He had come to the Bar X from Oregon, where he had grown up in the big timber, but he came to Arizona wanting to punch cows. After a couple of short jobs he had stumbled into the Bar X when they needed a hand. The boss hired him, and Lamson did not like that, but he had said nothing, done nothing until that night in town.
Everybody on the Bar X knew that Smoke was sweet on Mary Jane Calkins. Everybody, that is, but Johnny Garrett. And Johnny had seen Mary Jane, danced with her, talked with her, and then walked out with her. Looking for Mary Jane, Smoke had found them in a swing together.
He had been coldly furious, and Mary Jane, apparently unaware of what she was doing, told Smoke that Johnny was going to be a top hand by spring. “You wait an’ see,” Johnny had said.
And Smoke Lamson looked at Johnny and grinned slowly. “You know, Mary Jane,” he said meaningfully, “I’ll bet he is!”
That started it. Every tough and lonely job fell to Johnny Garrett. Morning, noon, and night he was on call. Everybody in the bunkhouse could see that Smoke was riding Johnny, driving him, trying to make him quit. “Want to be a top hand, don’t you?” he would taunt. “Get on out there!” And Johnny went.
He mended what seemed to be miles of fence, and if Lamson did not think it was well done, it was done over. He cut wood for the cook, the lowest of cow ranch jobs; he hunted strays in the wildest and roughest country; he used a shovel more than a rope, cleaning water holes, opening springs. He did more night riding than any three men in the outfit. He worked twelve and fourteen hours a day when the others rarely did more than seven or eight in the fall and bitter winter.
Smoke Lamson was big and he was tough. It was his boast that he had never been bested in a rough-and-tumble fight, and although he outweighed Johnny by forty pounds, he seemed to be trying to tempt the smaller man to try his luck.
As the months went by it grew worse. As if angered by his failure to force Johnny to quit, Lamson became tougher. Even Lasker, a taciturn man, attempted to reason with Smoke. “Why don’t you lay off the kid?” he demanded. “He’s doin’ his job.”
“My business, Dan.” Smoke was abrupt. “When he’s as good a hand as you or me, I’ll lay off.”
Johnny got the saddle on his dun and rode out of the big barn, ducking his head under the door. From the saddle he swung the door shut, then turned the horse into the wind and headed toward the west range.
Ice was already forming and the ground had white patches of snow, but there was more in the air, blowing as well as falling, than on the ground. It was blowing cold and bitter from the north, and if the cattle started to drift and got any kind of a start, there would be no stopping them. Not far below the valley where he would be riding was Sage Flat, fifty miles wide and half again that long, and nothing to stop them in all that length but a forty-foot arroyo. If they started south ahead of the wind, they would be half-frozen by the time they reached that arroyo and would walk off into it.
Johnny had heard about a drift. He had never seen it, but his imagination was good.
He had been in the saddle over an hour when he saw the first steer, a big roan steer, heading toward him, plodding steadily. Behind him there was another, then another … and for the first time, he knew panic.
Deep inside he knew that nobody had ever expected this. The upper end of the valley he patrolled was fenced, and Smoke had sent him here just for safety’s sake or out of pure cussedness, but the fence must be down, must have been pushed over, and they were coming.
There was no time to go for help. He drew his pistol and fired into the air, partly hoping to stop the drift, partly to call for help. It did neither. Desperately, he tried to turn the cattle, and they would not turn. When he got one half-turned into the storm, others would go by him.
And from up the valley came more, and more, and more.
Then he realized the full enormity of what was happening. The whole herd, more than a thousand head, would be drifting ahead of the norther. Unless stopped they would drift into the arroyo, winding up at the bottom either dead or with broken legs, helpless, for the cold to kill. A few would survive, of course, but not many. A forty-foot fall into a rocky ravine is not calculated to do either man or animal any good.
The dun worked hard. Johnny yelled, fired more shots, tried everything. The cattle kept coming. He had forgotten Smoke Lamson, who had sent him here. He had forgotten everything but the cattle and the kindly old man, old Bart Gavin, who had hired him when he was broke.
He drew up, staring into the storm. Ice was forming on the scarf over his chin. His toes were numb from inactivity, and the cattle drifted. It was four miles to the gate, four more to the bunkhouse. To go there and get back with the hands—for they must all dress and saddle up—would let too many cattle go by. And what could be done when they got here?
By daybreak a thousand head of beef steers would be piled up along a mile or so of that arroyo. Unless … unless he could force them over. If he could push them east to the flank of Comb Ridge, start them down along the ridge until they got between the ridge and Gavin Fault, he might force them to pile up in one place. Some would be lost but the fall of the others would be cushioned … An idea clicked in his mind.
Swinging the startled dun, he slammed the spurs to the mustang and raced south. He passed steer after steer, plodding steadily, methodically on, hypnotized by their movement and driven by the howling norther behind them. Racing on at breakneck speed over the frozen ground, he was soon beyond them. As he raced, he was thinking. They were traveling slow, the usual slow walk of a drift herd. There would be, with luck, time enough.
Soon he was passing the straggling leaders, strung out for a quarter of a mile, and then he was racing alone into the night and the south, away from the herd, toward the arroyo. Yet, when a few miles were behind him he swung off west and rode hard. Suddenly he saw a shoulder of Gavin Fault, a huge upthrust of sandstone. Keeping it close on his left, he rode down it until against the night he caught the square shoulder of Rock House. He swung the dun into the lee of the house and got out of the saddle.
The door opened when he lifted the latch and shoved. He got in quickly and struck a match. Against the wall were piled four boxes of powder. He stuffed it into sacks, caught up a roll of fuse, and ran from the shack, closing the door after him.
Putting the giant powder behind the saddle, he got up himself, and, the fuses around his arm, heedless of risk, he rode on south. If the dun stumbled and fell—well, there would be a mighty big hole in the grass!
The dun liked to run, and it was bitter cold now. How cold he did not know, but getting down there. He raced onward until suddenly he saw ahead of him the black line of the arroyo. He swung from the dun and led the horse into the shelter of a rocky projection and hurried to the edge. Carefully, he clambered down.
He knew that spot. He had slipped away and hidden from Lamson to catch a quiet smoke on several occasions. It was cracked and honeycombed with holes. Working swiftly, he stuffed the cracks with powder, jammed bunches of sticks into holes, and worked his way from the lip almost to the bottom. He had been working for more than a half hour before he saw the first steer. It had brought up against a rock some distance off and stood there, befuddled. It would soon come on.
Sheltered from the wind that blew over the lip above him, Johnny ran along, hastily spitting his fuses. When all were lighted that he could see, he scrambled back up and grabbed his horse. He was riding into the teeth of the wind when he heard the blast. There was no time to go back. It had to work. It must work.
North he rode until he saw the cattle. They were coming now in droves, and soon he was past the end of the fault. Channeled by the valley from which they had come, the animals plodded steadily ahead. Only a few seemed inclined to stray west, and these he pushed back. He could move them east or west, but no power on earth could now prevent them from going south.
How long he worked he did not know. Every move might be futile. Once the dun fell, but scrambled gamely up. Soon Johnny
found a place from which he could watch for some distance. The snow was letting up, the ground was white, and visibility not bad. He worked more slowly, half-dead in the saddle, and then the last of the cattle drifted by and he turned his horse and walked slowly back to the ranch.
Half-dead with weariness, he stripped the saddle from his horse and then went to work. For half an hour he worked hard over the dun, and then he blanketed the horse to allow him to conserve as much heat as possible. Stumbling, he got into the bunkhouse and crawled into bed. His feet were numbed and for a while he held his toes, trying to warm them. And then he fell asleep.
A hand on his shoulder awakened him. It was Dan Lasker. “Better crawl out, kid. Lamson’s on a tear this mornin’.”
He was the last one to reach the breakfast table. He came into the room and stopped abruptly. Sitting with Bart Gavin was a girl … and what a girl!
Her hair was dark and thick, her eyes bright, her lips slightly full and red. In a daze he got into a chair and hitched close to the table. The hands were tongue-tied. No conversation this morning. In front of the radiant creature beside Bart they were completely at a loss. Even Smoke Lamson was speechless.
Suddenly, she spoke. “Why is it that only one of the horses has a blanket on him? It was so cold last night!”
“Blanket?” Gavin looked around. “Blanket on a horse?”
The hands looked around, astonished. The tough western cow ponies were unaccustomed to such treatment. Even Smoke Lamson was surprised. Suddenly he turned on Johnny, seeing a chance to have some fun. “Maybe it was the Top Hand here. That sounds like him.”
The dark and lovely eyes turned to Johnny and he blushed furiously.
“Did oo w’ap up the po’ itto hossie?” Lamson said, glancing at the girl to see if his wit was appreciated, and chuckling.
Gavin looked at Johnny sharply. Feeling some explanation necessary, Johnny said feebly, “He was pretty wore out. It was near to daybreak before I got in.”
Gavin put his fork down. “Daybreak?” He was incredulous. “What were you doing out last night?”
It was Lamson’s turn to grow confused. He hesitated. Then he said, “I figured somebody better watch in case of a drift.”
“A drift?” Gavin’s voice was scornful. “With that fence? It’s horse high and bull strong! Anyway”—his voice was biting—“what could one man do against a drift?”
Smoke Lamson stuttered, hesitated, and finally tried a feeble excuse. The girl looked from him to Johnny, and then at the other hands. Bart Gavin was no fool. He was beginning to realize something he had not realized before.
“The cows are all right.” Johnny found a voice. “I was there when the drift started. They are in the arroyo.”
“What?” Bart Gavin came out of his seat, his face shocked and pale.
All eyes were on Johnny now. “I never did figure out what happened to the fence. I was ridin’, then all of a sudden I seen ’em comin’. I shot off my gun an’ yelled, but nobody heard me, an’ it didn’t have any effect on the cows.”
Lamson was hoarse. “You mean … there was a drift? They got through the fence?”
“Yeah,” Johnny said, “but they are all right.”
“What do you mean”—Gavin’s voice was icy—“all right? You mean I’ve got forty thousand dollars’ worth of cattle piled up in the arroyo?”
“They ain’t piled,” Johnny explained. “Not many, at least. I seen—saw—what was goin’ to happen, so I got that powder out of the Rock House and blowed—I mean, I blew the edge of the arroyo. I figure they couldn’t go no further, so they are probably scattered up an’ down it.”
There was a long moment of deathly silence. Lamson was pale, the others incredulous. Gavin stared at Johnny, and after a minute he picked up his fork and started to eat. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You got ahead of the herd, blew off the edge of the arroyo, then got back and worked all night pointing those cattle toward the break?”
“It wasn’t much.” Johnny was sheepish. “I had ’em narrowed down by the valley, so I just had to keep ’em that way.”
“I think that was wonderful!” the girl with the dark eyes said. “Don’t you, Uncle Bart?”
“It saved me the best part of forty thousand dollars, is all.” Gavin was emphatic. “Lamson, I want to talk to you. First, we’ll take a look.”
Of the more than a thousand cattle that drifted south, only six were lost. Despite the hurry and the darkness, Johnny had chosen his spot well and the powder had been well planted. Knowing the arroyo, he had known how many cracks were in the rocky edge, and how honeycombed it was with holes eroded by wind and water.
Gavin found his cattle scattered along the bottom of the arroyo, feeding on the rich grass that grew there where water often stood. He studied the blasted edge, glancing sharply at Johnny. “You knew something about powder, son,” he said. “Those shots were well placed.”
“My dad had a claim up in Oregon,” Johnny explained. “I helped him some, doin’ assignment work.”
What Bart Gavin said to Lamson none of them knew, but for a few days his driving of Johnny ceased, although some sneering remarks about “pets” were made. And then gradually the old way resumed. It was Johnny Garrett who drew the rough jobs.
When there was to be a dance at Rock Springs Schoolhouse, where Johnny might have seen Mary Jane, he was sent to a line-camp at Eagle Rest.
It was a rugged, broken country, heavily timbered like his native Oregon, but riven by canyons and peaks, and cut here and there by lava flows and bordered on the east by the malpais, a forty-mile-wide stretch of lava where no horse could go and where a man’s boots would be cut to ribbons in no time. Supposedly waterless, it was a treacherous area. There were stretches of flat, smooth lava, innocent in appearance, but actually that seemingly solid rock was merely the thin dome over a lava blister. Stepping on it, a man could plunge fifteen to fifty feet into a cavernous hole whose sides were slick and impossible to climb.
The few openings into this malpais were fenced, and the fences had to be kept up. At places the lava rode in a wall of basaltic blocks.
After the water holes were cleaned, salt scattered, and the fences checked, there was little to do. Johnny had a Colt and a Winchester, and he did a lot of shooting. He killed two mountain lions and a half-dozen wolves, skinning them and tanning the hides.
A week later Lasker rode in with two pack horses of supplies. Lasker was a tall, rawboned man who had punched cows for fifteen years.
He noticed the hides but made no comment. Hunkered down by the wall in the morning sun, he said, “Old man’s worried. The tally fell off this year. He’s losin’ cows.”
“You seen Mary Jane?”
“She was at the dance with Smoke,” Lasker said, started to say something further, but stopped. Then he said, “ ‘Member that niece of Gavin’s? She’s livin’ at the ranch. Her name is Betty.”
“Too high-toned for any cowpunch.”
“Can’t tell about a woman,” Lasker said. “Some of the high-toned ones are thoroughbreds.”
Two days later Johnny found a dead cow. Wolves had torn it, but the cow had been shot in the head … the carcass not even a week old. Nobody had been around but Lasker and himself.
It was a Gavin cow. The only reason to shoot a cow was because she followed a rustled calf. Johnny was woods-bred and he spelled out the trail. A dozen head of young stuff had been taken through the timber into high country. He followed the scuffed trail through the pine needles, then lost it at the rim of a high canyon about the malpais.
For a week he scouted for sign, keeping up the pretense of only doing his work. Once, he cut the trail of a shod horse but lost it. Back at the cabin he began to sketch a crude map on brown wrapping paper, incorporating all he knew of the country, marking ridges, arroyos, and streams.
Three small streams disappeared in the direction of the lava beds, and nobody had ever followed those streams to see where they went. Both streams were s
hallow—no water backed up anywhere.
The first stream, he discovered, veered suddenly south and dropped from sight in a deep cavern under the lava. Two days later, mending fence, he checked the next stream. It ended in a swamp.
Lasker and Lamson rode in the following day. Lasker was friendly and noticed the fresh wolf hide. “Good huntin’?”
“Yeah, but not enough time.”
Smoke Lamson said nothing, but looked around carefully, and several times Johnny found Smoke watching him intently. It was not until they were about to leave that Lamson turned suddenly. “Seen anybody? Any strange riders?”
“Not a soul,” Johnny told him, and after they were gone he swore at himself for not mentioning the tracks. And the cow.
On the third day after that, he circled around to trace the source of the one unexplored stream. When he found it he rode into the water and had followed it downstream more than a mile when he heard voices. He could distinguish no words, but two men were talking. Through a veil of brush he saw them ride out of the trees. One was a fat, sloppy man in a dirty gray shirt. The other was lean and savage; his name was Hoyt, and Johnny had seen him in town. He was said to be dangerous. After they were gone, Johnny followed cautiously.
The stream’s current increased. It was dropping fast, and suddenly he found himself about to enter a sheer-walled canyon. Climbing his dun out of the water, he followed along the rim for more than an hour as the canyon grew deeper, until the riders were mere dots.
In a clearing atop the mountain, Johnny took his bearings. To north, south, and east lay the malpais, spotted with trees and brush that concealed the razorlike edges of broken lava. Suppose there was, far out there where the stream flowed, a grassy valley where stolen cattle were held?
Back at the cabin he made his decision. It was time to talk to Bart Gavin. Switching horses he rode back, arriving long after dark. It would take another day to return, but he must see the rancher. “Nobody home,” the cook told him. “All gone to dance. Only Dan, he here.”
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume 2 Page 59