by Zane Grey
CHAPTER 5.
OAK SPRING
Moze and Don and Sounder straggled into camp next morning, hungry,footsore and scarred; and as they limped in, Jones met them withcharacteristic speech: "Well, you decided to come in when you gothungry and tired? Never thought of how you fooled me, did you? Now, thefirst thing you get is a good licking."
He tied them in a little log pen near the cabin and whipped themsoundly. And the next few days, while Wallace and I rested, he tookthem out separately and deliberately ran them over coyote and deertrails. Sometimes we heard his stentorian yell as a forerunner to theblast from his old shotgun. Then again we heard the shots unheralded bythe yell. Wallace and I waxed warm under the collar over this peculiarmethod of training dogs, and each of us made dire threats. But injustice to their implacable trainer, the dogs never appeared to behurt; never a spot of blood flecked their glossy coats, nor did theyever come home limping. Sounder grew wise, and Don gave up, but Mozeappeared not to change.
"All hands ready to rustle," sang out Frank one morning. "Old Baldy'sgot to be shod."
This brought us all, except Jones, out of the cabin, to see the objectof Frank's anxiety tied to a nearby oak. At first I failed to recognizeOld Baldy. Vanished was the slow, sleepy, apathetic manner that hadcharacterized him; his ears lay back on his head; fire flashed from hiseyes. When Frank threw down a kit-bag, which emitted a metallicclanking, Old Baldy sat back on his haunches, planted his forefeet deepin the ground and plainly as a horse could speak, said "No!"
"Sometimes he's bad, and sometimes worse," growled Frank.
"Shore he's plumb bad this mornin'," replied Jim.
Frank got the three of us to hold Baldy's head and pull him up, then heventured to lift a hind foot over his line. Old Baldy straightened outhis leg and sent Frank sprawling into the dirt. Twice again Frankpatiently tried to hold a hind leg, with the same result; and then helifted a forefoot. Baldy uttered a very intelligible snort, bit throughWallace's glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I letgo his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree.There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantlyheld on to Baldy's head, and a thrashing of scrub pinyon, where Baldyreached out vigorously with his hind feet. But for Jim, he would haveescaped.
"What's all the row?" called Jones from the cabin. Then from the door,taking in the situation, he yelled: "Hold on, Jim! Pull down on theornery old cayuse!"
He leaped into action with a lasso in each hand, one whirling round hishead. The slender rope straightened with a whiz and whipped roundBaldy's legs as he kicked viciously. Jones pulled it tight, thenfastened it with nimble fingers to the tree.
"Let go! let go! Jim!" he yelled, whirling the other lasso. The loopflashed and fell over Baldy's head and tightened round his neck. Jonesthrew all the weight of his burly form on the lariat, and Baldy crashedto the ground, rolled, tussled, screamed, and then lay on his back,kicking the air with three free legs. "Hold this," ordered Jones,giving the tight rope to Frank. Whereupon he grabbed my lasso from thesaddle, roped Baldy's two forefeet, and pulled him down on his side.This lasso he fastened to a scrub cedar.
"He's chokin'!" said Frank.
"Likely he is," replied Jones shortly. "It'll do him good." But withhis big hands he drew the coil loose and slipped it down over Baldy'snose, where he tightened it again.
"Now, go ahead," he said, taking the rope from Frank.
It had all been done in a twinkling. Baldy lay there groaning andhelpless, and when Frank once again took hold of the wicked leg, he wasalmost passive. When the shoeing operation had been neatly and quicklyattended to and Baldy released from his uncomfortable position hestruggled to his feet with heavy breaths, shook himself, and looked athis master.
"How'd you like being hog-tied?" queried his conqueror, rubbing Baldy'snose. "Now, after this you'll have some manners."
Old Baldy seemed to understand, for he looked sheepish, and lapsed oncemore into his listless, lazy unconcern.
"Where's Jim's old cayuse, the pack-horse?" asked our leader.
"Lost. Couldn't find him this morning, an' had a deuce of a timefindin' the rest of the bunch. Old Baldy was cute. He hid in a bunch ofpinyons an' stood quiet so his bell wouldn't ring. I had to trail him."
"Do the horses stray far when they are hobbled?" inquired Wallace.
"If they keep jumpin' all night they can cover some territory. We'renow on the edge of the wild horse country, and our nags know this aswell as we. They smell the mustangs, an' would break their necks to getaway. Satan and the sorrel were ten miles from camp when I found themthis mornin'. An' Jim's cayuse went farther, an' we never will get him.He'll wear his hobbles out, then away with the wild horses. Once withthem, he'll never be caught again."
On the sixth day of our stay at Oak we had visitors, whom Frankintroduced as the Stewart brothers and Lawson, wild-horse wranglers.They were still, dark men, whose facial expression seldom varied; talland lithe and wiry as the mustangs they rode. The Stewarts were ontheir way to Kanab, Utah, to arrange for the sale of a drove of horsesthey had captured and corraled in a narrow canyon back in the Siwash.Lawson said he was at our service, and was promptly hired to look afterour horses.
"Any cougar signs back in the breaks?" asked Jones.
"Wal, there's a cougar on every deer trail," replied the elder Stewart,"An' two for every pinto in the breaks. Old Tom himself downed fifteencolts fer us this spring."
"Fifteen colts! That's wholesale murder. Why don't you kill thebutcher?"
"We've tried more'n onct. It's a turrible busted up country, thembrakes. No man knows it, an' the cougars do. Old Tom ranges all theridges and brakes, even up on the slopes of Buckskin; but he lives downthere in them holes, an' Lord knows, no dog I ever seen could followhim. We tracked him in the snow, an' had dogs after him, but none couldstay with him, except two as never cum back. But we've nothin' agin OldTom like Jeff Clarke, a hoss rustler, who has a string of pintoscorraled north of us. Clarke swears he ain't raised a colt in twoyears."
"We'll put that old cougar up a tree," exclaimed Jones.
"If you kill him we'll make you all a present of a mustang, an' Clarke,he'll give you two each," replied Stewart. "We'd be gettin' rid of himcheap."
"How many wild horses on the mountain now?"
"Hard to tell. Two or three thousand, mebbe. There's almost no ketchin'them, an' they regrowin' all the time We ain't had no luck this spring.The bunch in corral we got last year."
"Seen anythin' of the White Mustang?" inquired Frank. "Ever get a ropenear him?"
"No nearer'n we hev fer six years back. He can't be ketched. We seenhim an' his band of blacks a few days ago, headin' fer a water-holedown where Nail Canyon runs into Kanab Canyon. He's so cunnin' he'llnever water at any of our trap corrals. An' we believe he can gowithout water fer two weeks, unless mebbe he hes a secret hole we'venever trailed him to."
"Would we have any chance to see this White Mustang and his band?"questioned Jones.
"See him? Why, thet'd be easy. Go down Snake Gulch, camp at Singin'Cliffs, go over into Nail Canyon, an' wait. Then send some one slippin'down to the water-hole at Kanab Canyon, an' when the band cums in todrink--which I reckon will be in a few days now--hev them drive themustangs up. Only be sure to hev them get ahead of the White Mustang,so he'll hev only one way to cum, fer he sure is knowin'. He nevermakes a mistake. Mebbe you'll get to see him cum by like a whitestreak. Why, I've heerd thet mustang's hoofs ring like bells on therocks a mile away. His hoofs are harder'n any iron shoe as was evermade. But even if you don't get to see him, Snake Gulch is worthseein'."
I learned later from Stewart that the White Mustang was a beautifulstallion of the wildest strain of mustang blue blood. He had roamed thelong reaches between the Grand Canyon and Buckskin toward its southernslope for years; he had been the most sought-for horse by all thewranglers, and had become so shy and experienced that nothing but aglimpse was ever obtained of him. A singular fact was that he neverattac
hed any of his own species to his band, unless they were coalblack. He had been known to fight and kill other stallions, but he keptout of the well-wooded and watered country frequented by other bands,and ranged the brakes of the Siwash as far as he could range. The usualmethod, indeed the only successful way to capture wild horses, was tobuild corrals round the waterholes. The wranglers lay out night afternight watching. When the mustangs came to drink--which was always afterdark--the gates would be closed on them. But the trick had never evenbeen tried on the White Mustang, for the simple reason that he neverapproached one of these traps.
"Boys," said Jones, "seeing we need breaking in, we'll give the WhiteMustang a little run."
This was most pleasurable news, for the wild horses fascinated me.Besides, I saw from the expression on our leader's face that anuncapturable mustang was an object of interest for him.
Wallace and I had employed the last few warm sunny afternoons in ridingup and down the valley, below Oak, where there was a fine, levelstretch. Here I wore out my soreness of muscle, and gradually overcamemy awkwardness in the saddle. Frank's remedy of maple sugar and redpepper had rid me of my cold, and with the return of strength, and thecoming of confidence, full, joyous appreciation of wild environment andlife made me unspeakably happy. And I noticed that my companions werein like condition of mind, though self-contained where I was exuberant.Wallace galloped his sorrel and watched the crags; Jones talked morekindly to the dogs; Jim baked biscuits indefatigably, and smoked incontented silence; Frank said always: "We'll ooze along easy like, forwe've all the time there is." Which sentiment, whether from reiteratedsuggestion, or increasing confidence in the practical cowboy, or charmof its free import, gradually won us all.
"Boys," said Jones, as we sat round the campfire, "I see you're gettingin shape. Well, I've worn off the wire edge myself. And I have thehounds coming fine. They mind me now, but they're mystified. For thelife of them they can't understand what I mean. I don't blame them.Wait till, by good luck, we get a cougar in a tree. When Sounder andDon see that, we've lion dogs, boys! we've lion dogs! But Moze is astubborn brute. In all my years of animal experience, I've neverdiscovered any other way to make animals obey than by instilling fearand respect into their hearts. I've been fond of buffalo, horses anddogs, but sentiment never ruled me. When animals must obey, theymust--that's all, and no mawkishness! But I never trusted a buffalo inmy life. If I had I wouldn't be here to-night. You all know how manykeepers of tame wild animals get killed. I could tell you dozens oftragedies. And I've often thought, since I got back from New York, ofthat woman I saw with her troop of African lions. I dream about thoselions, and see them leaping over her head. What a grand sight that was!But the public is fooled. I read somewhere that she trained those lionsby love. I don't believe it. I saw her use a whip and a steel spear.Moreover, I saw many things that escaped most observers--how sheentered the cage, how she maneuvered among them, how she kept acompelling gaze on them! It was an admirable, a great piece of work.Maybe she loves those huge yellow brutes, but her life was in dangerevery moment while she was in that cage, and she knew it. Some day, oneof her pets likely the King of Beasts she pets the most will rise upand kill her. That is as certain as death."