The Lure of the Dim Trails

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER V. THE STORM

  The third night he was detailed to stand with Bob MacGregor on themiddle guard, which lasts from eleven o'clock until two. The outfit hadcamped near the head of a long, shallow basin that had a creek runningthrough; down the winding banks of it lay the white-tented camps ofseven other trail-herds, the cattle making great brown blotches againstthe green at sundown. Thurston hoped they would all be there in themorning when the sun came up, so that he could get a picture.

  "Aw, they'll be miles away by then," Bob assured him unfeelingly. "Bythe signs, you can take snap-shots by lightning in another hour. Gotyour slicker, Bud?"

  Thurston said he hadn't, and Bob shook his head prophetically. "You'llsure wish yuh had it before yuh hit camp again; when yuh get wise,you'll ride with your slicker behind the cantle, rain or shine. They'llneed singing to, to-night."

  Thurston prudently kept silent, since he knew nothing whatever about it,and Bob gave him minute directions about riding his rounds, and how toturn a stray animal back into the herd without disturbing the others.

  The man they relieved met them silently and rode away to camp. Offto the right an animal coughed, and a black shape moved out from theshadows.

  Bob swung towards it, and the shape melted again into the splotch ofshade which was the sleeping herd. He motioned to the left. "Yuh can gothat way; and yuh want to sing something, or whistle, so they'll knowwhat yuh are." His tone was subdued, as it had not been before. Heseemed to drift away into the darkness, and soon his voice rose, awayacross the herd, singing. As he drew nearer Thurston caught the words,at first disjointed and indistinct, then plainer as they met. It was asong he had never heard before, because its first popularity had sweptfar below his social plane.

  "She's o-only a bird in a gil-ded cage, A beautiful sight to see-e-e; You may think she seems ha-a-aappy and free from ca-a-re.."

  The singer passed on and away, and only the high notes floated across toThurston, who whistled softly under his breath while he listened. Then,as they neared again on the second round, the words came pensively:

  "Her beauty was so-o-old For an old man's go-o-old, She's a bird in a gilded ca-a-age."

  Thurston rode slowly like one in a dream, and the lure of the range-landwas strong upon him. The deep breathing of three thousand sleepingcattle; the strong, animal odor; the black night which grew each momentblacker, and the rhythmic ebb and flow of the clear, untrained voiceof a cowboy singing to his charge. If he could put it into words; ifhe could but picture the broody stillness, with frogs cr-ekk, er-ekkingalong the reedy creek-bank and a coyote yapping weirdly upon a distanthilltop! From the southwest came mutterings half-defiant and ominous.A breeze whispered something to the grasses as it crept away down thevalley.

  "I stood in a church-yard just at ee-eve, While the sunset adorned the west."

  It was Bob, drawing close out of the night. "You're doing fine, Kid;keep her a-going," he commended, in an undertone as he passed, andThurston moistened his unaccustomed lips and began industriouslywhistling "The Heart Bowed Down," and from that jumped to Faust. Fifteenminutes exhausted his memory of the whistleable parts, and he was notgiven to tiresome repetitions. He stopped for a moment, and Bob's voicechanted admonishingly from somewhere, "Keep her a-go-o-ing, Bud, oldboy!" So Thurston took breath and began on "The Holy City," and camenear laughing at the incongruity of the song; only he remembered that hemust not frighten the cattle, and checked the impulse.

  "Say," Bob began when he came near enough, "do yuh know the words uhthat piece? It's a peach; I wisht you'd sing it." He rode on, stillhumming the woes of the lady who married for gold.

  Thurston obeyed while the high-piled thunder-heads rumbled deepaccompaniment, like the resonant lower tones of a bass viol.

  "Last night I lay a-sleeping, there came a dream so fair; I stood in old Jerusalem, beside the temple there."

  A steer stepped restlessly out of the herd, and Thurston's horse,trained to the work, of his own accord turned him gently back.

  "I heard the children singing; and ever as they sang, Me thought the voice of angels from heaven in answer rang."

  From the west the thunder boomed, drowning the words in itsdeep-throated growl.

  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, lift up your gates and sing."

  "Hit her up a little faster, Bud, or we'll lose some. They're getting ontheir feet with that thunder."

  Sunfish, in answer to Thurston's touch on the reins, quickened to atrot. The joggling was not conducive to the best vocal expression, butthe singer persevered:

  "Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna to your King!"

  Flash! the lightning cut through the storm-clouds, and Bob, who hadcontented himself with a subdued whistling while he listened, took upthe refrain:

  "Jerusalem, Jerusalem."

  It was as if a battery of heavy field pieces boomed overhead. The entireherd was on its feet and stood close-huddled, their tails to the comingstorm. Now the horses were loping steadily in their endless circling--apace they could hold for hours if need be. For one blinding instantThurston saw far down the valley; then the black curtain dropped assuddenly as it had lifted.

  "Keep a-hollering, Bud!" came the command, and after it Bob's voicetrilled high above the thunder-growl:

  "Hosanna in the high-est. Hosanna to your King!"

  A strange thrill of excitement came to Thurston. It was all new to him;for his life had been sheltered from the rages of nature. He had neverbefore been out under the night sky when it was threatening as now. Heflinched when came an ear-splitting crash that once again lifted theblack curtain and showed him, white-lighted, the plain. In the dark thatfollowed came a rhythmic thud of hoofs far up the creek, and the rattleof living castanets. Sunfish threw up his head and listened, musclesa-quiver.

  "There's a bunch a-running," called Bob from across the frightened herd."If they hit us, give Sunfish his head, he's been there before--and keepon the outside!"

  Thurston yelled "All right!" but the pounding roar of the stampededrowned his voice. A whirlwind of frenzied steers bore down uponhim--twenty-five hundred Panhandle two-year-olds, though he did not knowit then, his mind was all a daze, with one sentence zigzagging throughit like the lightning over his head, "Give Sunfish his head, and keep onthe outside!"

  That was what saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a fewminutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears andthe crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs closeupon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as itwere, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behindand wondering dully how he got there, though perhaps Sunfish knew wellenough.

  In his story of the West--the one that had failed to be convincing--hehad in his ignorance described a stampede, and it had not been in theleast like this one. He blushed at the memory, and wondered if he shouldever again feel qualified to write of these things.

  Great drops of rain pounded him on the back as he rode--chill drops,that went to the skin. He thought of his new canary-colored slicker inthe bed-tent, and before he knew it swore just as any of the othermen would have done under similar provocation; it was the first real,able-bodied oath he had ever uttered. He was becoming assimilated withthe raw conditions of life.

  He heard a man's voice calling to him, and distinguished the dim shapeof a rider close by. He shouted that password of the range, "Hello!"

  "What outfit is this?" the man cried again.

  "The Lazy Eight!" snapped Thurston, sure that the other had come withthe stampede. Then, feeling the anger of temporary authority, "What inhell are you up to, letting your cattle run?" If Park could have heardhim say that for Reeve-Howard!

  Down the long length of the valley they swept, gathering to themselvesother herds and other riders as incensed as were themselves. It is notpretty work, nor amusing, to gallop madly in the wake of a stampede atnight, keeping up the stragglers and taking
the chance of a broken neckwith the rain to make matters worse.

  Bob MacGregor sought Thurston with much shouting, and having found himthey rode side by side. And always the thunder boomed overhead, and bythe lightning flashes they glimpsed the turbulent sea of cattle fleeing,they knew not where or why, with blind fear crowding their heels.

  The noise of it roused the camps as they thundered by; men rose up,peered out from bed-tents as the stampede swept past, cursed the delayit would probably make, hoped none of the boys got hurt, and thanked theLord the tents were pitched close to the creek and out of the track ofthe maddened herds.

  Then they went back to bed to wait philosophically for daylight.

  When Sunfish, between flashes, stumbled into a shallow washout, and sentThurston sailing unbeautifully over his head, Bob pulled up and slid offhis horse in a hurry.

  "Yuh hurt, Bud?" he cried anxiously, bending over him. For Thurston,from the very frankness of his verdant ignorance, had won for himselfthe indulgent protectiveness of the whole outfit; not a man but watchedunobtrusively over his welfare--and Bob MacGregor went farther andloved him whole-heartedly. His voice, when he spoke, was unequivocallyfrightened.

  Thurston sat up and wiped a handful of mud off his face; if it had notbeen so dark Bob would have shouted at the spectacle. "I'm 'kinda sortershuck up like,"' he quoted ruefully. "And my nose is skinned, thank you.Where's that devil of a horse?"

  Bob stood over him and grinned. "My, I'm surprised at yuh, Bud! Whatwould your Sunday-school teacher say if she heard yuh? Anyway, yuh ain'tgot any call to cuss Sunfish; he ain't to blame. He's used to fellowsthat can ride."

  "Shut up!" Thurston commanded inelegantly. "I'd like to see you ride ahorse when he's upside down!"

  "Aw, come on," urged Bob, giving up the argument. "We'll be plumb lostfrom the herd if we don't hustle."

  They got into their saddles again and went on, riding by sound and therare glimpses the lightning gave them as it flared through the stormaway to the east.

  "Wet?" Bob sung out sympathetically from the streaming shelter of hisslicker. Thurston, wriggling away from his soaked clothing, grunted asarcastic negative.

  The cattle were drifting now before the storm which had settled to amonotonous downpour. The riders--two or three men for every herd thathad joined in the panic--circled, a veritable picket line without thepassword. There would be no relief ride out to them that night, and theyknew it and settled to the long wait for morning.

  Thurston took up his station next to Bob; rode until he met the nextman, and then retraced his steps till he faced Bob again; rode until theworld seemed unreal and far away, with nothing left but the night andthe riding back and forth on his beat, and the rain that oozed throughhis clothes and trickled uncomfortably down inside his collar. He lostall count of time, and was startled when at last came gray dawn.

  As the light grew brighter his eyes widened and forgot theirsleep-hunger; he had not thought it would be like this. He was ridingpart way across one end of a herd larger than his imagination had everpictured; three thousand cattle had seemed to him a multitude--yethere were more than twenty thousand, wet, draggled, their backs humpedmiserably from the rain which but a half hour since had ceased. He wasstill gazing and wondering when Park rode up to him.

  "Lord! Bud, you're a sight! Did the bunch walk over yuh?" he greeted.

  "No, only Sunfish," snapped Thurston crossly. Time was when PhilipThurston would not have answered any man abruptly, however great theprovocation. He was only lately getting down to the real, elemental manof him; to the son of Bill Thurston, bull-whacker, prospector,follower of dim trails. He rode silently back to camp with Bob, atehis breakfast, got into dry clothes and went out and tied his slickerdeliberately and securely behind the cantle of his saddle, though thesun was shining straight into his eyes and the sky fairly twinkled, itwas so clean of clouds.

  Bob watched him with eyes that laughed. "My, you're an ambitiousson-of-a-gun," he chuckled. "And you've got the slicker question settledin your mind, I see; yuh learn easy; it takes two or three soakings tolearn some folks."

  "We've got to go back and help with the herd, haven't we?" Thurstonasked. "The horses are all out."

  "Yep. They'll stay out, too, till noon, m'son. We hike to bed, ifanybody should ask yuh."

  So it was not till after dinner that he rode back to the greatherd--with his Kodak in his pocket--to find the cattle split upinto several bunches. The riders at once went to work separating thedifferent brands. He was too green a hand to do anything but help holdthe "cut," and that was so much like ordinary herd-ing that his interestflagged. He wanted, more than anything, to ride into the bunch andsingle out a Lazy Eight steer, skillfully hazing him down the slope tothe cut, as he saw the others do.

  Bob told him it was the biggest mix-up he had ever seen, and Bob hadridden the range in every State where beef grows wild. He was in thethickest of the huddle, was Bob, working as if he did not know themeaning of fatigue. Thurston, watching him thread his way in and out ofthe restless, milling herd, only to reappear unexpectedly at the edgewith a steer just before the nose of his horse, rush it out from amongthe others--wheeling, darting this way and that, as it tried to dodgeback, and always coming off victor, wondered if he could ever learn todo it.

  Being in pessimistic mood, he told himself that he would probably alwaysremain a greenhorn, to be borne with and coached and given boy's work todo; all because he had been cheated of his legacy of the dim trails andforced to grow up in a city, hedged about all his life by artificialconditions, his conscience wedded to convention.