Hidden Water

“Gee,” he said, “I wonder what’s keepin’ Tom? Here Tom! Heere Tom! Pussy, pussy, pussy!” He listened, and called again. “I hope the coyotes ain’t caught him while I was gone,” he said at length. “They treed him a few times last year, but he just stayed up there and yelled until I came–spoiled his voice callin’ so long, but you bet he can purr, all right.”

He listened once more, long and anxiously, then his face lit up suddenly.

“Hear that?” he asked, motioning toward the bluff, and while Hardy was straining his ears a stunted black cat with a crook in his tail came into view, racing in wildly from the great pile of fallen bowlders that lay at the base of the cliff, and yowling in a hoarse, despairing voice, like a condemned kitten in a sack.

“Hello, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!” cried Creede, and as the cat stopped abruptly, blinking warily at Hardy, he strode forward and gathered it gently into his arms. “Well, you poor little devil,” he exclaimed, stroking its rough coat tenderly, “you’re all chawed up again! Did them dam’ coyotes try to git you while I was gone?” And with many profane words of endearment he hugged it against his breast, unashamed.

“There’s the gamiest cat in Arizona,” he said, bringing him over to Hardy with conscious pride. “Whoa, kitten, he won’t hurt you. Dogged if he won’t tackle a rattlesnake, and kill ’im, too. I used to be afraid to git out of bed at night without puttin’ on my boots, but if any old rattler crawls under my cot now it’s good-bye, Mr. Snake. Tommy is right there with the goods–and he ain’t been bit yet, neither. He killed three side-winders last Summer–didn’t you, Tom, Old Socks?–and if any sheep-herder’s dog comes snoopin’ around the back door he’ll mount him in a minute. If a man was as brave as he is, now, he’d–well, that’s the trouble–he wouldn’t last very long in this country. I used to wonder sometimes which’d go first–me or Tom. The sheepmen was after me, and their dogs was after Tom. But I’m afraid poor Tommy is elected; this is a dam’ bad country for cats.”

He set him down with a glance of admiring solicitude, such as a Spartan mother might have bestowed upon her fighting offspring, and kicked open the unlocked door.

The Dos S ranch house was a long, low structure of adobe bricks, divided in the middle by the open passageway which the Mexicans always affect to encourage any vagrant breeze. On one side of the corredor was a single large room, half storehouse, half bunk room, with a litter of pack saddles, rawhide kyacks and leather in one corner, a heap of baled hay, grain, and provisions in the other, and the rest strewn with the general wreckage of a camp–cooking utensils, Dutch ovens, canvas pack covers, worn-out saddles, and ropes. On the other side the rooms were more pretentious, one of them even having a board floor. First came the large living-room with a stone chimney and a raised hearth before the fireplace; whereon, each on its separate pile of ashes, reposed two Dutch ovens, a bean kettle, and a frying-pan, with a sawed-off shovel in the corner for scooping up coals. Opening into the living-room were two bedrooms, which, upon exploration, turned out to be marvellously fitted up, with high-headed beds, bureaus and whatnots, besides a solid oak desk.

To these explorations of Hardy’s Creede paid but slight attention, he being engaged in cooking a hurried meal and watching Tommy, who had a bad habit of leaping up on the table and stealing; but as Hardy paused by the desk in the front bedroom he looked up from mixing his bread and said:

“That’s your room, Rufe, so you can clean it up and move in. I generally sleep outdoors myself–and I ain’t got nothin’, nohow. Jest put them guns and traps into the other room, so I can find ’em. Aw, go ahead, you’ll need that desk to keep your papers in. You’ve got to write all the letters and keep the accounts, anyhow. It always did make my back ache to lean over that old desk, and I’m glad to git shent of it.

“Pretty swell rooms, ain’t they? Notice them lace curtains? The kangaroo rats have chawed the ends a little, but I tell you, when Susie and Sallie Winship was here this was the finest house for forty miles. That used to be Sallie’s room, where you are now. Many’s the time in the old days that I’ve rid up here to make eyes at Sallie, but the old lady wouldn’t stand for no sich foolishness. Old Winship married her back in St. Louie and brought her out here to slave around cookin’ for rodér hands, and she wanted her daughters to live different. Nope, she didn’t want no bow-legged cow-punch for a son-in-law, and I don’t blame her none, because this ain’t no place for a woman; but Sal was a mighty fine girl, all the same.”

He shook a little flour over his dough, brushed the cat off the table absently, and began pinching biscuits into the sizzling fat of the Dutch oven, which smoked over its bed of coals on the hearth. Then, hooking the red-hot cover off the fire, he slapped it on and piled a little row of coals along the upturned rim.

“Didn’t you never hear about the Winship girls?” he asked, stroking the cat with his floury hands. “No? Well, it was on account of them that the judge took over this ranch. Old man Winship was one of these old-time Indian-fightin’, poker-playin’ sports that come pretty nigh havin’ their own way about everythin’. He had a fine ranch up here–the old Dos S used to brand a thousand calves and more, every round-up; but when he got old he kinder speculated in mines and loaned money, and got in the hole generally, and about the time the sheep drifted in on him he hauled off and died. I pulled off a big rodér for ’em and they sold a lot of cattle tryin’ to patch things up the best they could, but jest as everythin’ was lovely the drouth struck ’em all in a heap, and when the Widde’ Winship got the estate settled up she didn’t have nothin’ much left but cows and good will. She couldn’t sell the cows–you never can, right after these dry spells–and as I said, she wouldn’t let the girls marry any of us cowmen to kinder be man for the outfit; so what does she do but run the ranch herself!

“Yes, sir–Susie and Sallie, that was as nice and eddicated girls as you ever see, they jest put on overalls and climbed their horses and worked them cattle themselves. Course they had rodér hands to do the dirty work in the corrals–brandin’ and ear-markin’ and the like–but for ridin’ the range and drivin’ they was as good as the best. Well, sir, you’d think every man in Arizona, when he heard what they was doin’, would do everythin’ in his power to help ’em along, even to runnin’ a Dos S on an orehanna once in a while instead of hoggin’ it himself; but they’s fellers in this world, I’m convinced, that would steal milk from a sick baby!”

The brawny foreman of the Dos S dropped the cat and threw out his hands impressively, and once more the wild glow crept back into his eyes.

“You remember that Jim Swope that I introduced you to down on the desert? Well, he’s a good sheepman, but he’s on the grab for money like a wolf. He’s got it, too–that’s the hell of it.”

Creede sighed, and threw a scrap of bacon to Tommy.

“He keeps a big store down at Moroni,” he continued, “and the widde’, not wantin’ to shove her cows onto a fallin’ market, runs up an account with him–somethin’ like a thousand dollars–givin’ her note for it, of course. It’s about four years ago, now, that she happened to be down in Moroni when court was in session, when she finds out by accident that this same Jim Swope, seein’ that cattle was about to go up, is goin’ to close her out. He’d ’a’ done it, too, like fallin’ off a log, if the old judge hadn’t happened to be in town lookin’ up some lawsuit. When he heard about it he was so durned mad he wrote out a check for a thousand dollars and give it to her; and then, when she told him all her troubles, he up and bought the whole ranch at her own price–it wasn’t much–and shipped her and the girls back to St. Louie.”

Creede brushed the dirt and flour off the table with a greasy rag and dumped the biscuits out of the oven.

“Well,” he said, “there’s where I lost my last chanst to git a girl. Come on and eat.”

CHAPTER VI

THE CROSSING

From lonely ranches along the Salagua and Verde, from the Sunflower and up the Alamo, from all the sheeped-out and desolate Four Peaks country the cowboys drifted in to Hidden Water for the round-up, driving their extra mounts before them. Beneath the brush ramada of the ranch house they threw off their canvas-covered beds and turned their pack horses out to roll, strapping bells and hobbles on the bad ones, and in a day the deserted valley of Agua Escondida became alive with great preparations. A posse of men on fresh mounts rode out on Bronco Mesa, following with unerring instinct the trail of the Dos S horses, balking their wild breaks for freedom and rushing them headlong into the fenced pasture across the creek. As the hired hands of the Dos S outfit caught up their mounts and endeavored to put the fear of God into their hearts, the mountain boys got out the keg of horseshoes and began to shoe–every man his own blacksmith.

It was rough work, all around, whether blinding and topping off the half-wild ponies or throwing them and tacking cold-wrought “cowboy” shoes to their flint-like feet, and more than one enthusiast came away limping or picking the loose skin from a bruised hand. Yet through it all the dominant note of dare-devil hilarity never failed. The solitude of the ranch, long endured, had left its ugly mark on all of them. They were starved for company and excitement; obsessed by strange ideas which they had evolved out of the tumuli of their past experience and clung to with dogged tenacity; warped with egotism; stubborn, boastful, or silent, as their humor took them, but now all eager to break the shell and mingle in the rush of life.

In this riot of individuals Jefferson Creede, the round-up boss, strode about like a king, untrammelled and unafraid. There was not a ridge or valley in all the Four Peaks country that he did not know, yet it was not for this that he was boss; there was not a virtue or weakness in all that crowd that he was not cognizant of, in the back of his scheming brain. The men that could rope, the men that could ride, the quitters, the blowhards, the rattleheads, the lazy, the crooked, the slow-witted–all were on his map of the country; and as, when he rode the ridges, he memorized each gulch and tree and odd rock, so about camp he tried out his puppets, one by one, to keep his map complete.

As they gathered about the fire that evening it was Bill Lightfoot who engaged his portentous interest. He listened to Bill’s boastful remarks critically, cocking his head to one side and smiling whenever he mentioned his horse.

“Yes, sir,” asserted Bill belligerently, “I mean it–that gray of mine can skin anything in the country, for a hundred yards or a mile. I’ve got money that says so!”

“Aw, bull!” exclaimed Creede scornfully.

“Bull, nothin’,” retorted Lightfoot hotly. “I bet ye–I bet ye a thousand dollars they ain’t a horse in Arizona that can keep out of my dust for a quarter!”

“Well, I know you ain’t got no thousand dollars–ner ten,” sneered Creede. “Why don’t you bet yearlings? If you’d blow some of that hot air through a tube it’d melt rocks, I reckon. But talk cow, man; we can all savvy that!”

“Well, where’s the horse that can beat me?” demanded Lightfoot, bristling.

“That little sorrel out in the pasture,” answered Creede laconically.

“I’ll bet ye!” blustered Lightfoot. “Aw, rats! He ain’t even broke yet!”

“He can run, all right. I’ll go you for a yearling heifer. Put up or shut up.”

And so the race was run. Early in the morning the whole rodéo outfit adjourned to the parada ground out by the pole corrals, the open spot where they work over the cattle. Hardy danced his sorrel up to the line where the gray was waiting, there was a scamper of feet, a streak of dust, and Bill Lightfoot was out one yearling heifer. A howling mob of cowboys pursued them from the scratch, racing each other to the finish, and then in a yell of laughter at Bill Lightfoot they capered up the cañon and spread out over The Rolls–the rodéo had begun.

As the shadow of the great red butte to the west, around which the wagon road toiled for so many weary miles, reached out and touched the valley, they came back in a body, hustling a bunch of cattle along before them. And such cattle! After his year with the Chiricahua outfit in that blessed eastern valley where no sheep as yet had ever strayed Hardy was startled by their appearance. Gaunt, rough, stunted, with sharp hips and hollow flanks and bellies swollen from eating the unprofitable browse of cactus and bitter shrubs, they nevertheless sprinted along on their wiry legs like mountain bucks; and a peculiar wild, haggard stare, stamped upon the faces of the old cows, showed its replica even in the twos and yearlings. Yet he forbore to ask Creede the question which arose involuntarily to his lips, for he knew the inevitable answer.

Day after day, as they hurriedly combed The Rolls for what few cattle remained on the lower range, the cowmen turned their eyes to the river and to the cañons and towering cliffs beyond, for the sheep; until at last as they sat by the evening fire Creede pointed silently to the lambent flame of a camp fire, glowing like a torch against the southern sky.

“There’s your friends, Rufe,” he said, and the cowmen glanced at Hardy inquiringly.

“I might as well tell you fellers,” Creede continued, “that one reason Rufe come up here was to see if he couldn’t do somethin’ with these sheepmen.”

He paused and looked at the circle of faces with a smile that was almost a sneer.

“You fellers wouldn’t back me up when it come to fightin’–none except Ben Reavis and the Clark boys–so I told the old judge we might as well lay down, and to send up some smooth hombre to try and jockey ’em a little. Well, Hardy’s the hombre; and bein’ as you fellers won’t fight, you might as well look pleasant about it. What’s that you say, Bill?”

He turned with a sardonic grin to Lightfoot, who had already been reduced to a state of silence by the relentless persecutions of the rodéo boss.

“I never said nawthin’,” replied Lightfoot sullenly. “But if you’d’ve gone at ’em the way we wanted to,” he blurted out, as the grin broadened, “instead of tryin’ to move the whole outfit by daylight, I’d’ve stayed with you till hell froze over. I don’t want to git sent up fer ten years.”

“No,” said Creede coolly, “ner you never will.”

“Well, I don’t see what you’re pickin’ on me fer,” bellowed Lightfoot, “the other fellers was there too. Why don’t you sass Ensign or Pete a while?”

“For a durned good reason,” replied Creede steadily. “They never was for fightin’, but you, with that yawp of yours, was always a-hollerin’ and ribbin’ me on to fight, and then, when the time come, you never said ‘Boo!’ at ’em. Tucked your young cannon into the seat of your pants and flew, dam’ ye, and that’s all there was to it. But that’s all right,” he added resignedly. “If you fellers don’t want to fight you don’t have to. But, dam’ it, keep shut about it now, until you mean business.”

As to just who this man Hardy was and what he proposed to do with the sheep the members of the Four Peaks round-up were still in ignorance. All they knew was that he could ride, even when it came to drifting his horse over the rocky ridges, and that Jeff Creede took him as a matter of course. But, for a superintendent, he never seemed to have much to say for himself. It was only when he walked up to his sorrel pony in that gentle, precise way he had, and went through the familiar motions of climbing a “bad one” that they sensed, dimly, a past not without experience and excitement. Even in the preoccupation of their own affairs and doings they could not fail to notice a supple strength in his white hands, a military precision in his movements, and above all a look in his eyes when he became excited–the steady resolute stare with which his militant father had subdued outlaw horses, buck soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well. It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike Kennedy’s “side winder” on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up to him.

Even after his mission was announced, Hardy made no change in his manner of life. He rode out each day on the round-up, conning the lay of the land; at the corral he sat on the fence and kept tally, frankly admitting that he could neither rope nor brand; in camp he did his share of the cooking and said little, listening attentively to the random talk. Only when sheep were mentioned did he show a marked interest, and even then it was noticed that he made no comment, whatever his thoughts were. But if he told no one what he was going to do, it was not entirely due to an overrated reticence, for he did not know himself. Not a man there but had run the gamut of human emotions in trying to protect his ranch; they had driven herders off with guns; they had cut their huddled bands at night and scattered them for the coyotes; they had caught unwary Mexican borregueros in forbidden pastures and administered “shap lessons,” stretching them over bowlders and spanking them with their leather leggings; they had “talked reason” to the bosses in forceful terms; they had requested them politely to move; they had implored them with tears in their eyes–and still like a wave of the sea, like a wind, like a scourge of grasshoppers which cannot be withstood, the sheep had come on, always hungry, always fat, always more.

Nor was there any new thing in hospitality. The last bacon and bread had been set upon the table; baled hay and grain, hauled in by day’s works from the alfalfa fields of Moroni and the Salagua, had been fed to the famished horses of the very men who had sheeped off the grass; the same blanket had been shared, sometimes, alas, with men who were “crumby.” And it was equally true that, in return, the beans and meat of chance herders had been as ravenously devoured, the water casks of patient “camp-rustlers” had been drained midway between the river and camp, and stray wethers had showed up in the round-up fry-pans in the shape of mutton. Ponder as he would upon the problem no solution offered itself to Hardy. He had no policy, even, beyond that of common politeness; and as the menacing clamor of the sheep drifted up to them from the river the diplomat who was to negotiate the great truce began to wonder whether, after all, he was the man of the hour or merely another college graduate gone wrong.

On the opposite side of the river in bands of two and three thousand the cohorts of the sheep gathered to make the crossing–gathered and waited, for the Salagua was still high. At the foot of the high cliffs, from the cleft cañon of which water flowed forth as if some rod had called it from the rock, the leaders of the sheepmen were sitting in council, gazing at the powerful sweep of the level river, and then at the distant sand bar where their charges must win the shore or be swept into the whirlpool below. Ah, that whirlpool! Many a frightened ewe and weakling lamb in years past had drifted helplessly into its swirl and been sucked down, to come up below the point a water-logged carcass. And for each stinking corpse that littered the lower bar the boss sheep owner subtracted five dollars from the sum of his hard-earned wealth. Already on the flats below them the willows and burro bushes were trembling as eager teeth trimmed them of their leaves–in a day, or two days, the river bottom would be fed bare; and behind and behind, clear to the broad floor of the desert, band after band was pressing on to the upper crossing of the Salagua.

As Hardy rode up over the rocky point against which the river threw its full strength and then, flung inexorably back, turned upon itself in a sullen whirlpool, he could see the sheep among the willows, the herders standing impassive, leaning upon their guns as more rustic shepherds lean upon their staves, and above, at the head of the crossing, the group of men, sitting within the circle of their horses in anxious conference. If any of them saw him, outlined like a sentinel against the sky, they made no sign; but suddenly a man in a high Texas hat leaped up from the group, sprang astride his mule and spurred him into the cold water. For the first twenty feet the mule waded, shaking his ears; then he slumped off the edge of a submerged bench into deeper water and swam, heading across the stream but drifting diagonally with the current until, striking bottom once more, he struggled out upon the sand spit. The rider looked eagerly about, glanced up casually at the man on the point below, and then plunged back into the water, shouting out hoarse orders to his Mexicans, who were smoking idly in the shade of overhanging rocks. Immediately they scrambled to their feet and scattered along the hillside. The stroke of axes echoed from the crags above, and soon men came staggering down to the river, dragging the thorny limbs of palo verdes behind them. With these they quickly constructed a brush fence in the form of a wing, running parallel to the cliff and making a chute which opened into the river.