“There’s your friends, Rufe,” he said, and the cowmen glanced at Hardy inquiringly.
“I might as well tell you fellers,” Creede continued, “that one reason Rufe come up here was to see if he couldn’t do somethin’ with these sheepmen.”
He paused and looked at the circle of faces with a smile that was almost a sneer.
“You fellers wouldn’t back me up when it come to fightin’––none except Ben Reavis and the Clark boys––so I told the old judge we might as well lay down, and to send up some smooth hombre to try and jockey ’em a little. Well, Hardy’s the hombre; and bein’ as you fellers won’t fight, you might as well look pleasant about it. What’s that you say, Bill?”
He turned with a sardonic grin to Lightfoot, who had already been reduced to a state of silence by the relentless persecutions of the rodéo boss.
“I never said nawthin’,” replied Lightfoot sullenly. “But if you’d’ve gone at ’em the way we wanted to,” he blurted out, as the grin broadened, “instead of tryin’ to move the whole outfit by daylight, I’d’ve stayed with you till hell froze over. I don’t want to git sent up fer ten years.”
“No,” said Creede coolly, “ner you never will.”
“Well, I don’t see what you’re pickin’ on me fer,” bellowed Lightfoot, “the other fellers was there too. Why don’t you sass Ensign or Pete a while?”
“For a durned good reason,” replied Creede steadily. “They never was for fightin’, but you, with that yawp of yours, was always a-hollerin’ and ribbin’ me on to fight, and then, when the time come, you never said ‘Boo!’ at ’em. Tucked your young cannon into the seat of your pants and flew, dam’ ye, and that’s all there was to it. But that’s all right,” he added resignedly. “If you fellers don’t want to fight you don’t have to. But, dam’ it, keep shut about it now, until you mean business.”
As to just who this man Hardy was and what he proposed to do with the sheep the members of the Four Peaks round-up were still in ignorance. All they knew was that he could ride, even when it came to drifting his horse over the rocky ridges, and that Jeff Creede took him as a matter of course. But, for a superintendent, he never seemed to have much to say for himself. It was only when he walked up to his sorrel pony in that gentle, precise way he had, and went through the familiar motions of climbing a “bad one” that they sensed, dimly, a past not without experience and excitement. Even in the preoccupation of their own affairs and doings they could not fail to notice a supple strength in his white hands, a military precision in his movements, and above all a look in his eyes when he became excited––the steady resolute stare with which his militant father had subdued outlaw horses, buck soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well. It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike Kennedy’s “side winder” on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up to him.
Even after his mission was announced, Hardy made no change in his manner of life. He rode out each day on the round-up, conning the lay of the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally, frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment, whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns; they had cut their huddled bands at night and scattered them for the coyotes; they had caught unwary Mexican borregueros in forbidden pastures and administered “shap lessons,” stretching them over bowlders and spanking them with their leather leggings; they had “talked reason” to the bosses in forceful terms; they had requested them politely to move; they had implored them with tears in their eyes––and still like a wave of the sea, like a wind, like a scourge of grasshoppers which cannot be withstood, the sheep had come on, always hungry, always fat, always more.
Nor was there any new thing in hospitality. The last bacon and bread had been set upon the table; baled hay and grain, hauled in by day’s works from the alfalfa fields of Moroni and the Salagua, had been fed to the famished horses of the very men who had sheeped off the grass; the same blanket had been shared, sometimes, alas, with men who were “crumby.” And it was equally true that, in return, the beans and meat of chance herders had been as ravenously devoured, the water casks of patient “camp-rustlers” had been drained midway between the river and camp, and stray wethers had showed up in the round-up fry-pans in the shape of mutton. Ponder as he would upon the problem no solution offered itself to Hardy. He had no policy, even, beyond that of common politeness; and as the menacing clamor of the sheep drifted up to them from the river the diplomat who was to negotiate the great truce began to wonder whether, after all, he was the man of the hour or merely another college graduate gone wrong.
On the opposite side of the river in bands of two and three thousand the cohorts of the sheep gathered to make the crossing––gathered and waited, for the Salagua was still high. At the foot of the high cliffs, from the cleft cañon of which water flowed forth as if some rod had called it from the rock, the leaders of the sheepmen were sitting in council, gazing at the powerful sweep of the level river, and then at the distant sand bar where their charges must win the shore or be swept into the whirlpool below. Ah, that whirlpool! Many a frightened ewe and weakling lamb in years past had drifted helplessly into its swirl and been sucked down, to come up below the point a water-logged carcass. And for each stinking corpse that littered the lower bar the boss sheep owner subtracted five dollars from the sum of his hard-earned wealth. Already on the flats below them the willows and burro bushes were trembling as eager teeth trimmed them of their leaves––in a day, or two days, the river bottom would be fed bare; and behind and behind, clear to the broad floor of the desert, band after band was pressing on to the upper crossing of the Salagua.
As Hardy rode up over the rocky point against which the river threw its full strength and then, flung inexorably back, turned upon itself in a sullen whirlpool, he could see the sheep among the willows, the herders standing impassive, leaning upon their guns as more rustic shepherds lean upon their staves, and above, at the head of the crossing, the group of men, sitting within the circle of their horses in anxious conference. If any of them saw him, outlined like a sentinel against the sky, they made no sign; but suddenly a man in a high Texas hat leaped up from the group, sprang astride his mule and spurred him into the cold water. For the first twenty feet the mule waded, shaking his ears; then he slumped off the edge of a submerged bench into deeper water and swam, heading across the stream but drifting diagonally with the current until, striking bottom once more, he struggled out upon the sand spit. The rider looked eagerly about, glanced up casually at the man on the point below, and then plunged back into the water, shouting out hoarse orders to his Mexicans, who were smoking idly in the shade of overhanging rocks. Immediately they scrambled to their feet and scattered along the hillside. The stroke of axes echoed from the crags above, and soon men came staggering down to the river, dragging the thorny limbs of palo verdes behind them. With these they quickly constructed a brush fence in the form of a wing, running parallel to the cliff and making a chute which opened into the river.
Then with a great braying and bleating a huddle of sheep moved unwillingly along it, led by bold goats with crooked horns and resolute beards, and pushed forward by that same reckless rider on his black mule, assisted by a horde of shouting Mexicans. But at the touch of the cold water, two days from the snow beds of the White Mountains, even the hardy bucks steppe
d back and shook their heads defiantly. In vain with showers of rocks and flapping tarpaulins the herders stormed the rear of the press––every foot was set against them and the sheep only rushed about along the edge of the herd or crowded in close-wedged masses against the bluff. At last a line of men leaped into the enclosure, holding up a long canvas wagon-cover and, encircling the first section of the leaders, shoved them by main force into the river.
Instantly the goats took water, swimming free, and below them the man on the black mule shouted and waved his broad Texas hat, heading them across the stream. But the timid sheep turned back behind him, landing below the fence against all opposition, and the babel of their braying rose higher and higher, as if in protest against their unlucky fate. Again and again the herders, stripped to their underclothes, pushed the unwilling sheep into the current, wading out to their chins to keep them headed across; each time the sodden creatures evaded them and, drifting with the current, landed far below on the same side, whence they rushed back to join their fellows.
Upon the opposite shore the goats stood shivering, watching the struggle with yellow, staring eyes which showed no trace of fear. Like brave generals of a craven band they were alone in their hardihood and, with their feet upon the promised land, were doomed either to proceed alone or return to their companions. So at last they did, plunging in suddenly, while the man on the mule spurred in below in a vain effort to turn them back.
That night by the camp fire Hardy mentioned the man on a black mule.
“My old friend, Jasp Swope,” explained Creede suavely, “brother of Jim, the feller I introduced you to. Sure, Jasp and I have had lo-ong talks together––but he don’t like me any more.” He twisted his nose and made a face, as if to intimate that it was merely a childish squabble, and Hardy said no more. He was growing wise.
The next morning, and the next, Jasper Swope made other attempts at the crossing; and then, as the snow water from the high mountains slipped by and the warm weather dried up by so much each little stream, he was able at last to ford the diminished river. But first, with that indomitable energy which marked him at every move, he cleared a passage along the base of the cliff to a place where the earth-covered moraine broke off at the edge of the water. Here a broad ledge shot down to the river like a toboggan slide, with a six-foot jump off at the bottom.
Once on this chute, with the strong tug of the canvas wagon-covers behind, there was nothing for the sheep to do but to take the plunge, and as his brawny herders tumbled them head over heels into the deep current Swope and his helpers waded out in a line below, shunting each ewe and wading toward the farther shore. There on the edge of the sand spit they huddled in a bunch, gathering about the hardier bucks and serving as a lure for those that followed. As cut after cut was forced into the stream a long row of bobbing heads stretched clear across the river, each animal striving desperately to gain the opposite bank and landing, spent and puffing, far below. A Mexican boy at intervals drove these strays up the shore to the big bunch and then concealed himself in the bushes lest by his presence he turn some timid swimmer back and the whirlpool increase its toll. So they crossed them in two herds, the wethers first, and then the ewes and lambs––and all the little lambs that could not stem the stream were floated across in broad pieces of tarpaulin whose edges were held up by wading men.
From Lookout Point it was a majestic spectacle, the high cliffs, the silvery river gliding noiselessly out from its black cañon, the white masses of sheep, clustering on either side of the water––and as the work went ahead merrily the Mexicans, their naked bodies gleaming like polished bronze in the ardent sun, broke into a wild refrain, a love song, perhaps, or a cancion of old Mexico. Working side by side with his men Jasper Swope joined in the song himself, and as they returned empty-handed he seized the tallest and strongest of them and ducked him in the water while his retainers roared with laughter. And Hardy, sitting unnoticed upon his horse, began to understand why these low-browed barbarians from Mexico were willing to fight, and if need be to die, for their masters. The age of feudalism had returned––the lords of the sheep went forth like barons, sharing every hardship and leading the way in danger, and their men followed with the same unthinking devotion that the Myrmidons showed for noble Achilles or the Crusaders for their white-crossed knights.
Upon this and many other feats Hardy had ample leisure to meditate, for the sheepmen regarded him no more than if he had been a monument placed high upon the point to give witness to their victory. As the sheep crossed they were even allowed to straggle out along the slopes of the forbidden mesa, untended by their shepherds; and if the upper range was the special reserve of the cowmen the sheep owners showed no knowledge of the fact. For two days the grazing herd crept slowly along the mesquite-covered flat toward Lookout Point, and on the third morning they boiled up over the rocks and spewed down into the valley of the Alamo.
“Well,” observed Creede, as he watched the slow creeping of the flock, “here’s where I have to quit you, Rufe. In a week this ground around here will be as level as a billiard table and they won’t be enough horse feed in the valley to keep a burro. The town herd pulls out for Bender this mornin’ and the rest of us will move up to Carrizo Creek.”
He hurried away to oversee the packing, but when all was ready he waved the boys ahead and returned to the conversation.
“As I was sayin’ a while ago, you won’t see nothin’ but sheep around here now for the next two weeks––and all I want to say is, keep ’em out of the pasture, and f’r God’s sake don’t let ’em corral in the brandin’ pens! They’re dirty enough already, but if you git about six inches of sheep manure in there and then mill a few hundred head of cattle around on top of it, the dust would choke a skunk. Our cows ain’t so over-particular about that sheep smell, but if we poor cowboys has got to breathe sheep and eat sheep and spit up sheep every time we brand, it’s crowdin’ hospitality pretty strong. But if they want grub or clothes or tabac, go to it––and see if you can’t keep ’em off the upper range.”
He paused and gazed at Hardy with eyes which suggested a world of advice and warning––then, leaving it all unsaid, he turned wearily away.
“I look to find you with a sprained wrist,” he drawled, “when I come back––throwin’ flapjacks for them sheepmen!” He made the quick motion of turning a pancake in midair, smiled grimly, and galloped after the long line of horses and packs that was stringing along up the Bronco Mesa trail. And, having a premonition of coming company, Hardy went in by the fireplace and put on a big kettle of beef. He was picking over another mess of beans when he heard the clatter of hoofs outside and the next moment the door was kicked violently open.
It was Jasper Swope who stood on the threshold, his high Texas hat thrust far back upon his head––and if he felt any surprise at finding the house occupied he gave no expression to it.
“Hello, there!” he exclaimed. “I thought you folks was all gone!”
“Nope,” replied Hardy, and continued his work in silence.
“Cookin’ for the outfit?” queried Swope, edging in at the door.
“Nope,” replied Hardy.
“Well, who the hell air ye cookin’ fer then?” demanded Swope, drawing nearer. “’Scuse me if I pry into this matter, but I’m gittin’ interested.” He paused and showed a jagged set of teeth beneath his bristling red mustache, sneeringly.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” answered Hardy easily. “I thought some white man might come along later and I’d ask him to dinner.” He fixed his eyes upon the sheepman with an instant’s disapproval and then resumed his cookery. As for Swope, his gray eyes flashed sudden fire from beneath bushy eyebrows, and then a canny smile crept across his lips.
“I used to be a white man, myself,” he said, “before I lost my soap. What’s the chance to git a bite of that bymeby?” He threw his hand out toward the pot of beef, which was sending out odors of a rich broth, flavored with onions and chili.
Hardy looked
at him again, little shrimp of a man that he was, and still with disapproval.
“D’ye call that a white man’s way of entering another man’s house?” he inquired pointedly.
“Well,” temporized Swope, and then he stopped. “A man in my line of business gits in a hurry once in a while,” he said lamely. “But I’m hungry, all right,” he remarked, sotto voce.
“Yes,” said Hardy, “I’ve noticed it. But here––sit down and eat.”
The sheepman accepted the dish of beef, dipped out a spoonful of beans, broke off a slab of bread, and began his meal forthwith, meanwhile looking at Hardy curiously.
“What’s that you say you’ve noticed?” he inquired, and a quizzical smile lurked beneath his dripping mustache as he reached over and hefted the coffeepot.
“I’ve noticed,” replied Hardy, “that you sheepmen get in a hurry once in a while. You can’t stop to knock on a door so you kick it open; can’t stop to go around a ranch, so you go through it, and so on.”
“Ah,” observed Swope slyly, “so that’s what’s bitin’ you, eh? I reckon you must be that new superintendent that Jim was tellin’ about.”
“That’s right,” admitted Hardy, “and you’re Mr. Swope, of course. Well, I’ll say this for you, Mr. Swope, you certainly know how to get sheep across a river. But when it comes to getting along with cowmen,” he added, as the sheepman grinned his self-approval, “you don’t seem to stack up very high.”
“Oh, I don’t, hey?” demanded Swope defiantly. “Well, how about the cowmen? Your friend Creede gets along with sheepmen like a house afire, don’t he? Him and a bunch of his punchers jumped on one of my herders last Fall and dam’ nigh beat him to death. Did you ever hear of a sheepman jumpin’ on a cowboy? No, by Gad, and you never will! We carry arms to protect ourselves, but we never make no trouble.”
He paused and combed the coffee grounds out of his heavy red mustache with fingers that were hooked like an eagle’s talons from clutching at sheep in the cold water.
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