Hidden Water, Page 3

  CHAPTER III

  THE TRAIL OF THE SHEEP

  The morning dawned as clear on Bender as if there had never been stormnor clouds, and the waxy green heads of the greasewood, dotting thelevel plain with the regularity of a vineyard, sparkled with athousand dewdrops. Ecstatic meadow larks, undismayed by the utter lackof meadows, sang love songs from the tops of the telegraph poles; andthe little Mexican ground doves that always go in pairs trackedamiably about together in the wet litter of the corral, picking up thegrain which the storm had laid bare. Before the early sun had clearedthe top of the eastern mountains Jefferson Creede and Hardy had risenand fed their horses well, and while the air was yet chill they loadedtheir blankets and supplies upon the ranch wagon, driven by ashivering Mexican, and went out to saddle up.

  Since his confession of the evening before Creede had put aside hisair of friendly patronage and, lacking another pose, had taken tosmoking in silence; for there is many a boastful cowboy in Arizona whohas done his riding for the Cherrycow outfit on the chuck wagon,swamping for the cook. At breakfast he jollied the Chinaman intogiving him two orders of everything, from coffee to hot cakes, paidfor the same at the end, and rose up like a giant refreshed--butbeneath this jovial exterior he masked a divided mind. Although he hadcome down handsomely, he still had his reservations about thewhite-handed little man from Cherrycow, and when they entered thecorral he saddled his iron-scarred charger by feeling, gazing craftilyover his back to see how Hardy would show up in action.

  Now, first the little man took a rope, and shaking out the loopdropped it carelessly against his horse's fore-feet--and that lookedwell, for the sorrel stood stiffly in his tracks, as if he had beenanchored. Then the man from Cherrycow picked up his bridle, rubbedsomething on the bit, and offered it to the horse, who graciouslybowed his head to receive it. This was a new one on Creede and in theexcitement of the moment he inadvertently cinched his roan up twoholes too tight and got nipped for it, for old Bat Wings had a mind ofhis own in such matters, and the cold air made him ugly.

  "Here, quit that," muttered the cowboy, striking back at him; but whenhe looked up, the sorrel had already taken his bit, and while he waschamping on it Hardy had slipped the headstall over his ears. Therewas a broad leather blind on the hacamore, which was of the bestplaited rawhide with a horsehair tie rope, but the little man did nottake advantage of it to subdue his mount. Instead he reached down forhis gaudy Navajo saddle blanket, offered it to the sorrel to smell,and then slid it gently upon his back. But when he stooped for hissaddle the high-headed horse rebelled. With ears pricked suspiciouslyforward and eyes protruding he glared at the clattering thing inhorror, snorting deep at every breath. But, though he was free-footed,by some obsession of the mind, cunningly inculcated in his breaking,the sorrel pony was afraid to move.

  As the saddle was drawn toward him and he saw that he could not escapeits hateful embrace he leaned slowly back upon his haunches, gruntingas if his fore-feet, wreathed in the loose rope, were stuck in someterrible quicksands from which he tried in vain to extricate them; butwith a low murmur of indifferent words his master moved the saddleresolutely toward him, the stirrups carefully snapped up over thehorn, and ignoring his loud snorts and frenzied shakings of the headlaid it surely down upon his back. This done, he suddenly spokesharply to him, and with a final groan the beautiful creature rose upand consented to his fate.

  Hardy worked quickly now, tightening the cinch, lowering thestirrups, and gathering up the reins. He picked up the rope, coiled itdeftly and tied it to the saddle--and now, relieved of the idea thathe was noosed, the pony began to lift his feet and prance, softly,like a swift runner on the mark. At these signs of an early breakCreede mounted hurriedly and edged in, to be ready in case the sorrel,like most half-broken broncos, tried to scrape his rider off againstthe fence; but Hardy needed no wrangler to shunt him out the gate.Standing by his shoulder and facing the rear he patted the sorrel'sneck with the hand that held the reins, while with his right hand hetwisted the heavy stirrup toward him stealthily, raising his boot tomeet it. Then like a flash he clapped in his foot and, catching thehorn as his fiery pony shot forward, he snapped up into the saddlelike a jumping jack and went flying out the gate.

  "Well, the son of a gun!" muttered Creede, as he thundered down thetrail after him. "Durned if he can't ride!"

  There are men in every cow camp who can rope and shoot, but the manwho can ride a wild horse can hold up his head with the best ofthem. No matter what his race or station if he will crawl a "snake"and stay with him there is always room on the wagon for hisblankets; his fame will spread quickly from camp to camp, and theboss will offer to raise him when he shows up for his time.Jefferson Creede's face was all aglow when he finally rode up besideHardy; he grinned triumphantly upon horse and man as if they had wonmoney for him in a race; and Hardy, roused at last from hisreserve, laughed back out of pure joy in his possessions.

  "How's that for a horse?" he cried, raising his voice above the thudof hoofs. "I have to turn him loose at first--'fraid he'll learn topitch if I hold him in--he's never bucked with me yet!"

  "You bet--he's a snake!" yelled Creede, hammering along on hisbroad-chested roan. "Where'd you git 'im?"

  "Tom Fulton's ranch," responded Hardy, reining his horse in andpatting him on the neck. "Turned in three months' pay and broke himmyself, to boot. I'll let you try him some day, when he's gentled."

  "Well, if I wasn't so big 'n' heavy I'd take you up on that," saidCreede, "but I'm just as much obliged, all the same. I don't claim tobe no bronco-buster now, but I used to ride some myself when I was akid. But say, the old judge has got some good horses runnin' on theupper range,--if you want to keep your hand in,--thirty or forty headof 'em, and wild as hawks. There's some sure-enough wild horses too,over on the Peaks, that belong to any man that can git his rope onto'em--how would that strike you? We've been tryin' for years to catchthe black stallion that leads 'em."

  Try as he would to minimize this exaggerated estimate of his prowessas a horse-tamer Hardy was unable to make his partner admit that hewas anything short of a real "buster," and before they had been on thetrail an hour Creede had made all the plans for a big gather of wildhorses after the round-up.

  "I had you spotted for a sport from the start," he said, puffing outhis chest at the memory of his acumen, "but, by jingo, I never thoughtI was drawin' a bronco-twister. Well, now, I saw you crawl that horsethis mornin', and I guess I know the real thing by this time. Say," hesaid, turning confidentially in his saddle, "if it's none of mybusiness you can say so, but what did you do to that bit?"

  Hardy smiled, like a juggler detected in his trick. "You must havebeen watching me," he said, "but I don't mind telling you--it's simplypassing a good thing along. I learned it off of a Yaqui Mayo Indianthat had been riding for Bill Greene on the Turkey-track--I rubbed itwith a little salt."

  "Well, I'm a son of a gun!" exclaimed Creede incredulously. "Herewe've been gittin' our fingers bit off for forty years and neverthought of a little thing like that. Got any more tricks?"

  "Nope," said Hardy, "I've only been in the Territory a little over ayear, this trip, and I'm learning, myself. Funny how much you can pickup from some of these Indians and Mexicans that can't write their ownnames, isn't it?"

  "Umm, may be so," assented Creede doubtfully, "but I'd rather go to awhite man myself. Say," he exclaimed, changing the subject abruptly,"what was that name the old man called you by when he was makin' thattalk about sheep--Roofer, or Rough House--or something like that?"

  "Oh, that's my front name--Rufus. Why? What's the matter with it?"

  "Nothin', I reckon," replied Creede absently, "never happened to hearit before, 's all. I was wonderin' how he knowed it," he added,glancing shrewdly sideways. "Thought maybe you might have met him upin California, or somewheres."

  "Oh, that's easy," responded Hardy unblinkingly. "The first thing hedid was to ask me my full name. I notice he calls you Jefferson," headded, shiftily changing the subject.r />
  "Sure thing," agreed Creede, now quite satisfied, "he calls everybodythat way. If your name is Jim you're James, John you're Jonathan, Jeffyou're Jefferson Davis--but say, ain't they any f'r short to yourname? We're gittin' too far out of town for this Mister business. Myname's Jeff, you know," he suggested.

  "Why, sure," exclaimed Hardy, brushing aside any college-bredscruples, "only don't call me Rough House--they might get the ideathat I was on the fight. But you don't need to get scared ofRufus--it's just another way of saying Red. I had a red-headedancestor away back there somewhere and they called him Rufus, and thenthey passed the name down in the family until it got to me, and I'm nomore red-headed than you are."

  "_No_--is that straight?" ejaculated the cowboy, with enthusiasm,"same as we call 'em Reddy now, eh? But say, I'd choke if I tried tocall you Rufus. Will you stand for Reddy? Aw, that's no good--what'sthe matter with Rufe? Well, shake then, pardner, I'm dam' glad I metup with you."

  They pulled their horses down to a Spanish trot--that easy, limpingshuffle that eats up its forty miles a day--and rode on together likebrothers, heading for a distant pass in the mountains where thepainted cliffs of the Bulldog break away and leave a gap down to theriver. To the east rose Superstition Mountain, that huge buttress uponwhich, since the day that a war party of Pimas disappeared within theshadow of its pinnacles, hot upon the trail of the Apaches, and neverreturned again, the Indians of the valley have always looked withsuperstitious dread.

  Creede told the story carelessly, smiling at the pride of the Pimaswho refused to admit that the Apaches alone, devils and bad medicinebarred, could have conquered so many of their warriors. To the west ina long fringe of green loomed the cottonwoods of Moroni, where thehard-working Mormons had turned the Salagua from its course andirrigated the fertile plain, and there on their barren reservationdwelt the remnant of those warlike Pimas, the unrequited friends ofthe white men, now held by them as of no account.

  As he heard the history of its people--how the Apaches had wiped outthe Toltecs, and the white men had killed off the Apaches, and then,after pushing aside the Pimas and the Mexicans, closed in a deathstruggle for the mastery of the range--Hardy began to perceive thegrim humor of the land. He glanced across at his companion, tall,stalwart, with mighty arms and legs and features rugged as a mountaincrag, and his heart leaped up within him at the thought of the battlesto come, battles in which sheepmen and cattlemen, defiant of the law,would match their strength and cunning in a fight for the open range.

  As they rode along mile after mile toward the north the road mountedgently; hills rose up one by one out of the desert floor, crowned withtowering _sahuaros_, and in the dip of the pass ahead a mighty forestof their misshapen stalks was thrust up like giant fingers against thehorizon. The trail wound in among them, where they rose like flutedcolumns above the lesser cactus--great skin-covered tanks, gorged fatwith water too bitter to quench the fieriest thirst, yet guardedjealously by poison-barbed spines. Gilded woodpeckers, with hearts redas blood painted upon their breasts, dipped in uneven flight from_sahuaro_ to _sahuaro_, dodged into holes of their own making, dugdeep into the solid flesh; sparrow hawks sailed forth from theirsummits, with quick eyes turned to the earth for lizards; and thebrown mocking bird, leaping for joy from the ironwood tree where hismate was nesting, whistled the praise of the desert in the ecstaticnotes of love. In all that land which some say God forgot, there wasnaught but life and happiness, for God had sent the rain.

  The sun was high in the heavens when, as they neared the summit ofthe broad pass, a sudden taint came down the wind, whose only burdenhad been the fragrance of resinous plants, of wetted earth, and ofgreen things growing. A distant clamor, like the babble of manyvoices or the surf-beats of a mighty sea, echoed dimly between the_chuck-a-chuck_ of their horses' feet, and as Hardy glanced upinquiringly his companion's lip curled and he muttered:

  "Sheep!"

  They rode on in silence. The ground, which before had been furred withIndian wheat and sprouting six weeks' grass, now showed the imprintsof many tiny feet glozed over by the rain, and Hardy noticed vaguelythat something was missing--the grass was gone. Even where a minutebefore it had covered the level flats in a promise of maturity, risingup in ranker growth beneath the thorny trees and cactus, its place wasnow swept bare and all the earth trampled into narrow, hard-tampedtrail. Then as a brush shed and corrals, with a cook tent and a coupleof water wagons in the rear, came into view, the ground went suddenlystone bare, stripped naked and trampled smooth as a floor. Neverbefore had Hardy seen the earth so laid waste and desolate, the verycactus trimmed down to its woody stump and every spear of root grasssearched out from the shelter of the spiny _chollas_. He glanced oncemore at his companion, whose face was sullen and unresponsive; therewas a well-defined bristle to his short mustache and he rowelled hishorse cruelly when he shied at the blatting horde.

  The shearing was in full blast, every man working with such feverishindustry that not one of them stopped to look up. From the receivingcorral three Mexicans in slouched hats and jumpers drove the sheepinto a broad chute, yelling and hurling battered oil cans at thehindmost; by the chute an American punched them vigorously forwardwith a prod, and yet another thrust them into the pens behind theshearers, who bent to their work with a sullen, back-breaking stoop.Each man held between his knees a sheep, gripped relentlessly, thatflinched and kicked at times when the shears clipped off patches offlesh; and there in the clamor of a thousand voices they shuttledtheir keen blades unceasingly, stripping off a fleece, throwing itaside, and seizing a fresh victim by the foot, toiling and sweatinggrimly. By another chute a man stood with a paint pot, stamping afresh brand upon every new-shorn sheep, and in a last corral the nakedones, their white hides spotted with blood from their cuts, blattedfrantically for their lambs. These were herded in a small inclosure,some large and browned with the grime of the flock, others white andwobbly, newborn from mothers frightened in the shearing; and alwaysthat tremendous wailing chorus--_Ba-a-a_, _ba-a-a_, _ba-a-a_--and menin greasy clothes wrestling with the wool.

  To a man used to the noise and turmoil of the round-up and brandingpen and accustomed to the necessary cruelties of stock raising therewas nothing in the scene to attract attention. But Hardy was ofgentler blood, inured to the hardships of frontier life but not to itsunthinking brutality, and as he beheld for the first time the waste,the hurry, the greed of it all, his heart turned sick and his eyesglowed with pity, like a woman's. By his side the sunburned swarthygiant who had taken him willy-nilly for a friend sat unmoved, his lipcurled, not at the pity of it, but because they were sheep; andbecause, among the men who rushed about driving them with clubs andsacks, he saw more than one who had eaten at his table and thensheeped out his upper range. His saturnine mood grew upon him as hewaited and, turning to Hardy, he shouted harshly:

  "There's some of your friends over yonder," he said, jerking his thumbtoward a group of men who were weighing the long sacks of wool. "Wantto go over and get acquainted?"

  Hardy woke from his dream abruptly and shook his head.

  "No, let's not stop," he said, and Creede laughed silently as hereined Bat Wings into the trail. But just as they started to go one ofthe men by the scales hailed them, motioning with his hand and, stilllaughing cynically, the foreman of the Dos S turned back again.

  "That's Jim Swope," he said, "one of our big sheep men--nicefeller--you'll like him."

  He led the way to the weighing scales, where two sweating Mexicanstumbled the eight-foot bags upon the platform, and a burly man with aScotch turn to his tongue called off the weights defiantly. At hiselbow stood two men, the man who had called them and a woolbuyer,--each keeping tally of the count.

  Jim Swope glanced quickly up from his work. He was a man not overforty but bent and haggard, with a face wrinkled deep with hard lines,yet lighted by blue eyes that still held a twinkle of grim humor.

  "Hello, Jeff," he said, jotting down a number in his tally book,"goin' by without stoppin', was ye
? Better ask the cook for somethin'to eat. Say, you're goin' up the river, ain't ye? Well, tell PabloMoreno and them Mexicans I lost a cut of two hundred sheep up theresomewhere. That son of a--of a herder of mine was too lazy to make acorral and count 'em, so I don't know where they are lost, but I'llgive two bits a head for 'em, delivered here. Tell the old man that,will you?"

  He paused to enter another weight in his book, then stepped away fromthe scales and came out to meet them.

  "How's the feed up your way?" he inquired, smiling grimly.

  "Dam' pore," replied Creede, carrying on the jest, "and it'll bepoorer still if you come in on me, so keep away. Mr. Swope, I'll makeyou acquainted with Mr. Hardy--my new boss. Judge Ware has sent himout to be superintendent for the Dos S."

  "Glad to meet you, sir," said Swope, offering a greasy hand thatsmelled of sheep dip. "Nice man, the old judge--here, _umbre_, putthat bag on straight! Three hundred and _fifteen_? Well I know a dam'sight better--excuse me, boys--here, put that bag on again, and weighit right!"

  "Well," observed Creede, glancing at his friend as the combat ragedunremittingly, "I guess we might as well pull. His busy day, youunderstand. Nice feller, though--you'll like 'im." Once more the glintof quiet deviltry came into his eyes, but he finished out the jestsoberly. "Comes from a nice Mormon family down in Moroni--sixbrothers--all sheepmen. You'll see the rest of the boys when they comethrough next month--but Jim's the best."

  There was something in the sardonic smile that accompanied thisencomium which set Hardy thinking. Creede must have been thinking too,for he rode past the kitchen without stopping, cocking his head up atthe sun as if estimating the length of their journey.

  "Oh, did you want to git somethin' to eat?" he inquired innocently."No? That's good. That sheep smell kinder turns my stomach." Andthrowing the spurs into Bat Wings he loped rapidly toward the summit,scowling forbiddingly in passing at a small boy who was shepherdingthe stray herd. For a mile or two he said nothing, swinging his headto scan the sides of the mountains with eyes as keen as an eagle's;then, on the top of the last roll, he halted and threw his hand outgrandly at the panorama which lay before them.

  "There she lays," he said, as if delivering a funeral oration, "asgood a cow country as God ever made--and now even the jack rabbitshave left it. D'ye see that big mesa down there?" he continued,pointing to a broad stretch of level land, dotted here and there withgiant cactus, which extended along the river. "I've seen a thousandhead of cattle, fat as butter, feedin' where you see them _sahuaros_,and now look at it!"

  He threw out his hand again in passionate appeal, and Hardy saw thatthe mesa was empty.

  "There was grass a foot high," cried Creede in a hushed, sustainedvoice, as if he saw it again, "and flowers. Me and my brothers andsisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, bigyaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies--andferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget 'em--but I've beenfightin' these sheep so long and gittin' so mean and ugly them flowerswouldn't mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds andstink squashes. But hell, what's the use?" He threw out his hands oncemore, palms up, and dropped them limply.

  "That's old Pablo Moreno's place down there," he said, falling backabruptly into his old way. "We'll stop there overnight--I want to helpgit that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we'llgo up by trail in the mornin'."

  Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the nakedhills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy,quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once thegrama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle ofJeff Creede's father had stood knee-high in flowers.

  Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desertlay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, andthe sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there wasno government; anybody's land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, tohog for and fight over forever--and no law of right; only this, thatthe best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts willin the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, aword here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand;and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious--averse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother's knee manyyears before:

  "Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace."

  But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followedevery vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens,he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond,which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.