by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER 9
Moving the Herd
Four thousand weary cattle crawled up the long ridge which divides Chin Coulee from Quitter Creek. Pink, riding point, opposite the Silent One, twisted round in his saddle and looked back at the slow-moving river of horns and backs veiled in a gray dust-cloud. Down the line at intervals rode the others, humped listlessly in their saddles, their hat brims pulled low over tired eyes that smarted with dust and wind and burning heat.
Pink sighed, and wished lonesomely that it was Rowdy riding point with him, instead of the Silent One, who grew even more silent as the day dragged leadenly to mid-afternoon; Pink could endure anything better than being left to his thoughts and to the complaining herd for company.
He took off his hat, pushed back his curls—dripping wet they were and flattened unbecomingly in pasty, yellow rings on his forehead—and eyed with disfavor a line-backed, dry cow, with one horn tipped rakishly toward her speckled nose; she blinked silently at wind and heat, and forged steadily ahead, up-hill and down coulee, always in the lead, always walking, walking, like an automaton. Her energy, in the face of all the dry, dreary days, rasped Pink’s nerves unbearably. For nearly a week he had ridden left point, and always that line-backed cow with the down-crumpled horn walked and walked and walked, a length ahead of her most intrepid followers.
He leaned from his saddle, picked up a rock from the barren, yellow hillside, and threw it at the cow spitefully. The rock bounced off her lean rump; she blinked and broke into a shuffling trot, her dragging hoofs kicking up an extra amount of dust, which blew straight into Pink’s face.
“Aw, cut it out!” he shouted petulantly. “You’re sure the limit, without doing any stunts at sprinting up-hill. Ain’t yuh got any nerves, yuh blamed old skate? Yuh act like it was milkin’-time, and yuh was headed straight for the bars and a bran mash. Can’t yuh realize the kind uh deal you’re up against? Here’s cattle that’s got you skinned for looks, old girl, and they know it’s coming blamed tough; and you just bat your eyes and peg along like yuh enjoyed it. Bawl, or something, can’t yuh? Drop back a foot and act human!”
The Silent One looked across at him with a tired smile. “Let her go, Pink, and pray for more like her,” he called amusedly. “There’ll be enough of them dropping back presently.”
Pink threw one leg over the horn and rode sidewise, made him a cigarette, and tried to forget the cow—or, at least, to forgive her for not acting as dog-tired as he felt.
They were on the very peak of the ridge now, and the hill sloped smoothly down before them to the bluff which bounded Quitter Creek. Far down, a tiny black speck in the coulee-bottom, they could see Wooden Shoes riding along the creek-bank, scouting for water. From the way he rode, and from the fact that camp was nowhere in sight, Pink guessed shrewdly that his quest was in vain. He shrugged his shoulders at what that meant, and gave his attention to the herd.
The marching line split at the brow of the bluff. The line-backed cow lowered her head a bit and went unfaltering down the parched, gravel-coated hill, followed by a few hundred of the freshest. Then the stream stopped flowing, and Pink and the Silent One rode back up the bluff to where the bulk of the footsore herd, their senses dulled by hunger and weariness and choking thirst, sniffed at the gravel that promised agony to their bruised feet, and balked at the ordeal. Others straggled up, bunched against the rebels, and stood stolidly where they were.
Pink galloped on down the crawling line. “Forward, the Standard Oil Brigade!” he yelled whimsically as he went.
The cowboys heard—and understood. They left their places and went forward at a lope, and Pink rode back to the coulee edge, untying his slicker as he went. The Silent One was already off his horse and shouting hoarsely as he whacked with his slicker at the sulky mass. Pink rode in and did the same. It was not the first time this thing had happened, and from a diversion it was verging closely on the monotonous. Presently, even a rank tenderfoot must have caught the significance of Pink’s military expression. The Standard Oil Brigade was at the front in force.
Cowboys, swinging five-gallon oil-cans, picked up from scattered sheep camps and carried many a weary mile for just such an emergency, were charging the bunch intrepidly. Others made shift with flat sirup-cans with pebbles inside. A few, like Pink and the Silent One, flapped their slickers till their arms ached. Anything, everything that would make a din and startle the cattle out of their lethargy, was pressed into service.
But they might have been raised in a barnyard and fed cabbage leaves from back door-steps, for all the excitement they showed. Cattle that three months ago—or a month—would run, head and tail high in air, at sight of a man on foot, backed away from a rattling, banging cube of gleaming tin, turned and faced the thing dull-eyed and apathetic.
In time, however, they gave way dogedly before the onslaught. A few were forced shrinkingly down the hill; others followed gingerly, until the line lengthened and flowed, a sluggish, brown-red stream, into the coulee and across to Quitter Creek.
Here the leaders were browsing greedily along the banks. They had emptied the few holes that had still held a meager store of brackish water and so the mutinous bulk of the herd snuffed at the trampled, muddy spots and bellowed their disappointment.
Wooden Shoes rode up and surveyed the half maddened animals gloomily. “Push ’em on, boys,” he said. “They’s nothings for ’em here. I’ve sent the wagons on to Red Willow; we’ll try that next. Push ’em along all yuh can, while I go on ahead and see.”
With tin-cans, slickers, and much vituperation, they forced the herd up the coulee side and strung them out again on trail. The line-backed cow walked and walked in the lead before Pink’s querulous gaze, and the others plodded listlessly after. The gray dust-cloud formed anew over their slowmoving backs, and the cowboys humped over in their saddles and rode and rode, with the hot sun beating aslant in their dirt-grimed faces, and with the wind blowing and blowing.
If this had been the first herd to make that dreary trip, things would not have been quite so disheartening. But it was the third. Seven thousand lean kine had passed that way before them, eating the scant grass growth and drinking what water they could find among those barren, sun-baked coulees.
The Cross L boys, on this third trip, were become a jaded lot of hollow-eyed men, whose nerves were rasped raw with long hours and longer days in the saddle. Pink’s cheeks no longer made his name appropriate, and he was not the only one who grew fretful over small things. Rowdy had been heard, more than once lately, to anathematize viciously the prairie-dogs for standing on their tails and chipchip-chipping at them as they went by. And though the Silent One did not swear, he carried rocks in his pockets, and threw them with venomous precision at every “dog” that showed his impertinent nose out of a burrow within range. For Pink, he vented his spleen on the line-backed cow.
So they walked and walked and walked.
The cattle balked at another hill, and all the tincans and slickers in the crowd could scarcely move them. The wind dropped with the sun, and the clouds glowed gorgeously above them, getting scant notice, except that they told eloquently of the coming night; and there were yet miles—long, rough, heartbreaking miles—to put behind them before they could hope for the things their tired bodies craved: supper and dreamless sleep.
When the last of the herd had sidled, under protest, down the long hill to the flat, dusk was pushing the horizon closer upon them, mile by mile. When they crawled sinuously out upon the welcome level, the hill loomed ghostly and black behind them. A mile out, Wooden Shoes rode out of the gloom and met the point. He turned and rode beside Pink.
“Yuh’ll have t’ swing ’em north,” he greeted.
“Red Willow’s dry as hell—all but in the Rockin’ R field. No use askin’ ole Mullen to let us in there; we’ll just go. I sent the wagons through the fence, an’ yuh’ll find camp about a mile up from the mouth uh the big coulee. You swing ’em round the end uh this bench, an’ hit that big coulee
at the head. When you come t’ the fence, tear it down. They’s awful good grass in that field!”
“All right,” said Pink cheerfully. It was in open defiance of range etiquette; but their need was desperate. The only thing about it Pink did not like was the long detour they must make. He called the news across to the Silent One, after Wooden Shoes had gone on down the line, and they swung the point gradually to the left.
Before that drive was over, Pink had vowed many times to leave the range forever and never to turn another cow—besides a good many other foolish things which would be forgotten, once he had a good sleep. And Rowdy, plodding half-way down the herd, had grown exceedingly pessimistic regarding Jessie Conroy, and decided that there was no sense in thinking about her all the time, the way he had been doing. Also, he told himself savagely that if Harry ever crossed his trail again, there would be something doing. This thing of letting a cur like that run roughshod over a man on account of a girl that didn’t care was plumb idiotic. And beside him the cattle walked and walked and walked, a dim, moving mass in the quiet July night.
CHAPTER 10
Harry Conroy at Home
It was late next morning when they got under way; for they had not reached camp until long after midnight, and Wooden Shoes was determined the cattle should have one good feed, and all the water they wanted, to requite them for the hard drive of the day before.
Pink rode out with Rowdy to the herd—a heavylidded, gloomy Rowdy he was, and not amiably inclined toward the small talk of the range. But Pink had slept five whole hours and was almost his normal self; which means that speech was not to be denied him.
“What yuh mourning over?” he bantered. “Mad ’cause the reservation’s so close?”
“Sure,” assented Rowdy, with deep sarcasm.
“That’s what I thought. Studying up the nicest way uh giving brother-in-law the glad hand, ain’t yuh?”
“He’s no relation uh mine—and never will be,” said Rowdy curtly. “And I’ll thank you, Pink, to drop that subject for good and all.”
“Down she goes,” assented Pink, quite unperturbed. “But the cards ain’t all turned yet, yuh want to remember, I wouldn’t pass on no hand like you’ve got. If I wanted a girl right bad, Rowdy, I’d wait till I got refused before I’d quit.”
“Seems to me you’ve changed your politics lately,” Rowdy retorted. “A while back you was cussing the whole business; and now you’re worse than an old maid aunt. Pink, you may not be wise to the fact, but you sure are an inconsistent little devil.”
“Are yuh going t’ hunt Harry up and—”
“I thought I told you to drop that.”
“Did yuh? All right, then—only I hope yuh didn’t leave your gun packed away in your bed,” he insinuated.
“You can take a look tonight, if you want to.”
Pink laughed in a particularly infectious way he had, and, before he quite knew it, Rowdy was laughing, also. After that the world did not look quite so forlorn as it had, nor the day’s work so distasteful. So Pink, having accomplished his purpose, was content to turn the subject.
“There’s old Liney”—he pointed her out to Rowdy—“fresh as a meadow-lark. I had a big grouch against her yesterday, just because she batted her eyes and kept putting one foot ahead uh the other. I could ’a’ killed her. But she’s all right, that old girl. The way she led out down that black coulee last night wasn’t slow! Say, she’s an ambitious old party. I wish you was riding point with me, Rowdy. The Silent One talks just about as much as that old cow. He sure loves to live up to his rep.”
“Oh, go on to work,” Rowdy admonished. “You make me think of a magpie.” All the same, he looked after him with smiling lips, and eyes that forgot their gloom. He even whistled while he helped round up the scattered herd, ready for that last day’s drive.
Every man in the outfit comforted himself with the thought that it was the last day’s drive. After long weeks of trailing lean herds over barren, windbrushed hills, the last day meant much to them. Even the Silent One sang something they had never heard before, about “If Only I Knew You Were True.”
They crossed the Rocking R field, took down four panels of fence, passed out, and carefully put them up again behind them. Before them stretched level plain for two miles; beyond that a high, rocky ridge that promised some trouble with the herd, and after that more plain and a couleee or two, and then, on a far slope—the reservation.
The cattle were rested and fed, and walked out briskly; the ridge neared perceptibly. Pink’s shrill whistle carried far back down the line and mingled pleasantly with voices calling to one another across the herd. Not a man was humped listlessly in his saddle; instead, they rode with shoulders back and hats at divers jaunty angles to keep the sun from shining in eyes that faced the future cheerfully.
The herd steadily climbed the ridge, choosing the smoothest path and the easiest slope. Pink assured the line-backed cow that she was a peach, and told her to “go to it, old girl.” The Silent One’s pockets were quite empty of rocks, and the prairiedogs chipped and flirted their funny little tails unassailed. And Rowdy, from wondering what had made Pink change his attitude so abruptly, began to plan industriously the next meeting with Jessie Conroy, and to build a new castle that was higher and airier than any he had ever before attempted—and perhaps had a more flimsy foundation; for it rested precariously on Pink’s idle remarks.
The point gained the top of the ridge, and Pink turned and swung his hat jubilantly at the others. The reservation was in sight, though it lay several miles distant. But in that clear air one could distinguish the line fence—if one had the eye of faith and knew just where to look. Presently he observed a familiar horseman climbing the ridge to meet them.
“Eagle Creek’s coming,” he shouted to the man behind. “Come alive, there, and don’t let ’em roam all over the map. Git some style on yuh!”
Those who heard laughed; no one ever dreamed of being offended at what Pink said. Those who had not heard had the news passed on to them, in various forms. Wooden Shoes, who had been loitering in the rear gossiping with the men, rode on to meet Smith.
Eagle Creek urged his horse up the last steep place, right in the face of the leaders, which halted and tried to turn back. Pink, swearing in a whisper, began to force them forward.
“Let ’em alone,” Eagle Creek bellowed harshly. “They ain’t goin’ no farther.”
“W-what?” Pink stopped short and eyed him critically. Eagle Creek could not justly be called a teetotaler; but Pink had never known him to get worse than a bit wobbly in his legs; his mind had never fogged perceptibly. Still, something was wrong with him, that was certain. Pink glanced dubiously across at the Silent One and saw him shrug his shoulders expressively.
Eagle Creek rode up and stopped within ten feet of the line-backed cow; she seemed hurt at being held up in this manner, Pink thought.
“Yuh’ll have t’ turn this herd back,” Eagle Creek announced bluntly.
“Where to?” Pink asked, too stunned to take in the meaning of it.
“T’ hell, I guess. It’s the only place I know of where everybody’s welcome.” Eagle Creek’s tone was not pleasant.
“We just came from there,” Pink said simply, thinking of the horrors of that drive.
“Where’s Wooden Shoes?” snapped the old man; and the foreman’s hat-crown appeared at that instant over the ridge.
“Well, we’re up against it,” Eagle Creek greeted. “That damn’ agent—or the fellow he had workin’ for him—reported his renting us pasture. Made the report read about twice as many as we’re puttin’ on. He’s got orders now t’ turn out every hoof but what b’longs there.”
“My Lord!” Wooden Shoes gasped at the catastrophe which faced the Cross L.
“That’s Harry Conroy’s work,” Pink cut in sharply’ “He’d hurt the Cross L if he could, t’ spite me and Rowdy. He—”
“Don’t matter—seein’ it’s done. Yuh might as well turn the herd loos
e right here, an’ let ’em go t’ the devil. I don’t know what else t’ do with ’em.”
“Anything gone wrong?” It was Rowdy, who had left his place and ridden forward to see what was holding the herd back.
“Naw. We’re fired off the reservation, is all. We got orders to take the herd to hell. Eagle Creek’s leased it. Mr. Satan is going to keep house here in Montana; he says it’s better for his trade,” Pink informed him, in his girlish treble.
Eagle Creek turned on him fiercely, then thought better of it and grinned. “Them arrangements wouldn’t make us any worse off’n what we are,” he commented. “Turn ’em loose, boys.”
“Man, if yuh turn ’em loose here, the first storm that hits ’em, they all die,” Wooden Shoes interposed excitedly. “They ain’t nothings for ’em. We had t’ turn ’em into the Rockin’ R field last night, t’ git water an’ feed. Red Willow’s gone dry outside dat field. They ain’t—nothings. They’ll die!”
Eagle Creek looked at him dully. For the first time in his life he faced utter ruin. “Damn ’em, let ’em die, then!” he said.
“That’s what they’ll sure do,” Wooden Shoes reiterated stubbornly. “If they don’t git feed and water now, yuh needn’t start no round-up next spring.”
Pink’s eyes went down over the close-huddled backs and the thicket of polished horns, and his eyelids stung. Would all of them die, he wondered! Four thousand! He hoped not. There must be some way out. Down the hill, he knew the cowboys were making cigarettes while they waited and wondered mightily what it was all about If they only knew, he thought, there would be more than one rope ready for Harry Conroy.
“How about the Peck reservation? Couldn’t you get them on there?” Rowdy ventured.
“Not a hoof!” growled Eagle Creek, with his chin sunk against his chest. “There’s thirty thousand Valley County cattle on there now.” He looked down at the cattle, as Pink had done. “God! It’s bad enough t’ go broke,” he groaned; “but t’ think uh them poor brutes dyin’ off in bunches, for want uh grass an’ water! I’ve run that brand fer over thirty year.”