Hidden Water

The grass is dead upon the stem, O Sun!

The lizards pant with heat–they starve for flies–
And they for grass–and grass for rain! Yea, none

Of all that breathe may face these brazen skies
And live, O Sun, without the touch of rain.
Behold, thy children lift their hands–in vain!

Drink up the water from this olla’s brim

And take the precious corn here set beside–
Then summon thy dark clouds, and from the rim

Of thy black shield strike him who hath defied
Thy power! Appease thy wrath, Great Sun–but give
Ah, give the touch of rain to those that live!

As it had been a thousand years before, so it was that day at Hidden Water. The earth was dead, it gave forth nothing; the sky was clean and hard, without a cloud to soften its asperity. Another month and the cattle would die; two months and the water would fail; then in the last agonies of starvation and thirst the dissolution would come–the Four Peaks would be a desert. Old Don Pablo was right, the world was drying up. Chihuahua and Sonora were parched; all Arizona lay stricken with the drought; in California the cattle were dying on the ranges, and in Texas and New Mexico the same. God, what a thing–to see the great earth that had supported its children for ages slowly dying for water, its deserts first, and then its rivers, and then the pine-topped mountains that gave the rivers birth! Yet what was there for a man to do but take care of his own and wait? The rest was in the hands of God.

On the first morning that Hardy took his axe and went down to the river he found a single bunch of gaunted cattle standing in the shade of the big mesquites that grew against Lookout Point–a runty cow with her two-year-old and yearling, and a wobbly calf with a cactus joint stuck across his nose. His mother’s face showed that she, too, had been among the chollas; there was cactus in her knees and long spines bristling from her jaws, but she could stand it, while it was a matter of life and death to the calf. Every time he came near his mother she backed away, and whenever he began to nudge for milk she kicked out wildly. So Hardy roped him and twitched the joint away with a stick; then he pulled out the thorns one by one and went about his work.

Selecting a fine-leaved palo verde that grew against the point, he cleared a way into its trunk and felled it down the hill. He cut a second and a third, and when he looked back he saw that his labor was appreciated; the runty cow was biting eagerly at the first tree-top, and the wobbly calf was restored to his own. As the sound of the axe continued, a band of tame cattle came stringing down the sandy riverbed, and before the morning was over there were ten or twenty derelicts and water-bums feeding along the hillside. In the afternoon he cut more trees along the trail to Hidden Water, and the next day when he went to work he found a little band of weaklings there, lingering expectantly in the shadow of the cañon wall. As the days went by more and more of them gathered about the water, the lame, the sick, the crippled, the discouraged, waiting for more trees to be felled. Then as the feed on the distant ridges grew thinner and the number of cut trees increased, a great band of them hung about the vicinity of the ranch house constantly–the herds from Hidden Water and the river, merged into one–waiting to follow him to the hills.

For a mile up and down the cañon of the Alamo, the palo verde stumps dotted the hillside, each with its top below it, stripped to the bark and bared of every twig. As the breathless heat of July came on, Hardy was up before dawn, hewing and felling, and each day the long line of cattle grew. They trampled at his heels like an army, gaunt, emaciated; mothers mooing for their calves that lay dead along the gulches; mountain bulls and outlaws, tamed by gnawing hunger and weakness, and the awful stroke of the heat. And every day other bands of outlaws, driven at last from their native hills, drifted in to swell the herd. For a month Hardy had not seen a human face, nor had he spoken to any living creature except Chapuli or some poor cow that lay dying by the water. When he was not cutting trees on the farther ridges, he was riding along the river, helping up those that had fallen or dragging away the dead.

Worn and foot-sore, with their noses stuck full of cactus joints, their tongues swollen from the envenomed thorns, their stomachs afire from thirst and the burden of bitter stalks, the wild cattle from the ridges would stagger down to the river and drink until their flanks bulged out and their bellies hung heavy with water. Then, overcome with fatigue and heat, they would sink down in the shade and lie dreaming; their limbs would stiffen and cramp beneath them until they could not move; and there they would lie helpless, writhing their scrawny necks as they struggled to get their feet under them. To these every day came Hardy with his rawhide reata. Those that he could not scare up he pulled up; if any had died he dragged the bodies away from the water; and as soon as the recent arrivals had drunk he turned them away, starting them on their long journey to the high ridges where the sheep had not taken the browse.

Ah, those sheep! How many times in the fever of heat and work and weariness had Hardy cursed them, his tongue seeking unbidden the wickedest words of the range; how many times had he cursed Jim Swope, and Jasper Swope, the Mexicans, and all who had rushed in to help accomplish their ruin. And as the sun beat down and no clouds came into the sky he cursed himself, blindly, for all that had come to pass. One man–only one–at the mouth of Hell’s Hip Pocket, and the sheep might have been turned back; but he himself had seen the dust-cloud and let it pass–and for that the cattle died. The sheep were far away, feeding peacefully in mountain valleys where the pines roared in the wind and the nights were cool and pleasant; but if the rain came and young grass sprang up on Bronco Mesa they would come again, and take it in spite of them. Yes, even if the drought was broken and the cattle won back their strength, that great army would come down from the north once more and sheep them down to the rocks! But one thing Hardy promised himself–forgetting that it was the bootless oath of old Bill Johnson, who was crazy now and hiding in the hills–he would kill the first sheep that set foot on Bronco Mesa, and the next, as long as he could shoot; and Jasp Swope might answer as he would.

Yet, why think of sheep and schemes of belated vengeance?–the grass was gone; the browse was cleaned; even the palo verde trees were growing scarce. Day by day he must tramp farther and farther along the ridge, and all that patient, trusting army behind, waiting for him to find more trees! Already the weakest were left behind and stood along the trails, eying him mournfully; yet work as he would he could not feed the rest. There was no fine-drawn distinction now–every palo verde on the hillside fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved and short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all. Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the armored sahuaros. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of fuzzy chollas, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate them died in agony.

Once more Hardy took his ax and went out in search of palo verdes, high or low, young or old. There was a gnarled trunk, curling up against a rocky butte and protected by two spiny sahuaros that stood before it like armed guards, and he climbed up the rock to reach it. Chopping away the first sahuaro he paused to watch it fall. As it broke open like a giant melon on the jagged rocks below, the cattle crowded about it eagerly, sniffing at the shattered parts–and then the hardiest of them began suddenly to eat!

On the outside the wiry spines stood in rows like two-inch knife blades; but now the juicy heart, laid open by the fall, was exposed, and the cattle munched it greedily. A sudden hope came to Hardy as he watched them feed, and, climbing higher, he felled two more of the desert giants, dropping them from their foothold against the butte far down into the rocky cañon. As they struck and burst, and the sickly aroma filled the air, the starved cattle, bitten with a new appetite, rushed forward in hordes to eat out their bitter hearts. At last, when the battle had seemed all but over, he had found a new food,–one that even Pablo Moreno had overlooked,–each plant a ton of bitter pulp and juice. The coarse and wiry spines, whose edges would turn an axe, were conquered in a moment by the fall from the precipitous cliffs. And the mesa was covered with them, like a forest of towering pin-cushions, as far as the eye could see! A great gladness came over Hardy as he saw the starved cattle eat, and as soon as he had felled a score or more he galloped up to Carrizo to tell the news to Jeff.

The mesa was deserted of every living creature. There was not a snake track in the dust or a raven in the sky, but as he topped the brow of the hill and looked down into the cañon, Hardy saw a great herd of cattle, and Creede in the midst of them still hacking away at the thorny palo verdes. At the clatter of hoofs, the big man looked up from his work, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow, and his face was hard and drawn from working beyond his strength.

“Hello!” he called. “How’s things down your way–water holdin’ out? Well, you’re in luck, then; I’ve had to dig the spring out twice, and you can see how many cows I’m feedin’. But say,” he continued, “d’ye think it’s as hot as this down in hell? Well, if I thought for a minute it’d be as dry I’d take a big drink and join the church, you can bet money on that. What’s the matter–have you got enough?”

“I’ve got enough of cutting palo verdes,” replied Hardy, “but you just lend me that axe for a minute and I’ll show you something.” He stepped to the nearest sahuaro and with a few strokes felled it down the hill, and when Creede saw how the cattle crowded around the broken trunk he threw down his hat and swore.

“Well–damn–me,” he said, “for a pin-head! Here I’ve been cuttin’ these ornery palo verdes until my hands are like a Gila monster’s back, and now look at them cows eat giant cactus! There’s no use talkin’, Rufe, the feller that wears the number five hat and the number forty jumper ain’t worth hell-room when you’re around–here, gimme that axe!” He seized it in his thorn-scarred hands and whirled into the surrounding giants like a fury; then when he had a dozen fat sahuaros laid open among the rocks he came back and sat down panting in the scanty shade of an ironwood.

“I’m sore on myself,” he said. “But that’s the way it is! If I’d had the brains of a rabbit I’d’ve stopped Jasp Swope last Spring–then I wouldn’t need to be cuttin’ brush here all Summer like a Mexican wood-chopper. That’s where we fell down–lettin’ them sheep in–and now we’ve got to sweat for it. But lemme tell you, boy,” he cried, raising a mighty fist, “if I can keep jest one cow alive until Fall I’m goin’ to meet Mr. Swope on the edge of my range and shoot ’im full of holes! Nothin’ else will do, somebody has got to be killed before this monkey business will stop! I’ve been makin’ faces and skinnin’ my teeth at that dastard long enough now, and I’m goin’ to make him fight if I have to put high-life on ’im!”

He stopped and looked out over the hillside where the heat quivered in rainbows from the rocks, and the naked palo verdes, stripped of their bark, bleached like skeletons beside their jagged stumps.

“Say, Rufe,” he began, abruptly, “I’m goin’ crazy.”

He shook his head slowly and sighed. “I always thought I was,” he continued, “but old Bill Johnson blew in on me the other day–he’s crazy, you know–and when I see him I knowed it! W’y, pardner, Bill is the most reas-on-able son-of-a-gun you can imagine. You can talk to him by the hour, and outside of bein’ a little techy he’s all right; but the minute you mention sheep to him his eye turns glassy and he’s off. Well, that’s me, too, and has been for years, only not quite so bad; but then, Bill is plumb sheeped out and I ain’t–quite!”

He laughed mirthlessly and filled a cigarette.

“You know,” he said, squinting his eyes down shrewdly, “that old feller ain’t so durned crazy yet. He wanted some ammunition to shoot up sheep-camps with, but bein’ a little touched, as you might say, he thought I might hold out on ’im, so he goes at me like this: ‘Jeff,’ he says, ‘I’ve took to huntin’ lions for the bounty now–me and the hounds–and I want to git some thirty-thirtys.’ But after I’d give him all I could spare he goes on to explain how the sheep, not satisfied with eatin’ ’im out of house and home, had gone and tolled all the lions away after ’em–so, of course, he’ll have to foller along, too. You catch that, I reckon.”

Creede drooped his eyes significantly and smoked.

“If it hadn’t been for old Bill Johnson,” he said, “we wouldn’t have a live cow on our range to-day, we’d’ve been sheeped down that close. When he’d got his ammunition and all the bacon and coffee I could spare he sat down and told me how he worked it to move all them sheep last Spring. After he’d made his first big play and see he couldn’t save the Pocket he went after them sheepmen systematically for his revenge. That thirty-thirty of his will shoot nigh onto two miles if you hold it right, and every time he sees a sheep-camp smoke he Injuned up onto some high peak and took pot-shots at it. At the distance he was you couldn’t hear the report–and, of course, you couldn’t see smokeless powder. He says the way them Mexican herders took to the rocks was a caution; and when the fireworks was over they didn’t wait for orders, jest rounded up their sheep and hiked!

“And I tell you, pardner,” said the big cowman impressively, “after thinkin’ this matter over in the hot sun I’ve jest about decided to go crazy myself. Yes, sir, the next time I hear a sheep-blat on Bronco Mesa I’m goin’ to tear my shirt gittin’ to the high ground with a thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell ’em that your pore friend’s mind was deranged by cuttin’ too many palo verdes.” He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ever sent the rain.

On the day after the visit to Carrizo a change came over the sky; a haze that softened the edges of the hills rose up along the horizon, and the dry wind died away. As Hardy climbed along the rocky bluffs felling the giant sahuaros down into the ravines for his cattle, the sweat poured from his face in a stream. A sultry heaviness hung over the land, and at night as he lay beneath the ramada he saw the lightning, hundreds of miles away, twinkling and playing along the northern horizon. It was a sign–the promise of summer rain!

In the morning a soft wind came stealing in from the west; a white cloud came up out of nothing and hovered against the breast of the Peaks; and the summer heat grew terrible. At noon the cloud turned black and mounted up, its fluffy summit gleaming in the light of the ardent sun; the wind whirled across the barren mesa, sweeping great clouds of dust before it, and the air grew damp and cool; then, as evening came on the clouds vanished suddenly and the wind died down to a calm. For a week the spectacle was repeated–then, at last, as if weary, the storm-wind refused to blow; the thunder-caps no longer piled up against the Peaks; only the haze endured, and the silent, suffocating heat.

Day after day dragged by, and without thought or hope Hardy plodded on, felling sahuaros into the cañons, his brain whirling in the fever of the great heat. Then one day as the sun rose higher a gigantic mass of thunder-clouds leapt up in the north, covering half the sky. The next morning they rose again, brilliant, metallic, radiating heat like a cone of fire. The heavens were crowned with sudden splendor, the gorgeous pageantry of summer clouds that rise rank upon rank, basking like newborn cherubim in the glorious light of the sun, climbing higher and higher until they reached the zenith.

A moist breeze sprang up and rushed into the storm’s black heart, feeding it with vapors from the Gulf; then in the south, the home of the rain, another great cloud arose, piling in fluffy billows against the grim cliffs of the Superstitions and riding against the flying cohorts that reared their snowy heads in the north. The wind fell and all nature lay hushed and expectant, waiting for the rain. The cattle would not feed; the bearded ravens sat voiceless against the cliffs; the gaunt trees and shrubs seemed to hold up their arms–for the rain that did not come. For after all its pomp and mummery, its black mantle that covered all the sky and the bravery of its trailing skirts, the Storm, that rode in upon the wind like a king, slunk away at last like a beaten craven. Its black front melted suddenly, and its draggled banners, trailing across the western sky, vanished utterly in the kindling fires of sunset.

As he lay beneath the starlit sky that night, Hardy saw a vision of the end, as it would come. He saw the cañons stripped clean of their high-standing sahuaros, the spring at Carrizo dry, the river stinking with the bodies of the dead–even Hidden Water quenched at last by the drought. Then a heavy sleep came upon him as he lay sprawling in the pitiless heat and he dreamed–dreamed of gaunt steers and lowing cows, and skeletons, strewn along the washes; of labor, never ending, and sweat, dripping from his face. He woke suddenly with the horror still upon him and gazed up at the sky, searching vainly for the stars. The night was close and black, there was a stir among the dead leaves as if a snake writhed past, and the wind breathed mysteriously through the bare trees; then a confused drumming came to his ears, something warm and wet splashed against his face, and into his outstretched hand God sent a drop of rain.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FLOOD

The rain came to Hidden Water in great drops, warmed by the sultry air. At the first flurry the dust rose up like smoke, and the earth hissed; then as the storm burst in tropic fury the ground was struck flat, the dust-holes caught the rush of water and held it in sudden puddles that merged into pools and rivulets and glided swiftly away. Like a famine-stricken creature, the parched earth could not drink; its bone-dry dust set like cement beneath the too generous flood and refused to take it in–and still the rain came down in sluicing torrents that never stayed or slackened. The cracked dirt of the ramada roof dissolved and fell away, and the stick frame leaked like a sieve. The rain wind, howling and rumbling through the framework, hurled the water to the very door where Hardy stood, and as it touched his face, a wild, animal exultation overcame him and he dashed out into the midst of it. God, it was good to feel the splash of rain again, to lean against the wind, and to smell the wet and mud! He wandered about through it recklessly, now bringing in his saddle and bedding, now going out to talk with his horse, at last simply standing with his hands outstretched while his whole being gloried in the storm.

As the night wore on and the swash of water became constant, Hardy lay in his blankets listening to the infinite harmonies that lurk in the echoes of rain, listening and laughing when, out of the rumble of the storm, there rose the deeper thunder of running waters. Already the rocky slides were shedding the downpour; the draws and gulches were leading it into the creek. But above their gurgling murmur there came a hoarser roar that shook the ground, reverberating through the damp air like the diapason of some mighty storm-piece. At daybreak he hurried up the cañon to find its source, plunging along through the rain until, on the edge of the bluff that looked out up the Alamo, he halted, astounded at the spectacle. From its cleft gate Hidden Water, once so quiet and peaceful, was now vomiting forth mud, rocks, and foaming waters in one mad torrent; it overleapt the creek, piling up its debris in a solid dam that stretched from bank to bank, while from its lower side a great sluiceway of yellow water spilled down into the broad bed of the Alamo.

Above the dam, where the cañon boxed in between perpendicular walls, there lay a great lagoon, a lake that rose minute by minute as if seeking to override its dam, yet held back by the torrent of sand and water that Hidden Water threw across its path. For an hour they fought each other, the Alamo striving vainly to claim its ancient bed, Hidden Water piling higher its hurtling barrier; then a louder roar reverberated through the valley and a great wall of dancing water swept down the cañon and surged into the placid lake. On its breast it bore brush and sticks, and trees that waved their trunks in the air like the arms of some devouring monster as they swooped down upon the dam. At last the belated waters from above had come, the outpourings of a hundred mountain creeks that had belched forth into the Alamo like summer cloudbursts. The forefront of the mighty storm-crest lapped over the presumptuous barrier in one hissing, high-flung waterfall; then with a final roar the dam went out and, as the bowlders groaned and rumbled beneath the flood, the Alamo overleapt them and thundered on.

A sudden sea of yellow water spread out over the lower valley, trees bent and crashed beneath the weight of drift, the pasture fence ducked under and was gone. Still irked by its narrow bed the Alamo swung away from the rock-bound bench where the ranch house stood and, uprooting everything before it, ploughed a new channel to the river. As it swirled past, Hardy beheld a tangled wreckage of cottonwoods and sycamores, their tops killed by the drought, hurried away on this overplus of waters; the bare limbs of palo verdes, felled by his own axe; and sun-dried skeletons of cattle, light as cork, dancing and bobbing as they drifted past the ranch.

The drought was broken, and as the rain poured down it washed away all token of the past. Henceforward there would be no sign to move the uneasy spirit; no ghastly relic, hinting that God had once forgotten them; only the water-scarred gulches and cañons, and the ricks of driftwood, piled high along the valleys in memory of the flood. All day the rain sluiced down, and the Alamo went wild in its might, throwing a huge dam across the broad bed of the river itself. But when at last in the dead of night the storm-crest of the Salagua burst forth, raging from its long jostling against chasm walls, a boom like a thunder of cannon echoed from all the high cliffs by Hidden Water; and the warring waters, bellowing and tumbling in their titanic fury, joined together in a long, mad race to the sea.

So ended the great flood; and in the morning the sun rose up clean and smiling, making a diamond of every dew-drop. Then once more the cattle gathered about the house, waiting to be fed, and Hardy went out as before to cut sahuaros. On the second day the creek went down and the cattle from the other bank came across, lowing for their share. But on the third day, when the sprouts began to show on the twining stick-cactus, the great herd that had dogged his steps for months left the bitter sahuaros and scattered across the mesa like children on a picnic, nipping eagerly at every shoot.

In a week the flowers were up and every bush was radiant with new growth. The grass crept out in level places, and the flats in the valley turned green, but the broad expanse of Bronco Mesa still lay half-barren from paucity of seeds. Where the earth had been torn up and trampled by the sheep the flood had seized upon both soil and seed and carried them away, leaving nothing but gravel and broken rocks; the sheep-trails had turned to trenches, the washes to gulches, the gulches to ravines; the whole mesa was criss-crossed with tiny gullies where the water had hurried away–but every tree and bush was in its glory, clothed from top to bottom in flaunting green. Within a week the cattle were back on their old ranges, all that were left from famine and drought. Some there were that died in the midst of plenty, too weak to regain their strength; others fell sick from overeating and lost their hard-earned lives; mothers remembered calves that were lost and bellowed mournfully among the hills. But as rain followed rain and the grass matured a great peace settled down upon the land; the cows grew round-bellied and sleepy-eyed, the bulls began to roar along the ridges, and the Four Peaks cattlemen rode forth from their mountain valleys to see how their neighbors had fared.

They were a hard-looking bunch of men when they gathered at the Dos S Ranch to plan for the fall rodéo. Heat and the long drought had lined their faces deep, their hands were worn and crabbed from months of cutting brush, and upon them all was the sense of bitter defeat. There would be no branding in the pens that Fall–the spring calves were all dead; nor was there any use in gathering beef steers that were sure to run short weight; there was nothing to do, in fact, but count up their losses and organize against the sheep. It had been a hard Summer, but it had taught them that they must stand together or they were lost. There was no one now who talked of waiting for Forest Reserves, or of diplomacy and peace–every man was for war, and war from the jump–and Jefferson Creede took the lead.

“Fellers,” he said, after each man had had his say, “there’s only one way to stop them sheep, and that is to stop the first band. Never mind the man–dam’ a herder, you can buy one for twenty dollars a month–git the sheep! Now suppose we stompede the first bunch that comes on our range and scatter ’em to hell–that’s fif-teen thousand dol-lars gone! God A’mighty, boys, think of losin’ that much real money when you’re on the make like Jim Swope! W’y, Jim would go crazy, he’d throw a fit–and, more than that, fellers,” he added, sinking his voice to a confidential whisper, “he’d go round.

“Well, now, what ye goin’ to do?” he continued, a crafty gleam coming into his eye. “Are we goin’ to foller some cow’s tail around until they jump us again? Are we goin’ to leave Rufe here, to patrol a hundred miles of range lone-handed? Not on your life–not me! We’re goin’ to ride this range by day’s works, fellers, and the first bunch of sheep we find we’re goin’ to scatter ’em like shootin’ stars–and if any man sees Jasp Swope I’ll jest ask him to let me know. Is it a go? All right–and I’ll tell you how we’ll do.

“There’s only three places that the sheep can get in on us: along the Alamo, over the Juate, or around between the Peaks. Well, the whole caboodle of us will camp up on the Alamo somewhere, and we’ll jest naturally ride them three ridges night and day. I’m goin’ to ask one of you fellers to ride away up north and foller them sheepmen down, so they can’t come a circumbendibus on us again. I’m goin’ to give ’em fair warnin’ to keep off of our upper range, and then the first wool-pullin’ sheep-herder that sneaks in on Bronco Mesa is goin’ to git the scare of his life–and the coyotes is goin’ to git his sheep.

“That’s the only way to stop ’em! W’y, Jim Swope would run sheep on his mother’s grave if it wasn’t for the five dollars fine. All right, then, we’ll jest fine Mr. Swope fifteen thousand dollars for comin’ in on our range, and see if he won’t go around. There’s only one thing that I ask of you fellers–when the time comes, for God’s sake stick together!”