CHAPTER XIV
ON ANTELOPE BUTTE
After the departure of Bat it was a very silent little cavalcade thatmade its way down the valley. Tex, with the lead-horse in tow, rodeahead, his attention fixed on the trail, and the others followed,single file.
Alice's eyes strayed from the backs of her two companions to themountains that rolled upward from the little valley, their massivepeaks and buttresses converted by the wizardry of moonlight into afairyland of wondrous grandeur. The cool night air was fragrant withthe breath of growing things, and the feel of her horse beneath hercaused the red blood to surge through her veins.
"Oh, it's grand!" she whispered, "the mountains, and the moonlight, andthe spring. I love it all--and yet--" She frowned at the jarring notethat crept in, to mar the fulness of her joy. "It's the most wonderfuladventure I ever had--and romantic. And it's _real_, and I ought to beenjoying it more than I ever enjoyed anything in all my life. But, I'mnot, and it's all because--I don't see why he had to go and drink!"The soft sound of the horses' feet in the mud changed to a series ofsharp clicks as their iron shoes encountered the bare rocks of thefloor of the canyon whose precipitous rock walls towered far above,shutting off the flood of moonlight and plunging the trail intodarkness. The figures of the two men were hardly discernible, and thegirl started nervously as her horse splashed into the water of thecreek that foamed noisily over the canyon floor. She shivered slightlyin the wind that sucked chill through the winding passage, althoughback there in the moonlight the night had been still. Gradually thecanyon widened. Its walls grew lower and slanted from theperpendicular. Moonlight illumined the wider bends and flashed insilver scintillations from the broken waters of the creek. The clickof the horses' feet again gave place to the softer trampling of mud,and the valley once more spread before them, broader now, and flankedby an endless succession of foothills.
Bat appeared mysteriously from nowhere, and after a whispered colloquywith Tex, led off toward the west, leaving the valley behind andwinding into the maze of foothills. A few miles farther on they cameagain into the valley and Alice saw that the creek had dwindled into asuccession of shallow pools between which flowed a tiny trickle of thewater. On and on they rode, following the shallow valley. Lush grassoverran the pools and clogged the feeble trickle of the creek. Fartheron, even the green patches disappeared and white alkali soil showedbetween the gnarled sage bushes. Gradually the aspect of the countrychanged. High, grass-covered foothills gave place to sharp pinnaclesof black lava rock, the sides of the valley once more drew together,low, and broken into ugly cutbanks of dirty grey. Sagebrush andprickly pears furnished the only vegetation, and the rough, brokensurface of the country took on a starved, gaunt appearance.
Alice knew instinctively that they were at the gateway of the badlands, and the forbidding aspect that greeted her on every side as hereyes swept the restricted horizon caused a feeling of depression. Eventhe name "bad lands" seemed to hold a foreboding of evil. She had notnoticed this when the Texan had spoken it. If she had thought of it atall, it was impersonally--an undesirable strip of country, as onementions the Sahara Desert. But, now, when she herself was enteringit--was seeing with her own eyes the grey mud walls, the bare blackrocks, and the stunted sage and cactus--the name held much of sinisterportent.
From a nearby hillock came a thin weird scream--long-drawn and brokeninto a series of horrible cackles. Instantly, as though it were thesignal that loosed the discordant chorus of hell, the sound was caughtup, intensified and prolonged until the demonical screams seemed tobelch from every hill and from the depths of the coulees between.
Unconsciously, the girl spurred her horse which leaped past Endicottand Bat and drew up beside the Texan, who was riding alone in theforefront.
The man glanced into the white frightened face: "Coyotes," he said,gravely. "They won't bother any one."
The girl shuddered. "There must be a million of them. What makes themhowl that way?"
"Most any other way would be better, wouldn't it. But I reckon that'sthe way they've learnt to, so they just keep on that way."
Alice glanced at him sharply, but in the moonlight his clean-cutprofile gave no hint of levity.
"You are making fun of me!"
He turned his head and regarded her thoughtfully. "No. I wouldn't dothat, really. I was thinkin' of somethin' else."
"You are a very disconcerting young man. You are unspeakably rude, andI ought to be furiously angry."
The Texan appeared to consider. "No. You oughtn't to do that becausewhen something important comes up you ain't got anything back, an'folks won't regard you serious. But you wouldn't have been even peevedif you knew what I was thinkin' about."
"What was it?" The instant the question left her lips the girl wishedshe could have recalled it.
There was a long pause and Alice began to hope that the man had notheard her question. Then he turned a very grave face toward her andhis eyes met hers squarely. "I was thinkin' that maybe, sometime,you'd get to care enough about me to marry me. Sounds kind of abruptan' off-hand, don't it? But it ain't. I've been thinkin' about it alot. You're the first woman I've seen since--well, since way backyonder, that I'd ever marry. The only one that stacks up to the kindof people mine are, an' that I was back there. Of course, there'd be alot of readjustin' but that would work out--it always does when theright kind of folks takes holt to put anything through. I've got somerecreations an' pastimes that ain't condoned by the pious. I gamble,an' swear, an' smoke, an' lie, an' drink. But I gamble square, sweardecent an' hearty, lie for fun, but never in earnest, an' drink to areasonable degree of hilarity. My word is good with every man, woman,an' child in the cow country. I never yet went back on a friend, norlet up on an enemy. I never took underhand advantage of man or woman,an' I know the cow business. For the rest of it, I'll go to the oldman an' offer to take the Eagle Creek ranch off his hands an' turnnester. It's a good ranch, an' one that rightly handled would make aman rich--provided he was a married man an' had somethin' to get richfor. I don't want you to tell me now, you won't, or you will. We'vegot a week or so yet to get acquainted in. An', here's another thing.I know, an' you know, down deep in your heart, that you're goin' tomarry either Win, or me. Maybe you know which. I don't. But if it ishim, you'll get a damned good man. He's square an' clean. He's gotnerve--an' there ain't no bluff about it, neither. Wise men don't foolwith a man with an eye like his. An' he wants you as bad as I do. AsI said, we've got a week or more to get acquainted. It will be a weekthat may take us through some mighty tough sleddin', but that ain'tgoin' to help you none in choosin', because neither one of us willbreak--an' you can bet your last stack of blue ones on that."
The girl's lips were pressed very tight, and for some moments she rodein silence.
"Do you suppose I would ever marry a man who deliberately gets so drunkhe sings and talks incessantly----"
"You'd be safer marryin' one that got drunk deliberately, than one whodone it inadvertent when he aimed to stay sober. Besides, there'svarious degrees of drunkenness, the term bein' relative. But for thesake of argument admittin' I was drunk, if you object to the singin'and talkin', what do you recommend a man to do when he's drunk?"
"I utterly despise a man that gets drunk!" The words came with anangry vehemence, and for many minutes the Texan rode in silence whilethe bit chains clinked and the horses' hoofs thudded the ground dully.He leaned forward and his gloved hand gently smoothed his horse's mane."You don't mean just exactly that," he said, with his eyes on the dimoutline of a butte that rose high in the distance. Alice noticed thatthe bantering tone was gone from his voice, and that his words fellwith a peculiar softness. "I reckon, though, I know what you do mean.An' I reckon that barrin' some little difference in viewpoint, we thinkabout alike. . . . Yonder's Antelope Butte. We'll be safe to campthere till we find out which way the wind blows before we strikeacross."
Deeper and deeper they pushed into the
bad lands, the huge bulk ofAntelope Butte looming always before them, its outline showingdistinctly in the light of the sinking moon. As far as the eye couldsee on every side the moonlight revealed only black lava-rock, deepblack shadows that marked the courses of dry coulees, and enormousmud-cracks--and Antelope Butte.
As the girl rode beside the cowboy she noticed that the cynical smilewas gone from the clean-cut profile. For miles he did not speak.Antelope Butte was near, now.
"I am thirsty," she said. A gauntleted hand fumbled for a moment withthe slicker behind the cantle, and extended a flask.
"It's water. I figured someone would get thirsty."
The girl drank from the flask and returned it: "If there are posses outwon't they watch the water-holes? You said there are only a few in thebad lands."
"Yes, they'll watch the water-holes. That's why we're goin' to camp onAntelope Butte--right up on top of it."
"But, how will we get water?"
"It's there."
"Have you been up there?" The girl glanced upward. They were alreadyascending the first slope, and the huge mass of the detached mountaintowered above them in a series of unscaleable precipices.
"No. But the water's there. The top of the Butte hollows out like asaucer, an' in the bowl there's a little sunk spring. No one much evergoes up there. There's a little scragglin' timber, an' the trail--it'san old game trail--is hard to find if you don't know where to look forit. A horse-thief told me about it."
"A horse-thief! Surely, you are not risking all our lives on the wordof a horse-thief!"
"Yes. He was a pretty good fellow. They killed him, afterwards, overnear the Mission. He was runnin' off a bunch of Flourey horses."
"But a man who would steal would lie!"
"He didn't lie to me. He judged I done him a good turn once. Over onthe Marias, it was--an' he said: 'If you're ever on the run, hit forAntelope Butte.' Then he told me about the trail, an' the spring thatyou've got to dig for among the rocks. He's got a grub _cache_ there,too. He won't be needin' it, now." The cowboy glanced toward thewest. "The moon ought to just about hold 'til we get to the top. Hesaid you could ride all the way up." Without an instant's hesitationhe headed his horse for a huge mass of rock fragments that lay at thebase of an almost perpendicular wall. The others followed in singlefile. Bat bringing up the rear driving the pack-horse before him.Alice kept her horse close behind the Texan's which wormed and twistedin and out among the rock fragments that skirted the wall. For aquarter of a mile they proceeded with scarcely a perceptible rise andthen the cowboy turned his horse into a deep fissure that slantedupward at a most precarious angle seemingly straight into the heart ofthe mountain. Just when it seemed that the trail must end in a blindpocket, the Texan swung into a cross fissure so narrow that thestirrups brushed either side. So dark was it between the towering rockwalls that Alice could scarcely make out the cowboy's horse, althoughat no time was he more than ten or fifteen feet in advance. Afterinnumerable windings the fissure led once more to the face of themountain and Tex headed his horse out upon a ledge that had not beendiscernible from below. Alice gasped, and for a moment it seemed asthough she could not go on. Spread out before her like a huge reliefmap were the ridges and black coulees of the bad lands, and directlybelow--hundreds of feet below--the gigantic rock fragments lay strewnalong the base of the cliff like the abandoned blocks of a child. Sheclosed her eyes and shuddered. A loose piece of rock on the narrowtrail, a stumble, and--she could feel herself whirling down, down,down. It was the voice of the Texan--confident, firm, reassuring--thatbrought her once more to her senses.
"It's all right. Just follow right along. Shut your eyes, or keep 'emto the wall. We're half-way up. It ain't so steep from here on, an'she widens toward the top. I'm dizzy-headed, too, in high places an' Ishut mine. Just give the horse a loose rein an' he'll keep the trail.There ain't nowhere else for him to go."
With a deadly fear in her heart, the girl fastened her eyes upon thecowboy's back and gave her horse his head. And as she rode shewondered at this man who unhesitatingly risked his life upon the wordof a horse-thief.
Almost before she realized it the ordeal was over and her horse wasfollowing its leader through a sparse grove of bull pine. The ascentwas still rather sharp, and the way strewn with boulders, and fallentrees, but the awful precipice, with its sheer drop of many hundreds offeet to the black rocks below, no longer yawned at her stirrup's edge,and it was with a deep-drawn breath of relief that she allowed her eyesonce again to travel out over the vast sweep of waste toward the westwhere the moon hung low and red above the distant rim of the bad lands.
The summit of Antelope Butte was, as the horse-thief had said, an idealcamping place for any one who was "on the run." The edges of thelittle plateau, which was roughly circular in form, rose on every sideto a height of thirty or forty feet, at some points in an easy slope,and at others in a sheer rise of rock wall. The surface of the littleplane showed no trace of the black of the lava rock of the lower levelsbut was of the character of the open bench and covered with buffalograss and bunch grass with here and there a sprinkling of pricklypears. The four dismounted and, in the last light of the moon,surveyed their surroundings.
"You make camp, Bat," ordered the Texan, "while me an' Win hunt up thespring. He said it was on the east side where there was a lot of looserock along the edge of the bull pine. We'll make the camp there, too,where the wood an' water will be handy."
Skirting the plateau, Tex led the way toward a point where a fewstraggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight.
"It ought to be somewheres around here," he said, as he stopped toexamine the ground more closely. "He said you had to pile off therocks 'til you come to the water an' then mud up a catch-basin." As hetalked, the cowboy groped among the loose rocks on his hands and knees,pausing frequently to lay his ear to the ground. "Here she is!" heexclaimed at length. "I can hear her drip! Come on, Win, we'll buildour well."
Alice stood close beside her horse watching every move with intenseinterest.
"Who would have thought to look for water there?" she exclaimed.
"I knew we'd find it just as he said," answered the Texan gravely. "Hewas a good man, in his way--never run off no horses except from outfitsthat could afford to lose 'em. Why, they say, he could have got plumbaway if he'd shot the posse man that run onto him over by the Mission.But he knew the man was a nester with a wife an' two kids, so he took achance--an' the nester got him."
"How could he?" cried the girl, "after----"
The Texan regarded her gravely. "It was tough. An' he probably hatedto do it. But he was a sworn-in posse man, an' the other was ahorse-thief. It was just one of those things a man's got to do. LikeJim Larkin, when he was sheriff, havin' to shoot his own brother, an'him hardly more'n a kid that Jim had raised. But he'd gone plumb badan' swore never to be taken alive, so Jim killed him--an' then heresigned. There ain't a man that knows Jim, that don't know he'drather a thousan' times over had the killin' happen the other way'round. But he was a man. He had it to do--an' he done it."
Alice shuddered: "And then--what became of him, then?"
"Why, then, he went back to ranchin'. He owns the Bar X horse outfitover on the White Mud. This here, Owen--that was his brother'sname--was just like a son to him. Jim tried to steer him straight, butthe kid was just naturally a bad egg. Feelin' it the way he does, alesser man might of squinted down the muzzle of his own gun, or gonethe whiskey route. But not him. To all appearances he's the same ashe always was. But some of us that know him best--we can see that heain't _quite_ the same as before--an' he never will be."
There were tears in the girl's eyes as the man finished.
"Oh, it's all wrong! It's cruel, and hard, and brutal, and wrong!"
"No. It ain't wrong. It's hard, an' it's cruel, maybe, an' brutal.But it's right. It ain't a country for weaklings--the cow countryain't. It's a country where, eve
ry now an' then, a man comes square upagainst something that he's got to do. An' that something is apt asnot to be just what he don't want to do. If he does it, he's a man,an' the cow country needs him. If he don't do it, he passes on towhere there's room for his kind--an' the cow country don't miss him. Aman earns his place here, it ain't made for him--often he earns thename by which he's called. I reckon it's the same all over--only thisis rawer."
"Here's the water! And it is cold and sweet," called Endicott who hadbeen busily removing the loose rock fragments beneath which the springlay concealed.
The Texan's interest centred on matters at hand: "You Bat, you make afire when you've finished with the horses." He turned again to thegirl: "If you'll be the cook, Win an' I'll mud up a catch-basin an'rustle some firewood while Bat makes camp. We got to do all ourcookin' at night up here. A fire won't show above the rim yonder, butin the daytime someone might see the smoke from ten mile off."
"Of course, I'll do the cooking!" assented the girl, and began to carrythe camp utensils from the pack that the half-breed had thrown upon theground. "The dough-gods are all gone!" she exclaimed in dismay,peering into a canvas bag.
"Mix up some bakin'-powder ones. There's flour an' stuff in that brownsack."
"But--I don't know how!"
"All right. Wait 'til I get Win strung out on this job, an' I'll makeup a batch."
He watched Endicott arrange some stones: "Hey, you got to fit thoserocks in better'n that. Mud ain't goin' to hold without a goodbackin'."
The cowboy washed his hands in the overflow trickle and wiped them uponhis handkerchief. "I don't know what folks does all their lives backEast," he grinned; "Win, there, ain't barbered none to speak of, an'the Lord knows he ain't no stone-mason."
Alice did not return the smile, and the Texan noticed that her face wasgrave in the pale starlight. For the first time in her life the girlfelt ashamed of her own incompetence.
"And I can't cook, and----"
"Well, that's so," drawled Tex, "but it won't be so tomorrow. No onebut a fool would blame any one for not doin' a thing they've neverlearnt to do. They might wonder a little how-come they never learnt,but they wouldn't hold it against 'em--not 'til they've had thechance." Bat was still busy with the horses and the cowboy collectedsticks and lighted a small fire, talking, as he worked with swiftmovements that accomplished much without the least show of haste. "Itgenerally don't take long in the cow country for folks to get theirchance. Take Win, there. Day before yesterday he was about thegreenest pilgrim that ever straddled a horse. Not only he didn't knowanything worth while knowin', but he was prejudiced. The first time Ilooked at him I sized him up--almost. 'There's a specimen,' I says tomyself--while you an' Purdy was gossipin' about the handkerchief, an'the dance, an' what a beautiful rider he was--'that's gone on gatherin'refinement 'til it's crusted onto him so thick it's probably struckthrough.' But just as I was losin' interest in him, he slanted aglance at Purdy that made me look him over again. There he stood, justthe same as before--only different." The Texan poured some flour intoa pan and threw in a couple of liberal pinches of baking-powder.
Alice's eyes followed his every movement, and she glanced toward thespring that Endicott had churned into a mud hole. The cowboy noted herglance. "It would be riled too much even if we strained it," hesmiled, "so we'll just use what's left in that flask. It don't takemuch water an' the spring will clear in time for the coffee."
"And some people never do learn?" Alice wanted to hear more from thisman's lips concerning the pilgrim. But the Texan mustn't know that shewanted to hear.
"Yes, some don't learn, some only half learn, an' some learn in a waythat carries 'em along 'til it comes to a pinch--they're the worst.But, speakin' of Win, after I caught that look, the only surprise I gotwhen I heard he'd killed Purdy was that he _could_ do it--not that he_would_. Then later, under certain circumstances that come to pass ina coulee where there was cottonwoods, him an' I got better acquaintedyet. An' then in the matter of the reservoir--but you know more aboutthat than I do. You see what I'm gettin' at is this: Win can saddlehis own horse, now, an' he climbs onto him from the left side. Thenext time he tackles it he'll shave, an' the next time he muds up acatch-basin he'll mud it right. Day before yesterday he was about asuseless a lookin' piece of bric-a-brac as ever draw'd breath--an' lookat him now! There ain't been any real change. The man was there allthe time, only he was so well disguised that no one ever know'dit--himself least of all. Yesterday I saw him take a chew off Bat'splug--an' Bat don't offer his plug promiscuous. He'll go back East,an' the refinement will cover him up again--an' that's a damned shame.But he won't be just the same. It won't crust over no more, becausethe prejudice is gone. He's chewed the meat of the cow country--an'he's found it good."
Later, long after the others had gone to sleep, Alice lay between herblankets in the little shelter tent, thinking.
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