Hidden Water Part 13

the bills. My credit is good with Einstein, and the rate lies between him and Judge Ware."

"Well, your credit is good here, too," replied Swope acidly, "but I see you'd rather trade with a Jew than stand in with your friends, any day."

"I tell you I haven't got a thing to do with it," replied Hardy warmly. "I take my orders from Judge Ware, and if he tells me to trade here I'll be glad to do so--it'll save me two days' freighting--but I'm not the boss by any means."

"No, nor you ain't much of a supe, neither," growled Swope morosely.

"In fact, I consider you a dam' b.u.m supe. Some people, now, after they had been accommodated, would take a little trouble, but I notice you ain't breaking your back for me. h.e.l.l, no, you don't care if I _never_ make a deal. But that's all right, Mr. Hardy, I'll try and do as much for you about that job of yourn."

"Well, you must think I'm stuck on that job," cried Hardy hotly, "the way you talk about it! You seem to have an idea that if I get let out it'll make some difference to me, but I might as well tell you right now, Mr. Swope, that it won't. I've got a good horse and I've got money to travel on, and I'm just holding this job to accommodate Judge Ware. So if you have any idea of taking it out on him you can just say the word and I'll quit!"

"Um-m!" muttered the sheepman, taken aback by this sudden burst of temper, "you're a hot-headed boy, ain't you?" He surveyed him critically in the half light, as if appraising his value as a fighter, and then proceeded in a more conciliatory manner. "But you mustn't let your temper git away with you like that," he said. "You're likely to say something you'll be sorry for later."

"Oh, I don't know," retorted Hardy. "It might relieve my mind some.

I've only been in this country a few months, but if a sheepman is the only man that has any legal or moral rights I'd like to know about it.

You talk about coming in on our upper range, having a right to the whole country, and all that. Now I'd like to ask you whether in your opinion a cowman has got a right to live?"

"Oh, tut, tut, now," protested Swope, "you're gettin' excited."

"Well, of course I'm getting excited," replied Hardy, with feeling.

"You start in by telling me the sheepmen are going to take the whole country, from Flag to the line; then you ask me what I'd do if a Mexican came in on us; then you say you can sheep us out any time you want to, and what am I going to do about it! Is that the way you talk to a man who has done his best to be your friend?"

"I never said we was going to sheep you out," retorted the sheepman sullenly. "And if I'd 'a' thought for a minute you would take on like this about it I'd've let you go bust for your postage stamps."

"I know you didn't _say_ it," said Hardy, "but you hinted it good and strong, all right. And when a man comes as near to it as you have I think I've got a right to ask him straight out what his intentions are. Now how about it--are you going to sheep us out next Fall or are you going to give us a chance?"

"Oh h.e.l.l!" burst out Swope, in a mock fury, "I'm never going to talk to _you_ any more! You're crazy, man! _I_ never said I was going to sheep you out!"

"No," retorted Hardy dryly, "and you never said you wasn't, either."

"Yes, I did, too," spat back Swope, seizing at a straw. "Didn't I introduce you to my boss herder and tell him to keep off your range?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Hardy coldly. "Did you?"

For a moment the sheepman sat rigid in the darkness. Then he rose to his feet, cursing.

"Well, you can jest politely go to h.e.l.l," he said, with venomous deliberation, and racked off down the street.

CHAPTER X

"FEED MY SHEEP"

The slow, monotonous days of Summer crept listlessly by like dreams which, having neither beginning nor end, pa.s.s away into nothingness, leaving only a dim memory of restlessness and mystery.

In the relentless heat of noon-day the earth seemed to shimmer and swim in a radiance of its own; at evening the sun set in a glory incomparable; and at dawn it returned to its own. Then in the long breathless hours the cows sought out the scanty shadow of the canon wall, sprawling uneasily in the sand; the lizards crept far back into the crevices of the rocks; the birds lingered about the water holes, throttling their tongues, and all the world took on a silence that was almost akin to death. As the Summer rose to its climax a hot wind breathed in from the desert, clean and pure, but withering in its intensity; the great bowlders, superheated in the glare of day, irradiated the stored-up energy of the sun by night until even the rattlesnakes, their tough hides scorched through by the burning sands, sought out their winter dens to wait for a touch of frost. There was only one creature in all that heat-smitten land that defied the sway of the Sun-G.o.d and went his way unheeding--man, the indomitable, the conqueror of mountains and desert and sea.

When the sun was hottest, then was the best time to pursue the black stallion of Bronco Mesa, chasing him by circuitous ways to the river where he and his band could drink. But though more than one fine mare and suckling, heavy with water, fell victim, the black stallion, having thought and intelligence like a man, plunged through the water, leaving his thirst unquenched, refusing with a continency and steadfastness rare even among men to sell his liberty at any price. In the round corral at Hidden Water there was roping and riding as Creede and Hardy gentled their prizes; in the cool evenings they rode forth along the Alamo, counting the cows as they came down to water or doctoring any that were sick; and at night they lay on their cots beneath the _ramada_ telling long stories till they fell asleep.

At intervals of a month or more Hardy rode down to Moroni and each time he brought back some book of poems, or a novel, or a bundle of magazines; but if he received any letters he never mentioned it. Sometimes he read in the shade, his face sobered to a scholarly repose, and when the mood came and he was alone he wrote verses--crude, feverish, unfinished--and destroyed them, furtively.

He bore his full share of the rough work, whether riding or horse-breaking or building brush corrals, but while he responded to every mood of his changeable companion he hid the whirl of emotion which possessed him, guarding the secret of his heart even when writing to Lucy Ware; and slowly, as the months crept by, the wound healed over and left him whole.

At last the days grew shorter, the chill came back into the morning air, and the great thunder-caps which all Summer had mantled the Peaks, scattering precarious and insufficient showers across the parching lowlands, faded away before the fresh breeze from the coast.

Autumn had come, and, though the feed was scant, Creede started his round-up early, to finish ahead of the sheep. Out on The Rolls the wild and runty cows were hiding their newborn calves; the spring twos were grown to the raw-boned dignity of steers; and all must be gathered quickly, before the dust arose in the north and the sheep mowed down the summer gra.s.s. Once more from their distant ranches the mountain men trailed in behind their horses; the _rodeo_ hands dropped in from nowhere, mysteriously, talking loudly of high adventures but with the indisputable marks of Mormon hay-forks on their thumbs.

Before their restless energy The Rolls were swept bare of market stock, and the upper end of the mesa as well, before the first sheep dust showed against the hills. The _rodeo_ outfit left Carrizo and came down to Hidden Water, driving their herd before them, and still no sheep appeared. So long had they strained their eyes for nothing that the cowmen from the north became uneasy, dropping out one by one to return to their ranches for fear that the sheep had crept in and laid waste their pastures and corrals. Yet the round-up ended without a band in sight, where before The Rolls had been ploughed into channels by their mult.i.tude of feet.

In a slow fever of apprehension Hardy rode ceaselessly along the rim of Bronco Mesa, without finding so much as a track. Throughout that long month of watching and waiting the memory of his conversation with Jim Swope had haunted him, and with a sinister boding of impending evil he had ridden far afield, even to the lower crossing at Pablo Moreno's, where a few Mexicans and Basques were fording the shallow river. Not one of those veiled threats and intimations had he confided to Creede, for the orders from Judge Ware had been for peace and Jeff was hot-headed and hasty; but in his own mind Hardy pictured a solid phalanx of sheep, led by Jasp Swope and his gun-fighting Chihuahuanos, drifting relentlessly in over the unravaged mesa. Even that he could endure, trusting to some appeal or protest to save him from the ultimate disaster, but the strain of this ominous waiting was more than Hardy's nerves could stand.

As the town herd was put on the long trail for Bender and the round-up hands began to spit dry for their first drink, the premonition of evil conquered him and he beckoned Creede back out of the rout.

"I've got a hunch," he said, "that these sheepmen are hanging back until you boys are gone, in order to raid the upper range. I don't _know_ anything, you understand, but I'm looking for trouble. How does it look to you?"

"Well," answered Creede sombrely, "I don't mind tellin' you that this is a new one on me. It's the first fall gather that I can remember when I didn't have a round-up with a sheepman or two. They're willin'

enough to give us the go-by in the Spring, when there's gra.s.s everywhere, but when they come back over The Rolls in the Fall and see what they've done to the feed--well, it's like fightin' crows out of a watermelon patch to protect that upper range.

"The only thing I can think of is they may be held back by this dry weather. But, I tell you, Rufe," he added, "it's jest as well I'm goin'--one man can tell 'em to he'p themselves as good as two, and I might get excited. You know your orders--and I reckon the sheepmen do, too, 's fer 's that goes. They're not so slow, if they do git lousy.

But my G.o.d, boy, it hurts my feelin's to think of you all alone up here, tryin' to appeal to Jasp Swope's better nature." He twisted his lips, and shrugged his huge shoulders contemptuously. Then without enthusiasm he said: "Well, good luck," and rode away after his cattle.

Creede's scorn for this new policy of peace had never been hidden, although even in his worst cursing spells he had never quite named the boss. But those same orders, if they ever became known, would call in the rapacious sheepmen like vultures to a feast, and the bones of his cattle--that last sorry remnant of his father's herds--would bleach on Bronco Mesa with the rest, a mute tribute to the triumph of sheep.

All that day Hardy rode up the Alamo until he stood upon the summit of the Juate and looked over the divide to the north, and still there were no sheep. Not a smoke, not a dust streak, although the chill of Autumn was in the air. In the distant Sierra Blancas the snow was already on the peaks and the frosts lay heavy upon the black mesa of the Mogollons. Where then could the sheep be, the tender, gently nurtured sheep, which could stand neither heat in Summer nor cold in Winter, but must always travel, travel, feeding upon the freshest of green gra.s.s and leaving a desert in their wake? The slow-witted Mexicans and Basques, who did not follow the lead of the Swopes, had returned on their fall migration with the regularity of animals, but all those cheery herders for whom he had cooked and slaved--Bazan, McDonald, the Swopes and their kin, who used the upper ford--were lost as if the earth had swallowed them up.

The stars were shining when Hardy came in sight of the ranch at the end of that unprofitable day, and he was tired. The low roof of the house rose up gloomily before him, but while he was riding in a hound suddenly raised his challenge in the darkness. Instantly his yell was answered by a chorus, and as Chapuli swerved from the rush of the pack the door was thrown open and the tall, gaunt form of Bill Johnson stood outlined against the light.

"Yea, Ribs; hey, Rock; down, Ring!" he hollered. "Hey, boys; hey, Suke!" And in a mighty chorus of bayings the long-eared hounds circled about and returned to the feet of their master, wagging their tails but not abating their barking one whit. Standing bareheaded in the doorway with his hair and beard bushed out like a lion's mane Johnson strove by kicks and curses to quiet their uproar, shouting again and again some words which Hardy could not catch.

At last, grabbing old Suke, the leader of the pack, by an ear, he slapped her until her yelpings silenced the rest; then, stepping out into the opening, he exclaimed:

"My G.o.d, Hardy, is that you?"

"Sure," replied Hardy impatiently. "Why, what's the matter?"

"Sheep!" shouted Johnson, throwing out his hands wildly, "thousands of 'em, millions of 'em!"

"Sheep--where?" demanded Hardy. "Where are they?"

"They're on your upper range, boy, and more comin'!"

"What?" cried Hardy incredulously. "Why, how did they get up there? I just rode the whole rim to-day!"

"They come over the top of the Four Peaks," shouted the old man, shaking with excitement. "Yes, sir, over the top of the Four Peaks! My hounds took after a lion last night, and this mornin' I trailed 'em clean over into the middle fork where they had 'im treed. He jumped down and run when I come up and jist as we was hotfoot after him we run spang into three thousand head of sheep, drifting down from the pa.s.s, and six greasers and a white man in the rear with carbeens. The whole dam' outfit is comin' in on us. But we can turn 'em yet! Whar's Jeff and the boys?"

"They've gone to town with the cattle."

"Well, you're dished then," said the old man grimly. "Might as well put up your horse and eat--I'm goin' home and see that they don't none of 'em git in on me!"