by Zane Grey
“We cain’t ever drive a wagon down in heah,” observed Melberne.
“That’s the beauty of it. Build a corral and barn up on the rim, and down here also.”
“Chane, you shore have idees. Wal, in a day or two I’ll send Utah an’ Miller back to Lund to mail letters an’ fetch back a wagonload of supplies. Mebbe my brothers will be so keen aboot this place they’ll come before the snow flies. If not, then by spring, shore … Wal, wal, I reckon I’m happier than I’ve been for long.”
Sue wondered what her father meant by that. It brought back to her the subtle intimation of an enemy he had always been expecting to meet. Here in this out-of-the-way corner of the world perhaps he felt secure at last from the fear he must kill a man. So Sue interpreted that strange observance of her father’s.
Without the disturbing element of Manerube and the Loughbridges, camp life had indeed taken on a happier order. Chess confessed that he missed Ora, and hinted he might go after her someday. Sue also missed a girl companion, but the rest of that disorganizing contingent did not occasion regret.
“Say, Chane, I reckon I can make a big pond heah, judgin’ by the lay of the land an’ the rocky ground,” observed Melberne, whose mind obviously was active on possibilities.
“Sure you can,” replied the ever-optimistic and enthusiastic Chane.
Captain Bunk removed his pipe, manifestly to deliver a remark of importance. “Shiver my timbers if I wouldn’t dam up the other end of this hole in the rocks and fill her up with water to the gunwale.”
“W-w-w-wh-wh-what’n hell for would you do t-t-t-t-th – … that?” stuttered Miller.
“Why, mate, I’d have a bit of a lake, and run boats on it, and start a fish ranch,” replied Bunk impressively.
“Haw! Haw!” roared Melberne. “Shore that’s a new one on me. Fish ranch! Wal, a fish pond ain’t a bad idee. Cap, you’re shore helpin’ me to establish a home … Sue, we haven’t heard from you aboot this heah homestead of mine. Reckon I’d like somethin’ good from my girl.”
“Dad, it’s wonderful,” replied Sue. “But I can’t think of anything to tell you … except I’ll stay. It’ll be my home, too.”
“Wal, listen to that, Wife!” ejaculated Melberne, his broad face beaming in the firelight. “Sue will not go back to the cities to teach. She’ll stay with us … to teach kiddies when they come heah, as shore they will. Mebbe some of her own. These boys will be gettin’ themselves wives before long. An’ that’ll be good.”
* * * * *
Night down in this deep-bottomed, high-walled solitude kept Sue awake for hours. It was so strange, so different from any other night she could recall. It had a haunting melancholy, a perfect peace, a glory of starlit loneliness. The insects might not have belonged to species she knew, so clear-toned and high-pitched were they. A lonesome owl far back in the notched fastnesses bemoaned his watch. The murmuring stream made music like all fast-flowing streams, yet somehow more mellow, the same because it was swift water tumbling over rocks down the mound to a level, yet differing because of innumerable imagined melodies.
Dawn came gray, cool, rich in its dark clearness, taking long to grow lighter. Sue wondered what was the cause. She had never before awakened to a dawn like this. Daylight came, yet all seemed shadowed.
Where was the sun? Where was the east? At last she realized she was down in the very bowels of the earth. The mighty wall of Wild Horse Mesa loomed above her, shutting out the sunrise.
At last a clear wonderful deep-blue light shone over the eastern rim. Low clouds, faintly rose in tone, floated above a strange live effulgence that centered the horizon line. Here was the effect of the sun. Beneath Sue the wide cañon slept, still dark, except over the gray levels, and they were vague. Far to the west the faces of the great escarpments that lifted high above the rim began to brighten, to turn purple. Sue watched the changes, sure of them, though they seemed imperceptible. Under the wandering wall of Wild Horse Mesa showed only a soft dark freshness of dawn.
Sue rose to begin the day, aware of the whistle of the riders below, of the ring of an ax, the smell and blue of a column of smoke, the hearty voice of her father. She felt light, quick, buoyant. She wanted to run, to sing, to ride, to go wild with it all. She was happy, yet there was that break, that wound in her heart. But her sorrow and her shame were not as they had been. Some incalculable difference had followed her avowal of injustice to Chane Weymer, her abasement of self. She had told him. That had not mitigated her blunder, but it had eliminated her vanity. The absence of Manerube had much to do with her mounting pleasure in the present. He was not there with his swaggering figure, his hateful handsome face, to mar every scene for her. How wrong she had been to encourage his attention just to sting the man she loved! She had never forgiven herself for that blindness; she was always uneasily conscious that the end of her blunder was not yet come. Nevertheless, happiness encroached more and more on her trouble. She stifled the whispering voices of dreams; she would not listen to the woman temptress strong in her depths, the feminine that would bid her use charm, coquetry, sex, love to win Chane Weymer. In his heart he must despise her, and though at times this conviction roused a flashing fiery rage in her, she always reverted to the justice of it and accepted it as her punishment for unworthiness. Even sight of Chane had grown bearable, and then a joy, provided he was not close enough to see her watching him. Seldom he spoke to her or noticed her, never unless politeness or the kindness of service made that imperative to a man of his character. Sue had welcomed this aloofness, but, as the days passed, it had begun to gall her—a fact about which she did not like to conjecture.
Chess had been loyal; he had kept her secret, but always, womanlike, she feared he would betray her to Chane. More and more the lovableness of the boy manifested itself to her. He was a friend, a comrade, a brother. Yet at times he exasperated her so exceedingly that she could scarcely keep from flying at him to slap and scratch. Chess never let her forget that she loved Chane.
* * * * *
Melberne began the second day in this place he had chosen to labor and end his years with an energy and heartiness that augured well for his ultimate achievements.
After breakfast he dictated letters which Sue wrote for him, sitting on the ground beside the campfire, with her writing case on her lap. Then he dispatched Utah and Miller on the long wagon trip back to Lund.
“Pack your guns an’ don’t be slow in usin’ them,” was his last instruction.
Next he set to work with all the men available to fence the mouths of two verdant prongs at the head of the cañon, where he turned loose all his horses. He now had over fifty head, counting the mustangs he had bought from Chane. Toddy Nokin had promised to return in the spring with another band to sell. Melberne had conceived the idea of raising horses as well as cattle. He had vision. He saw into the future when horses would not be running wild over every range, when well-bred stock would be valuable. It took half the day to erect those cedar and spruce fences.
“Wal, now we can breathe easy an’ look around,” he said. “Shore was afraid one of them stallions down there would come up heah an’ stampede us.”
“Melberne, you’ll want this cañon free of wild horses,” Chane said thoughtfully. “Because your stock will never be safe where wild stallions are ranging. You know tame horses, once they get away, make the wildest of wild horses.”
“Wal, what’re you foreman of this heah Melberne outfit for?” rejoined Melberne jovially.
Chane laughed pleasantly. That pleased him. “We’ll get busy and catch the best of the wild stock in here, then drive the rest out. It’s a big country down here. You can’t tell what we’ll run into.”
“Mebbe Panguitch, huh? Forgot that stallion, didn’t you?”
“Forgot Panguitch? I guess not. I’ll bet I’ve thought of him a thousand times since I saw him. There’s his range, Melberne.”
Chane swept a slow hand aloft toward the yellow rampart, so high and far away that the black fringe of cedars and piñons looked like a thin low line of brush.
“On top, hey? Wild Horse Mesa!” ejaculated Melberne, craning his neck. “Chane, I reckon if Panguitch ranges up there he’s no longer a horse. He’s an eagle.”
* * * * *
In the afternoon Sue accompanied her father and the riders out upon a venture that promised thrilling excitement. Alonzo was to give an exhibition of his ability to run down and rope wild horses. Sue heard Chane tell her father that Alonzo was the only rider he had ever known who could accomplish this. It seemed a fair and honest matching of speed and endurance against the wild horse, with the advantage all his. Sue imagined it would be worth a good deal to see the vaquero at work.
Melberne had abandoned any further idea of cruel practices in the capturing of wild horses.
Creasing with a rifle bullet, a method considerably used in Nevada and Utah, was to his mind as obnoxious as barbed wire. A skilled marksman could shoot a wild horse through the outer edge of the nape of the neck and so stun him that capture was easy. The fault with this method of creasing, as it was called, was that if the bullet did a little more than crease, which happened more times than not, it killed the horse.
Water hole trapping was a humane and easy and exciting way to catch wild horses, but seldom or never did it yield the best results—that is, the fastest and finest horses, especially the stallions, would refuse to enter the trap, or if they did, they broke out or leaped the fence or killed themselves. Wild horse wranglers, however, liked this method, and often employed it. First they located a spring or water hole much frequented by wild horses, and around it they constructed a large corral of poles or logs, and mostly cedar trees that they cut whole and dragged into close formation, leaving space for a wide gate. This gate had to be one that could be shut quickly. When the trap was completed, the hunters watched by night for the wild horses to come in to drink. It was always necessary to hide on the side against which the wind blew from the horses. Otherwise their keen noses would soon detect the scent of man. Not always on the first or the second night did the horses enter the trap. But usually their thirst conquered their suspicions. When a number had gone in to drink, the hunters rushed out to close the gate.
Chane Weymer’s favorite method, so he told Melberne, was to find a favorable location where wild horses grazed, and one preferably with natural obstructions to flight, such as a wall of rock, or a cañon rim on one side. Then cedar trees were cut and dragged to make a long fence, a wing that stretched as far as needful, perhaps a mile in extreme instances. At the point where this fence joined the wall, or, if there was a cañon rim, at the apex of the triangle, a large corral was built. The wild horses would be chased and driven toward this fence and down into the corral.
“I’ve often tried a method that I got on to by accident,” said Chane as they were riding along. “It takes a mighty fast horse, though. I’m keen now to try it with Brutus. But this particular place wouldn’t suit. The idea is for a rider on the fast horse to get in front of a bunch of wild horses and ride away from them. Other riders must be on both sides and behind the wild horses, driving them. Now the strange fact is this … if the rider in front can keep ahead of the wild horses, they will follow him clear to a trap corral. Such drives begin with a small bunch. But as they run along they draw in other wild horses, and at the end of a fifteen-mile drive upward of a hundred and fifty might be in the band.”
“Huh! There’d shore be fun in that,” replied Melberne. “But I reckon none of them stunts would work with your stallion, Panguitch.”
“Hardly,” declared Chane with a short laugh. “If he’s ever caught, it’ll be by an accident or trick.”
The riders kept close to the western wall, under cover of the cedars that lined the gentle slope of the wide gray grassy cañon. Thus they avoided frightening the several scattered bands of wild horses that dotted the meadow-like expanse.
To Sue the ride was a continually growing delight. What a perfectly beautiful and amazing place! The deer trotted away into the spruce, scarcely showing fear. Small game was abundant. Birds in flocks fluttered up at the approach of the horses. The high wall was notched like a saw, and each indentation appeared to be a deep fissure, red-walled, thick with green spruce and russet oak and golden cottonwood. Winding gray aisles of sage led back mysteriously; huge blocks of cliff choked some passages; caverns yawned. Along the outside of the main wall the scattered groups of oak, the lines of spruce, the dots of cedar looked as if they had been planted on the gray grassy level to insure effect of stateliness, of park-like beauty. Though it was crisp October weather above, down here the sun shone warm and wildflowers bloomed everywhere, nodding in the soft breeze.
Three or four miles from camp Chane led the riders out into the open, stationing them wide apart across the cañon, for the purpose of keeping the wild horses at that end so Alonzo could have favorable opportunity to chase them.
Sue stayed with her father, who had a central stand. The lithe, sinewy vaquero resembled an Indian jockey. He wore neither coat, hat, nor boots. Sue inquired how could he manage to race without spurs?
“Shore, I’m blessed if I know,” replied her father. “But he shore looks good to me. All muscle. No bones. Reckon he doesn’t weigh more’n a feather.”
Sue thought Alonzo made a picturesque figure as he sat his black racer, scanning the level grassland. His horse was not a beauty, but he had every other qualification of greatness. He was lean, long, slim, powerful of chest, ragged and wiry, with a challenging look. He quivered under the bare heels of the vaquero. Around his middle was belted a broad surcingle. This appeared no less than a band with a ring in the right side, and to this ring was fastened the end of the thin, greasy, snakelike lasso Alonzo carried in loops. Alonzo rode bareback. His horse did not have even a bridle.
“Wal, Sue, I reckon this will be as good as a show,” said Melberne.
Presently Alonzo gave his horse a gentle kick. No spur could have brought better response. The horse sprung from one leap into a long easy lope. How lightly he moved! He did not even raise the dust. And the dark-skinned rider seemed a part of him. Sue had learned that the Mexican vaqueros were the great horsemen of the Southwest, from whom all the cattle-driving and bronco-busting cowboys had learned their trade. It had been a heritage from Texas, and Texas had learned it from Mexico. Sue did not see how it was possible for a rider to sit his horse so perfectly.
Alonzo headed to go around the closest band of wild horses, so to place them between him and the riders on the stands across the cañon. The wild horses saw him, stood erect and motionless, watching for a moment, then began to move restlessly. When he had approached to within a quarter of a mile, they broke and ran eastward. Sue uttered a little cry of delight at the beauty and wildness of their appearance and action. The leader, evidently not a stallion, was red in color, and there were whites, blacks, tans, and bays, all actuated as by one instinct. Like the wind they raced, long tails and manes streaming behind them. Then suddenly it appeared that in one bound they had halted and wheeled at once, to gaze back at this lone rider. Presently it developed that the red mustang had espied enemies to the east. Chane and Chess were riding in to turn them back toward Alonzo.
But first the wild horses trotted this way and that, fiery in motion, proud and wild, intolerant of this intrusion upon their lonely precincts. Alonzo kept a little to the north of their position, no doubt fearing a break in that unprotected direction. But manifestly the wild horses knew the unobstructed open distance lay in the opposite direction. Sue espied other bands farther off, gathering together, trotting to and fro, evincing the same curiosity that had at first affected the band upon whom Alonzo had concentrated.
Sue enjoyed this watching experience to the full. The surroundings were such as to exalt her. Calm acceptance of this place of rugged grandeur and isolat
ion was not possible to Sue. The dry sweet air, unbreathed; the blue sky above the great walls; the gray meadow with its waving grass; the borders of green; then the wild horses and the riders, and the surety that this was to be a clean fine race devoid of deceit or brutality—all this appealed powerfully to Sue, waking again that something that the Utah upland had discovered in her.
The moment came when the vaquero launched his black into the race. Sue, who had seen race horses leave the post, could not but recognize the superiority of Alonzo’s black. All in a second he seemed wild, too. The band of horses broke and ran, in a way to make their former running seem slow. They stretched out to the east, and the fleetest forged to the front. The red leader had two rivals for supremacy, and these three drew away from the others, though not far.
Alonzo did not appear to gain. He kept to the north of his quarry. His reason for this was obvious. For perhaps half a mile eastward this position was maintained, then shots from Chane’s gun acted like a wall upon the running wild horses. They sheered in abrupt curve toward the open, and were turned by Chess back toward the west. Here the wonderful race began.
The vaquero had now only to head directly toward them to gain the distance that he had been behind. If the fleetness of those wild horses was something thrillingly incredible, that of Alonzo’s black was even more so, because he carried weight. No doubt the vaquero meant this particular race to be short, or perhaps this was his method. At any rate he closed in on the rear of that band, and began to pass mustang after mustang. He wanted to rope one of the best and fleetest.
Wild horses and pursuer were now racing back toward where Sue and her father waited, and the line on which they would pass, if they kept straight, was scarcely two hundred yards.
“Oh, Dad, they’ll come close!” cried Sue.
“You bet. Reckon I’ll shoot to scare them if they head closer … Say, Sue, look at that half-breed ride.”