pointed to
the herd.
“What hombres, Sanchez? What’s up?”
“_Los hombres_—they cutta our herd!”
“Cut our herd—what’s that?”
“Read-a our brand—cutta our herd. They say-a we gotta their _vacas_.
They goin’ take!”
“Cut our herd? On our own ground. Not none! The man don’t live that’s
going to cut a Del Sol herd without my consent and my help. Come on!”
He set spurs, rode through the thin fringe of mesquite that made the
shortest path.
“Come on, McMasters!” he called across his shoulder. “I want you for
witness here!”
But as he and his two riders burst free and spurred down the slope to
where the great herd was made he looked back, not hearing hoof beats.
McMasters was not with them.
“I’ll be damned!”
Nabours smothered the remainder of a volley of hot-headed oaths. He did
not understand a man who sidestepped when he was needed.