Hidden Water

“W’y, sure it would be deep for Coloraydo,” he answered, guardedly.

Jefferson Creede glanced up at him, smoking luxuriously, holding the cigarette to his lips with his hand as if concealing a smile.

“Aw, rats,” snapped out Lightfoot at last, “why don’t you finish up and quit? What happened then?”

“Then?” drawled Creede, with a slow smile. “W’y, nothin’, Bill–I died!”

“Ah-hah-hah!” yelled the punchers, throwing up handfuls of dirt in the extravagance of their delight, and before Bill could realize the enormity of the sell one of his own partisans rose up and kicked the cracker box out from under him in token of utter defeat. For an hour after their precipitate retreat the visitors could hear the whoops and gibes of the cowboys, the loud-mouthed and indignant retorts of Lightfoot, and the soothing remonstrances of Jefferson Creede–and from the house Kitty the irrepressible, added to their merriment a shriek of silvery laughter. But after it was all over and he had won, the round-up boss swore soberly at himself and sighed, for he discerned on the morrow’s horizon the Indian signs of trouble.

CHAPTER XIV

FOREBODINGS

To the Eastern eye, blinded by local color, the Four Peaks country looked like a large and pleasantly variegated cactus garden, sparsely populated with rollicking, fun-loving cowboys who wore their interesting six-shooters solely to keep their balance in the saddle. The new grass stood untrampled beneath the bushes on Bronco Mesa, there were buds and flowers everywhere, and the wind was as sweet and untainted as if it drew out of Eden. But somewhere, somewhere in that great wilderness of peaks which lay to the south and through which only the dogged sheepmen could fight their way, stealthily hidden, yet watching, lay Jasper Swope and his sheep. And not only Jasper with his pet man-killing Chihuahuano and all those low-browed compadres whom he called by circumlocution “brothers,” but Jim, sore with his defeat, and many others–and every man armed.

After the first rain they had disappeared from the desert absolutely, their tracks pointing toward the east. The drought had hit them hard, and the cold of Winter; yet the ewes had lambed in the springtime, and as if by magic the tender grass shot up to feed their little ones. Surely, God was good to the sheep. They were ranging far, now that the shearing was over, but though they fed to the topmost peaks of the Superstitions, driving the crooked-horned mountain sheep from their pastures, their destiny lay to the north, in the cool valleys of the Sierra Blancas; and there in the end they would go, though they left havoc in their wake. Once before the sheep had vanished in this same way, mysteriously; and at last, travelling circuitous ways and dealing misery to many Tonto cowmen, they had poured over the very summit of the Four Peaks and down upon Bronco Mesa. And now, though they were hidden, every man on the round-up felt their presence and knew that the upper range was in jeopardy.

After amusing the ladies with inconsequential tales, the rodéo outfit therefore rose up and was gone before the light, raking the exposed lowland for its toll of half-fed steers; and even Rufus Hardy, the parlor-broke friend and lover, slipped away before any of them were stirring and rode far up along the river. What a river it was now, this unbridled Salagua which had been their moat and rampart for so many years! Its waters flowed thin and impotent over the rapids, lying in clear pools against the base of the black cliffs, and the current that had uprooted trees like feathers was turned aside by a snag. Where before the sheep had hung upon its flank hoping at last to swim at Hidden Water, the old ewes now strayed along its sandy bed, browsing upon the willows. From the towering black buttes that walled in Hell’s Hip Pocket to the Rio Verde it was passable for a spring lamb, and though the thin grass stood up fresh and green on the mesas the river showed nothing but drought. Drought and the sheep, those were the twin evils of the Four Peaks country; they lowered the price of cattle and set men to riding the range restlessly. For the drought is a visitation of God, to be accepted and endured, but sheep may be turned back.

As he rode rapidly along the river trail, halting on each ridge to search the landscape for sheep, Hardy’s conscience smote him for the single day he had spent in camp, dallying within sight of Kitty or talking with Lucy Ware. One such day, if the sheepmen were prepared, and Bronco Mesa would be a desert. Threats, violence, strategy, would be of no avail, once the evil was done; the sheep must be turned back at the river or they would swarm in upon the whole upper range. One man could turn them there, for it was the dead line; but once across they would scatter like quail before a hawk, crouching and hiding in the gulches, refusing to move, yet creeping with brutish stubbornness toward the north and leaving a clean swath behind. There were four passes that cut their way down from the southern mountains to the banks of the river, old trails of Apaches and wild game, and to quiet his mind Hardy looked for tracks at every crossing before he turned Chapuli’s head toward camp.

The smoke was drifting from the chimney when, late in the afternoon, he rode past the door and saw Lucy Ware inside, struggling with an iron kettle before the fireplace. Poor Lucy, she had undertaken a hard problem, for there is as much difference between camp cooking and home cooking as there is between a Dutch oven and a steel range, and a cooking-school graduate has to forget a whole lot before she can catch the knack of the open fire. For the second time that day Rufus Hardy’s conscience, so lately exercised over his neglect of the sheep, rose up and rebuked him. Throwing Chapuli into the corral he kicked off his spurs and shaps and gave Lucy her first lesson in frontier cookery; taught her by the force of his example how to waste her wood and save her back; and at the end of the short demonstration he sat down without ceremony, and fell to eating.

“Excuse me,” he said, “if I seem to be greedy, but I had my breakfast before sun-up. Where’s your father, and Kitty?”

“Oh, they had the Mexican boy catch their horses for them and have ridden up the valley to watch for the cattle. I stayed behind to make my first water color, and then–I thought you would be coming back soon, so I tried to cook supper instead. I’m a pretty good housekeeper–at home,” she said apologetically.

Hardy watched her as she experimented painstakingly with the fire, scooping out shovelfuls of coal from beneath the glowing logs and planting her pots and kettles upon them with a hooked stick, according to instructions.

“You look like a picture of one of our sainted Puritan ancestors,” he observed, at last, “and that’s just exactly the way they cooked, too–over an open fire. How does it feel to be Priscilla?”

“Well, if Priscilla’s hands looked like mine,” exclaimed Lucy despairingly, “John Alden must have been madly in love with her. How do you keep yours clean?”

“That’s a secret,” replied Hardy, “but I’ll tell you. I never touch the outside of a pot–and I scour them with sandsoap. But I wish you’d stop cooking, Lucy; it makes me feel conscience-stricken. You are my guests, remember, even if I do go off and neglect you for a whole day; and when you go back to Berkeley I want you to have something more interesting than housekeeping to talk about. Didn’t I see two ladies’ saddles out in the wagon?”

Miss Lucy’s eyes lighted up with pleasure as, anticipating his drift, she nodded her head.

“Well then,” said Hardy, with finality, “if you’ll get up early in the morning, I’ll catch you a little pony that I gentled myself, and we can ride up the river together. How does that strike you?”

“Fine!” exclaimed Lucy, with sudden enthusiasm.

“Oh, Rufus,” she cried impulsively, “if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman–and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home and cook the meals.”

“Well, you just let me cook those meals for a while,” said Rufus, with brotherly authority, “and come out and be a man for a change. Can you ride pretty well?”

Lucy glanced at him questioningly, and thought she read what was in his mind.

“Yes,” she said, “I can ride, but–but I just couldn’t bring myself to dress like Kitty!” she burst out. “I know it’s foolish, but I can’t bear to have people notice me so. But I’ll be a man in everything else, if you’ll only give me a chance.” She stood before him, radiant, eager, her eyes sparkling like a child’s, and suddenly Hardy realized how much she lost by being always with Kitty. Seen by herself she was as lithe and graceful as a fairy, with a steady gaze very rare in women, and eyes which changed like the shadows in a pool, answering every mood in wind and sky, yet always with their own true light. Her cheeks glowed with the fresh color which her father’s still retained, and she had inherited his generous nature, too; but in mind and stature she took after her dainty mother, whose exquisite grace and beauty had made her one of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of the petite in her which appealed to him–for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret–or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which she most loved to hear.

“Ah, Lucy,” he said, “you need never try to be a man in order to ride with me. It would be hard luck if a woman like you had to ask twice for anything. Will you go out with me every day? No? Then I shall ask you every day, and you shall go whenever you please! But you know how it is. The sheepmen are hiding along the river waiting for a chance to sneak across, and if I should stay in camp for a single day they might make a break–and then we would have a war. Your father doesn’t understand that, but I do; and I know that Jeff will never submit to being sheeped out without a fight. Can’t you see how it is? I should like to stay here and entertain you, and yet I must protect your father’s cattle, and I must protect Jeff. But if you will ride out with me when it is not too hot, I–it–well, you’ll go to-morrow, won’t you?”

He rose and took her hand impulsively, and then as quickly dropped it and turned away. The muffled chuck, chuck, of a horse’s feet stepping past the door smote upon his ear, and a moment later a clear voice hailed them.

“What are you children chattering about in there?” cried Kitty Bonnair, and Hardy, after a guilty silence, replied:

“The ways of the weary world. Won’t you come in and have the last word?”

He stepped out and held Pinto by the head, and Kitty dropped off and sank wearily into a rawhide chair.

“Oh, I’m too tired to talk, riding around trying to find those cattle–and just as I was tired out we saw them coming, away out on The Rolls. Lucy, do put on your riding habit and go back on Pinto–you haven’t been out of the house to-day!”

As half an hour later Lucy Ware trotted obediently away, riding up the cañon toward the distant bawling of cattle, Kitty turned suddenly upon Hardy with half-closed, accusing eyes.

“You seem to be very happy with Lucy,” she said, with an aggrieved smile. “But why,” she continued, with quickening animus, “why should you seek to avoid me? Isn’t it enough that I should come clear down here to see you? But when I want to have a word with you after our long silence I have to scheme and manage like a gypsy!”

She paused, and flicked her booted leg with the lash of a horsehair quirt, glancing at him furtively with eyes that drooped with an appealing sadness.

“If I had known how hard-hearted you could be,” she said, after a silence, “I should never have spoken as I did, if the words choked me. But now that I have come part way and offered my poor friendship again, you might–oh Rufus, how could you be so inconsiderate! No one can ever know what I suffered when you left that way. Every one knew we were the best of friends, and several people even knew that you had been to see me. And then, without a word, without a sign, with no explanation, to leave and be gone for years–think what they must have thought! Oh, it was too humiliating!”

She paused again, and to Hardy’s apprehensive eyes she seemed on the verge of tears. So he spoke, blindly and without consideration, filled with a man’s anxiety to stave off this final catastrophe.

“I’m sorry,” he began, though he had never meant to say it, “but–but there was nothing else to do! You–you told me to go. You said you never wanted to see me again, and–you were not very kind to me, then.” He paused, and at the memory of those last words of hers, uttered long ago, the flush of shame mantled his cheeks.

“Every man has his limit,” he said bluntly, “and I am no dog, to be scolded and punished and sent away. I have been ashamed many times for what I did, but I had to keep my own respect–and so I left. Is it too much for a man to go away when he is told?”

Kitty Bonnair fixed him with her dark eyes and shook her head sadly.

“Ah, Rufus,” she sighed, “when will you ever learn that a woman does not always mean all she says? When you had made me so happy by your tender consideration–for you could be considerate when you chose–I said that I loved you; and I did, but not in the way you thought. I did mean it at the moment, from my heart, but not for life–it was no surrender, no promise–I just loved you for being so good and kind. But when, taking advantage of what I said in a moment of weakness, you tried to claim that which I had never given, I–I said more than I meant again. Don’t you understand? I was hurt, and disappointed, and I spoke without thinking, but you must not hold that against me forever! And after I have come clear down here–to avoid me–to always go out with Lucy and leave me alone–to force me to arrange a meeting–”

She stopped, and Hardy shifted uneasily in his seat. In his heart of hearts he had realized from the first his inequality in this losing battle. He was like a man who goes into a contest conquered already by his ineptitude at arms–and Kitty would have her way! Never but once had he defied her power, and that had been more a flight than a victory. There was fighting blood in his veins, but it turned to water before her. He despised himself for it; but all the while, in a shifting, browbeaten way, he was seeking for an excuse to capitulate.

“But, Kitty,” he pleaded, “be reasonable. I have my duties down here–the sheep are trying to come in on us–I have to patrol the river. This morning before you were awake I was in the saddle, and now I have just returned. To-morrow I shall be off again, so how can I arrange a meeting?”

He held out his hands to her appealingly, carried away by the force of his own logic.

“You might at least invite me to go with you,” she said. “Unless you expect me to spend all my time getting lost with Judge Ware,” she added, with a plaintive break in her voice.

“Why, yes–yes,” began Hardy haltingly. “I–I have asked Lucy to go with me to-morrow, but–”

“Oh, thank you–thank you!” burst out Kitty mockingly. “But what?”

“Why, I thought you might like to come along too,” suggested Hardy awkwardly.

“What? And rob her of all her pleasure?” Kitty smiled bitterly as she turned upon him. “Why, Rufus Hardy,” she exclaimed, indignantly, “and she just dotes on every word you say! Yes, she does–any one can see that she simply adores you. I declare, Rufus, your lack of perception would make an angel weep–especially if it was a lady angel. But you may as well understand once and for all that I will never deprive dear, patient, long-suffering Lucy of anything she sets her heart on. No, I will not go with you the next day. If you haven’t consideration enough to invite me first, I have sense enough to stay away. It was only yesterday that you took Lucy up to Hidden Water, and to-day I find you with her again; and to-morrow–well, I perceive that I must amuse myself down here. But–oh, look, look! There’s a cowboy–up on that high cliff!”

She started up, pointing at a horseman who was spurring furiously along the side of the cañon after a runaway steer.

“Oh, look!” she cried again, as Hardy surveyed him indifferently. “He is whirling his lasso. Oh! He has thrown it over that big cow’s horns! Goodness me, where is my horse? No, I am going on foot, then! Oh, Lucy–Lucy dear,” she screamed, waving her hand wildly, “do let me have Pinto, just for a moment! All right–and Lucy–wasn’t that Mr. Creede?” She lingered on the ground long enough to give her an ecstatic kiss and then swung up into the saddle. “Yes, I knew it–and isn’t he just perfectly grand on that big horse? Oh, I’ve been wanting to see this all my life–and I owe it all to you!”