Judith of the Plains Part 14

Their twisted branches, gaunt and bare, writhed upward as if in dumb supplication. There was about them a something that made Judith come closer to Peter as they pa.s.sed them by. The night wind sang in their leafless branches with a long-drawn, shuddering sigh. The despair of a barren, deserted thing seemed to have settled on them.

"Those frightful trees, how can Alida stand them?" She looked back. "Oh, I wish they were cut down!"

Before them was the cabin, its ruined condition pitifully apparent even by night. It had been deserted ten years before Jim brought his family to it.

Rumor said it was haunted. Grim stories were told of the death of a woman who had come there with a man, and had not lived to go away with him. The roof of the adjoining stable had fallen in, the bars of the corral were missing. The house was dark but for a feeble light that glimmered in one window, the beacon that had been lighted, night after night, against Jim's coming. It added a further note of apprehension, peering through the dark, still valley like a wakeful, anxious eye, keeping a long and unrewarded vigil. Judith felt the consummation of the threatening tragedy after her first glimpse of the sentinel trees. She could not explain, but her heart cried, even as the wind in them had sung of death. Perhaps her mother's spirit spoke to her, just as she had said, on that memorable drive, that the Great Mystery spoke to his people in the earth, the sky, and the frowning mountains.

"Peter"-she had slid from her horse and was clinging to his arm-"when it happens, Peter, you will have no part in it?"

"It won't happen, Judith, if I can help it."

She kissed his hand as it held the loose reins.

"Lord, I am not worthy!" was the thought in his heart. He sat graven in the saddle. Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart though he was, the unsought kiss of trust gifted him with a self-reverence that would not soon forsake him.

Judith was rapping on the door and calling to Alida not to be frightened.

And presently it was opened. Peter wanted to leave Judith, now that she was safely at the end of her journey, but she would not hear of it till he had eaten.

"You would have had your comfortable supper five hours ago had you not been playing cavalier to me all over the wilderness." And Peter yielded.

Judith busied herself about the kitchen. Her mood of racking apprehension had disappeared. Indian stoicism had again the guiding hand. She waved Peter from the fire that she was kindling, as if he were a blundering incompetent. But she let him slice the bacon and grind the coffee as one lets a child help. Alida came in, white-faced and anxious over the long absence of her husband, but conscientiously hospitable nevertheless. Peter noticed that Judith made a gallant pretence of eating, crumbling her bread and talking the meanwhile. The pale wife, who had little to say at the best of times, was put to the test to say anything at all. But, withal, their intent was so genuinely hospitable that Peter himself could not speak with the pity of it. Accustomed as he was to the roughness of these frontier cabins, never had he seen a human habitation so desolate as this.

The mud plaster had fallen away from between the logs, showing cross sections of the melancholy prospect. An atmosphere of tragedy brooded over the place. Whether from its long period of emptiness, or from the vaguely hinted murder of the woman who had died there, or whether it took its character from the prevailing desolation, the cabin in the valley was an unlovely thing. Nor did the cleanliness, the conscientious making the best of things, soften the woful aspect of the place. Rather was the appeal the more poignant to the seeing eye, as the brave makeshift of the self-respecting poor strikes deeper than the beggar's whine. The house was bare but for the few things that Alida could take in the wagon in which they made their flight. And all through the pinch of poverty and grinning emptiness there was visible the woman-touch, the brave making the best of nothing, the pitiful preparation for the coming of the man. Wild roses from the creek bloomed against the gnarled and weather-warped logs of the walls. Sprays of clematis trailed their white bridal beauty from cans rescued from the ashes of a camp-fire. But Alida was a strategist when it came to adorning her home, and the rusty receptacle was hid beneath trailing green leaves. There was at the window a muslin curtain that in its starched and ruffled estate was strongly suggestive of a child's frock hastily converted into a window drapery. The curtain was drawn aside that the lamp might shed its beam farther on the way of the traveller who came not. There was but one other light in the place, a bit of candle. Alida apologized for the poor light by which they must eat, but she did not offer to take the lamp from the window.

Peter was no longer Sir Knight of the Joyous Heart as he watched the little, white-faced woman, who went so often to the door to look towards the road that entered the valley that she was no longer aware of what she did. He saw her wide eyes full of fear, the bow of the mouth strained taut with anxiety, her unconscious fear of him as one of the alien faction, and withal her concern for his comfort. Judith's control was far greater, but though she hid it skilfully, he knew the sorrow that consumed her.

There was a cry from the room beyond, and Judith, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the candle, went in to the children. All three of them were sleeping cross-ways in one bed, their small, round arms and legs striking out through the land of dreams as swimmers breasting the waves. She gave a little cry of delight and appreciation, and called Peter to look. Little Jim, who had cried in some pa.s.sing fear, sat up sleepily. He stretched out his small arms to Peter, whom he had never seen before. Peter took him, and again he settled to sleep, apparently a.s.sured that he was in friendly hands.

The warm, small body, giving itself with perfect confidence, strongly affected Peter's heightened susceptibilities. In the very nature of the situation he could be no friend to Jim Rodney, yet here in his arms lay Jim Rodney's son, loving, trusting him instinctively. Judith noticed that his face paled beneath its many coats of tan. He was afraid of the little sleeping boy, afraid that his unaccustomed touch might hurt him, and yet loath to part with the small burden. Judith took the boy from Peter and placed him between the two little girls on the bed.

Through the window they could see Alida's dress glimmering, like a phantom in the darkness, as she strained her eyes towards the path. Peter hated to leave the women and children in this desolate place. The night was far spent. To reach the round-up in season, he could at best s.n.a.t.c.h a couple of hours' sleep and be again in the saddle while the stars still shone.

His saddle and saddle blanket were enough for him. The broad canopy of heaven, the bosom of mother earth, had given him sound, dreamless sleep these many years. He bade the women good-night, and made his bed where the canon gave entrance to the valley. But sleep was slow to come. Now, in that vague, uncertain world where we fall through oceans of s.p.a.ce, and the waking is the dream, the dream the waking, Peter caught pale flashes of Kitty's gold head as she ran and ran, ever in the pursuit of something, she knew not what. And as she ran hither and thither, she would turn her head and beckon to Peter, and as he followed he felt the burden of years come upon him. And then he saw Judith's eyes, still and grave. He turned and wakened. No, it was not Judith's eyes, but the stars above the mountain-tops.

XII

The Round-up

The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton looked at his watch next morning, but he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two minutes by remembering the day's work before him, and went in search of the horse that he had not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full belly after the hard night's ride he had given him. Peter had rolled out of his blankets with a keen antic.i.p.atory relish for the day ahead. It was well, he knew, that there was ample work of a definite nature for Peter the cow-puncher; as for Peter the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful years for him to get his first belated insight into the real Judith only a few little hours back?

Or was it, he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him, as she rode brave and sorrowful through the night, to avert, if might be, her brother's death-at all events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened woman and her little children-that had freshly tinged the friendship he had so long felt for her? Many were the questions that Peter vaguely put to himself as he started out for his long day in the saddle; and none of them he answered. Indeed, he could not satisfactorily explain to himself why he should think of Judith at all in this way-Judith, whom he had known so long, and upon whom he counted so securely-Judith, who understood things, and was as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a strange thing that he should discover himself in a sentimental dream of Judith!

For it was in such dreams that Katherine Colebrooke had figured ever since Peter could remember. For years, indeed-and Judith knew it!-he had stood, tame and tractable, waiting for Chloe to throw her dainty lariat. But Chloe had intimated that her graceful fingers were engaged with the inkpot and her head with schemes for further sonneting. Chloe was becoming famous. To Peter, who was unmodern, there was little to be gained in arguing against a state of affairs so cra.s.sly absurd as career-getting for women. At such seasons it behooved sane men to pray for patience rather than the gift of tongues. When the disheartened fair should weary of the phantom pursuit, then might the man of patience have his little day. Peter winced at the picture. To the world he knew that his long waiting on the brink of the bog, while his ambitious lady floundered after false lights, was, in truth, no more impressive a spectacle than the anguished squawking of a hen who watches a brood of ducklings, of her own hatching, try their luck in the pond.

And there was Judith the great-hearted, Judith who was as inspiring as a breath of hill air, Judith with no thought of careers beyond the loyal doing of her woman's part, Judith, trusty and loyal-and Judith with that accursed family connection!

Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse westward. The stars had grown dim in the sky. The world that the night before had seemed to float in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The cabin in the valley flaunted its wretched squalor, like a beggar seeking alms on the highway.

Riding by, Peter lifted his sombrero. "Sweet dreams, gentle lady!" He dug the rowel into his horse's side and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor did he spare his horse in the miles that lay between him and breakfast.

The beast would have no more work to do that day, when once he reached camp, and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he spurred through the gray of the morning. The pale, chastened world was all his own at this hour. Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the valleys, the softly huddled hills slept in the deep hush that is just before the dawn. He looked about with questioning eyes. Last night this very road had been a pale silver thread winding from the mountain crests into a world of dreams. To-day it was but a trail across the range. "Where are the snows of yester year?" he quoted, with a certain early-morning grimness. At heart he was half inclined to believe Judith responsible for the vanished world; Judith, Judith-he was riding away from her as fast as his horse could gallop, and yet his thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in the valley.

After a couple of hours' hard riding he could dimly make out specks moving on that huge background of s.p.a.ce, and presently his horse neighed and put fresh spirit into his gait, recognizing his fellows in moving dots on the vast perspective. And being a beast of some intelligence, for all his heavy-footed failings, he reasoned that food and rest would soon be his portion. Peter had no further use for the rowel.

Breakfast was already well under way when he reached camp. The outfit, seated on saddles in a semicircle about the chuck wagon, ate with that peculiar combination of haste and skill that doubtless the life of the saddle counteracts, as digestive troubles are apparently unknown among plainsmen. The cook, in handing Peter his tin plate, cup, spoon, and black-handled fork, asked him if "he would take overland trout or Cincinnati chicken, this morning?" The cook never omitted these jocular inquiries regarding the various camp names for bacon. He seemed to think that a choice of alias was as good as a change of menu. There was little talk at breakfast, and that bearing chiefly on the day's work. Every one was impatient for an early start. The horse wrangler had his string waiting, the cook was scouring his iron pots, saddles were thrown over horses fresh from a long night's good grazing, cinches were tightened, slickers and blankets were adjusted, and camp melted away in a troup of hors.e.m.e.n winding away through the gray of early morning.

The scene of the beef round-up was a mighty plain, affording limitless scope for handling the cattle of a thousand hills. In the distance rose the first undulations of the mountains, that might be likened to the surplusage of s.p.a.ce that rolled the length of the sweeping levels, then heaped high to the blue. The specks in the far distance began to grow as if the screw of a field-gla.s.s were bringing them nearer, turning them into hors.e.m.e.n, bunches of cattle, "chuck-wagons" of the different outfits, reserves of horses restrained by temporary rope-corrals, all the equipment of a great round-up. Dozens of men, mult.i.tudes of horses, hordes of cattle-the mighty plain swallowed all the little, prancing, galloping, bellowing things, and still looked mighty in its loneliness. Fling a handful of toys from a Noah's Ark-if they make such simple toys now-in an ordinary field, and the little, wooden men, horses and cows, will suggest the round-up in relation to its background. Men darted hither and thither, yelling shrilly; cows-born apparently to be leaders-broke from the bunches to which they had been a.s.signed and started at a clumsy run, followed by kindred susceptible to example. Cow-punchers, waiting for just such manifestations of individuality, whirled after them like comets, and soon they were again in the pawing, heaving, sweltering bunch to which they belonged.

Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher lay in that branch of the profession known as "cutting out," found that the work of the rustlers had been carried on with no unsparing hand since the early spring round-up. Calves bearing the "H L" brand-that claimed by a company known to be made up of cattle-thieves-followed mothers bearing almost every brand that grazed herds in that part of the State. The Wetmore outfit, that used a "W" enclosed in a square, were apparently the heaviest losers.

The cows and calves were herded at the right of the plain, convenient to the branding-pen, the steers well away to the opposite side. As Peter drove a "W-square" cow, followed by a little, white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard one of his a.s.sociates say:

"There's nothing small about the 'H L' except their methods."

"What's 'H L' stand for, anyway?" the other cow-puncher asked.

"Why, h.e.l.l, or, How Long; depends whether you're with 'em or again 'em."

Peter wheeled from the men and headed for the bunch he was cutting out. He fancied that the man had looked at him strangely as he offered a choice of meanings for the "H L"-and yet he could not have known that Peter had gone to Rodney's cabin last night. He flung himself heart and soul into his work, dashing full tilt at the snorting, stamping bedlam, enveloped in clouds of dust that dimmed the very daylight. Calves bleated piteously as they were jammed in the thickening pack. Peter shouted, swung the rope right and left, thinning the bunch about him, and a second later emerged, driving before him a cow, followed by a calf. These were turned over to cow-boys waiting for them. Time after time Hamilton returned to that ma.s.s of unconscious power, that with a single rush could have annihilated the little band of hors.e.m.e.n that handled them with the skill of a dealer shuffling, cutting, dealing a pack of cards.

To the left were the steers, pawing and tearing up the earth in a very ecstasy of impotent fury. Picture the giant propeller of an ocean liner thrashing about in the sands of the desert and you will have an approximate knowledge of the dust raised by a thousand steers. Their long-drawn, shrieking bellow had a sinister note. Horns, hoofs, tails beat the air, their bloodshot eyes looked menacingly in every direction; but a handful of cow-boys kept them in check, circling round and round them on ponies who did their work without waiting for quirt or rowel.

The noonday sun looked down upon a scene that to the eye unskilled in these things was as confusion worse confounded. Cow-boys dashed from nowhere in particular and did amazing things with a bit of rope, sending it through the air with snaky undulations after flying cattle. The rope, taking on lifelike coils, would pursue the flying beast like an aerial reptile, then the noose would fall true, and the thing was done. A second later a couple of cow-boys would be examining the disputed brand on the p.r.o.ne animal.

The smell of burning flesh and hair rose from the branding-pen and mingled with the stench of the herds in one noisome compound. The yells of the cow-punchers, each having its different bearing on the work in hand, were all but lost in the dull, steady roar of the cattle, bellowing in a chorus of fear, rage, and pain. And still the work of sorting, branding, cutting-out, went steadily on. Though an outsider would not have perceived it, the work was as crisp-cut and exact in its methods as the work in a counting-house. One of the cow-boys, in hot pursuit of a fractious heifer, encountered a gopher-hole, and horse and rider were down in a heap. In a second a dozen helping hands were dragging him from under the horse. He limped painfully, but stooped to examine his horse. The beast had broken a leg, and turned on the man eyes almost human in their pain.

"Bob, Bob!" The cow-puncher went down on his knees and put his arms about the neck of his pet. "My G.o.d!" he said, "me and Bob was just like brothers. Everybody knowed that." He uncinched the saddle with clumsy tenderness; not a man thought a whit less of him because he could not see well at the moment. He turned his head away, that he might not see the well-aimed shot that would release his pet from pain. Then he limped away after another horse-it was all in the day's work.

The beef contract called for a thousand steers, four and five years old, and these having been well and duly counted, and some dozen extra head added in case of accident, they were immediately started on the trail, as they could accomplish some seven or eight miles before being bedded down for the night. Hamilton, who had crossed to the beef side of the round-up to have a necessary word with the "Circle-Star" foreman, was amazed to find Simpson making ready to start with the trail herd. Peter inquired, with a few expletives, "how long he had been a cow-man, in good and regular standing?"

"As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he's had an interest in the 'x.x.x' since-since-"

"He drove Rodney's sheep over the cliff?"

"Ain't you a little hard on the beginning of his cattle career? It usually goes by a more business-like name, but-" he shrugged his shoulders-"it's up to the 'x.x.x.' We wouldn't have him help to pull bogged cattle out of a creek."

The beeves, hidden in a simoom of their own stamping, were gradually being pressed forward on the trail, a huge p.a.w.n, ignorant of its own strength, manipulated by a handful of men and horses. Its bellowing, like the tuning of a thousand ba.s.s-fiddles, shook the stillness like the long, sullen roar of the sea, as out of the plain they thundered, to feed the mult.i.tude.

"Well, there goes as pretty a bunch of porterhouses as I'd want to put tooth to. If I get away from here within the next two months, as I'm expecting, doubtless I'll meet some of you again with your personality somewhat obscured by reason of fried onions."

The foreman of the "Circle-Star" waved his hand after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order.

Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering ma.s.s that trailed its half-mile length at a snail's-pace. The great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little force of a handful of men and a few horses.

After supper came general relaxation around the camp-fire. The men, who had all day been strung to a keen pitch of nervous energy, lounged in loose, picturesque uncouthness, while each began to unravel his own lively miscellany of information or invention. There was jest, laughter, spinning of yarns, singing of songs. As Peter lay in the fire-light, smoking his brier-wood, he noticed that the man next him spent a great deal of time poring over a letter, holding it close to the blaze, now at arm's-length, which was hardly surprising, considering the penmanship of the more common variety of _billet-doux_. The man was plainly disappointed that Peter would not notice or comment. Finally he folded it up, and with sentimental significance returned it to the left side pocket of his flannel shirt, and remarked to Peter, "It's from her."

"Indeed," said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who "her" could be.

"Let me congratulate you."

"Yes, sir," and there was conviction in the cow-puncher's tone; "it's from old man Kinson's girl, up to the Basin, and the parson's goin' to give us the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o' h.e.l.ling it all over creation."

He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life ent.i.tled him to speak with a certain authority. "Is it that, or is it that we're getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?"