Hidden Water

“That feller was a jim-dandy scrapper,” he said, smiling magnanimously, “but I downed ’im, all right. I couldn’t quite lick the whole town, but I tried; and I certainly gave ’em a run for their money, while it lasted. If Bender don’t date time from Jeff Creede’s big drunk I miss my guess a mile. And you know, after I got over bein’ fightin’ drunk, I got cryin’ drunk–but I never did get drunk enough to tell my troubles, thank God! The fellers think I’m sore over bein’ sheeped out. Well, after I’d punished enough booze to start an Injun uprisin’, and played the faro bank for my wad, I went to sleep; and when I woke up it seemed a lo-ong time ago and I could look back and see jest how foolish I’d been. I could see how she’d jollied me up and got me comin’, playin’ me off against Bill Lightfoot; and then I could see how she’d tantalized me, like that mouse the cat had when you was down in Bender; and then I could see where I had got the big-head bad, thinkin’ I was the only one–and all the time she was laughin’ at me! Oh, it’s nothin’ now–I kin laugh at it myself in a month; but I’m so dam’ ’shamed I could cry.” He lopped down in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and shook his head gloomily.

“They ain’t but one girl I ever knowed,” he said solemnly, “that wasn’t stringin’ me, and that was Sallie Winship. Sal liked me, dam’d if she didn’t. She cried when she went away, but the old lady wouldn’t stand for no bow-legged cowpuncher–and so I git euchred, every time.”

For lack of some higher consolation Hardy cooked up a big supper for his low-spirited partner, and after he had done the honors at the feast the irrepressible good health of the cowboy rose up and conquered his grief in spite of him. He began by telling the story of his orgy, which apparently had left Bender a wreck. The futile rage of Black Tex, the despair of the town marshal, the fight with the Big Man, the arrest by the entire posse comitatus, the good offices of Mr. Einstein in furnishing bail, the crying and sleeping jags–all were set forth with a vividness which left nothing to the imagination, and at the end the big man was comforted. When it was all over and his memory came down to date he suddenly recalled a package of letters that were tied up in his coat, which was still on the back of his saddle. He produced them forthwith and, like a hungry boy who sees others eat, sat down to watch Rufe read. No letters ever came for him–and when one did come it was bad. The first in the pack was from Lucy Ware and as Hardy read it his face softened, even while he knew that Creede was watching.

“Say, she’s all right, ain’t she?” observed Jeff, when his partner looked up.

“That’s right,” said Hardy, “and she says to take you on again as foreman and pay you for every day you didn’t carry your gun.”

“No!” cried Creede, and then he laughed quietly to himself. “Does that include them days I was prizin’ up hell down in Bender? Oh, it does, eh? Well, you can tell your boss that I’ll make that up to her before the Summer’s over.”

He leaned back and stretched his powerful arms as if preparing for some mighty labor. “We’re goin’ to have a drought this Summer,” he said impressively, “that will have the fish packin’ water in canteens. Yes, sir, the chaser is goin’ to cost more than the whiskey before long; and they’s goin’ to be some dead cows along the river. Do you know what Pablo Moreno is doin’? He’s cuttin’ brush already to feed his cattle. That old man is a wise hombre, all right, when it comes to weather. He’s been hollerin’ ‘Año seco, año seco,’ for the last year, and now, by Joe, we’ve got it! They ain’t hardly enough water in the river to make a splash, and here it’s the first of June. We’ve been kinder wropt up in fightin’ sheep and sech and hain’t noticed how dry it’s gittin’; but that old feller has been sittin’ on top of his hill watchin’ the clouds, and smellin’ of the wind, and measurin’ the river, and countin’ his cows until he’s a weather sharp. I was a-ridin’ up the river this afternoon when I see the old man cuttin’ down a palo verde tree, and about forty head of cattle lingerin’ around to eat the top off as soon as she hit the ground; and he says to me, kinder solemn and fatherly:

“‘Jeff,’ he says, ‘cut trees for your cattle–this is an año seco.”

“‘Yes, I’ve heard that before,’ says I. ‘But my cows is learnin’ to climb.’”

“‘Stawano,’ he says, throwin’ out his hands like I was a hopeless proposition. But all the same I think I’ll go out to-morrow and cut down one of them palo verdes like he show’d me–one of these kind with little leaves and short thorns–jest for an expeeriment. If the cattle eat it, w’y maybe I’ll cut another, but I don’t want to be goin’ round stuffin’ my cows full of twigs for nothin’. Let ’em rustle for their feed, same as I do. But honest to God, Rufe, some of them little runty cows that hang around the river can’t hardly cast a shadder, they’re that ganted, and calves seems to be gittin’ kinder scarce, too. But here–git busy, now–here’s a letter you overlooked.”

He pawed over the pile purposefully and thrust a pale blue envelope before Hardy–a letter from Kitty Bonnair. And his eyes took on a cold, fighting glint as he observed the fatal handwriting.

“By God,” he cried, “I hain’t figured out yet what struck me! I never spoke a rough word to that girl in my life, and she certainly gimme a nice kiss when she went away. But jest as soon as I write her a love letter, w’y she–she–W’y hell, Rufe, I wouldn’t talk that way to a sheep-herder if he didn’t know no better. Now you jest read that”–he fumbled in his pocket and slammed a crumpled letter down before his partner–“and tell me if I’m wrong! No, I want you to do it. Well, I’ll read it to you, then!”

He ripped open the worn envelope, squared his elbows across the table, and opened the scented inclosure defiantly, but before he could read it Hardy reached out suddenly and covered it with his hand.

“Please don’t, Jeff,” he said, his face pale and drawn. “It was all my fault–I should have told you–but please don’t read it to me. I–I can’t stand it.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” retorted Creede coldly. “I reckon you can stand it if I can. Now suppose you wrote a real nice letter–the best you knowed how–to your girl, and she handed you somethin’ like this: ‘My dear Mr. Creede, yore amazin’ letter–’ Here, what ye doin’?”

“I won’t listen to it!” cried Hardy, snatching the letter away, “it’s–”

“Now lookee here, Rufe Hardy,” began Creede, rising up angrily from his chair, “I want to tell you right now that you’ve got to read that letter or lick me–and I doubt if you can do that, the way I happen to be feelin’. You got me into this in the first place and now, by God, you’ll see it out! Now you read that letter and tell me if I’m wrong!”

He reared up his head as he spoke and Hardy saw the same fierce gleam in his eyes that came when he harried the sheep; but there was something beside that moved his heart to pity. It was the lurking sadness of a man deep hurt, who fights the whole world in his anguish; the protest of a soul in torment, demanding, like Job, that some one shall justify his torture.

“All right, Jeff,” he said, “I will read it–only–only don’t crowd me for an answer.”

He spread the letter before him on the table and saw in a kind of haze the angry zigzag characters that galloped across the page, the words whose meaning he did not as yet catch, so swiftly did his thoughts rise up at sight of them. Years ago Kitty had written him a letter and he had read it at that same table. It had been a cruel letter, but unconsidered, like the tantrum of a child. Yes, he had almost forgotten it, but now like a sudden nightmare the old horror clutched at his heart. He steadied himself, and the words began to take form before him. Surely she would be gentle with Jeff, he was so big and kind. Then he read on, slowly, grasping at the meaning, and once more his eyes grew big with horror at her words. He finished, and bowed his head upon the table, while the barren room whirled before him.

From his place across the table the big cowboy looked down upon him, grim and masterful, yet wondering at his silence.

“Well, am I wrong?” he demanded, but the little man made no answer.

Upon the table before Hardy there lay another letter, written in that same woman’s hand, a letter to him, and the writing was smooth and fair. Jeff had brought it to him, tied behind his saddle, and he stood before him now, waiting.

“Am I wrong?” he said again, but Hardy did not answer in words. Holding the crumpled letter behind him he took up his own fair missive–such a one as he would have died for in years gone by–and laid it on the fire, and when the tiny flame leaped up he dropped the other on it and watched them burn together.

“Well, how about it?” inquired Creede, awed by the long silence, but the little man only bowed his head.

“Who am I, to judge?” he said.

CHAPTER XX

THE DROUGHT

For a year the shadowy clouds had flitted past Hidden Water, drifting like flocks of snowy birds to their resting-place against the Peaks, and as the wind raged and the darkness gathered the cattle had raised their heads and bellowed, sniffing the wet air. In Summer the thunder-heads had mounted to high heaven and spread from east to west; the heat lightning had played along the horizon at night, restless and incessant; the sky had turned black and the south wind had rushed up, laden with the smell of distant showers. At last the rain had fallen, graciously, bringing up grass and browse, and flowers for those who sought them. But all the time the water lay in black pools along the shrunken river, trickling among the rocks and eddying around huge snags of driftwood, clear, limpid, sparkling, yet always less and less.

Where the winter floods had scoured the lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river’s edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang up on the mesas, the myriad grass-seeds germinated and struggled forth, sucking the last moisture from the earth to endow it with more seeds. In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and palo verdes threw out the golden halo of their flowers until the cañons were aflame; the soggy sahuaros drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the pitiless sun.

As Creede and Hardy rode out from Hidden Water, the earth lay dead beneath their horses’ feet–stark and naked, stripped to the rocks by the sheep. Even on Bronco Mesa the ground was shorn of its covering; the cloven hoofs of the sheep had passed over it like a scalping knife, tearing off the last sun-blasted fringe of grass. In open spaces where they had not found their way the gaunt cattle still curled their hungry tongues beneath the bushes and fetched out spears of grass, or licked the scanty Indian wheat from the earth itself.

With lips as tough and leathery as their indurated faces, the hardiest of them worked their way into bunches of stick-cactus and chollas, breaking down the guard of seemingly impenetrable spines and munching on the juicy stalks; while along the ridges long-necked cows bobbed for the high browse which the sheep had been unable to reach.

The famine was upon them; their hips stood out bony and unsightly above their swollen stomachs as they racked across the benches, and their eyes were wild and haggard. But to the eye of Creede, educated by long experience, they were still strong and whole. The weaklings were those that hung about the water, foot-sore from their long journeyings to the distant hills and too weary to return. At the spring-hole at Carrizo they found them gathered, the runts and roughs of the range; old cows with importunate calves bunting at their flaccid udders; young heifers, unused to rustling for two; orehannas with no mothers to guide them to the feed; rough steers that had been “busted” and half-crippled by some reckless cowboy–all the unfortunate and incapable ones, standing dead-eyed and hopeless or limping stiffly about.

A buzzard rose lazily from a carcass as they approached, and they paused to note the brand. Then Creede shook his head bodingly and rode into the bunch by the spring. At a single glance the rodéo boss recognized each one of them and knew from whence he came. He jumped his horse at a wild steer and started him toward the ridges; the cows with calves he rounded up more gently, turning them into the upper trail; the orehannas, poor helpless orphans that they were, followed hopefully, leaving one haggard-eyed old stag behind.

Creede looked the retreating band over critically and shook his head again.

“Don’t like it,” he observed, briefly; and then, unlocking the ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he went in and fetched out the axe. “Guess I’ll cut a tree for that old stiff,” he said.

From his stand by the long troughs where all the mountain cattle watered in Summer, the disconsolate old stag watched the felling of the tree curiously; then after an interval of dreary contemplation, he racked his hide-bound skeleton over to the place and began to browse. Presently the rocks began to clatter on the upper trail, and an old cow that had been peering over the brow of the hill came back to get her share. Even her little calf, whose life had been cast in thorny ways, tried his new teeth on the tender ends and found them good. The orehannas drifted in one after the other, and other cows with calves, and soon there was a little circle about the tree-top, munching at the soft, brittle twigs.

“Well, that settles it,” said Creede. “One of us stays here and cuts brush, and the other works around Hidden Water. This ain’t the first drought I’ve been through, not by no means, and I’ve learned this much: the Alamo can be dry as a bone and Carrizo, too, but they’s always water here and at the home ranch. Sooner or later every cow on the range will be goin’ to one place or the other to drink, and if we give ’em a little bait of brush each time it keeps ’em from gittin’ too weak. As long as a cow will rustle she’s all right, but the minute she’s too weak to travel she gits to be a water-bum–hangs around the spring and drinks until she starves to death. But if you feed ’em a little every day they’ll drift back to the ridges at night and pick up a little more. I’m sorry for them lily-white hands of yourn, pardner, but which place would you like to work at?”

“Hidden Water,” replied Hardy, promptly, “and I bet I can cut as many trees as you can.”

“I’ll go you, for a fiver,” exclaimed Creede, emulously. “Next time Rafael comes in tell him to bring me up some more grub and baled hay, and I’m fixed. And say, when you write to the boss you can tell her I’ve traded my gun for an axe!”

As Hardy turned back towards home he swung in a great circle and rode down the dry bed of the Alamo, where water-worn bowlders and ricks of mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, moving the very rocks in its bed until they ground together! But now the sand lay dry and powdery, the willows and water-moodies were dead to the roots, and even the ancient cottonwoods from which it derived its name were dying inch by inch. A hundred years they had stood there, defying storm and cloudburst, but at last the drought was sucking away their life. On the mesa the waxy greasewood was still verdant, the gorged sahuaros stood like great tanks, skin-tight with bitter juice, and all the desert trees were tipped with green; but the children of the river were dying for a drink.

A string of cattle coming in from The Rolls stopped and stared at the solitary horseman, head up against the sky; then as he rode on they fell in behind him, travelling the deep-worn trail that led to Hidden Water. At the cleft-gate of the pass, still following the hard-stamped trail, Hardy turned aside from his course and entered, curious to see his garden again before it succumbed to the drought. There before him stood the sycamores, as green and flourishing as ever; the eagle soared out from his cliff; the bees zooned in their caves; and beyond the massive dyke that barred the way the tops of the elders waved the last of their creamy blossoms. In the deep pool the fish still darted about, and the waterfall that fed it was not diminished. The tinkle of its music seemed even louder, and as Hardy looked below he saw that a little stream led way from the pool, flowing in the trench where the cattle came to drink. It was a miracle, springing from the bosom of the earth from whence the waters come. When all the world outside lay dead and bare, Hidden Water flowed more freely, and its garden lived on untouched.

Never had Hardy seen it more peaceful, and as he climbed the Indian steps and stood beneath the elder, where Chupa Rosa had built her tiny nest his heart leapt suddenly as he remembered Lucy. Here they had sat together in the first gladness of her coming, reading his forgotten verse and watching the eagle’s flight; only for that one time, and then the fight with the sheep had separated them. He reached up and plucked a spray of elder blossoms to send her for a keep-sake–and then like a blow he remembered the forget-me-not! From that same garden he had fetched her a forget-me-not for repentance, and then forgotten her for Kitty. Who but Lucy could have left the little book of poems, or treasured a flower so long to give it back at parting? And yet in his madness he had forgotten her!

He searched wistfully among the rocks for another forget-me-not, but the hot breath of the drought had killed them. As he climbed slowly down the stone steps he mused upon some poem to take the place of the flowers that were dead, but the spirit of the drought was everywhere. The very rocks themselves, burnt black by centuries of sun, were painted with Indian prayers for rain. A thousand times he had seen the sign, hammered into the blasted rocks–the helix, that mystic symbol of the ancients, a circle, ever widening, never ending,–and wondered at the fate of the vanished people who had prayed to the Sun for rain.

The fragments of their sacrificial ollas lay strewn among the bowlders, but the worshippers were dead; and now a stranger prayed to his own God for rain. As he sat at his desk that night writing to Lucy about the drought, the memory of those Indian signs came upon him suddenly and, seizing a fresh sheet of paper, he began to write. At the second stanza he paused, planned out his rhymes and hurried on again, but just as his poem seemed finished, he halted at the last line. Wrestle as he would he could not finish it–the rhymes were against him–it would not come right. Ah, that is what sets the artist apart from all the under-world of dreamers–his genius endures to the end; but the near-poet struggles like a bee limed in his own honey. What a confession of failure it was to send away–a poem unfinished, or finished wrong! And yet–the unfinished poem was like him. How often in the past had he left things unsaid, or said them wrong. Perhaps Lucy would understand the better and prize it for its faults. At last, just as it was, he sent it off, and so it came to her hand.

A PRAYER FOR RAIN

Upon this blasted rock, O Sun, behold

Our humble prayer for rain–and here below
A tribute from the thirsty stream, that rolled

Bank-full in flood, but now is sunk so low
Our old men, tottering, yet may stride acrost
And babes run pattering where the wild waves tossed.