by Zane Grey
“You’ll admit, though, that there are some fine horses among these?” asked Pan earnestly.
“Wal, Pan, to stop kiddin’ you, now an’ then a fellar sees a real hoss among them broomies. But shore them boys are the hard ones to ketch.”
The last of Blinky’s remark forced Pan’s observation upon the cardinally important point—the lay of the land. A million wild horses in sight would be of no marketable value if they could not be trapped. So he bent his keen gaze here and there, up and down the valley, across to the far side, and upon the steep wall near by.
“Blink, see that deep wash running down the valley? It looks a good deal closer to the far side. That’s a break in the valley floor all right. It may be a wonderful help to us, and it may ruin our chances.”
“Reckon we cain’t tell much from heah. Thet’s where the water runs, when there is any. Bet it’s plumb dry now.”
“We’ll ride out presently and see. But I’m almost sure it’s a deep wide wash, with steep walls. Impassable! And by golly, if that’s so—you’re a rich cowboy.”
“Haw! Haw! Gosh, the way you sling words around.”
“Now let’s work along this ridge, down to the point where Dad went. Wasn’t he funny?”
“He’s shore full of ginger. Wal, I reckon he’s perked up since you come.”
Brush and cactus, jumbles of sharp rocks, thickets of scrub oak and dumps of dwarf cedars, all matted along the narrow hog-back, as Blinky called it, made progress slow and tedious. No cowboy ever climbed and walked so well as he rode. At length, however, Pan and Blinky arrived at the extreme end of the capelike bluff. It stood higher than their first lookout.
Pan, who arrived at a vantage point ahead of Blinky, let out a stentorian yell. Whereupon his companion came running.
“Hey, what’s eatin’ you?” he panted. “Rattlesnakes or wild hosses?”
“Look!” exclaimed Pan, waving his hand impressively.
The steep yellow slope opposite them, very close at the point where the bluff curved in, stretched away almost to the other side of the valley. Indeed it constituted the southern wall of the valley, and was broken only by the narrow pass below where the cowboys stood, and another wider break at the far end. From this point the wash that had puzzled Pan proved to be almost a canyon in dimensions. It kept to the lowest part of the valley floor and turned to run parallel with the slope.
“Blink, suppose we run a fence of cedars from the slope straight out to the wash. Reckon that’s two miles and more. Then close up any gaps along this side of the valley. What would happen?” suggested Pan, with bright eyes on his comrade.
Blinky spat out his cigarette, a sign of unusual emotion for him.
“You doggone wild-hoss wrangler!” he ejaculated, with starting eyes and healthy grin. “Shore I begin to get your hunch. Honest, I never till this heah minnit thought so damn much of your idee. You shore gotta excuse me. A blind man could figger this deal heah.… Big corrals hid behind the gate under us—long fence out there to the wash—close up any holes on this side of valley—then make a humdinger of a drive.… Cowboy, shore’s you’re born I’m seein’ my Arizona ranch right this minnit!”
“Reckon I’m seeing things too,” agreed Pan in suppressed excitement. “I said once before it’s too good to be true. Dad wasn’t loco. No wonder he raved.… Blink, is there any mistake?”
“What about?”
“The market for wild horses.”
“Absolutely, no,” declared Blinky vehemently. “It’s new. Only started last summer. Wiggate made money. He said so. Thet’s what fetched the Hardmans nosin’ into the game. Mebbe this summer will kill the bizness, but right now we’re safe. We can sell all the hosses we can ketch, right heah on the hoof, without breakin’ or drivin’. It’s only a day’s ride from Marco, less than thet over the hills the way we come. We can sell at Marco or we can drive to the railroad. I’d say sell at ten dollars a haid right heah an’ whoop.”
“I should smile,” replied Pan. “It’ll take us ten days or more, working like beavers to cut and drag the cedars to build that fence. More time if there are gaps to close along this side. Then all we’ve got to do is drive the valley. One day will do it. Why, I never saw or heard of such a trap. You can bet it will be driven only once. The wild horses we don’t catch will steer clear of this valley. But breaking a big drove, or driving them to Marco—that’d be a job I’d rather dodge. It’d take a month, even with a small herd.”
“Hardman an’ Wiggate have several outfits working, mebbe fifty riders all told. They’ve been handlin’ hosses. Reckon Wiggate would jump at buyin’ up a thousand haid, all he could get. He’s from St. Louis an’ what he knows aboot wild hosses ain’t a hell of a lot. I’ve talked with him.”
“Blinky, old-timer, we’ve got the broomies sold. Now let’s figure on catching them,” replied Pan joyfully. “And we’ll cut out a few of the best for ourselves.”
“An’ a couple fer our lady friends, hey, pard!” added Blinky, with violence of gesture and speech.
Down the steep slope, through brush and thickets, they slid like a couple of youngsters on a lark. Pan found the gateway between bluff and slope even more adaptable to his purposes than it had appeared from a distance. The whole lay of the land was miraculously advantageous to the drive and the proposed trap.
“Oh, it’s too darn good,” cried Pan, incredulously. “It’ll be too easy. It makes me afraid.”
“Thet somethin’ unforeseen will happen, huh?” queried Blink, shrewdly. “I had the same idee.”
“But what could happen?” asked Pan, darkly speculative.
“Wal, to figger the way things run fer me an’ Gus out heah I’d say this,” replied Blinky, with profound seriousness. “We’ll do all the cuttin’ an’ draggin’ an’ buildin’. We close up any gaps. We’ll work our selves till we’re daid in our boots. Then we’ll drive—drive them wild hosses as hosses was never drove before.”
“Well, what then?” queried Pan sharply.
“Drive ’em right in heah where Hardman’s outfit will be waitin’!”
“My God, man,” flashed Pan hotly. “Such a thing couldn’t happen.”
“Wal, it just could,” drawled Blinky, “an’ we couldn’t do a damn thing but fight.”
“Fight?” repeated Pan passionately. The very thought of a contingency such as Blinky had suggested made the hot red blood film his eyes.
“Thet’s what I said, pard,” replied his comrade coolly. “An’ it would be one hell of a fight, with all the best of numbers an’ guns on Hardman’s side. We’ve got only three rifles besides our guns, an’ not much ammunition. I fetched all we had an’ sent Gus for more. But Black didn’t send thet over an’ I forgot to go after it.”
“We can send somebody back to Marco,” said Pan broodingly. “Say, you’ve given me a shock. I never thought of such a possibility. I see now it could happen, but the chances are a thousand to one against it.”
“Shore. It’s hardly worth guessin’ aboot. But there’s thet one chance. An’ we’re both afeared of somethin’ strange. All we can do, Pan, is gamble.”
On the way back to camp, Pan, pondering very gravely over the question, at last decided that such a bold raid was a remote possibility, and that his and Blinky’s subtle reaction to the thought came from their highly excited imaginations. The days of rustling cattle and stealing horses on a grand scale were gone into the past. Hardman’s machinations back there in Marco were those of a crooked man who played safe. There was nothing big or bold about him, none of the earmarks of the old frontier rustler. Matthews was still less of a character to fear. Dick Hardman was a dissolute and depraved youth, scarcely to be considered. Purcell, perhaps, or others of like ilk, might have to be drawn upon sooner or later, but that being a personal encounter caused Pan no anxiety. Thus he allayed the doubts and misgivings that had been roused over Blinky’s supposition.
“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 with broken rock, and gradually failing in vegetation. The notch of the west end loomed up, ragged and brushy, evide
ntly 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.