Hidden Water

With a smile and a gay salutation, she leaned forward and galloped out into the riot and confusion of the rodéo, skirting the edge of the bellowing herd until she disappeared in the dust. And somehow, even by the childlike obliviousness with which she scampered away, she managed to convey a pang to her errant lover which clutched at his heart for days.

And what days those were for Jefferson Creede! Deep and devious as was his knowledge of men in the rough, the ways of a woman in love were as cryptic to him as the poems of Browning. The first day that Miss Kitty rode forth to be a cowboy it was the rodéo boss, indulgent, but aware of the tenderfoot’s ability to make trouble, who soberly assigned his fair disciple to guard a pass over which no cow could possibly come. And Kitty, sensing the deceit, had as soberly amused herself by gathering flowers among the rocks. But the next day, having learned her first lesson, she struck for a job to ride, and it was the giddy-headed lover who permitted her to accompany him–although not from any obvious or selfish motives.

Miss Bonnair was the guest of the ranch, her life and welfare being placed for the time in the keeping of the boss. What kind of a foreman would it be who would turn her over to a hireling or intrust her innocent mind to a depraved individual like Bill Lightfoot? And all the decent cowmen were scared of her, so who was naturally indicated and elected but Jefferson D. Creede?

There wasn’t any branding at the round corral that night. The gather was a fizzle, for some reason, though Miss Kitty rode Pinto to a finish and killed a rattlesnake with Creede’s own gun. Well, they never did catch many cattle the first few days,–after they had picked up the tame bunch that hung around the water,–and the dry weather seemed to have driven the cows in from The Rolls. But when they came in the second afternoon, with only a half of their gather, Creede rode out from the hold-up herd to meet them, looking pretty black.

It is the duty of a rodéo boss to know what is going on, if he has to ride a horse to death to find out; and the next day, after sending every man down his ridge, Jeff left Kitty Bonnair talking lion hunt with old Bill Johnson who had ridden clear over from Hell’s Hip Pocket to gaze upon this horse-riding Diana, and disappeared. As a result, Bat Wings was lathered to a fine dirt-color and there was one man in particular that the boss wanted to see.

“Jim,” he said, riding up to where one of the Clark boys was sullenly lashing the drag with his reata, “what in the hell do you mean by lettin’ all them cattle get away? Yes, you did too. I saw you tryin’ to turn ’em back, so don’t try to hand me anything like that. I used to think you was a good puncher, Jim, but a man that can’t keep a herd of cows from goin’ through a box pass ought to be smokin’ cigarettes on the day herd. You bet ye! All you had to do was be there–and that’s jest exactly where you wasn’t! I was up on top of that rocky butte, and I know. You was half a mile up the cañon mousin’ around in them cliffs, that’s where you was, and the only question I want to ask is, Did you find the Lost Dutchman? No? Then what in hell was you doin’?”

The rodéo boss crowded his horse in close and thrust his face forward until he could look him squarely in the eye, and Clark jerked back his head resentfully.

“What is it to you?” he demanded belligerently.

“Oh, nawthin’,” returned the boss lightly, “jest wanted to know.”

“Uhr!” grunted the cowboy contemptuously. “Well, I was killin’ snakes, then! What ye goin’ to do about it?”

“Snakes!” cried Creede incredulously. “Killin’ snakes! Since when did you call a feud on them?”

“Since thet young lady come,” replied Clark, glancing around to see if any one had the nerve to laugh. “I heerd her say she was collectin’ rattles; an’ I thought, while I was waitin’, I might as well rustle up a few. Oh, you don’t need to look pop-eyed–they’s others!”

He rolled his eyes significantly at the group of assembled cowboys, and Creede took it all in at a flash. There were others–he himself had a set of rattles in his shap pocket that were not two hours from the stump. The situation called for diplomacy.

“Well,” he drawled, scratching his bushy head to cover his confusion, “this reflects great credit on your bringin’ up, Jim, and I’m sure Miss Bonnair will appreciate what you’ve done for her, especially as I happened to notice a couple o’ head of your own cows in that bunch, but it’s a mighty expensive way to collect snake-tails. We ain’t gittin’ the cattle, boys; that’s the size of it, and they’re as much yours as they are mine. Now I suggest that we run these few we’ve got down to the corral and brand ’em quick–and then the whole shootin’-match goes over to the big white cliff and rounds up every rattlesnake in the rock pile! Is it a go?”

“Sure!” yelled the bunch impetuously, and as they charged down upon the herd Creede quietly fished out his snake-tail and dropped it in the dirt.

If he lacked a virtue he could feign it, anyhow–but there was no doubt about it, Miss Kitty was putting his rodéo on the bum. There had never been so many men to feed and so few calves to brand in the history of Hidden Water. Even old Bill Johnson had got the fever from hearing the boys talk and was hanging around the fire. But then, what were a few head of cows compared to–well, what was it, anyway? The only man who could stay away was Rufe, and he was in good company.

Yet Creede was not satisfied with this explanation. Miss Kitty was always asking questions about Rufe–they had known each other well in Berkeley–and at the same time the little partner with whom he had been so friendly never came around any more. He was always very polite, and she called him by his first name–and then one of them rode up the river and the other followed the round-up.

The night after the big snake-killing Jefferson Creede picked up his blankets and moved quietly back to the ramada with Hardy.

“Them locoed punchers have been skinnin’ rattlers and stretchin’ their hides,” he said, “until the camp stinks like a buzzard roost. I’m due to have some bad dreams to-night anyhow, on the strength of this snake-killin’, but it’d give me the jumpin’ jimjams if I had to sleep next to them remains. Didn’t git back in time to join in, did ye? Well, no great loss. I always did intend to clean out that snake hole over’n the cliff, and the boys was stoppin’ every time they heard one sing, anyhow, in order to git the rattles for Miss Bonnair, so I thought we might as well git it off our minds before somethin’ worse turned up. See any sheep tracks?”

He kicked off his boots, poked his six-shooter under his pillow, and settled down comfortably for the night.

“Nary one, eh?” he repeated musingly. “Well, when you see one you’ll see a million–that’s been my experience. But say, Rufe, why don’t you come and ride with the boys once in a while? The rodéo has been goin’ rotten this year–we ain’t gittin’ half of ’em–and you’d come in mighty handy. Besides, I’ve been braggin’ you up to Miss Bonnair.”

He dropped this last as a bait, but Hardy did not respond.

“I told her you was the best bronco-buster in the Four Peaks country,” continued Creede deliberately, “and that you could drift Chapuli over the rocks like a sand lizard; but I’m too heavy for anything like that now, and Bill Lightfoot has been puttin’ up the fancy work, so far. You know how I like Bill.”

Once more he waited for an answer, but Hardy was wrestling with those elementary passions which have been making trouble since Helen of Troy left home, and he received the remark in silence.

“I’ll tell you, Rufe,” said Creede, lowering his voice confidentially. “Of course I see how it is with you and Miss Ware, and I’m glad of it; but things ain’t goin’ so lovely for me. It ain’t my fault if Miss Bonnair happens to like my company, but Bill and some of the other boys have got their backs up over it, and they’ve practically gone on a strike. Leastwise we ain’t gittin’ the cattle, and God knows the range won’t more ’n carry what’s left. I’ve got to git out and do some ridin’, and at the same time I want to do the right thing by Miss Bonnair, so if you could jest kindly come along with us to-morrow I’ll be much obliged.”

The elemental passions–man-love, jealousy, the lust for possession–are ugly things at best, even when locked in the bosom of a poet. In their simplest terms they make for treachery and stealth; but when complicated with the higher call of friendship and duty they gall a man like the chains of Prometheus and send the dragon-clawed eagles of Jove to tear at his vitals. Never until this naive confession had Hardy suspected the sanity of his friend nor the constancy of Kitty Bonnair. That she was capable of such an adventure he had never dreamed–and yet–and yet–where was there a more masterful man than Jeff? Anything can happen in love; and who was there more capable of winning a romantic woman’s regard than good-natured, impulsive, domineering Jeff?

The thoughts flashed through his brain with the rapidity of lightning, and only his instinct of reserve protected him from his blundering tongue.

“I–I was–” he began, and stopped short. The idea of loyalty had ruled his mind so long that it had become a habit, ill suited to the cause of a jealous lover; and Jeff had confided to him as a child might run to its mother. Should a man take advantage of his friend’s innocence to deprive him of that for which they both strove? Hardy fought the devil away and spoke again, quietly.

“I was going up the river to-morrow, Jeff,” he said. “Seemed to me I saw a kind of smoke, or dust, over south of Hell’s Hip Pocket this afternoon–and we can’t take any chances now. That would take all day, you know.”

He lay still after that, his brain whirling with contending emotions. Each evening as he listened to the music of her laughter he had resolved to quit his lonely watch and snatch from life the pleasure of a single day with Kitty, such days as they used to have when he was her unacknowledged lover and all the world was young. Then he could always please her. He could bend to her moods like a willow, braving the storms of her displeasure, which only drew them closer in the end, secure in the hope of her ultimate yielding. But now the two barren years lay between; years which had stiffened his jaw and left him rough in his ways; years which had wrought some change in her, he knew not what. A single day might solve the crux–nay, it might bring the great happiness of which he dreamed. But each morning as he woke with the dawn he saw that mighty army without banners, the sheep, marching upon their stronghold, the broad mesa which fed the last of Jeff’s cows, and Judge Ware’s, and Lucy’s–and sprang from his blankets. And when the sun rose and Kitty came forth he was far away. But now–

He was awakened from his dreams by the voice of Creede, low, vibrant, full of brotherly love.

“Rufe,” he was saying, “Miss Bonnair has told me a lot about you–a lot I didn’t know. She likes you, boy, and she’s a good woman. I never knowed but one like her, and that was Sallie Winship. You mustn’t let anything that’s happened stand between you. Of course she never said anything–never said a word–but I’m wise that way; I can tell by their voice, and all that. You want to let them dam’ sheep go for a day or two and git this thing patched up.”

He paused, and Hardy’s mind whirled backward, upsetting his fears, unmaking his conclusions. It was Jeff the friend who spoke, Jeff the peacemaker, who had stampeded him by the equivocation of his words. But now the voice broke in again, apologetic, solicitous, self-seeking.

“Besides, that son-of-a-gun, Bill Lightfoot, has been tryin’ to cut me out.”

God! There it hit him hard. Kitty, the immaculate, the exquisite, the friend of poets and artists, the woman he had loved and cherished in his dreams–striven for by Jeff and Bill, revelling in the homage of Mexicans and hard-drinking round-up hands, whose natural language was astench with uncleanliness. It was like beholding a dainty flower in the grime and brutality of the branding pen.

“I’m sorry, Jeff,” he said, in a far-away voice. “I–I’d do anything I could for you–but I’m afraid of those sheep.”

He dragged miserably through the remnant of their conversation and then lay staring at the stars while his hulk of a partner, this great bear who in his awkward good nature had trampled upon holy ground, slept peacefully by his side. The Pleiades fled away before Orion, the Scorpion rose up in the south and sank again, the Morning Star blinked and blazed like a distant fire, such as shepherds kindle upon the ridges, and still Hardy lay in his blankets, fighting with himself. The great blackness which precedes the first glow of dawn found him haggard and weary of the struggle. He rose and threw wood on the coals of last night’s fire, cooked and ate in silence, and rode away. There was a great burden upon his soul, a great fire and anger in his heart, and he questioned the verities of life. He rode up the river gloomily, searching the southern wilderness with frowning, bloodshot eyes, and once more, far to the east where the jagged cliffs of the Superstitions sweep down to the gorge of the Salagua and Hell’s Hip Pocket bars the river’s sweep, he saw that vague, impalpable haze–a smoke, a dust, a veil of the lightest skein, stirred idly by some wandering wind, perhaps, or marking the trail of sheep. And as he looked upon it his melancholy gaze changed to a staring, hawk-like intentness; he leaned forward in the saddle and Chapuli stepped eagerly down the slope, head up, as if he sniffed the battle.

CHAPTER XV

THE CATASTROPHE

A demon of unrest, twin devil to that which had so clutched and torn at the sensitive spirit of Rufus Hardy, seemed to rise up with the dawn of that ill-omened day and seize upon the camp at Hidden Water. It was like a touch of the north wind, which rumples the cat’s back, sets the horses to fighting in the corrals, and makes men mean and generally contrary. Bill Johnson’s hounds were the first to feel the madness. They left before sun-up, heading for the wooded heights of the Juate, and led him a weary chase. At the last moment Creede abandoned the unprofitable working of The Rolls and ordered the rodéo up onto Bronco Mesa; and Kitty Bonnair, taking advantage of his preoccupation, quietly gave him the slip at the end of their long eastern detour, and turned her pinto’s head toward the river.

As for Kitty, her will was the wind’s will, which changes with the times and seasons but is accountable to no universal law. Never in her life had she met a man who could quarrel like Rufus Hardy. Beneath her eye he was as clay in the hands of the potter; every glance spoke love, and for her alone. And yet it was something more than a smouldering resentment which made him avoid her, riding out before the dawn; more than the tremulous bashfulness which had stayed his hand when at times he might have taken hers. There was something deep, hidden, mysterious, lurking in those fawnlike eyes, and it made him insurgent against her will. It was a secret, hidden from all the world, which he must yield to her. And then she would forgive him for all the unhappiness he had caused her and teach him what a thing it is for a woman to love and be misunderstood. But first–first she must see him alone; she must burst upon him suddenly, taking his heart by storm as she had on that first day, and leave the rest to fate. So she lingered to gather some flowers which nodded among the rocks, the shy and dainty forget-me-nots which they had picked together at home; and when Creede was over the first ridge she struck out boldly up a side cañon, tucking the miniature bouquet into the shadows of her hair.

The southern flank of Bronco Mesa breaks off sharply above the Salagua, rising slowly by slopes and terraced benches to the heights, and giving way before the river in a succession of broken ridges. Along these summits run winding trails, led high to escape the rougher ground. Urged on by the slashings of her quirt, Pinto galloped recklessly through this maze of cow paths until as if by magic the great valley lay before them. There in its deep cañon was the river and the river trail–and a man, mounted upon a sorrel horse, savagely intent upon his way. For a minute Kitty studied him curiously as he hustled along, favoring his horse up the hills but swinging to the stirrup as he dodged bushes across the flats; then she flung out her hand impulsively, and called his name. In a flash he was up in his saddle, looking. Chapuli tossed his head and in the act caught a glimpse of the other horse–then they both stood rigid, gazing in astonishment at the living statue against the sky. At sight of that witching figure, beckoning him from the mountain top, Hardy’s heart leaped within him and stopped. Once more the little hand was thrown out against the sky and a merry voice floated down to him from the sun-touched heights.

“Hello, Rufus!” it called teasingly, and still he sat gazing up at her. All the untamed passions of his being surged up and choked his voice–he could not answer. His head turned and he gazed furtively over his shoulder to the east, where his duty lay. Then of his own accord Chapuli stepped from the trail and began to pick his way soberly up the hill.

From the high summit of the butte all the world lay spread out like a panorama,–the slopes and cañons of Bronco Mesa, picketed with giant sahuaros; the silvery course of the river flowing below; the unpeopled peaks and cliffs of the Superstitions; and a faint haze-like zephyr, floating upon the eastern horizon. And there at last the eyes of Rufus Hardy and Kitty Bonnair met, questioning each other, and the world below them took on a soft, dreamy veil of beauty.

“Why, how did you come here?” he asked, looking down upon her wonderingly. “Were you lost?”

And Kitty smiled wistfully as she answered:

“Yes–till I found you.”

“Oh!” said Hardy, and he studied her face warily, as if doubtful of her intent.

“But how could you be lost,” he asked again, “and travel so far? This is a rough country, and you got here before I did.”

He swung down from his horse and stood beside her, but Kitty only laughed mischievously and shook her head–at which, by some lover’s magic, the dainty forget-me-nots fell from her hair in a shower of snowy blossoms.