Redskin and Cow-Boy: A Tale of the Western Plains

"'Troops!' says the chief; 'who cares about the troops? We can just drive them whenever we like. We want the cannon to fight the cow-boys.'

"That chief knew what was what. It is the cow-boys as keep back the Red-skins, it's the cow-boys as prevent these plains getting filled up with outlaws and horse-thieves, and the cow-boys can do it 'cause each man has got six lives pretty sartin at his belt, and as many more as he has time to slip in fresh cartridges for; and because we don't place much valley on our lives, seeing as we risk them every day. We know they ain't likely to be long anyhow. What with death among the herds, shooting scrapes, broken limbs, and one thing and another, and the work which wears out the strongest in a few years, a cow-boy's life is bound to be a short one. You won't meet one in ten who is over thirty. It ain't like other jobs. We don't go away and take up with another trade. What should we be fit for? A man that has lived on horseback, and spent his life galloping over the plains, what is he going to do when he ain't no longer fit for this work? He ain't going to hoe a corn-patch or wear a biled shirt and work in a store. He ain't going to turn lawyer, or set up to make boots or breeches. No, sirree. He knows as ten years is about as much as he can reckon on if his chances are good, and that being so, he don't hold nothing particular to his life. We ain't got no wives and no children. We works hard for our money, and when we gets it we spend it mostly in a spree. We are ready to share it with any mate as comes along hard up. It might be better, and it might be worse. Anyway, I don't see no chance of changing it as long as there is room out west for cattle ranches. Another hundred years and the grangers will have got the land and the cow-boys will be gone, but it will last our time anyhow."

Hugh was much struck with this estimate of a cow-boy's life by one of themselves, but on thinking it over he saw that it was a true one. These men were the adventurous spirits of the United States. Had they been born in England they would have probably either enlisted or run away as boys and gone to sea. They were men to whom a life of action was a necessity. Their life resembled rather that of the Arab or the Red Indian than that of civilized men. Their senses had become preternaturally acute; their eyesight was wonderful. They could hear the slightest sound, and pronounce unhesitatingly how it was caused. There was not an ounce of unnecessary flesh upon them. Their muscles seemed to have hardened into whip-cord.

They were capable of standing the most prolonged fatigue and hardship, and just as a wild stag will run for a considerable distance after receiving a wound that would be instantly fatal to a domestic animal, these men could, as he had seen for himself, and still more, as he had heard many anecdotes to prove, sustain wounds and injuries of the most terrible kind and yet survive, seeming, in many cases, almost insensible to pain. They were, in fact, a race apart, and had very many good qualities and comparatively few bad ones. They were, indeed, as Long Tom had said, reckless of their lives, and they spent their earnings in foolish dissipation. But they knew of no better way. The little border-towns or Mexican villages they frequented offered no other amusements, and except for clothes and ammunition for their pistols they had literally no other need for their money.

Nothing could exceed the kindness with which they nursed each other in illness or their generosity to men in distress. They were devoted to the interests of their employers, undergoing, as a matter of course, the most prolonged and most prodigious exertions. They were frank, good-tempered, and kindly in their intercourse with each other, as addicted to practical jokes as so many school-boys, and joining as heartily in the laugh when they happened to be the victims as when they were the perpetrators of the joke. Their code of honour was perhaps a primitive one, but they lived up to it strictly, and in spite of its hardships and its dangers there was an irresistible fascination in the wild life that they led.

CHAPTER XI.

A FIRE ON THE PLAINS

AFTER the hard work at the round-up the journey north seemed almost a holiday. Of an evening the cook's accordion was again brought out, and the men sang and, to Hugh's amusement, danced. He thought the proposal was a joke when it was first made, but he soon saw that it was quite serious. He had declined to take part in it, saying that he had never danced since he was a little boy; but it was as much as he could do to restrain his laughter, upon seeing the gravity with which eight of the cow-boys went through a quadrille to the music of the accordion. Then followed waltzes, and then some Mexican dances, the entertainment being kept up for a couple of hours.

Dancing, indeed, is one of the favourite amusements of cow-boys, and there being no females to dance with they dance with each other, and are so accustomed to do so that it comes to them as naturally as if dancing with women. When, however, they are camped within thirty or forty miles of a Mexican village, it is no unusual thing for a party of half a dozen to ride over to it. Perhaps one has preceded them to make the arrangements. These are simple. The Mexicans are very musical, and there is not a village where men capable of playing upon the mandoline, and perhaps other instruments, cannot be found. An arrangement is made with these and with the landlord of the little inn.

The preparations are not expensive – spirits for the men and a supply of cakes and syrups for the women. The news spreads like lightning, and in the evening Mexican villagers, male and female, in their best attire, from miles round arrive, some in carts and some on horseback. The music strikes up, and the dance is kept up until morning. Occasionally these entertainments end with a fray, arising generally from the jealousy of some young Mexican at the complacency with which his sweetheart receives the attentions of a cow-boy admirer. But these are quite the exceptions. The Mexicans know that their hosts will be off in the morning, and that they shall probably never see them again, and they therefore put up philosophically with the temporary inconstancy of the damsels of their village.

To the Mexican girls, indeed, these cow-boys are veritable heroes. They have heard endless tales of their courage. They know that the Indians, who hold their countrymen in absolute contempt, fear to meet these terrible herdsmen. The careless way in which they spend their money, their readiness to bestow their gorgeous silk handkerchiefs, their really handsome and valuable sashes, or the gold cord of their hats, upon their favourite partner for the evening, fills them with admiration. They know, too, that when, as occasionally happens, a cow-boy does marry a Mexican girl, and settles down upon some little ranche among them, the lot of his wife is greatly easier than that of those who marry Mexicans, and that she will be treated with an amount of consideration and courtesy undreamt of by the Mexican peasant, who, although an humble adorer before marriage, is a despotic master afterwards. It is not surprising, then, that upon occasions like these the cow-boy hosts have a monopoly of the prettiest girls at the ball.

Round the camp fires in the evening Hugh heard many tales of such evenings spent in the villages of New Mexico.

"I had a very narrow escape once," a cow-boy known as Straight Charley said. "There were six of us went up together to a Mexican village, and we gave a first-rate hop. There was a big crowd there, find things went on well until there was a muss between one of our fellows and a Mexican. Jake was rather a hard man, and we hadn't much fancied his being of our party, for he was fonder of drink than of dancing, and was quarrelsome when the drink was in him. I don't know how the muss began, for I was dancing with as pretty a little Mexican girl as I ever came across. However, I haven't any doubt as Jake was in the wrong. The first I knowed about it was that the music stopped, and then I heard loud voices. I saw a knife flash, and dropped my partner, and was going to run in to stop it, but I hadn't more than thought about it when there was the crack of a pistol. Then knives were out all round, and there was a pretty lively fight.

"It seemed, as I heard afterwards, that when Jake shot the Mexican – and I don't say he had no right to do so when the Mexican had drawn his knife first, for if he had not shot he would have been killed himself – two or three other Mexicans went for him, and, as a matter of course, two of our fellows went for the Mexicans. If they hadn't been all mixed up together the six of us could have cleared the hull lot out, but mixed up like that, and with girls about, our fellows hadn't much show. I was just breaking through to take a hand in the game, when a fellow who had been looking pretty sour at me for some time, jumped on my back like a wild cat, so down I went, and in half a minute my legs and arms were tied tight with their sashes. I didn't try to struggle after I had fallen, for I knew well enough that our fellows had got the worst of it.

"When matters cleared up a bit I found that four Mexicans had been killed, and five or six others pretty badly hurt. Jake and another of our boys were dead; two others had broke out, run to their horses, and ridden away. Another of the boys had been taken prisoner, but he had got two or three knife-cuts before he was knocked down. There was a big hubbub for some time, as you may guess, and then they told us we should be taken to the town in the morning. Well, they took off the sashes, and marched us away to a house at the end of the village. It was a plank house, and built in the same fashion as their adobe huts, with one room behind the other. Of course they had taken our six-shooters and knives away from us, and they shoved us into the inner room, and then a dozen of them sat down to play cards and keep watch in the other.

"The place had been built as a sort of lock-up, and there were heavy bars to the window, just as you see in a good many Mexican houses. They had left our legs free, but had put some ropes round our arms; but we knew that we could shift them easy enough. The Mexicans had shut the door between the two rooms, but we could hear their talk through it, and we heard that, though the thing had been brought on by Jake, there would have been a muss anyhow sooner or later. Two white men had come into the village a fortnight before; they were dressed like cow-boys, but I reckon they were horse-stealers or outlaws, anyhow they had kicked up a row and shot three men, and rode away, and the Mexicans had seemed to make up their minds that they would take revenge on the next party that came in, whoever they were.

"Well, things looked pretty bad for us. If we had once got inside one of their prisons, the Mexican judges would have made short work of us. The greasers would, of course, have sworn that we had begun the row, and shot down four or five of their people without the least cause, and it would have been a case of hanging, as sure as a gun; so Dave and I agreed that we had got to git somehow. It wur no use talking of fighting, for there was a dozen fellows in the next room, and they had all got their guns along with them. We hadn't got our knives, and there was no chance of cutting our way out. We were talking it over when someone said, 'Are you there, Charley?' at the window. It was one of the boys who had got away. You bet I was there pretty sharp.

"'Here I am, Ginger,' I said. 'How goes it?' 'Pretty bad,' he said; 'Jeffries is cut pretty near to pieces, and I am wounded in half-a-dozen places, and can scarce crawl. Jeffries is with the horses a mile away. He is too bad to stand. I made a shift to crawl back to see what had become of you. I have been creeping round, and heard the two of you were shut up here, and that you was going to be taken off to-morrow, and would be hung, sure, so I came round to see what could be done; here is my six-shooter if it will be any good to you.' 'No, that won't be any good,' I said; 'there are twelve of them, and they have all got guns; but give me your knife; these planks are pretty thick, but we can cut our way through.' 'I haven't got it,' says Ginger; 'it was knocked out of my belt in the fight, and, worse luck, Jeffries has lost his too. A fellow got hold of his wrist, so he couldn't use his pistol, and he drew his knife, and he was fighting with it, when he got a slice across his fingers which pretty nigh cut them off, and he dropped his knife, and, as luck would have it, just wrenched himself free and bolted.'

"'Well, we must do what we can,' I said; 'but it is hard luck on us. Look here, Ginger, you bring the two horses up to that clump of trees over there; Dave is pretty badly cut about, and cannot run far, but he can make a shift to get over there. If we don't come by an hour before daylight it ain't no use your waiting no longer; you go and pick up Jeffries, and make tracks; but I reckon that somehow we shall manage to come.' 'All right!' says he, and went. 'Now, Dave,' I said, 'you turn over and let me get my teeth at your knots, it is hard if I don't manage to undo them.'

"Sure enough, in five minutes I had loosed a knot, and then the rest was easy. Dave untied me, and we were free so far. 'What next?' says Dave. 'We will have a look round,' says I. Luckily there was a moon, and there was plenty of light to see what was in the room. There was some bits of furniture and bedding, just as they had been left by the people they had turned out to make room for us, but nothing that I could find as would help us to cut our way out. 'Now, Dave,' says I, 'you get to that corner and I will get to this, and just shove against the planks, and see if we can't push the hull side of this shanty out.' Well, it wur too strong for us. It was made of rough boards, pretty strongly nailed. I thought it gave a little, but nothing as would be any good. 'If we could throw ourselves against it both together it might go,' I said; 'but it mightn't, and if it didn't we should have them inside in a moment, and there would be an end to it. What do you say to our burning ourselves out, Dave?'

"'How are we to do that, Charley?' he said. 'Well, I have got my box of matches in my boot, and I suppose you have yours too. Let us pile up some of these wooden things against the two corners; there is plenty of straw in this bed. Before we begin we will hang one of these blankets over the doorway so as to keep the smoke from going through the cracks. I reckon they are all smoking in there, and they won't smell it very quick.' So we made a pile, moving as quiet as we could, standing still when they were not talking much in the next room, and moving whenever they made a row, which was pretty often. 'These things are as dry as chips,' I said, 'and what smoke there is will mostly go out through the window, but I expect there will be more than we shall like. Here is a big pitcher of water, we will soak these two blankets, and then lie down close to the floor; you cover your head over with one, and I will do it with the other. Now, then!'

"We lit a couple of matches and touched off the straw, and in half a minute there was a blaze up to the roof. Then we lay down by the other wall one on each side of the door, and waited. In about two minutes there was a shout in the next room and a rush, then the door was flung open and the blanket torn down, and such a yelling and cussing as you never heard. The smoke was pretty bad where we was lying, and I reckon that up higher it was as thick as a wall. 'The cursed Americans have lighted the house and smothered themselves,' one of them shouted. Then they rushed out, coughing and choking, and we heard them shouting for water, and there wur as much row as if the village had been attacked by Injuns.

"We waited another three or four minutes, and then Dave shouted, 'I can't stand this no longer.' I had hoped they would have left the outer door open, and that we could have got out that way, but we had heard it shut. I expect someone more cute than the rest suspected we wur inside biding our time. 'Take a long breath, Dave,' says I, 'and don't breathe again until you are out; now jump up and join me.' We joined hands and made a run, and threw ourselves against one corner of the end of the hut. Several of the planks fell, and a couple of kicks sent the rest out, then off we bolted.

"There wur a yell outside, for by this time half the village were there. Luckily the men with guns was mostly round by the door, and when the yells fetched them there was too many women and children about for them to shoot. We went straight on, as you may guess, and we were half-way to the woods before the shooting began, and it wur pretty wild at that. Dave gave out afore he got to the trees, and I had to carry him.

"'This way,' Ginger shouted. I lifted Dave on to a horse, and jumped up behind him, and we wur off just as the Mexicans came running up. After that it wur easy enough. We rode to where Jeffries had been left, got him on to Ginger's horse, and made tracks for the camp. Jeffries died next day, but Dave got over it. That wur a pretty near touch, I reckon."

"It was indeed," Hugh said. "That was a very lucky idea of yours of burning out the corners of the house."

"Some of them Mexicans is cusses," another cow-boy put in. "I had a smart affair with them in one of their villages last year. I had rid in with Baltimore Rube. We had been searching some of the gullies for cows, and had run short of sugar and tea. Waal, I was on a young broncho I had only roped two days before, and the critter wur as wild as could be. When we rode in, a lot of them brutes of dogs that swarms almost as thick as their fleas in all these Mexican villages, came barking round, while one big brute in particular made as if he would pin my broncho by the nose, and the pony plunged and kicked till I thought he would have me off. There was a lot of their men standing at their doors smoking, for it wur late in the afternoon, and they wur all back from what they called work. I shouted to them to call their dogs off, but they just laughed and jeered, so I did the only thing as there was to do, just pulled out my six-shooter and shot the dog. Waal, if it had been a man there could not have been a worse sort of row. The Mexicans ran into their houses just as quick as a lot of prairie-dogs when they scent danger, and in a moment were back with their guns, and began to blaze away. Waal, naturally, our dander riz, a bullet chipped the bark off my cheek, and by the way my broncho jumped I knew one had hit him, so Baltimore and I blazed away in return, and neither of us didn't shoot to miss, you bet. We just emptied our six-shooters, and then rode for it.

"Baltimore got a shot in his shoulder. I had one in the leg, and there was two in the saddle. We talked it over and agreed it wur best to say nothing about it. Them Mexicans will swear black is white, and when there is a whole village swearing one way, and only two men swearing the other way, them two has got but a poor show of being believed. So we concluded to leave those parts altogether, and we rode a hundred and fifty miles in the next two days, and then camped for a week till our wounds healed up a bit.

"A fortnight after that we went into the station, and there I happened to light upon one of them rags the Mexicans calls papers, and there sure enough was the account of that business. 'Two cow-boys, unknown, rode last week into the quiet village of Puserey, and without the slightest provocation commenced a murderous attack upon its inhabitants, and after killing four and wounding eight men, they galloped off before the inhabitants had time to betake themselves to their arms to defend themselves. A reward of five hundred dollars is offered for their apprehension.' Now, that wur a pretty tall piece of lying; but Baltimore and I agreed it wur best to keep dark about it altogether, for if it wur talked about, it might get to the ears of some of the half-caste Mexicans about the station, and some day or other, when we went into a village, we might find ourselves roped in."

"That is the way," Broncho Harry said indignantly, "us cow-boys get a bad name. Now, I dare say that air article wur copied in half the newspapers in the States, and folks as know nothing about it would say, 'Them cow-boys is a cuss; they ought to be wiped off the arth right away.' It is always so whenever there is a row between any of us and the Mexicans. They give thar account of it, and we goes away and thinks no more about it one way or the other, and there is no one to show it up as a lie from beginning to end; and I know there's people think we are as bad as the Injuns, if not worse, and that we ride about shooting down people just for amusement. Then all these outlaws and horse-thieves and bad men near the settlements dress as much as they can like us, and every murder as they commits, every horse that gits stolen, every man that gits held up and robbed, it is just put down to the cow-boys. While if the truth wur known, for every one of these fellows caught or wiped out by the sheriff and their posse, there is twenty gets wiped out by us."

There was a cordial "That is so, Broncho," all round the fire, for the injustice connected with their reputation was a very sore point among the cow-boys.

"Well, some day, Broncho," Hugh said, "when I get away from here, for, as you know, I haven't come here to stay, I will take pen in hand and try to give a true account of you and your doings, so that people may see that there are two sides to the question."

"Bully for you, Hugh!" Long Tom said; "just you put it in hot and strong. I tell you it ain't nice if one does go down to the settlements in the winter, when work is slack, to see people look at you as if you wur a wild beast, who is only waiting his chance to hold up the hull town. Why, I have seen women pull their children indoors as I came along, as if I wur a mountain lion, and was meaning to draw my six-shooter on them just for amusement."

"Well," Hugh said, "I must say I heard stories at M'Kinney of cow-boys coming down to a town and riding about shooting off the hats of the inhabitants, making targets of the bottles in the saloons, and generally turning the place topsy-turvy. Of course I didn't believe it all."

There was silence round the fire, and then Straight Charley said:

"Well, Lightning, I won't say as you have been altogether deceived as to that, and I won't deny as I have taken part in sprees myself, but you see it don't hurt no one. It is just fun. If we do shoot the heads off the bottles, we pays for them, and it makes one laugh till one can scarcely sit in a saddle to see an old cuss jump when you put a bullet through his stove-pipe hat. It is his fault for wearing such a thing, which is an unnatural invention altogether and should be discouraged."

"We do carry on," Broncho Harry agreed, "thar ain't no denying it. When a man has been out in these plains for six months working worse than a nigger, and that without a drop of liquor, it is natural as he should go in for a high old time when he gits down to a town with money in his pockets; but thar ain't no real harm in it. We know how we can shoot, and that if we fire at a hat there ain't no chance of our hitting the head inside. It just makes things lively for them for a bit, and there is never no trouble, unless anyone is fool enough to take the matter up and make a muss about it."

"I am not saying you do any real harm, Broncho, only you see the people in the towns don't know how well you shoot. If you knock a pipe out of my mouth, as you have done once or twice, I only laugh, because I know there was no chance in the world of your hitting me; but you see they don't all know that. And so when a man finds there are two holes in his hat an inch above his head, he thinks he has had a marvellous escape of being murdered."

"I don't deny as there is something in that," Broncho Harry said reflectively; "but you see it is in their ignorance that the mistake comes in, not in our shooting. Anyhow, you see we have got to do something to amuse ourselves, and we might do worse than just skeer a few store-men, who take it out of us by charging us about double the price they charge anyone else."

Hugh was not convinced by the argument, but he felt that it was of no use to pursue the subject further.

"How do the cows know their calves?" he asked one day, as at the end of a march some of the cows were loudly lowing for their offspring to come to them.

"By smell," Broncho Harry replied promptly.

"You don't see much of their ways here, for the calves are pretty well grown up; but when you are driving a herd, as I have done many a time, made up altogether of cows and young calves, you see a lot of it. Ten or twelve miles a day is as much as you can do with a herd of that sort. What steers there are always go ahead, grazing as they go. The cows will come straggling along next, and then the calves strung out all over the place, and the rear-guard have pretty hard work to hurry them up. You see calves have got no sense, and run anywhere – under your horse's legs or anywhere else; while the cows don't pay much attention to them till they get to the end of the march. Then they begin to bawl for their calves to come to them, and the calves begin to bawl for their mothers, and I tell you that for a bit there is such a row going on that you would think the end of the world had come. Two thousand cows and as many calves can kick up a row, you bet, that will well-nigh scare you."

"But don't the calves know their mothers' voices?"

"Not a bit of it; it is just smell and nothing else that brings them together. You would think the cows would know something about the colour of their young uns, but they don't. I have seen a cow that I knew had a white calf run up to a black calf and smell it, then to a brown one, and then to a spotted one, while her own white calf stood bawling fit to kill herself a dozen yards away. It is wonderful how they do find each other at all, and the job often takes them two or three hours. Some of the cows concludes at last that their calves have been left behind, and then off they set, and would go all the way back to the place they had started from in the morning if you didn't stop them. Sometimes they don't find them at all that night."

"But what happens to the calves then?"

"The calves shift for themselves. They run up to other cows which have got their own calves sucking. Each cow will generally let them have a suck or two, and then drive them off, and in that way they get enough to last them on till they find their mothers in the morning.

"There is a good deal of trouble in keeping night-watch over a herd like that. It isn't that there is any risk of a stampede. A cow herd will never stampede if there are a lot of young calves in it; but they don't settle themselves comfortable to sleep. The calves want to wander about, and the cows who haven't found their young ones keep trying to slip off to take the back track, and you have got to be always on the watch for them. Take it altogether, I would rather drive a beef herd than a cow herd."

After a week's travel they reached the spot that had been fixed upon for the herd to graze. The cow-boys' work was now much lighter. Parties of twos and threes could often be spared for a day's excursion up to some Mexican village among the hills, or they would go off for three or four days' hunt among the valleys to pick up any cattle that had evaded search during the round-up. One day, when there were but four of them in camp, two of the party who had been absent a couple of days rode in at full speed, and reported to the head of the outfit that they had seen the light of a fire up north.

"Then there is no time to be lost," Colley said. "Will you two men stop here and look after things? I will ride off with the other four and fight the fire. When the others come back do you start out after us. The last two who come in must stop here. Give us what food you have got, darkey; we may be away four or five days. Directly we have gone set to and cook something for the others."