Hidden Water

“Ah, no,” protested Moreno, rising from his chair. “It is not the goats but my goat dogs that are well trained. Come with me while I close the gate and I will show you my flock.”

The old gentleman walked leisurely down the trail to the corral, and at their approach Hardy saw two shaggy dogs of no breed suddenly detach themselves from the herd and spring defiantly forward.

“Quita se, quita se!” commanded Don Pablo, and at his voice they halted, still growling and baring their fangs at Hardy.

“Mira,” exclaimed the old man, “are they not bravo? Many times the borregueros have tried to steal my bucks to lead their timid sheep across the river, but Tira and Diente fight them like devils. One Summer for a week the chivas did not return, having wandered far up into the mountains, but in the end Tira and Diente fetched them safely home. See them now, lying down by the mother goat that suckled them; you would not believe it, but they think they are goats.”

He laughed craftily at the idea, and at Hardy’s eager questions.

“Seguro,” he said, “surely I will tell you about my goat dogs, for you Americans often think the Mexicans are tonto, having no good sense, because our ways are different. When I perceived that my cattle were doomed by reason of the sheep trail crossing the river here at my feet I bought me a she-goat with kids, and a ram from another flock. These I herded myself along the brow of the hill, and they soon learned to rear up against the bushes and feed upon the browse which the sheep could not reach. Thus I thought that I might in time conquer the sheep, fighting the devil with fire; but the coyotes lay in wait constantly to snatch the kids, and once when the river was high the borregueros of Jeem Swopa stole my buck to lead their sheep across.

“Then I remembered a trick of my own people in Sonora, and I took the blind pups of a dog, living far from here, and placed each of them with a she-goat having one newborn kid; and while the kid was sucking at one teat the mother could not help but let down milk for the puppy at the other, until at last when the dog smell had left him she adopted him for her own. Now as the pups grew up they went out on the hills with their goat mother, and when, they being grown, she would no longer suckle them, they stole milk from the other she-goats; and so they live to-day, on milk and what rabbits they can catch. But whenever they come to the house I beat them and drive them back–their nature is changed now, and they love only goats. Eight years ago I raised my first goat dogs, for many of them desert their mothers and become house dogs, and now I have over a hundred goats, which they lead out morning and night.”

The old man lashed fast the gate to the corral and turned back toward the house.

“Ah, yes,” he said musingly, “the Americanos say continually that we Mexicanos are foolish–but look at me! Here is my good home, the same as before. I have always plenty beans, plenty meat, plenty flour, plenty coffee. I welcome every one to my house, to eat and sleep–yet I have plenty left. I am muy contento, Señor Hardy–yes, I am always happy. But the Americanos? No! When the sheep come, they fight; when their cattle are gone, they move; fight, fight; move, move; all the time.” He sighed and gazed wearily at the barren hills.

“Señor Hardy,” he said at last, “you are young, yet you have seen the great world–perhaps you will understand. Jeff tells me you come to take charge of the Dos S Rancho, where the sheep come through by thousands, even as they did here when there was grass. I am an old man now; I have lived on this spot twenty-four years and seen much of the sheep; let me advise you.

“When the sheepmen come across the river do not fight, as Don Jeff does continually, but let them pass. They are many and the cowmen are few; they are rich and we are very poor; how then can a few men whip many, and those armed with the best? And look–if a sheepman is killed there is the law, you know, and lawyers–yes, and money!” He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, peeping ruefully through the fingers to symbolize prison bars.

“Is it not so?” he asked, and for the first time an Americano agreed with him.

“One thing more, then,” said Don Pablo, lowering his voice and glancing toward the house, where Creede was conversing with the Señora. “The papá of Don Jeff yonder was a good man, but he was a fighting Texano–and Jeff is of the same blood. Each year as the sheep come through I have fear for him, lest he should kill some saucy borreguero and be sent to prison; for he has angry fits, like his father, and there are many bad men among the sheep-herders,–escaped criminals from Old Mexico, ladrones, and creatures of low blood, fathered by evil Americanos and the nameless women of towns.

“In Sonora we would whip them from our door, but the sheepmen make much of their herders, calling them brothers and cuñados and what not, to make them stay, since the work is hard and dangerous. And to every one of them, whether herder or camp rustler, the owners give a rifle with ammunition, and a revolver to carry always. So they are drunk with valor. But our Jeff here has no fear of them, no, nor decent respect. He overrides them when the fit is on him, as if they were unfanged serpents–and so far he has escaped.”

The old man leaned closer, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, acting out his words dramatically.

“But some day–” he clasped his heart, closed his eyes, and seemed to lurch before a bullet. “No?” he inquired, softly. “Ah, well, then, you must watch over him, for he is a good man, doing many friendships, and his father was a buen hombre, too, in the days when we all were rich. So look after him–for an old man,” he added, and trudged wearily back to the house.

CHAPTER V

HIDDEN WATER

The trail to Hidden Water leads up the Salagua, alternately climbing the hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the river bottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box cañon, it swings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purling brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the Salagua is a Rio, broad and swift, with a current that clutches treacherously at a horse’s legs and roars over the brink of stony reefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad mill race, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they took their plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.

“Swim?” he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse into the water. “Keep your head upstream, then,” he said, “we’ll try it a whirl, anyhow.”

Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feeling their way among the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below them the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim, sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede looked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.

“How’s that for high?” he inquired, slapping his wet legs. “I tell you, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. I wouldn’t cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She’s away up since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you’ll hear her talk–snow’s meltin’ on the mountains. I wish to God she’d stay up!” he added fervently, as he poured the water out of his boots.

“Why?” asked Hardy innocently. “Won’t it interfere with your bringing in supplies?”

“Sure thing,” said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. “But when you’ve been up here a while,” he observed, “you’ll savvy a lot of things that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on its hind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f’r a month, we cowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don’t give a dam’ for supplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.

“Begin to see light, eh?” he queried, as he pushed on up the river. “Well, that’s the only thing in God’s world that wasn’t made to order for these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the country east and west without consultin’ nobody, not even Jim Swope, and the sheep move north and south.

“How’d you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand borregos and half of ’em with lambs, when the rio was on a bender? I’ve seen some of these sheepmen wadin’ around up to their chins for two weeks, tryin’ to float twenty-five hundred head across the river–and there wasn’t turkey buzzards enough in the country when they got through.

“Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined with carcasses two deep where they’d jest naturally crowded ’em into the river and let ’em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy. After they’d wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin’ they got tired and shoved ’em in, regardless. Well, if this warm weather holds we’ll be able to git our rodér good and started before the sheep come in. That’s one reason why I never was able to do much with these sheepmen,” he added. “They hit me right square in the middle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I’m too busy gatherin’ cattle to pay much attention to ’em. I did plan a little surprise party last year–but that was somethin’ special. But now you’re on the job, Rufe,” he continued reassuringly, “I’m goin’ to leave all sheep and sheepmen strictly alone–you can bank on that. Bein’ as we are goin’ to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never made a cent fightin’ ’em, that’s a cinch, and if you can appeal to their better natures, w’y, go to it! I’d help you if I could, but bein’ as I can’t I’ll git out of the road and give you a chanst.

“Now I’ll tell you how it’ll be,” he continued, turning in his saddle and hooking one leg over the horn, “the boys’ll come in for the rodér to-morrow or next day; we begin to gather on the first, and it takes us about a month. Well, we look for the sheep to come in on us at about the same time–first of April–and we ain’t been fooled yet. They’ll begin to stack up on the other side any time now, and as soon as the water goes down they’ll come across with a rush. And if they’re feelin’ good-natured they’ll spread out over The Rolls and drift north, but if they’re feelin’ bad they’ll sneak up onto Bronco Mesa and scatter the cattle forty ways for Sunday, and bust up my rodér and raise hell generally. We had a little trouble over that last year,” he added parenthetically.

“Well, I’ll turn over the house and the grub and the whole business to you this year and camp out with the boys under the mesquite–and then you can entertain them sheepmen and jolly ’em up no end. They won’t have a dam’ thing–horse feed, grub, tobacco, matches, nothin’! Never do have anythin’. I’d rather have a bunch of Apaches camped next to me–but if you want to be good to ’em there’s your chanst. Meanwhile, I’m only a cow-punch pullin’ off a round-up, and your name is Mr.–you’re the superintendent of the Dos S. Your job is to protect the upper range, and I begin to think you can do it.”

There was a tone of half-hearted enthusiasm about this talk which marked it for a prepared “spiel,” laboriously devised to speed the new superintendent upon his way; but, not being schooled in social deceit, Creede failed utterly in making it convincing.

“That’s good,” said Hardy, “but tell me–what has been your custom in the past? Haven’t you been in the habit of feeding them when they came in?”

“Feed ’em?” cried Creede, flaring up suddenly. “Did I feed ’em? Well, I should guess yes–I never turned one away hungry in my life. W’y, hell, man,” he exclaimed, his anger growing on him, “I slep’ in the same blanket with ’em–until I become lousy,” he added grimly.

“What!” exclaimed Hardy, aghast. “You don’t mean to say–”

“No,” interrupted Creede ironically, “I don’t mean to say anythin’–not from now on. But while we’re on the subject and to avoid any future misunderstandin’ I might just as well tell you right now that I can’t see nothin’ good in a sheepman–nothin’! I’m like my cat Tom when he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears and I see hell, damnation, and sudden death!”

He rose up, frowning, on his mighty horse and gazed at Hardy with eyes that burned deep with passion. “If every sheep and sheepman in Arizona should drop dead at this minute,” he said, “it would simply give me a laughin’ sensation. God damn ’em!” he added passionately, and it sounded like a prayer.

Half an hour later as they passed through the gloomy silence of the box cañon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters, he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and looked down upon Hidden Water his anger was forgotten.

“Well,” he remarked, throwing out a hand, “there’s home–how do you like it?”

Hardy paused and looked it over critically–a broad V-shaped valley half a mile in length, beginning at the mouth of a great dry wash and spreading out through trees and hummocks down to the river. A broken row of cottonwoods and sycamores stretched along the farther side, following the broad, twisting bed of the sand wash where the last flood had ripped its way to the Salagua; and on the opposite side, close up against the base of the cliff, a flash of white walls and the shadow of a ramada showed where man had built his puny dwelling high in order to escape its fury. At their feet lay the ranch pasture, a broad elbow of the valley rich with grass and mesquite trees and fenced in with barbed wire that ran from cliff to cliff. Beyond the eastern wall the ground was rough and broken, cut up by innumerable gulches and waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbidding crags of a black butte whose shoulders ran down to and confined the silvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was even rougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towered a mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedral spire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence–purple with the regal robes of distance.

“That’s Weaver’s Needle,” volunteered Creede, following his companion’s eyes. “Every lost mine for a hundred miles around here is located by sightin’ at that peak. The feller it’s named after was picked up by the Apaches while he was out lookin’ for the Lost Dutchman and there’s been a Jonah on the hidden-treasure business ever since, judgin’ by the results.

“D’ye see that big butte straight ahead? That’s Black Butte. She’s so rough that even the mountain sheep git sore-footed, so they say–we have to go up there on foot and drive our cattle down with rocks. Old Bill Johnson’s place is over the other side of that far butte; he’s got a fine rich valley over there–the sheep haven’t got in on him yet. You remember that old feller that was drunk down at Bender–well, that’s Bill. Calls his place Hell’s Hip Pocket; you wait till you try to git in there some day and you’ll know why.”

He paused and turned to the north.

“Might as well give you the lay of the land,” he said. “I’ll be too busy to talk for the next month. There’s the Four Peaks, northeast of us, and our cows run clean to the rocks. They’s more different brands in that forty miles than you saw in the whole Cherrycow country, I bet ye. I’ve got five myself on a couple hundred head that the old man left me–and everybody else the same way. You see, when the sheep come in down on the desert and around Moreno’s we kept pushin’ what was left of our cattle east and east until we struck the Peaks–and here we are, in a corner. The old judge has got nigh onto two thousand head, but they’s about twenty of us poor devils livin’ up here in the rocks that has got enough irons and ear marks to fill a brand book, and not a thousand head among us.

“Well, I started out to show you the country, didn’t I? You see that bluff back of the house down there? That runs from here clean to the Four Peaks without a break, and then it swings west in a kind of an ox bow and makes that long ridge up there to the north that we called the Juate. All that high country between our house here and the Peaks–everythin’ east of that long bluff–is Bronco Mesa. That’s the upper range the judge asked me to point out to you. Everythin’ west of Bronco Mesa is The Rolls–all them rollin’ hills out there–and they’s feed enough out there to keep all the sheep in the country, twice over–but no water. Now what makes us cowmen hot is, after we’ve give ’em that country and welcome, the sheepmen’re all the time tryin’ to sneak in on our upper range. Our cows can’t hardly make a livin’ walkin’ ten or fifteen miles out on The Rolls every day, and then back again to water; but them dam’ sheep can go a week without drinkin’, and as much as a month in the winter-time.

“Why can’t they give us a chanst, then? We give ’em all the good level land and simply ask ’em as a favor to please keep off of the bench up there and leave our cows what little cactus and browse they is. But no–seems like as soon as you give one of them Chihuahua Mexicans a gun he wants to git a fight out of somebody, and so they come crowdin’ in across our dead line, just to see if they can’t git some of us goin’.”

Once more his eyes were burning, his breath came hard, and his voice became high and sustained. “Well, I give one of ’em all he wanted,” he said, “and more. I took his dam’ pistol away and beat him over the head with it–and I moved him, too. He was Jasper Swope’s pet, and I reckon he had his orders, but I noticed the rest went round.”

He stopped abruptly and sat silent, twisting his horse’s mane uneasily. Then he looked up, smiling curiously.

“If you hadn’t come up this year I would’ve killed some of them fellers,” he said quietly. “I’m gittin’ as crazy as old Bill Johnson–and he hears voices. But now lookee here, Rufe, you don’t want to believe a word I say about this trouble. Don’t you pay any attention to me; I’m bughouse, and I know it. Jest don’t mention sheep to me and I’ll be as happy as an Injun on a mescal jag. Come on, I’ll run you to the house!”

Throwing his weight forward he jumped his big horse down the rocky trail and went thundering across the flat, whooping and laughing and swinging under mesquite trees as if his whole heart was in the race. Catching the contagion Hardy’s sorrel dashed madly after him, and the moment they struck the open he went by like a shot, over-running the goal and dancing around the low adobe house like a circus horse.

“By Joe,” exclaimed Creede as he came up, “that caballo of yours can run some. I’m goin’ to make a little easy money off of Bill Lightfoot when he comes in. He’s been blowin’ about that gray of his for two years now and I’ll match you ag’inst him for a yearlin’. And don’t you forgit, boy, we’re going after that black stallion up on Bronco Mesa just as soon as the rodér is over.”

His face was all aglow with friendliness and enthusiasm now, but as they started toward the house, after turning their horses into the corral, he suddenly stopped short in the trail.