THE FISHHOOK
“CUSS take the law!” fumed old Jim Nabours. “I never seen nothing but
trouble come out of law. Ef it wouldn’t of been for them Ranger boys
we’d of killed Rudabaugh and his outfit right here, and that’d of ended
the whole business. Courts? They own the courts; they’ll all be out and
at it again inside a week. Ef they meet up with us again I shore hope
there won’t be no Rangers. When come it a cowman can’t take care of his
own cows?
“But come on, now, Del, push ’em over to the new pens; we got to work
this Noah’s ark right now.”
Nabours and Dell Williams slowly edged out a string of cattle, making a
point. Swing men rode gently somewhat farther back; others pushed in the
stragglers. Quietly, efficiently, with the long skill of men who all
their lives had “savvied cows,” they broke the compact mass into a
long-strung-out line, traveling quietly in the direction laid out by the
leaders. The herd submitted itself to guidance. All went well until they
reached the raw new lines of the crude branding chute, when a few of the
old mossy horns began to stare and then to roll their tails as though
about to break away; but trouble finally was averted.
The swing men crowded and cut the front of the herd to one side of the
others. Back of them others began to circle the long procession. In a
few moments two herds were made on the flat near the branding pens. In
half an hour three irons of the Fishhook road brand, made by Buck the
cook, were getting cherry heat in the fire near the chute. Men pushed a
thin line of animals out of the smaller bunch, heading them for the
fences. Once in the wings, they were crowded into the V till a row of a
dozen or twenty stood in single file back of the rising gate. Then, amid
swaying that strained the rawhide lashings of the new fence, and to the
chorus of bawls of the creatures as the hot irons sizzled into their
hides, the Fishhook began to appear above the T.L. holding and owner’s
brand.
“Tally one T.L. four! Two T.L. four! One T.L. yearling! One T.L.
yearling! One T.L. two!” Sometimes a man would grin as he came back to
the fire. “This here T.L. is the only thing I kin see on ary cow so
fur!” quoth Len Hersey, top hand. “Ef it wasn’t put on right good we kin
fix it some with a runnin’ iron. Keep about two straights in the fire.”
“Tally one three!” came a voice. “Say, Del, this here Fishhook is the
plumb catchin’est road brand ary feller ever did see! Does my eyes
deceive me?”
Laughter and jests, dust, noise, lowings and groanings, the clack and
clatter of cattle moved into the wings, the smell of the herd blending
with the odor of singed hair—all the old-time flavor of cattle work in
the open—went on now, the thin wedge of tail-twisting, surly brutes
pushed out of the chute gate increasing steadily. The nucleus of the Del
Sol trail herd grew steadily, until finally the red sun fell below the
distant screen of the live-oak groves.
“She pops!” said Del Williams.
“Shore she pops!” assented Nabours. “We’ll get the boss up a herd if we
have to make ’em out of red dirt, way God made old Uncle Adam!
“Hello!” he added. “There’s the boss a-coming!”
Indeed, through the dust, wind-carried up the flat, there showed the
white feet and front of Blancocito. Taisie Lockhart, again in her range
clothing, stained and worn, her hair once more clubbed between her
shoulders with a shoe string, rode up soberly, trotting close to the
pens.
“How are you, Jim?” said she. “How are you all, men? Where’ve you been
three days back?”
Jim Nabours wiped his face on the dirty kerchief he pulled around his
neck.
“Where we been, Miss Taisie?” he answered. “Why, we been strolling
around with our light geetars amid the cactus, a-rounding up the finest
road herd ever put up in Texas.”
“But, Jim, we said maybe beeves—fours or long threes! Look yonder in
the chute, man! There’s two fours, that’s all! The rest are twos and
calves!”
“I’m Noah, ma’am,” said Jim Nabours gravely. “This here, now, is my ark.
Don’t you come horning in. Of course, ef we do got a lot of she-stuff
and mixed ages along of the others, how could we help it? Reckon it’s
cheaper to iron ’em when you got ’em, ain’t it?”
“But you’re ironing everything, and all in the road brand, calves and
all!”
“Ma’am,” said Jim Nabours solemnly, “ef we wasn’t short of hands I’d
shore fire the segundo, Del Williams. He’s the onthoughtedest man I ever
did see. Now look what he done, him being in a dream! I expect he done
run our iron on a dozen or so that ain’t beeves a-tall! And it won’t
come off in the wash! Now, how can we get it off? Miss Taisie, as the
daughter of the best cowman Texas ever seen, what would you segest fer
me to do with Del?”
The girl turned aside to hide a smile that made her cheek dimple.
“Well, I’ve got a pair of eyes,” said she.
“Shore you have, Miss Taisie, and fine ones, too. I wish they was
different. But any good cowman has got to have two kinds of a eye—one
to tell a brand fur as he can see a critter and t’other not to see no
brand that he don’t want to see. Now you go on back to the house, Miss
Taisie, and leave us alone, and we’ll turn in up to Aberlene, ef there
is ary such place, with the damnedest, evenest, finest bunch of beeves
you ever seen, every one in the T.L. and Fishhook, and all of ’em yores.
God bless our home!”
He flicked at the white stripe on Blancocito’s hips with the end of his
own bridle rein; whereat Blancocito sprang a dozen feet to one side—but
Taisie with him, not at all concerned.
“Don’t, Jim,” she protested. “You always treat me like a child.”
“Well, ain’t you?” replied Jim. “Shore you’ll be the richest child in
Texas six months from now.”
The girl reined over to where her faithful adjutant stood, led him one
side. Her face was troubled.
“Jim——” she began.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Jim, what’s wrong around Del Sol? Something’s wrong!”
“What is it, Miss Taisie?”
She drew yet closer.
“Some one’s been around the house.”
“What? What’s that?”
“Some one’s been in the house! I don’t know just when. You know my
little old trunk—I mean the Spanish-leather box with the big hinges?”
“Why, yes, ma’am. I seen it a hundred times in the front room—seen it
just the other day.”
“It was in the front room. It isn’t there now.”
“What? What you telling me, Miss Taisie?”
“It’s gone! I missed it to-day.”
“What all was in it?”
“Some things of my mother’s; laces, you know, a silver comb,
pictures—and some clothes. That’s almost all, except a lot of old
papers. There were bundles and bundles of my father’s old land scrip. He
was always buying it, as you know; no one could stop him. He said it
would be worth something some day.”
“Miss Taisie, he said right! He told me that land would be worth five
dollars a acre in Texas some day; maybe even ten. He said a beef four’d
bring twelve dollars here on the Texas range. He said he was going to
buy land, all he could get, at five cents a acre, while he could. And
he’d of got a heap more in his pasture if he’d lived. And his trunk of
scrip——”
“By my mother’s grave!”—the girl rose to her full height in her
stirrups, in a sudden tempest of wrath, her right hand high above her
head—“I swear I’ll make the drive for him—and her! I swear if I ever
find the thief that came in my house I’ll live for my family’s revenge,
and for that alone!”
“Jim, they’re robbing us! I know that herd! Do you think I’m blind!
Don’t I know cows? Yon’s the leavings, the trimmings, of the Del Sol
range! All right! We’ll drive the leavings. My word and my life for it,
I’ll be only a man now till all these things are squared! Will you stand
by me?”
“You ort’n to ask, Miss Taisie.”
“Jim, now listen! I want every corner of the bunk house searched, every
tent, every wagon, every jacal, before we start north. If we find the
box we’ll know what to do.”
[Illustration: _A Paramount Picture._ _North of 36._
“JIM, WE’VE GOT TO DRIVE OUR HERDS NORTH—IT’S OUR ONLY SALVATION.”]