Hidden Water

He paused to enter another weight in his book, then stepped away from the scales and came out to meet them.

“How’s the feed up your way?” he inquired, smiling grimly.

“Dam’ pore,” replied Creede, carrying on the jest, “and it’ll be poorer still if you come in on me, so keep away. Mr. Swope, I’ll make you acquainted with Mr. Hardy–my new boss. Judge Ware has sent him out to be superintendent for the Dos S.”

“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Swope, offering a greasy hand that smelled of sheep dip. “Nice man, the old judge–here, umbre, put that bag on straight! Three hundred and fifteen? Well I know a dam’ sight better–excuse me, boys–here, put that bag on again, and weigh it right!”

“Well,” observed Creede, glancing at his friend as the combat raged unremittingly, “I guess we might as well pull. His busy day, you understand. Nice feller, though–you’ll like ’im.” Once more the glint of quiet deviltry came into his eyes, but he finished out the jest soberly. “Comes from a nice Mormon family down in Moroni–six brothers–all sheepmen. You’ll see the rest of the boys when they come through next month–but Jim’s the best.”

There was something in the sardonic smile that accompanied this encomium which set Hardy thinking. Creede must have been thinking too, for he rode past the kitchen without stopping, cocking his head up at the sun as if estimating the length of their journey.

“Oh, did you want to git somethin’ to eat?” he inquired innocently. “No? That’s good. That sheep smell kinder turns my stomach.” And throwing the spurs into Bat Wings he loped rapidly toward the summit, scowling forbiddingly in passing at a small boy who was shepherding the stray herd. For a mile or two he said nothing, swinging his head to scan the sides of the mountains with eyes as keen as an eagle’s; then, on the top of the last roll, he halted and threw his hand out grandly at the panorama which lay before them.

“There she lays,” he said, as if delivering a funeral oration, “as good a cow country as God ever made–and now even the jack rabbits have left it. D’ye see that big mesa down there?” he continued, pointing to a broad stretch of level land, dotted here and there with giant cactus, which extended along the river. “I’ve seen a thousand head of cattle, fat as butter, feedin’ where you see them sahuaros, and now look at it!”

He threw out his hand again in passionate appeal, and Hardy saw that the mesa was empty.

“There was grass a foot high,” cried Creede in a hushed, sustained voice, as if he saw it again, “and flowers. Me and my brothers and sisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, big yaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies–and ferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget ’em–but I’ve been fightin’ these sheep so long and gittin’ so mean and ugly them flowers wouldn’t mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and stink squashes. But hell, what’s the use?” He threw out his hands once more, palms up, and dropped them limply.

“That’s old Pablo Moreno’s place down there,” he said, falling back abruptly into his old way. “We’ll stop there overnight–I want to help git that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we’ll go up by trail in the mornin’.”

Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the naked hills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy, quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once the grama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle of Jeff Creede’s father had stood knee-high in flowers.

Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desert lay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, and the sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there was no government; anybody’s land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, to hog for and fight over forever–and no law of right; only this, that the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will in the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, a word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand; and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious–a verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother’s knee many years before:

“Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace.”

But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.

CHAPTER IV

DON PABLO MORENO

On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the casa of Don Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the thorny cactus which the Mexicans call ocotilla. Within this fence, which inclosed several acres of standing grain and the miniature of a garden, there were all the signs of prosperity–a new wagon under its proper shade, a storehouse strongly built where chickens lingered about for grain, a clean-swept ramada casting a deep shadow across the open doorway; but outside the inclosure the ground was stamped as level as a threshing floor. As Creede and Hardy drew near, an old man, grave and dignified, came out from the shady veranda and opened the gate, bowing with the most courtly hospitality.

“Buenos tardes, señores,” he pronounced, touching his hat in a military salute. “Pasa! Welcome to my poor house.”

In response to these salutations Creede made the conventional replies, and then as the old man stood expectant he said in a hurried aside to Hardy:

“D’ye talk Spanish? He don’t understand a word of English.”

“Sure,” returned Hardy. “I was brought up on it!”

“No!” exclaimed Creede incredulously, and then, addressing the Señor Moreno in his native tongue, he said: “Don Pablo, this is my friend Señor Hardy, who will live with me at Agua Escondida!”

“With great pleasure, señor,” said the old gentleman, removing his hat, “I make your acquaintance!”

“The pleasure is mine,” replied Hardy, returning the salutation, and at the sound of his own language Don Pablo burst into renewed protestations of delight. Within the cool shadow of his ramada he offered his own chair and seated himself in another, neatly fashioned of mesquite wood and strung with thongs of rawhide. Then, turning his venerable head to the doorway which led to the inner court, he shouted in a terrible voice:

“Muchacho!”

Instantly from behind the adobe wall, around the corner of which he had been slyly peeping, a black-eyed boy appeared and stood before him, his ragged straw hat held respectfully against his breast.

“Sus manos!” roared the old man; and dropping his hat the muchacho touched his hands before him in an attitude of prayer.

“Give the gentlemen a drink!” commanded Don Pablo severely, and after Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a porous olla, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the mozo brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the river–Bull Durham and brown paper. The señor offered these to his guest, while Creede grinned in anticipation of the outcome.

“What?” exclaimed the Señor Moreno, astounded. “You do not smoke? Ah, perhaps it is my poor tobacco! But wait, I have a cigarro which the storekeeper gave me when I–No? No smoke nothing? Ah, well, well–no smoke, no Mexicano, as the saying goes.” He regarded his guest doubtfully, with a shadow of disfavor. Then, rolling a cigarette, he remarked: “You have a very white skin, Señor Hardy; I think you have not been in Arizona very long.”

“Only a year,” replied Hardy modestly.

“Muchacho!” cried the señor. “Run and tell the señora to hasten the dinner. And where,” he inquired, with the shrewd glance of a country lawyer, “and where did you learn, then, this excellent Spanish which you speak?”

“At Old Camp Verde, to the north,” replied Hardy categorically, and at the name Creede looked up with sudden interest. “I lived there when I was a boy.”

“Indeed!” exclaimed Don Pablo, raising his eyebrows. “And were your parents with you?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Hardy, “my father was an officer at the post.”

“Ah, sí, sí, sí,” nodded the old man vigorously, “now I understand. Your father fought the Apaches and you played with the little Mexican boys, no? But now your skin is white–you have not lived long under our sun. When the Apaches were conquered your parents moved, of course–they are in San Francisco now, perhaps, or Nuevo York.”

“My father is living near San Francisco,” admitted Hardy, “but,” and his voice broke a little at the words, “my mother has been dead many years.”

“Ah, indeed,” exclaimed Don Pablo sympathetically, “I am very sorry. My own madre has been many years dead also. But what think you of our country? Is it not beautiful?”

“Yes, indeed,” responded Hardy honestly, “and you have a wonderful air here, very sweet and pure.”

“Seguro!” affirmed the old man, “seguro que sí! But alas,” he added sadly, “one cannot live on air alone. Ah, que malo, how bad these sheep are!”

He sighed, and regarded his guest sadly with eyes that were bloodshot from long searching of the hills for cattle.

“I remember the day when the first sheep came,” he said, in the manner of one who begins a set narration. “In the year of ’91 the rain came, more, more, more, until the earth was full and the excess made lagunas on the plain. That year the Salagua left all bounds and swept my fine fields of standing corn away, but we did not regret it beyond reason for the grass came up on the mesas high as a horse’s belly, and my cattle and those of my friend Don Luís, the good father of Jeff, here, spread out across the plains as far as the eye could see, and every cow raised her calf. But look! On the next year no rain came, and the river ran low, yet the plains were still yellow with last year’s grass. All would have been well now as before, with grass for all, when down from the north like grasshoppers came the borregos–baaa, baaa, baaa– thousands of them, and they were starving. Never had I seen bands of sheep before in Arizona, nor the father of Don Jeff, but some say they had come from California in ’77, when the drought visited there, and had increased in Yavapai and fed out all the north country until, when this second año seco came upon them, there was no grass left to eat. And now, amigo, I will tell you one thing, and you may believe it, for I am an old man and have dwelt here long: it is not God who sends the dry years, but the sheep!

“Mira! I have seen the mowing machine of the Americano cut the tall grass and leave all level–so the starved sheep of Yavapai swept across our mesa and left it bare. Yet was there feed for all, for our cattle took to the mountains and browsed higher on the bushes, above where the sheep could reach; and the sheep went past and spread out on the southern desert and were lost in it, it was so great.

“That was all, you will say–but no! In the Spring every ewe had her lamb, and many two, and they grew fat and strong, and when the grass became dry on the desert because the rains had failed again, they came back, seeking their northern range where the weather was cool, for a sheep cannot endure the heat. Then we who had let them pass in pity were requited after the way of the borregueros– we were sheeped out, down to the naked rocks, and the sheepmen went on, laughing insolently. Ay, que malo los borregueros, what devils they are; for hunger took the strength from our cows so that they could not suckle their calves, and in giving birth many mothers and their little ones died together. In that year we lost half our cows, Don Luís Creede and I, and those that lived became thin and rough, as they are to this day, from journeying to the high mountains for feed and back to the far river for water.

“Then the father of Jeff became very angry, so that he lost weight and his face became changed, and he took an oath that the first sheep or sheep-herder that crossed his range should be killed, and every one thereafter, as long as he should live. Ah, what a buen hombre was Don Luís–if we had one man like him to-day the sheep would yet go round–a big man, with a beard, and he had no fear, no not for a hundred men. And when in November the sheep came bleating back, for they had promised so to do as soon as the feed was green, Don Luís met them at the river, and he rode along its bank, night and day, promising all the same fate who should come across–and, umbre, the sheep went round!”

The old man slapped his leg and nodded his head solemnly. Then he looked across at Creede and his voice took on a great tenderness. “My friend has been dead these many years,” he said, “but he was a true man.”

As Don Pablo finished his story the Señora opened the door of the kitchen where the table was already set with boiled beans, meat stewed with peppers, and thin corn cakes–the conventional frijoles, carne con chili, and tortillas of the Mexicans–and some fried eggs in honor of the company. As the meal progressed the Señora maintained a discreet silence, patting out tortillas and listening politely to her husband’s stock of stories, for Don Pablo was lord in his own house. The big-eyed muchacho sat in the corner, watching the corn cakes cook on the top of the stove and battening on the successive rations which were handed out to him. There were stories, as they ate, of the old times, of the wars and revolutions of Sonora, wherein the Señor Moreno had taken too brave a part, as his wounds and exile showed; strange tales of wonders and miracles wrought by the Indian doctors of Altár; of sacred snakes with the sign of the cross blazoned in gold on their foreheads, worshipped by the Indians with offerings of milk and tender chickens; of primitive life on the haciendas of Sonora, where men served their masters for life and were rewarded at the end with a pension of beans and carne seco.

Then as the day waned they sat at peace in the ramada, Moreno and Creede smoking, and Hardy watching the play of colors as the sun touched the painted crags of the Bulldog and lighted up the square summit of Red Butte across the river, throwing mysterious shadows into the black gorge which split it from crown to base. Between that high cliff and the cleft red butte flowed the Salagua, squirming through its tortuous cañon, and beyond them lay Hidden Water, the unknown, whither a single man was sent to turn back the tide of sheep.

In the silence the tinkle of bells came softly from up the cañon and through the dusk Hardy saw a herd of goats, led by a long-horned ram, trailing slowly down from the mesa. They did not pause, either to rear up on their hind feet for browse or to snoop about the gate, but filed dutifully into their own corral and settled down for the night.

“Your goats are well trained, Don Pablo,” said Hardy, by way of conversation. “They come home of their own accord.”