Hidden Water

“I’ll take care of that for you,” answered Hardy pointedly. “Now you pile onto that mule of yours and pull your freight, will you?” He led the black mule up close and boosted its master into the saddle, but Swope was not content.

“Where’s that dastard, Jeff Creede?” he demanded. “Well, I wanter see him, that’s all. And say, Mr. Smart Alec, I want that gun, too, see?”

“Well, you won’t get it,” said Hardy.

“I will that,” declared Swope, “’nd I’ll git you, too, Willie, before I git through with you. I’ve had enough of this monkey business. Now gimme that gun, I tell ye, or I’ll come back with more of ’em and take it!”

He raised his voice to a roar, muffled to a beast-like hoarseness by his swollen jaws, and the ramada reverberated like a cavern as he bellowed out his challenge. Then the door was snatched violently open and Jefferson Creede stepped forth, looking black as hell itself. In one hand he held the sheepman’s pistol and in the other his own.

“Here!” he said, and striding forward he thrust Swope’s gun into his hand. “It’s loaded, too,” he added. “Now, you–if you’ve got any shootin’ to do, go to it!”

He stepped back quickly and stood ready, his masterful eyes bent upon his enemy in a scowl of unquenchable hate. Once before they had faced each other, waiting for that mysterious psychic prompting without which neither man nor beast can begin a fight, and Jim had stepped in between–but Hardy stood aside without a word. It was a show-down and, bulldog fighter though he was, Jasper Swope weakened. The anger of his enemy overcame his hostile spirit without a blow, and he turned his pistol away.

“That’s all I wanted,” he said, shoving the gun sullenly into its holster. “They’s two of you, and–”

“And you’re afraid,” put in Creede promptly. He stood gazing at the downcast sheepman, his lip curling contemptuously.

“I’ve never seen a sheepman yet,” he said, “that would fight. You’ve listened to that blat until it’s a part of ye; you’ve run with them Mexicans until you’re kin to ’em; you’re a coward, Jasp Swope, and I always knowed it.” He paused again, his eyes glowing with the hatred that had overmastered his being. “My God,” he said, “if I could only git you to fight to-day I’d give everything I’ve got left!”

The sheepman’s gaze was becoming furtive as he watched them. He glanced sidewise, edging away from the door; then, pricking his mule with his spurs, he galloped madly away, ducking his head at every jump as if he feared a shot.

“Look at the cowardly dastard!” sneered Creede bitterly. “D’ye know what he would do if that was me? He’d shoot me in the back. Ah, God A’mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this–every dam’ one of ’em–and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty.” He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.

“God A’mighty,” he moaned, “I can’t keep nothin’!” And stumbling back into the house he slammed the door behind him.

A gloom settled down over the place, a gloom that lasted for days. The cowboys came back from driving the town herd and, going up on the mesa, they gathered a few head more. Then the heat set in before its time and the work stopped short. For the steer that is roped and busted in the hot weather dies suddenly at the water; the flies buzz about the ears of the new-marked calves and poison them, and the mother cows grow gaunt and thin from overheating. Not until the long Summer had passed could the riding continue; the steers must be left to feed down the sheeped-out range; the little calves must run for sleepers until the fall rodéo. Sheep and the drought had come together, and the round-up was a failure. Likewise the cowmen were broke.

As they gathered about the fire on that last night it was a silent company–the rodéo boss the gloomiest of them all. Not since the death of Tommy had his eyes twinkled with the old mischief; he had no bets to offer, no news to volunteer; a dull, sombre abstraction lay upon him like a pall. Only when Bill Lightfoot spoke did he look up, and then with a set sneer, growing daily more saturnine. The world was dark to Creede and Bill’s fresh remarks jarred on him–but Bill himself was happy. He was of the kind that runs by opposites, taking their troubles with hilarity under the impression that they are philosophers. His pretext for this present happiness was a professed interview with Kitty Bonnair on the evening that the town herd pulled into Moreno’s. What had happened at this interview was a secret, of course, but it made Bill happy; and the more morose and ugly Jeff became about it the more it pleased Lightfoot to be gay. He sat on a box that night and sang risqué ditties, his enormous Colt’s revolver dangling bravely at his hip; and at last, casting his weather eye upon Creede, he began a certain song.

“Oh, my little girl, she lives in the town–”

And then he stopped.

“Bill,” said the rodéo boss feelingly, “you make me tired.”

“Lay down an’ you’ll git rested, then,” suggested Lightfoot.

“A toodle link, a toodle link, a too-oodle a day.”

“I’ll lay you down in a minute, if you don’t shut up,” remarked Creede, throwing away his cigarette.

“The hell you say,” commented Lightfoot airily.

“And last time I seen her she ast me to come down.”

At this raw bit of improvisation the boss rose slowly to his feet and stalked away from temptation.

“And if anybody sees her you’ll know her by this sign,”

chanted the cowboy, switching to an out-and-out bad one; and then, swaying his body on his cracker box, he plunged unctuously into the chorus.

“She’s got a dark and rolling eye, boys;
She’s got a dark and rolling eye.”

He stopped there and leapt to his feet anxiously. The mighty bulk of the rodéo boss came plunging back at him through the darkness; his bruising fist shot out and the frontier troubadour went sprawling among the pack saddles.

It was the first time Creede had ever struck one of his own kind,–men with guns were considered dangerous,–but this time he laid on unmercifully.

“You’ve had that comin’ to you for quite a while, Bill Lightfoot,” he said, striking Bill’s ineffectual gun aside, “and more too. Now maybe you’ll keep shut about ‘your girl’!”

He turned on his heel after administering this rebuke and went to the house, leaving his enemy prostrate in the dirt.

“The big, hulkin’ brute,” blubbered Lightfoot, sitting up and aggrievedly feeling of his front teeth, “jumpin’ on a little feller like me–an’ he never give me no warnin’, neither. You jest wait, I’ll–”

“Aw, shut up!” growled Old Man Reavis, whose soul had long been harrowed by Lightfoot’s festive ways. “He give you plenty of warnin’, if you’d only listen. Some people have to swallow a few front teeth before they kin learn anythin’.”

“Well, what call did he have to jump on me like that?” protested Lightfoot. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”

“No, nothin’ but singin’ bawdy songs about his girl,” sneered Reavis sarcastically.

“His girl, rats!” retorted the cowboy, vainglorious even in defeat, “she’s my girl, if she’s anybody’s!”

“Well, about your girl then, you dirty brute!” snarled the old man, suddenly assuming a high moral plane for his utter annihilation. “You’re a disgrace to the outfit, Bill Lightfoot,” he added, with conviction. “I’m ashamed of ye.”

“That’s right,” chimed in the Clark boys, whose sensibilities had likewise been harassed; and with all the world against him Bill Lightfoot retired in a huff to his blankets. So the rodéo ended as it had begun, in disaster, bickering, and bad blood, and no man rightly knew from whence their misfortune came. Perhaps the planets in their spheres had cast a malign influence upon them, or maybe the bell mare had cast a shoe. Anyhow they had started off the wrong foot and, whatever the cause, the times were certainly not auspicious for matters of importance, love-making, or the bringing together of the estranged. Let whatsoever high-priced astrologer cast his horoscope for good, Saturn was swinging low above the earth and dealing especial misery to the Four Peaks; and on top of it all the word came that old Bill Johnson, after shooting up the sheep camps, had gone crazy and taken to the hills.

For a week, Creede and Hardy dawdled about the place, patching up the gates and fences and cursing the very name of sheep. A spirit of unrest hovered over the place, a brooding silence which spoke only of Tommy and those who were gone, and the two partners eyed each other furtively, each deep in his own thoughts. At last when he could stand it no longer Creede went over to the corner, and dug up his money.

“I’m goin’ to town,” he said briefly.

“All right,” responded Hardy; and then, after meditating a while, he added: “I’ll send down some letters by you.”

Late that evening, after he had written a long letter to Lucy and a short one to his father, he sat at the desk where he had found their letters, and his thoughts turned back to Kitty. There lay the little book which had held their letters, just as he had thrust it aside. He picked it up, idly, and glanced at the title-page: “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” How dim and far away it all seemed now, this world of the poets in which he had once lived and dreamed, where sweetness and beauty were enshrined as twin goddesses of light, and gentleness brooded over all her children. What a world that had been, with its graceful, smiling women, its refinements of thought and speech, its aspirations and sympathies–and Kitty! He opened the book slowly, wondering from whence it had come, and from the deckled leaves a pressed forget-me-not fell into his hand. That was all–there was no mark, no word, no sign but this, and as he gazed his numbed mind groped through the past for a forget-me-not. Ah yes, he remembered! But how far away it seemed now, the bright morning when he had met his love on the mountain peak and the flowers had fallen from her hair–and what an inferno of strife and turmoil had followed since! He opened to the place where the imprint of the dainty flower lay and read reverently:

“If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love’s sake only. Do not say
‘I love her for her smile–her look–her way
Of speaking gently–for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought
A sense of pleasant ease on such a day’–
For these things in themselves, Belovéd, may
Be changed, or change for thee–and love, so wrought,
May be unwrought so. Neither love me for
Thine own dear pity’s wiping my cheek dry–
A creature might forget to weep, who bore
Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby!
But love me for love’s sake, that evermore
Thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”