Following the Grass

by Harry Sinclair Drago

  The following day she had her bed moved so that she could look across the mountain. She knew that the end was near. Out there, somewhere, was the man she loved. She wondered if he was waiting for her, or had her spirit called to him in the flesh and turned his feet in her direction?

  Sometime, somewhere, they must meet again! It could not be otherwise. With the thought, a great peace came to her. Resignation robbed her eyes of their wistfulness, painting in them a light of happiness, of coming glory.

  For hours at a time Joseph sat beside her, his eyes ever on her face. He knew nothing of death, save as he had seen it in the wild; but he knew something tremendous was about to happen, something bigger than anything he had known. It kept his throat tight and stabbed at his heart.

  “Daddy ought to be here, mother,” he said to her. “He’d know what to do. I’m only a boy, and I don’t know how to get you well. You’re always smiling when you look at me, but I know there’s something inside of you that hurts. Maybe I’d better make Enriquez go for Tabor Kincaid. If anybody could get a doctor, he could.”

  “Mother doesn’t need a doctor, dear,” Margarida whispered to him.

  “Enriquez says we ought to get a priest,” Joseph went on. His mother drew his face close to hers:

  “No—no, Joseph! Enriquez is mistaken. But maybe you’d better send for Mr. Kincaid. Tell Enriquez to take the horse and go.”

  Margarida seldom closed her eyes. Whenever she did, Joseph pulled off his boots and crept about the cabin in his stocking feet. Sometimes, through half closed eyelids, his mother watched him as he moved about doing what he could for her. Once, when he thought her asleep, she heard him “talking to God,” as he called it.

  After that, she often “talked to God;” but it was of Joseph, and not of herself, that she spoke. What was to become of him? Dared she hope that her father would care for him? Reason said no; but if she sent Joseph to him now, could he refuse to come to her?

  What message could she send that would bring him ?—and a voice whispered; “The secret on the mountain-top!”

  Yes, she told herself, that was it! Angel Irosabal could not deny that summons. She had kept the secret well, but as she called Joseph to her side when Enriquez had gone, and gave him the message for her father, she promised herself that if he failed to come to her, Joseph should have the secret of Buckskin.

  Her own life had been laid waste by hatred, but she had tried to hide it from her son. Even so, had she kept from him the story of the injustice done his father. Her husband had asked that. A legacy of hate was a poor heritage, but she could not ask her son to always turn the other cheek.

  Never before had she asked her father’s mercy. She was on her knees to him now. If he failed her, it must be for Joseph to right the wrong which had been done his father and her.

  Since babyhood, in Joseph’s eyes, Angel Irosabal’s caserio had been an ogre’s castle. The bad man of his dreams lived there, but it was with a brave smile to his mother that he set forth. He knew he must go swiftly. The trail which Enriquez had taken to the valley was not to be thought of, for Joseph had no horse. An old deer run led down the side of the mountain, and that was the course he took.

  Margarida knew it would be morning before he could return with her father. At dawn her eyes were open, searching the mountain-side for them. She knew they must come soon, or else be too late. Her spirit waited only for them.

  It must have been eight o’clock when she thought she saw a speck moving up the mountain. Weak as she was, she pulled herself into a sitting position and watched the running, jumping object that was surely hurrying hurrying toward the cabin. It was Joseph! And he was alone! Angel Irosabal had turned him from his door!

  Margarida wished that she might call out to Joseph and bid him not to hurry, for, no matter how fast he ran, he would be too late. Never again would their mortal eyes behold each other.

  An hour later, tired and hollow-eyed, the boy reached the cabin. Twice he raised his hand to open the door before he found courage to do it. He called to Margarida, but there was no response. Rushing to her side, he clutched her hands; they were still warm. For an instant he took hope, and shook her faintly. And then he knew!—his mother was dead!

  He had left the door open and Brindle, his favorite of Slippy-foot’s pups, had followed him into the cabin. The dog put his paws upon the bed and nuzzled Margarida’s hand. Joseph hugged the dog, and as Brindle threw back his head and voiced the misery that was in him, the boy sobbed out his grief.

  Time passed unnoticed. Here was the end of all things. What good to go to the door and see if Enriquez was returning with Tabor Kincaid? The dogs were barking; perhaps the sheep were in trouble—Joseph shook his head. The sheep mattered not.

  How long he knelt beside his dead mother before he became aware of his slate, propped against the wall, he did not know. Only yesterday he had used it. He saw the pencil lying upon the coverlet, where it had evidently fallen from his mother’s fingers. And then, before he fully realized that the slate held a message for him, he was reading it:

  MY JOSEPH:

  I can see you, my son. You are running, but your little legs will not bring you to me in time. Leave Buckskin. Go where you can grow into the man I know you can be. Some day, when you are grown, you must come back here. You have got to right a great wrong. On the very top of the mountain you will find your answer. Let this be your secret, my Joseph. Your fa——

  The last two lines were so faint the boy read them with difficulty. Brindle stared at him quizzically. Word by word, he committed the message to memory. The dog stiffened at the sound of Enriquez’s voice. Joseph heard Kincaid, too. They must have hurried to have come so soon.

  He put the slate upon his knees, and with the sleeve of his coat rubbed out his mother’s words. He wished they had not come just yet, for he wanted to be alone. He grabbed his hat and walked to the door as Kincaid knocked.

  Joseph’s eyes told their own story.

  “I’m mighty sorry, Joseph,” Kincaid muttered. “The Doc was off to Quinn River, but I guess he couldn’t have done nothing.”

  Joseph nodded dumbly.

  “You go off up the mountain for a spell,” Kincaid went on. “I’ll do what I can here.”

  Later, in a crude coffin of his own making, he and Joseph buried Margarida. Enriquez looked from one to the other—the burial left nothing undone. What was to become of him? Kincaid caught the herder’s questioning look; he wondered, too. It was necessary that he go back to his own ranch. Something definite must be done about Joseph. That night he spoke to him about the future.

  “You can’t stay here, my boy,” Kincaid said.

  “I’m not aiming to stay here,” Joseph answered. “My grandpa can have the place. Guess the best thing for me to do is to roll up a few things and go.”

  “The sheep are yours, Joseph. Irosabal didn’t get them thrown in when he bought the mountain. How many head do you reckon on?”

  “Nigh four hundred,” the boy replied without any show of interest. He couldn’t take the sheep along with him to the vague and distant land to which he was going.

  “The market’s about six dollars a head now,” Kincaid muttered, busy with his pencil. “That won’t be so bad. If you say so, I’ll sell the sheep for you. It’ll give you enough to get a decent education, Joseph.”

  Joseph shook his head at the word education. Kincaid shook his head, too :

  “I don’t mean Paradise. When I say education, I mean back East—Chicago, or some place like that. You know, Joseph, your daddy just about saved my life once. He’d never let me do anything to pay him back. I swear he must have been waiting to have me do it for you instead of him. Ain’t no one been near you but me. Don’t seem as if any one cared what happened to you, but old Tabor Kincaid.

  “I’d adopt you, Joseph, sure as shooting, if I thought your grandpap would let me. The law don’t give me any right to sell your sheep—you being a minor, and me no legal guardian of you, but I’m going
to do it. I won’t see old Angel grab them, and have you bound out to boot!

  “Maybe he’ll make me some trouble, but he’ll find he ain’t fighting a ten year old boy and his mammy. But we ain’t got no time to waste, Joseph. What do you say?”

  “You been most like a daddy to me, since mine went away,” the little fellow replied cautiously. “I reckon I’d be pretty mean not to do as you say. But I’ve got to come back here some day. I’ve got something to do here that I mustn’t never forget.”

  “I guess I know what you mean,” Kincaid murmured. “And I’m not saying you shouldn’t come back. But I want you to come back a man, Joseph.”

  “That’s what my mother said,” Joseph agreed. “And I reckon that’s the way I’m coming back.”

  CHAPTER VI.

  THE UNKNOWN PRESENCE.

  THERE are two roads by which one may enter Paradise Valley from the north. The more traveled one cuts through the Santa Rosa Forest Reserve and, after swinging around the face of Hinkey Summit, drops into the valley in a series of easy grades. The other road curves to the east, skirting Buckskin, and does not turn north until it strikes Antelope Springs.

  In May, when the herds and flocks are going into the Reserve for the summer, both roads are ground to powder beneath the hoofs of countless sheep and cattle. A saddle, or low hog-back, connects Buckskin with the Santa Rosa range. A trail traverses the saddle—a short cut with a saving of many miles for one traveling north or south.

  In times past, Angel Irosabal’s herders—his sons and his grandsons—had made use of that short cut across the mountain, but this particular spring, as if by common consent, they avoided it. For three weeks the Basque herders had been going north, driving not less than fourteen thousand sheep.

  In the late afternoon of this day—the twenty-first of May, to be exact—a slowly moving dust cloud hovered above the yellow road. It marked the progress of the last flock of the year on its way to the high hills of the Reserve. This band was not a large one, and the two herders in charge of it wallowed along in the dust unconcernedly.·

  One of the two was only a slip of a boy, the other a black-visaged man, heavy of jaw and narrow-eyed. When they spoke, which was seldom, they addressed each other in Basque.

  “Is it far to the spring, Andres?” the boy asked. Getting no answer, he repeated his question.

  The man grunted: “Thirsty?”

  The boy nodded. “The dust,” he said tersely.

  “We will reach it by sundown,” Andres said with his habitual gruffness. “Maybe it will be dry,” he went on, as much to himself as to the boy.

  For all that the man was the lad’s uncle, the boy half feared the surly Andres. Not for some time did he venture another question.

  “What will we do if it is dry?” he asked at last.

  Andres grinned as he glanced at the youth.

  “You are afraid, eh, Felipe?” he demanded tauntingly. The boy winced, and Andres laughed.

  “If it’s dry, we’ll dig it out!” he exclaimed. “A little mud will not hurt you.”

  Felipe’s throat was parched, and the prospect of having to quench his thirst with a cupful of riled water incensed him.

  “Well do you say that we may find it dry,” he muttered petulantly. “We are the very last. If we had taken the short cut over Buckskin we would have had plenty of water.”

  “You bleat now, eh?” Andres remarked hotly. “This morning you talked out of the other side of your mouth. It was to please you that we followed the road. I made no talk about ghosts.”

  “No, but you were glad that I did,” Felipe replied with a show of truculence quite new in him. “You were none too anxious to cross Buckskin.”

  “Are you saying that I was afraid?” Andres demanded angrily. “This talk of ghosts is the cackling of children.”

  “I did not use the word,” Felipe retorted. “But something is living up there. All of this talk does not spring from nothing. Lope says that he saw him; says he was within a hundred yards of him.”

  “I’ve heard his story. Why did he run away? Lope is a coward! I don’t believe he saw any one. If he did, why didn’t he go up and talk to him and find out his business. The Irosabals can’t use the range up there, but a stranger in rags can, eh? Lope says that the man he saw had sheep.”

  “Only fifteen or twenty head.”

  “Even so; your grandfather has heard Lope’s tale. Has he done anything about it? Of course not! He is not fooled.”

  “No?” Felipe queried. “Perhaps grandfather sees ghosts up there that we know little about.”

  Andres’s eyes narrowed shrewdly as he glanced at the boy.

  “It would not be well for you to let him hear you say that,” he warned.

  Felipe shook his head slowly. “I am not afraid,” he declared. “He knows what I think. One day I caught him kneeling beside that grave on Buckskin. I asked him why he knelt there, and he snarled at me, but he would not answer—as if an answer were necessary. He has admitted to himself what he will not admit to us.

  “What has the mad hatred that he has always preached gained for us? What happened in the past, belongs in the past. If our people were abused when they came here, it was partly their fault. But you are like your father, Andres.”

  “Yes, and you would do well to think as I do. I hate these gringos, these criollos! Why do they give themselves the airs they do? Haven’t we proved ourselves good citizens?”

  “We’ve proved ourselves able to do everything but forgive and forget an injustice!” Felipe answered boldly. “It was well enough to remember, when we were only a few, but we are many now; and we’re here for all time. There’s no more talk of Spain. I’m a man—”

  “A man?” Andres cried with a fine sarcasm. “You’re nothing but a boy, with your face as soft as a girl’s! You’ll do what you are told to do. Who cares what you think? Don’t let me hear any more of your foolish mouthings. Do you understand?”

  Andres glared menacingly at the boy, his neck muscles bulging with anger. Felipe knew that Andres was a bully, and previous experiences had taught him the wisdom of walking wide of the man’s powerful hands, so he contented himself in the present instance by turning away with a scornful grunt.

  Felipe’s gesture stung Andres, and he continued to watch the boy as they went along, waiting expectantly for him to voice the hot words that trembled on his tongue. Felipe, however, was not to be goaded into battle with Andres, and it was not until they reached the spring that he spoke agam.

  “Well, it’s dry!” he exclaimed angrily.

  Andres scowled as he surveyed the spring. Both of them cursed their luck in their own way.

  “Don’t stand there doing nothing,” Andres snapped. “Unpack the burro, and get me a shovel. The ground is still wet. I’ll dig a hole. We’ll have water in an hour.”

  Felipe did as he was bidden to do and later, with the help of the dogs, he got the flock to bed down. On returning to the spring, he found Andres staring moodily at the hole which he had dug. An inch of water had seeped into it already, but it was heavy with silt and covered with an oily scum. Unpalatable as it looked, it was water, and the sight of it maddened the boy. He threw himself to the ground to drink, but Andres shouldered him away.

  “You can’t drink it yet,” he grumbled. “It will settle in a short while.”

  Felipe’s eyes flashed, and he longed to strike Andres, but he dropped back to wait in sullen silence for the. water to clear.

  Twilight fell as they waited, but neither offered to build a fire. Some minutes later the dogs barked and, on getting to his knees, Felipe made out the figure of a man approaching the spring. In his hand the man held a lead rope, and behind him shuffled a decrepit pack horse.

  Andres caught the query in Felipe’s eyes, and he got up and stared at the figure approaching from the north.

  “Old man Organ,” he muttered irritably on recognizing him. Without bothering to conceal his annoyance at being discovered camped beside the muddy s
pring when fresh water was only an hour’s journey away, he sank back again to his former position.

  Peter Organ was a very old man. He had tramped the Nevada hills years before the first Basque had set foot in the state. He was one of the few left of those who had seen the first Basques trek into the country of the Humboldt. From Angel down, they had no fault to find with old Peter.

  But then, he was of the kind who find virtue in a Digger Indian with quite the same ease that most men find it in prince or bishop. Likewise, his ability at recognizing men’s faults had become proverbial, and backed up with a sharp tongue it had given him a certain prominence which, otherwise, would have been denied to him.

  Hair had long since ceased to adorn his bald pate, and even his stubby white beard seemed to have been nipped by the many adventurous years he had lived. His eyes, however, were keenly alive, and they twinkled mischievously as they beheld Andres and his nephew.

  “Howdy-do, boys!” he exclaimed. “Had to dig her out, eh?” he inquired with provoking inflection. “I’m ashamed of you, Andres, coming here this late in the month lookin’ fer water, especially since you knew all the others had gone up ahead of you.” Peter snorted as he viewed the water which had seeped into the freshly-dug hole.

  “You ain’t a-goin’ to drink that mess, be yuh?” he asked.

  Andres stirred uncomfortably.

  “Eet’s all right, by’m-by,” he argued.

  “Sure!” Peter agreed. “I’ve drunk worse ’an that; an’ sometimes I ain’t drunk nuthin’; but not when there was good water three er four miles away.”

  “Where ees that good water, señor?” Felipe asked eagerly.

  “That big spring above the coulee on Buckskin,” Peter answered rather sharply.

  Felipe’s face fell, and Andres muttered something to himself.

  “Buckskin?“ the old man queried. “What’s wrong with it?—oh—!” And he grinned impudently. “I’d clean fergot that you boys was walkin’ wide of the mountain.” He glanced at Andres.