by Zane Grey
“Let’s see,” he asked when he reached camp. “How many horses have we, all told?”
“Thirty-one, countin’ the pack hosses, an’ thet outlaw sorrel of yours,” replied Blinky.
“Reckon we’ll have to ride them all. Dragging cedars pulls a horse down.”
“Some of ’em we cain’t ride, leastways I cain’t.”
“Grab some ropes and nose bags, everybody, and we’ll fetch the string into camp,” ordered Pan.
In due time all the horses were ridden and driven back to camp, where a temporary corral had been roped off in a niche of the slope.
“Wal, fellars, it’s find a hoss you haven’t rid before,” sang out Blinky, “an’ everyone fer himself.”
There was a stout, round-barreled buckskin that Pan’s father had his eye on.
“Don’t like his looks, Dad,” warned Pan. “Say, Blink, how about this wormy-looking buck?”
“Wal, he’s hell to get on, but there never was a better hoss wrapped up in thet much hide.”
Pan caught him and led him out of the corral. Just as the horse stepped over the rope fence, which Pan held down, he plunged and made a break to get loose, dragging Pan at the end of a thirty-foot lasso. There was a lively tussle, which Pan finally won.
“Whoa, you bean-headed jasper,” he yelled. “I’ll ride you myself.”
His father caught a brown bald-faced horse, nothing much to look at, that acted gentle enough until he was mounted. Then! — He arched his back, jumped up stiff legged, and began to pitch. Evidently Smith had been a horseman in his day. He stayed on.
“Hang on, Dad,” yelled Pan in delight.
“Ride him, cowboy,” shrieked Blinky.
Fortunately for Smith, the horse was not one of the fiery devilish species that would not be ridden. He straightened out presently and calmed down.
“He was goin’ to pile me — shore,” declared Smith.
Charley Brown caught a blue-gray, fine-looking horse, whose appearance, no doubt had attracted the miner; but he turned out to be a counterfeit, and Charley “bit the dust,” as Blinky called it. Whereupon Charley had recourse to the animal he had ridden from Marco. Hurd showed he was a judge of horses and could ride. Blinky evidently was laboring under the urge that caused so much disaster among riders — he wanted to try a new horse. So he caught a jug-headed bay that did not look as if he could move out of his own way.
“Blink, you must be figuring on sleeping some?” inquired Pan.
“Humph! he’ll walk back,” snorted Gus. “I tried thet pack animal. He’s hell fer breakfast.”
“Gus, if I was goin’ to walk I’d leave my saddle heah in camp,” drawled Blinky.
“Blink, I’ll let you ride in behind me,” added Pan.
As a matter of fact, Pan was not having much luck propitiating the horse he had selected. Every time Pan would reach under for the cinch the horse would kick at him and throw off the saddle.
“Hey, Blink, come here,” called Pan impatiently. “Hold this nice kind horse. What’d you call him?”
“Dunny,” replied Blink. “An’ he’s a right shore enough good hoss...I’ll hold him.”
Blinky grasped the cars of the horse but that did not work, so Pan roped his front feet. Blinky held the beast while Pan put the saddle on, but when he gave the cinch a pull Dunny stood up with a wild shriek and fell over backwards. He would have struck square on the saddle if Blinky had not pulled him sideways. Fortunately for Pan the horse rolled over to the right.
“Pan, turn that thing loose an’ catch a horse you can get on,” called his father.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m ararin’ to ride this bird.”
“Pard, Dunny will be nice after you buckle down thet saddle an’ get forked on him good,” drawled Blinky, with his deceitful grin. “He’s shore a broomie-chasin’ devil.”
Pan said: “Blink, I’ll fool you in a minute...Hold him down now. Step on his nose.” Pulling the right stirrup out from under the horse Pan drew the cinch a couple of holes tighter, and then straddled him.
“Let him up, Blink.”
“All right, pard. Tell us where you want to be buried,” replied Blinky, loosing the lasso and jumping free.
With a blast of rage Dunny got up. But he cunningly got up with his back first, head down between his legs, and stiff as a poker. He scattered the horses and whooping men, bucked over the campfire and the beds; then with long high leaps, he tore for the open.
“High, wide an’ handsome,” yelled Blinky, in a spasm of glee. “Ride him, you Texas cowpunchin’ galoot! You’ll shore be the first one who ever forked him fer keeps.”
“Blink — if he — piles me — I’ll lick you!” yelled back Pan.
“Lick nothin’,” bawled Blinky, “you’ll need a doctor.”
But Pan stayed on that horse, which turned out to be the meanest and most violent bucker he had ever bestrode. Less powerful horses had thrown him. Eventually the plunging animal stopped, and Pan turned him back to camp.
“Wal, you son-of-a-gun!” ejaculated Blinky, in genuine admiration. “How’d you ever keep company with him?”
“Grin, you idiot,” panted Pan, good humoredly. “Now men — we’re ready to look the valley over. I’ll take Dad with me. Blink, you and Gus turn the corner here and keep close under the slope all the way up the valley. Look out for places where the wild horses might climb out. Charley, you and Mac New cross to the other side of the valley, if you can. Look the ground over along that western wall. And everybody keep eyes peeled for wild horses, so we can get a line on numbers.”
They rode out through the gateway into the valley, where they separated into pairs. Pan, with his father, headed south along the slope. He found distances somewhat greater than he had estimated from the bluff, and obstacles that he had not noted at all. But by traveling farther down he discovered a low ledge of rock, quite a wall in places, that zigzagged out from the slope for a goodly distance. It had breaks here and there which could easily be closed up with brush. This wall would serve very well for part of the fence, and from the end of it out to the wash there was comparatively level ground. Half a mile up the slope the cedars grew thickly, so that the material for the fence was easily accessible.
The wash proved to be a perpendicularly walled gorge fifty or more feet deep with a sandy dry floor. It wound somewhat west by north up the valley, and as far as he could see did not greatly differ in proportion from the point where the fence was to touch.
“Dad, there are likely to be side washes, or cuts up toward the head, where horses could get down,” said Pan. “We’ll fence right across here. So if we do chase any horses into the wash we’ll stop them here. Sure, this long hole would make a great trap.”
From that point they rode up the wash and gradually out into the middle of the valley. Bands of wild horses trooped away in the distance. Clouds of moving dust beyond the rolling ridges of the valley told of others in motion. They were pretty wild, considering that they had never been chased. At length Pan decided that many of these herds had come into this valley from other points nearer to Marco. Some bands stood on ridge tops, with heads erect, manes flying, wild and ragged, watching the two riders move along the wash.
Pan did not observe any evidence of water, but he hardly expected to find any in that wash. A very perceptible ascent in that direction explained the greater number of horses. The sage was stubby and rather scant near at hand, yet it lent the beautiful color that was so appreciable from a distance.
Intersecting washes were few and so deep and steep-walled that there need be no fear of horses going down them into the main wash. Out-croppings of rock were rare; the zone of cactus failed as the valley floor lost its desert properties; jack rabbits bounded away before the approach of the horses; a few lean gray coyotes trotted up to rises of ground, there to watch the intruders.
Pan had been deceived in his estimate of the size of the valley. They rode ten miles west before they began to get into rougher ground, scaly wit
h broken rock, and gradually failing in vegetation. The notch of the west end loomed up, ragged and brushy, evidently a wild jumble of cliffs, ledges, timber and brush. The green patch at the foot meant water and willows. Pan left his father to watch from a high point while he rode on five miles farther. The ascent of the valley was like a bowl. The time came when he gazed back and down over the whole valley. Before him lines and dots of green, widely scattered, told of more places where water ran. Strings of horses moved to and fro, so far away that they were scarcely distinguishable. Beyond these points no horses could be seen. The wash wound like a black ribbon out of sight. The vast sloping lines of valley swept majestically down from the wooded bluff-like sides. It was an austere, gray hollow of the earth, with all depressions and ridges blending beautifully into the soft gray-green dotted surface.
Pan rode back to join his father.
“It’s a big place, and we’ve got a big job on our hands,” he remarked.
“While you was gone a band of two hundred or more run right under me, comin’ from this side,” replied Smith with beaming face. “Broomtails an’ willowtails they may be, as those boys call them, but I’ll tell you, son, some of them are mighty fine stock. The leader of this bunch had a brand on his flank. He was white an’ I saw it plain. I’d shore like to own him.”
“Dad, I’ll bet we catch some good ones to take with us to Arizona. If we only had more time!”
“Pan, it’d pay us to work here all winter.”
“You bet. But Dad, I — I want to take Lucy away from Marco,” replied Pan hesitatingly. “When I let myself think, I’m worried. She’s only a kid, and she might be scared or driven.”
“Right, son,” said Smith, soberly. “Those Hardmans would try anythin’.”
“We’ll stick to the original plan, and that’s to make a quick hard drive — then rustle out of New Mexico.”
When they rode into the gateway the day was far spent, and the west was darkly ablaze with subdued fire.
Pan’s father showed his unfamiliarity with long horseback rides and he made sundry remarks, mirth provoking to his son.
“I’ll make a cowboy and horse wrangler of you again,” threatened Pan.
By the time Lying Juan had supper ready Blinky and Gus rode in camp.
“Hungrier’n a wolf,” said Blinky.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” asked Pan with a smile.
“Wuss an’ more of it,” drawled Blinky. “We seen most five thousand hosses, an’ I’ll be doggoned if I don’t believe we’ll ketch them all.”
“You found this side of the valley a regular hole-proof wing for our trap, I’ll bet,” asserted Pan.
“Wal, there’s places where hosses could climb out easy, but they won’t try it,” replied Blinky. “The valley slopes up long an’ easy to the wall. But when we drive them hosses they’ll keep down in the center, between the risin’ ground an’ thet wash. They’ll run far past them places where they could climb out. I shore lose my breath whenever I think of what’s comin’ off. I reckon the valley is a made-to-order corral.”
“Blink, you have some intelligence after all,” replied Pan, chaffingly. “Did you see any sign of Brown and Mac New?”
“Not after we separated this mawnin’,” returned Blinky. “An’ thet reminds me, pard, I’ve got somethin’ to tell you. This fellar Hurd — or Mac New as you call him — has a pocketful of gold coin.”
“How do you know?” queried Pan bluntly.
“Gus kicked his coat this mawnin’, over there where Mac New had his bed, an’ a pile of gold eagles rolled out. Just by accident. Gus wanted somethin’ or other. He was plumb surprised, an’ he said Mac New was plumb flustered. Now what you make of thet?”
“By golly, Blink, I don’t know. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t have some money, yet it strikes me queer. How much gold?”
“Aw, two or three hundred easy,” rejoined Blinky. “It struck me sort of queer, too. I recollected thet he told us he’d only been doin’ guard duty at the jail fer a couple of months. An’ Gus recollected how not long before Mac New went to work he’d been a regular grub-line runner. We fed him heah, or Juan did. Now, pard, it may be all right an’ then again it mayn’t. Are you shore aboot him?”
“Blink, you make me see how I answer to some feeling that’s not practical,” returned Pan, much perturbed. “Mac was an outlaw in Montana. Maybe worse. Anyway I saved him one day from being strung up. That was on the Powder River, when I was riding for Hurley’s X Y Z outfit. They were a hard lot. And Mac’s guilt wasn’t clear to me. Anyway, I got him out of a bad mess, on condition he’d leave the country.”
“Ahuh! Wal, I see. But it’s a shore gamble he’s one of Hardman’s outfit now, same as Purcell.”
“Reckon he was. But he got fired.”
“Thet’s what he says.”
“Blink, you advise me not to trust Mac New?” queried Pan dubiously.
“I ain’t advisin’ nobody. If you want my opinion, I’d say, now I know what you done fer Mac New, thet he wouldn’t double-cross you. When it comes down under the skin there ain’t much difference between outlaws an’ other range men in a deal like thet.”
“Well, I’ll trust him just because of that feeling I can’t explain,” returned Pan.
He did not, however, forget the possible implication, and it hovered in his mind. It was after dark when Mac New and Brown rode into camp. Pan and the others were eating their supper.
“We had to ride clean to the end of the valley to cross that wash,” said Brown. “It’s rough country. Horses all down low. Didn’t see so many, at that, until we rimmed around way up on this side.”
“Fine. You couldn’t have pleased me more,” declared Pan. “Now Mac, what do you say?”
“About this heah hoss huntin’?” queried Mac New.
“Yes. Our prospects, I mean. You’ve chased wild horses.”
“It’ll be most as bad as stealin’ hosses,” replied the outlaw, laconically. “Easy work an’ easy money.”
“Say, you won’t think it’s easy work when you get to dragging cedars down that hill in the hot sun all day. I don’t know anything harder.”
Early next morning the labor began and proceeded with the utmost dispatch. The slope resounded with the ring of axes. Pan’s father was a capital hand at chopping down trees, and he kept two horsemen dragging cedars at a lively rate. The work progressed rapidly, but the fence did not seem to grow in proportion.
As Pan dragged trees out to the sloping valley floor, raising a cloud of dust, he espied a stallion standing on the nearest ridge, half a mile away. How wild and curious!
“You better look sharp, you raw-boned sage eater!” called Pan.
Twice more this same horse evinced intelligent curiosity. Pan could not see any signs of a band with him. But other wild horses showed at different points, none however so close as this gray black-spotted stallion. Blinky was sure this horse had not always been wild. Manifestly he knew the ways of his archenemy, man.
With three cutters and three riders dragging cedars, allowing for a rest of an hour at noon the fence grew to a length of a quarter of a mile from the slope.
“Not so good,” declared Pan, when they left off work for the day. “But that fence is high and thick. It will take an old stallion like that gray to break through it.”
“Wal, my idee is thet we did grand,” replied Blinky, wiping his sweaty face. “Besides all the choppin’ and haulin’ Gus found time to kill a deer.”
It was a tired, sweaty and dust-begrimed party of hunters that descended upon Lying Juan for supper. After their hearty meal they gathered round the campfire to smoke and talk. This night Mac New joined the group, and though he had nothing to say he listened attentively and appeared to fit in more. Pan was aware of how the former outlaw watched him. The conversation, of course, centered round the plan and execution of work, and especially the wonderful drive they expected to make. If they could have at once started the drive, it would have bee
n over and done with before their interest had time to grow intense. But the tremendous task of preparation ahead augmented the anticipation and thrill of that one day when they must ride like the wind.
Next day they did not go back to the fence, but worked at the gateway on the blind corrals. Pan constructed the opening to resemble a narrow aisle of scrub oak. Material for this they cut from the bluff and slid it down to the level. By sunset one corral had been almost completed. It was large enough to hold a thousand horses. One third of it was fenced by the bluff.
Two more days were required to build the second blind corral, which was larger, and though it opened from the first it did not run along the bluff. As this one was intended for chasing and roping horses, as well as simply holding them, the fence was made an almost impenetrable mass of thick foliaged cedars reinforced, where necessary, with stuffings of scrub-oak brush. Pan was so particular that he tried to construct a barrier which did not have sharp projecting spikes of dead branches sticking out to cut a horse.
“By gum, I shore don’t believe you ever was a regular cowpuncher,” declared Blinky testily, after having been ordered to do additional labor on a portion of the fence.
“Blink, we’re dealing with horses, not cows,” answered Pan.
“But, good Lord, man, a cow is as feelin’ as a hoss any day,” protested Blinky.
“You’ll be swearing you love cows next,” laughed Pan. “Nope. We’ll do our work well. Then the chances are we won’t spike any of those thoroughbreds we want to break for Arizona.”
“Say, I’ll bet two bits you won’t let us sell a single gosh-darned broomie,” added Blinky.