by Zane Grey
“Fire me?” echoed Pecos, aghast.
“Yes, fire you! Have you no respect for a — a fellow’s person? I told you once before it drives me crazy to be tickled.”
“Shore I remember now, Dog-gone it, Terrill, cain’t I treat yu as I would any other boy?”
“You bet you can’t.”
“An’ yu’d fire me — honest to Gawd?”
“I — I’ve got to do something to — to protect myself,” replied Terrill, choking up.
“It’s got to be home to me — this hyar Lambeth Ranch, an’ I’m shore powerful fond of yu.”
“Shut up! That was a lie. I — I couldn’t get along without you,” flashed Terrill, with another kind of temper, and he ran away to the house, leaving Pecos relieved and glad, and uncomprehensibly moved. From that hour, nevertheless, Pecos realized he and Terrill were going to clash sooner or later. It only waited for the time and the place and the cause; and there was no use for Pecos to attempt to fend it off.
Terrill was subject to moods. He really was astounding in that way, but most of them did not interfere with the work, which, after all, was Pecos’ heartfelt aim. Sometimes when Terrill thought he was alone on the rocks or the banks of the river he would sing at the top of his lungs. Pecos never got close enough to him on these occasions to hear distinctly, but he caught a sweet rising and falling contralto voice. Then again Terrill would be wildly gay, and if opportunity offered where he was safe from attack, he would torment Pecos unmercifully. At times he would be profoundly melancholy and unapproachable, so sad-lipped and somber-eyed that Pecos was glad to let him alone. Again, and this was unusual and rare, happening in the dusk or in shadow, when his face was not visible, he would be provokingly curious about Pecos’ love-affairs.
“Dog-gone yu, boy, I told yu I hadn’t had any,” Pecos would reply, in good-humored impatience.
“Aw, you lie. A wonderful handsome vaquero like you! Pecos Smith, you cain’t make me believe you haven’t had — —”
“Wal, what? Yore so damn curious. Now just what?”
“A wife, maybe. Sweethearts, shore lots of them — and, like as not — more than one of those black-eyed, bewitching little Mexican hussies.”
“Wal, I’ll be jiggered! Thet last’s fine talk for a clean- minded boy who cain’t undress to go swimmin’ in front of men! ... You got me wrong, Terrill Lambeth. I never had no Mexican hussy, nor any other kind. Nor a wife. Gawd! thet’s kinda funny.... An’ the nearest I ever come to a sweetheart was up heah at the H H Ranch.... Mary Heald. I was a little sweet on her, but I never told her. Course she might have liked me — the boys swore she did — an’ I knew I’d shoot some fellar sooner or later an’ have to go on down the long trail. An’ thet’s just what happened.”
“Forgive me, Pecos. I — I was just curious.... I suppose then — I — we’ve only to look forward to the day when you shoot Breen Sawtell or Don Felipe — and ride away from Lambeth Ranch?”
Pecos was not so dense but he caught a faint bitterness in the lad’s words, and it touched him. In the shade of the trees — it was twilight under the canyon wall and they were riding home. Pecos reached out a hand to clasp Lambeth’s shoulder.
“Terrill, didn’t I say I’d never leave yu? Would it have been honest of me to go in partnership with yu when I might have to go on the drift? But it cain’t happen now. An’ if I shoot Sawtell an’ Felipe — which I’m damn liable to do if they come foolin’ in heah — it’ll be for yu.”
Terrill made no response to that unless riding on ahead could be construed as one.
Terrill had a sulky mood now and then, the only kind that Pecos found it trying to put up with. Without any reason whatever, that he could grasp, Terrill would get as sulky as a spoiled pup. It chanced one day that such a state of temper encroached upon an occasion when Pecos was as exasperated as he could well be. Things had gone wrong all day, even to the burning of his thumb with a branding-iron. This was serious. It was his trigger thumb! To be sure, he could shoot fairly well with his left hand, but if he ran into some of the vaqueros he suspected of brand-burning T L stock, he would be in a pretty pickle.
An argument arose over the matter of driving again to Camp Lancaster. Pecos wanted to put it off, and he was reasonable about it, though he did not mention the particular objection, which was his sore thumb. Terrill tossed his tawny head — happening for once to be without the omnipresent battered sombrero — and said he would be damned if he would not take Sambo and go alone.
“Yu will not,” replied Pecos, shortly.
“I will!”
“Ump-umm.”
“Who’ll stop me?”
“Wal, if yore such a dumbhaid, this heah little old Pecos Smith.”
“Dumbhaid! ... I shall go. I’d like to know who’s boss around Lambeth Ranch.”
“I reckon yore the owner of the ranch, Terrill, ‘cause I have only a half share in the stock. But yu cain’t boss me.”
“I am your boss.”
“Say, go away an’ leave me be. Yore pesterin’ me. Cain’t yu see this is a particular job.”
Terrill snatched the article Pecos was working on — no less than a wide leather belt he meant to carry money in — and threw it far down the bank.
“Wal, yu little devil!” ejaculated Pecos, nettled.
“Don’t call me names and don’t think you can work when I’m talking business,” declared Terrill, hotly.
“Call yu names? Shore I will. Heah’s a couple more. When yu air like yu air this minnit yu air a dod-blasted mean little kickin’ jackass. Yu heah me? ... Yore cranky, too, an’ turrible conceited aboot bein’ a boss. Why, yu couldn’t boss a lot of mavericks. Yu make me tired, Terrill, an’ I’ve a mind to spank you.”
“Spank me!” shrilled Terrill. “How dare you?” And he gave Pecos a stinging slap in the face.
That settled it. Out flashed Pecos’ long arms. He seized Terrill by the shoulders, heartily disposed to carry out the spanking threat. But sudden pangs in his sore thumb changed his mind. Instead he gave Terrill a flip that spun him around like a top. Then he swung his boot in a lusty kick to Terrill’s rear. In any case a vaquero’s kick was no trivial thing. This one lifted Terrill a little off the grass and dropped him sprawling. With astounding celerity Terrill sprang erect. Then Pecos met blazing eyes that took his breath. Many as had been the wonderful eyes of different-hued fury that had flashed into his, Terrill’s were the most magical.
“I’ll kill you!”
“Run along, yu little bull-haid,” drawled Pecos.
Terrill did run off, screaming incoherently, and that was the last Pecos saw of him until dusk. Pecos was watching the last ruddy glow of sunset down on the river when Terrill came out to edge closer to him.
“Pecos.” It was an entreating voice.
“Yeah.”
“I — I apologize.... You treated me just — just as I deserved. It was temper. I used to lose my haid at Dad. I’m sorry.”
* * * * *
Pecos and his two helpers rode the brakes of the river for twenty miles below Lambeth Ranch, and out on the slopes of the range for as many miles west. And Pecos’ hopes were more than fulfilled. They had burned the T L brand on more than seven hundred mavericks. What a grievous blow this would be to Don Felipe and his new partner, not to include several other ranchers who lived in Eagle’s Nest and ran their stock up and down the river! Soon the vaqueros of all those cattlemen would be riding out on full round-ups. Then Pecos expected some burned-out brands, if nothing worse.
In these three hot months of summer Pecos’ vigilant eye had not been rewarded by a single sight of Indians, or any tracks in the brakes or up on the ranges. Men who knew that country were partial to spring and fall for their operations. Before long now anything might be expected.
Toward the end of August the drought was broken by occasional rainstorms, most welcome to Lambeth Ranch. Even the well-watered canyon had begun to grow dusty and gray. But the rains worked magic.
When Pecos rode down from the desolate ranges or up the lonely, silent river with its drab walls, its never-changing monotony, back into the one green canyon within his range it was like entering another world. Months of riding the Pecos brakes could not but have its effect upon any man. The contrast of Lambeth’s Canyon counteracted this, and the vaquero would gain by night what he lost by day. Sambo was not affected by seasons, by heat or cold, by loneliness, by anything. “So long’s I’se got my chewin’-terbaccer I’se all right,” the negro was wont to say. Terrill was a difficult proposition to figure, and Pecos gave it up. Nevertheless, the lad never made one complaint about the hard work, the loneliness, and the confinement of the brakes.
Before undertaking a long siege of upriver riding, from which Pecos expected so much, he advised a week’s rest for the horses. During this interval Pecos and his helpers dammed the stream up near the canyon head, and formed a fine little lake, from which they dug an irrigation ditch, with branches almost the whole length of the ranch. This was something Terrill claimed his father had always wanted to do.
The change from the everlasting seat in a saddle, riding the rough, ragged, dreary brakes, to work on foot with clear running water while eyes were rested and soothed by soft greens, and the lines of goldenrod, and the autumn coloring of vines and willows, turned out to be something so beneficial that Pecos saw the wisdom of frequently resorting to it.
The white clouds sailed up back of the rims to fill the blue vault above, and to thicken and change and darken, until a heavy black one would come trailing veils of rain across the ranch. At the same time the sun would be shining through somewhere, and lakes of azure showed amidst both the white and the black clouds, and rainbows arched down from the ranges above to bend a gorgeous curve over the river, or drop a fading end far down the canyon.
“Shore the lovely time heah is coming,” said Terrill. “Makes up for the rest.”
“Pity we have to miss it,” replied Pecos. “But I’ve an idee, if it isn’t too ambitious. Let’s pack grub an’ beds an’ work out two or three of them upriver brakes at a time, then come home to rest up a bit.”
That met with Terrill’s approval.
“Sho yo’s gonna find det upribber tough sleddin’,” predicted Sambo.
* * * * *
Pecos was destined to learn vastly more about the river from which he had been named.
The country with which he had grown familiar while trail driving for McKeever did not take in the brakes of the river, but mostly the rolling ridges that led up to the vast sweeping ranges.
From Heald’s range, up and down the Pecos for miles, the strange river had worn a deep channel through dull red soil, and the places where cattle could get down to drink were not many.
The part of the river Pecos was now to explore proved to be the wildest and most dangerous reaches along its whole length. Nothing marked the course of the river. The cedar trees that grew sparsely were all down in the narrow deep-walled winding canyon. Cattle tracks led to the few breaks where it was possible to get down to water.
From time to time Sambo had told Pecos what he had learned personally about the river below Horsehead Crossing, and what had come to him through other riders. Whole herds of cattle had been drowned in the Pecos, and thousands had perished singly and doubly, and in small bunches. Fords were so few and far between that cowhands had often attempted a crossing at a bad place and a bad time, only to be carried down the swift current beyond a rocky wall to death.
The savages, lying in ambush at Horsehead Crossing, which was the most important and the most dreaded ford on the river, had often massacred an outfit of trail drivers and chased their cattle into the breaks. Even a repulsed attack seldom failed of a stampede, which added to the number of unknown strays.
Pecos was of the opinion that most of these lost cattle — for that matter all the cattle in this region were lost and not only had to be found, but caught — grazed gradually to the southward.
Three weeks of riding this hard country, allowing for weekend rests at home, did not account for many branded mavericks for Pecos’ outfit, but the labor was most valuable in acquainting Pecos with the haunts of a surprising number of cattle, and in what could not be done and what could. There was enough unbranded stock along Independence Creek alone to make Pecos and Terrill rich ranchers, and that stream lay between Lambeth Ranch and Camp Lancaster. Pecos’ visions of wealth and dreams of the future were not inconsistent with possibilities. At night, round the little camp fire, he would dwell on this and that aspect of the business, finding in Terrill a rapt listener.
“Listen pard,” said Pecos once, voicing a growing belief. “I shore don’t want to set up yore hopes way sky-high an’ then see them take a tumble. But, dog-gone it, I just cain’t see anythin’ ‘cept big money for us.”
“Pecos, you’ve got my hopes so high now I’m riding the clouds instead of my saddle,” replied Terrill.
“Wal, I’ll stick by my guns,” went on Pecos, doggedly. “By spring we’ll have twenty five hundred haid wearin’ the T L. We’ve got the ranch, the water, the range. This country will always run cattle, an’ a hundred times more’n what’s grazin’ heah now. It’s so darn big an’ so wild. Why, there’s no cattle range in Texas thet can come up to our West of the Pecos range. Grass doesn’t fail heah. Thet damned gray-green-yellow alkali-bitten river never went dry in its life.... We’re heah, boy, we’re heah!”
“But, Pecos, you’ve forgotten Don Felipe and Sawtell. It’s so easy to forget anything here. I cain’t keep track of days. It’s you, Pecos, with all your talk of riches, that makes me remember poor Dad and his hopes. And then I come back to these slick devils who not only stole my stock but tried to steal me.... It cain’t last, Pecos. Before October comes and goes these happy days will get a jolt.”
Pecos was silent a long time. The lad spoke sense, but then he had no idea who his partner was. And naturally Pecos was brought face to face with dire possibilities. He pondered over them, one by one, and added others as far-fetched and unlikely as he could conceive. Not one presented any great obstacle to him! Still, he could get shot in the back. If he would only sternly get down to the somber vigilance that had been natural to him in the past. But that was the opposite to being happy! He owed it to this orphaned lad, so lovable and fine, and so full of promise, to see that no tragedy ruined him.
“Terrill, yu handsome son-of-a-gun, listen,” began Pecos, deliberately. “Yu don’t know what I know. An’ I’ve gotta brag some to convince yu.... Wal, I once rode for Don Felipe.”
“Pecos! You did?” Terrill queried, in amaze, and he threw up his head so that the ruddy firelight played upon his tanned face.
“Shore did. An’ when thet greaser sees me an’ recognizes me, his black-peaked face will turn green, an’ his little pig’s eyes will pop out of his haid, an’ them pigtails — shore yu seen how he braids his hair? — they’ll stand up stiff.... Yu savvy, son?”
“Yes, I savvy,” replied Terrill, soberly.
“Wal, to resoom. Don has got the same vaqueros he always had, ‘cept two or three thet ain’t ridin’ for nobody no more. Ha! Ha! ... An’ do they know me? Wal, yu’ll see some day, an’ yu shore won’t worry no more.... An’ thet fetches us down to Breen Sawtell.... Terrill, thet man cain’t cause me to lose the tiniest wink of sleep. Now do yu savvy thet, too?”
“No, I cain’t.... Who are you, Pecos?”
“Wal, I’m yore partner, an’ thet’s enough.... Now listen to this new idee of mine. Next spring or fall, at the latest, provided we’re free of worry aboot the Felipe-Sawtell outfit, we’ll go south to the Rio Grande. We’ll pick up some honest-to-Gawd vaqueros thet I know how to find, an’ we’ll buy some fine hosses an’ cows, an’ particular some bulls, an’ turn trail drivers ourselves long enough to get them heah.”
“Oh, Pecos, there yu go again,” declared Terrill, in despair. “Do you mean we’ll drive and sell what cattle we have?”
“Not a darned hoof.”
/> “But that would cost a lot of money.”
“Shore it would, the way yu figure money. But I’ve got it, Terrill.”
“Where?” gasped the lad, incredulously.
“Wal, I reckon yu ought to know,” drawled Pecos. “‘Cause somethin’ might happen to me, an’ in thet case I’d want yu to have the money. I hid all my small bills in a tin can back in the corner of thet loft where I sleep when we’re home. The rest — the big bills — I pack around with me. Heah.”
Pecos opened his shirt, and unlacing the wide leather belt he had made he handed it over to his partner.
“I reckon you remember this belt. It’s to blame for my nearly kickin’ the pants off yu thet day.”
“I’m not — likely to forget that — Pecos Smith,” returned the lad, in a low voice. “What’ll I do with this?”
“Take a peep inside.”
With eager trembling fingers Terrill complied; and then, utterly astounded, he fixed large dark dilated eyes upon Pecos.
“Fifty dollar bills! Hundred dollar bills! ... I dare look no farther.... A fortune!”
“Not so bad, for a couple of young Texas vaqueros,” replied Pecos, complacently, as he replaced the belt round his waist, and tucked in his shirt. “Yu ‘pear more shocked than tickled.”
“Pecos, if — if you turned out to — to be a — a thief — it’d kill me!”
“For Gawd’s sake! I’m no bank-robber or rustler. I told yu,” sharply returned Pecos, too keenly stung to weigh the strange significance of Terrill’s words.
* * * * *
October waned. The sunny days were still hot, but no longer hot in comparison with those of midsummer. Lambeth Ranch presented a beautiful spectacle for that arid and rocky region.
The gray rock walls never changed. They were immutable in their drab insulation, though the sunrise and sunset took fleeting colorful liberties with them. But at their base a yellow-and-gold hue vied with the green, and circled the whole oval canyon, a warm fringe that had no regularity. In the notch of the walls, where the gulch opened, there were clinging vines with hints of cerise among the brown and bronze leaves. Across the green canyon floor shone lines and patches of goldenrod.