Hidden Water

“Whose sheep are those?” continued Hardy, coming to the point with masterful directness, and once more the boss sheepman surveyed him with suspicion.

“Mine,” he said, and Hardy returned his stare with a glance which, while decorously veiled, indicated that he knew he lied. The man was a stranger to him, rather tall and slender, with drawn lips and an eye that never wavered. His voice was tense with excitement and he kept his right thumb hooked carelessly into the corner of his pocket, not far from the grip of a revolver. As soon as he spoke Hardy knew him.

“You are Mr. Thomas, aren’t you?” he inquired, as if he had no thought of trouble. “I believe I met you once, down in Moroni.”

“Ump!” grunted Mr. Thomas unsociably, and at that moment one of the Mexicans, out of awkwardness, dropped his gun. As he stooped to pick it up a slow smile crept over the cowman’s lips, a smile which expressed polite amusement along with a measured contempt–and the boss herder was stung with a nameless shame at the false play.

“Put up them guns, you dam’ gawky fools!” he yelled in a frenzy of rage. “Put ’em up, I say. This man ain’t goin’ to eat ye!” And though the poor browbeaten Chihuahuanos understood not a word of English they felt somehow that they had been overzealous and shuffled back to their blankets, like watchdogs that had been rebuked.

“Now,” said the sheepman, taking his hand from his gun, “what can I do for you, Mr. Hardy?”

“Well,” responded Hardy, “of course there are several things you might do to accommodate me, but maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me how you got in here, just for instance?”

“Always glad to ’commodate–where I can, of course,” returned the sheepman grimly. “I came in over the top of them Four Peaks yonder.”

“Um,” said Hardy, glancing up at the rocky walls. “Then you must’ve had hooks on your eyebrows, for sure. I suppose the rest of the family is coming, too! And, by the way, how is my friend, Mr. Swope?”

He appended this last with an artless smile, quite lacking in bitterness, but somehow the boss herder felt himself discredited by the inquiry, as if he were consorting with thieves. It was the old shame of the sheepman, the shame which comes to the social outcast, and burns upon the cheek of the dishonored bastard, but which is seared deepest into the heart of the friendless herder, the Ishmaelite of the cow-country, whose hand is against every man and every man’s against him. Hunger and thirst he can endure, and the weariness of life, but to have all men turn away from him, to answer him grudgingly, to feed him at their table, but refuse themselves to eat, this it is which turns his heart to bitterness and makes him a man to be feared. As Thomas had looked at this trim young cowboy, smooth-shaven and erect, sitting astride a blooded horse which snorted and pawed the ground delicately, and then had glanced at the low and brutal Mexicans with whom his lot was cast, a blind fury had swept over him, wreaking its force upon his own retainers; and now, when by implication he was classed with Jim Swope, he resented it still more bitterly.

“Dam’fino,” he answered sullenly. “Haven’t seen ’im for a month.”

“Oh, isn’t he with you this trip?” asked Hardy, in surprise. “I had hoped that I might find him up here.” There was a suggestion of irony in his words which was not lost upon the mayordomo, but Thomas let the remark pass in silence.

“Perhaps his brother Jasper is along,” ventured Hardy. “No? Well, that’s Jim’s earmark on those sheep, and I know it. What’s the matter?”

“Matter with what?” growled Thomas morosely.

“Why, with Jim, of course. I thought after the pleasant times we had together last Spring he’d be sure to come around. In fact,” he added meaningly, “I’ve been looking for him.”

At this naive statement, the sheepman could not restrain a smile.

“You don’t know Jim as well as I do,” he said, and there was a suggestion of bitterness in his voice which Hardy was not slow to note.

“Well, perhaps not,” he allowed; “but you know, and I know, that this is no pleasure trip you’re on–in fact, it’s dangerous, and I never thought that Jim Swope would send a man where he was afraid to go himself. Now I’ve got nothing against you, Mr. Thomas, and of course you’re working for him; but I ask you, as a man, don’t you think, after what I’ve done for him, that Jim Swope ought to come along himself if he wants to sheep me out?

“I’ve fed him, and I’ve fed all his herders and all his friends; I’ve grained his horses when they were ga’nted down to a shadow because his own sheep had cleaned up the feed; I’ve made him welcome to my house and done everything I could for him; and all I asked in return was that he would respect this upper range. He knows very well that if his sheep go through here this Fall our cattle will die in the Winter, and he knows that there is plenty of feed out on The Rolls where our cows can’t go, and yet he sends you in where he’s scared to go himself, just to hog our last piece of good feed and to put us out of business. I asked him down in Moroni if he thought a cowman had a right to live, and he dodged the question as if he was afraid he’d say something.”

He stopped abruptly and looked out over the country toward Hidden Water, while the Mexicans watched him furtively from beneath their slouched hats.

“Expecting some friends?” inquired Thomas, with a saturnine grin.

Hardy shook his head. “No. I came out here alone, and I left my gun in camp. I haven’t got a friend within forty miles, if that’s what you mean. I suppose you’ve got your orders, Mr. Thomas, but I just want to talk this matter over with you.”

“All right,” said the sheepman, suddenly thawing out at the good news. “I don’t have so much company as to make me refuse, even if it is a warm subject. But mebby you’d like a bite to eat before we git down to business?” He waved a deprecating hand at the greasy canvas, and Hardy swung quickly down from his saddle.

“Thanks. But don’t let me keep you from your dinner. Here’s where I break even with Jim Swope for all that grub I cooked last Spring,” he remarked, as he filled his plate. “But if it was him that asked me,” he added, “I’d starve to death before I’d eat it.”

He sat on his heels by the canvas, with the boss sheepman on the other side, and the Mexicans who had been so cocky took their plates and retired like Apaches to the edge of the brush, where they would not obtrude upon their betters.

“They say it’s bad for the digestion,” observed Hardy, after the first silence, “to talk about things that make you mad; so if you don’t mind, Mr. Thomas, we’ll forget about Jim Swope. What kind of a country is it up there in Apache County, where you keep your sheep all Summer?”

“A fine country,” rejoined Thomas, “and I wish to God I was back to it,” he added.

“Why, what’s the matter with this country? It looks pretty good to me.”

“Ye-es,” admitted the sheepman grudgingly, “it looks good enough, but–well, I lived up there a long time and I got to like it. I had one of the nicest little ranches in the White Mountains; there was good huntin’ and fishin’ and–well, I felt like a white man up there–never had no trouble, you understand–and I was makin’ good money, too.”

His voice, which before had been harsh and strident, softened down as he dwelt upon the natural beauty of the mountains which had been his home, but there was a tone of sadness in his talk which told Hardy that ultimately he had suffered some great misfortune there. His occupation alone suggested that–for there are few white men working as sheep-herders who lack a hard luck story, if any one will listen to it. But this Shep Thomas was still young and unbroken, with none of the black marks of dissipation upon his face, and his eyes were as keen and steady as any hunter’s. He was indeed the very type of fighter that Swope had sought, hardy and fearless, and at the same time careful. As they sat together Hardy looked him over and was glad that he had come out unarmed, yet though his host seemed a man of just and reasonable mind there was a set, dogged look in his eyes which warned the cowman not to interfere, but let him talk his fill. And the boss herder, poor lonely man, was carried away in spite of himself by the temptation of a listener; after many days of strife and turmoil, cutting trails, standing off cowmen, cursing Mexicans, at last to meet a white man who would just sit silent and let him talk! His stories were of hunting and fishing, of prospecting, and restless adventures among the Indians, and every time the conversation worked around towards sheep he led it resolutely away. And for his part, never for a moment did Hardy try to crowd him, but let the talk lead where it would, until of his own volition the sheepman told his story.

“I suppose you wonder what I’m doing down here,” he said at last, “if I was so stuck on the Concho country? Well, I bet you wouldn’t guess in a thousand years–and you ought to be a pretty good guesser, too,” he added, with a gruff laugh. “Now, what do you think it was that put me on the bum?”

“Poker game?” queried Hardy politely.

“Nope,” replied the sheepman, showing his teeth, “I’m winners on poker.”

“You don’t look like a drinking man.”

“Naw–nor it wasn’t women, either. It’s something unusual, I tell you. I stood and looked at it for ten years, and never turned a hair. But here, I’ve been holdin’ out on you a little–I never told you what it was I raised on my ranch. Well, it was sheep.”

“Sheep?” echoed Hardy, “did you keep ’em there all Winter?”

“W’y sure, man. There’s lots of sheep in Apache County that was never ten miles from home.”

“Then why does Jim Swope bring his bands south every Fall? I hear he loses five per cent of them, at the least, coming and going.”

“Ah, you don’t understand Jim as well as I do. I was tryin’ to make a livin’; he’s tryin’ to git rich. He’s doin’ it, too.”

Once more the note of bitterness came into his voice, and Hardy saw that the time had come.

“How’s that?” he inquired quietly, and the sheepman plunged into his story.

“Well, it was this way. I kept a few thousand sheep up there in my valley. In the Summer we went up the mountain, followin’ the grass, and in the Winter we fed down below, where the ground was bare. It never got very cold, and my sheep was used to it, anyhow. The Navajos don’t move their sheep south, do they? Well, they’re away north of where I was. We jest give ’em a little shelter, and looked after ’em, and, as I says, I was doin’ fine–up to last year.”

He paused again, with his secret on his lips, and once more Hardy supplied the helping word.

“And what happened then?” he asked.

“What happened then?” cried Thomas, his eyes burning. “Well, you ought to know–I was sheeped out.”

“Sheeped out? Why, how could that happen? You were a sheepman yourself!”

The boss herder contemplated him with an amused and cynical smile. “You ask Jim Swope,” he suggested.

For a minute Hardy sat staring at him, bewildered. “Well,” he said, “I can’t figure it out–maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me how it happened.”

“Why hell, man,” burst out the sheepman, “it’s as plain as the nose on your face–I didn’t belong to the Association. All these big sheepmen that drive north and south belong to the Sheepmen’s Protective Association, and they stand in with each other, but we little fellows up in ’Pache County was nobody. It’s about ten years ago now that the Swope outfit first came in through our country; and, bein’ in the sheep business ourselves, we was always friendly, and never made no trouble, and naturally supposed that they’d respect our range. And so they did, until I found one of Jim’s herders in on my ranch last Summer.

“Well, I thought there was some misunderstandin’, but when I told him and his compadres to move it was a bad case of ‘No savvy’ from the start; and while I was monkeyin’ around with them a couple of more bands sneaked in behind, and first thing I knew my whole lower range was skinned clean. Well, sir, I worked over one of them paisanos until he was a total wreck, and I took a shot at another hombre, too–the one that couldn’t savvy; but there was no use cavin’ round about it–I was jest naturally sheeped out.