Cattle-Ranch to College Part 28

CHAPTER XIX.

AN AWAKENING.

It was a terrible shock to the boy, and for a few moments he seemed dazed as if by a physical blow. He had come into camp weary of body but light and gay of heart, full of triumph, sure of a half-chaffing word of commendation from his friend and comrade. But that friend had met a horrible death. John's heart sank like lead, and for the time the light went out of the sky for him. There was no joy, no sunshine, no future--Jerry was dead!

"Where is he?" John asked of the man who brought him the sad news.

"In camp," was the answer.

John was in haste to go to his friend, yet he dreaded it with all his soul. He forgot his triumph, his pride in his horse, his weariness, in the one thought that filled his mind--"Jerry is dead!"

"So Jerry, great, strong, experienced Jerry, on his big bay went down, and I, neither strong nor wise, am safe and well," John soliloquized.

In a minute or two they entered camp, and John's first question was "Where?"

The cook nodded toward a bed outspread in the shade of a wagon.

Mr. Baker, the ranchman, was there, and as John reached the place he pulled back the canvas covering. The boy never forgot the sight that met his view. Jerry it was, certainly, but almost unrecognizable.

John sat down by him, overcome by his first great grief. Death he had seen many times, horrible deaths some of them, but none had come so close as this. Cook, perceiving his plight, brought him a cup of steaming hot coffee, well knowing that it would put heart into him.

"Mr. Baker," said John at length, "he's got to be buried some place where the coyotes can't get at him."

"But it's sixty miles to the ranch," objected the ranchman.

"That's nothing. Let me have a team and a wagon and I'll get him there."

After some demur, which John finally overcame, Mr. Baker allowed him to take a big wagon and a four-horse team.

The body was laid in reverently, the horses harnessed and hitched up.

Just as John was about to take up the reins Mr. Baker came forward. "I guess I'll go with you, Worth," he said. "Round-up's most finished and I can do more good at home."

He climbed into the seat of the big covered wagon as he spoke; and after tying Lightning alongside the wheel horse, John took up the lines. The punchers stood round, hats off, their weather-beaten faces grave and full of concern. All of them realized that this might have been _their_ fate. Their rough hearts, accustomed as they were to all the chances of the dangerous life, were full of grief for the loss of their companion, "who was and is not."

"So long!" they said--a farewell to living and dead.

The whip cracked, the leaders jumped, and in a few minutes the white top of the wagon sank out of sight behind a rise. The sixty-mile funeral journey had begun.

For some time employer and employee sat silent side by side. John's hands were busy with the four fresh horses he was guiding, and his mind with the real sorrow that filled it. He had never known Mr. Baker well; that familiar relation, unknown in the East, between employer and employed was prevented by John's absence on the range, but the boy was grateful for the kindness Mr. Baker had shown him.

"How long have you known Jerry, Worth?" the ranchman asked at length, touched by the boy's grief, and his interest aroused.

"Since I've worked for you only," was the answer. "Some people you never take to and some you know and like right off; Jerry was that kind. He always stood by me in quarrels, and many's the time he's stood a double watch 'cause he knew I was tired and he didn't want to wake me up. Yes, he stood by me through thick and thin."

"He was a good hand, too," interpolated Mr. Baker.

"He'd have divided his last dollar with me," continued John, more to himself than to his hearer. "I'd have done the same with him."

All this time they were travelling at full speed. The four horses yanked the heavy wagon along steadily over gullies and ridges, through valleys, and over hilltops.

A couple of hours pa.s.sed in this way, during which John slowed the horses down over the rocky places and urged them forward where it was smooth.

"What are you going to do with your money, Worth?" said Mr. Baker, hoping to dispel some of the sadness that hung over the boy. "You've not spent much this year, have you?"

"'Bout three hundred dollars, I guess. Jerry and I thought of starting in with a little bunch of cows on our own hook, but----" The glance that John gave over his shoulder into the wagon finished the sentence.

"Did you ever think of going to school?" asked the ranchman, intent on his effort to divert the boy's thoughts.

"No, I saw a dude feller one time that had been to school all his life"--John spoke contemptuously--"and I'd rather punch cows all my days than be like him."

"Why? He might have been a poor specimen. My son would have been a lawyer if he had lived, and I would a great deal rather have him one than a cow-puncher."

John shook his head, unconvinced. A vision came to him of streets walled in on each side by buildings so that every thoroughfare was a canon and every room a prison. The joy of wild freedom, fraught though it was with danger and hard work, tingled in his veins.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HERDS WERE POURING IN FROM EVERY DIRECTION. (_Page 283._)]

"You know if you stay on the range," continued Mr. Baker, "it's only a question of time when you'll be stiffened and broken down, or else, what may be better, you'll be caught as Jerry was. If you keep on punching cows all your life nothing will be left behind showing that you've been in the world but a pine plank set in the ground."

For a time John's thoughts were as busy as his hands. A new idea had been presented to him--his future. What would he do with it? He loved the wild, free life he was now leading, and up to this time he had never thought of working for something higher and more lasting. Mr. Baker had stirred a part of him that had long lain dormant--ambition. His plans heretofore had seldom carried him further than a few days or weeks, his sole care was to do his duty and keep his job; but now he had a new care--his future.

The horses jogged along steadily over the rough country, their driver getting every bit of speed out of them that would allow them to last the journey through. Most of the time Lightning went alongside the wheel horse contentedly. With particular perversity, however, as the team was pa.s.sing through a narrow place, where there was barely enough room to pa.s.s, Lightning began a spirited altercation with his side partner. He shied off from him, pushed him, and bit at him till he in turn retaliated. For a time John had his hands full, but "Lite," in his efforts to kick holes in the unoffending side of the wheel horse, got tangled in the harness, and so stopped the whole business. His master extricated him with difficulty, and "Lite," instead of getting the punishment he so richly deserved, was petted instead, whereupon he became very good indeed and rubbed his nose affectionately against John's sleeve, as much as to say: "I'm sorry. I'll never do it again."

"It seems to me," said Mr. Baker, after they had got started again, "that a fellow that could tame such a wicked brute as that horse was a few months ago could master anything, books or anything else."

"Oh, I've read some books," said John eagerly, "and I thought I knew something till that dude feller told all about the things he knew. But that chap couldn't ride a sway-backed cow," and John smiled, sad as he was, at the thought.

"You struck a poor sample," the ranchman responded. "He saw you could beat him physically, so he tried to get even with you mentally."

For a time they rode along in silence, the boy busy with his own thoughts, which Mr. Baker was wise enough not to interrupt.

At length Smith Creek, the half-way mark of their journey, was reached, and they stopped for water, rest, and food. The horses were unharnessed and allowed to feed a while. Thirty miles had been covered in less than five hours--thirty miles of diversified country, hill and plain, rock and mud. The road was not worthy of the name, it was merely a wheel track more or less distinct.

John was restless, the short hour of relief allowed the faithful beasts seemed long to him, and he was more at ease when they were spinning along the trail again. He had been living on his nerve all the morning and the strain was beginning to tell.

Soon Mr. Baker began to talk again. He was interested in the young companion by his side, this boy so filled with determination, so energetic and forceful and yet so abounding in loyalty and affection, as his grief over Jerry's death and his fondness for his horse testified; this boy who read books and yet had such a whole-souled contempt of affected learning as evidenced by his ill-concealed disdain of the Eastern "dude." "You've never been East," began the ranchman, "or to school?"

"No. I was born in Bismarck, North Dakota," was the answer. "It must be queer," he added after a pause, and a smile lit up his tired face.

"There's lots of women there, they say, and the men get their hair cut every month; the people have to always dress for dinner, the paper novels say, and everybody goes to school."

Mr. Baker smiled at this description of the life and manners of the East, and kept plying the boy with questions, put kindly, until he had learned pretty much all there was to know about him. It was long since John had had so much interest shown him, and it warmed his heart; it was specially grateful at this time, when he felt that he had lost a tried and true friend. The ranchman advised him to work out the year and save his money, and at the end of that time doff his cowboy clothes and manners, array himself in a "boiled shirt," enter some good-sized town, and go to school and church.

John was rather dubious about this; "muscle work," as he called it, work requiring a quick eye, a strong will, and the ability to endure, he knew he could do, but about brain work and book learning he was not so confident. The idea of wearing a "boiled shirt" made him smile.

"Those stiff-bellied things the dudes wear," said he derisively. "Me wear one of those things!" and he laughed aloud at the thought.