The Lure of the Dim Trails Part 8

"Well, say, I wish you'd slap in a lot uh things about hazy, lazy, daisy days in the spring--that jingles fine!--and green gra.s.s and the sun shining and making the hills all goldy yellow, and prairie dogs chip-chip-chipping on the 'dobe flats. (Prairie dogs would go all right in poetry, wouldn't they? They're sa.s.sy little cusses, and I don't know of anything that would rhyme with 'em, but maybe you do.) And read it all out to me after supper. Maybe it'll make me kinda forget there's a blizzard on."

"Another one?" Thurston got up to scratch a trench in the half-inch layer of frost on the cabin window. "Why, it only cleared up this morning after three days of it."

"Can't help that. This is just another chapter uh that same story. When these here Klondike Chinooks gets to lapping over each other they never know when to quit. Every darn one has got to be continued tacked onto the tail of it the winter. All the difference is, you can't read the writing; but I can."

"I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh if you'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start the Wagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being in the writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to take notes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder and sudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuh might have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pa.s.s this up."

"Oh, go easy. It turns me sick when I think about it; how they looked when they got their sentence, and all that. I certainly don't care to see them hanged, though they do deserve it. Where are the letters?"

Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard; he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner--an address that started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reached that blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one of the "Eight Leading" without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloated over his successes, and was cast into the deeps by his failures.

He held the envelope to the light, shook it tentatively, like any woman, guessed hastily and hopefully at the contents, and tore off an end impatiently. From the great fireplace Gene watched him curiously and half enviously. He wished he could get important-looking letters from New York every few days. It must make a fellow feel that he amounted to something.

"Gene, you remember that story I read to you one night--that yarn about the fellow that lived alone in the hills, and how the wolves used to come and sit on the ridge and howl o' nights--you know, the one you said was 'out uh sight'? They took it, all right, and--here, what do you think of that?" He tossed the letter over to Gene, who caught it just as it was about to be swept into the flame with the draught in Thurston, in the days which he spent one of the half-dozen Lazy Eight line-camps with Gene, down by the river, had been writing of the West--writing in fear and trembling, for now he knew how great was his subject and his ignorance of it. In the long evenings, while the fire crackled and the flames played a game they had invented, a game where they tried which could leap highest up the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooed around the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the one little window; while shivering, drifting range cattle tramped restlessly through the spa.r.s.e willow-growth seeking comfort where was naught but cold and snow and bitter, driving wind; while the gray wolves hunted in packs and had not long to wait for their supper, Thurston had written better than he knew. He had sent the cold of the blizzards and the howl of the wolves; he had sent bits of the wind-swept plains back to New York in long, white envelopes. And the editors were beginning to watch for his white envelopes and to seize them eagerly when they came, greedy for what was within. Not every day can they look upon a few typewritten pages and see the range-land spread, now frowning, now smiling, before them.

"Gee! they say here they want a lot the same brand, and at any old price yuh might name. I wouldn't mind writing stories myself." Gene kicked a log back into the flame where it would do the most good. His big, square-shouldered figure stood out sharply against the glow.

Thurston, watching him meditatively, wanted to tell him that he was the sort of whom good stories are made. But for men like Gene--strong, purposeful, brave, the West would lose half its charm. He was like Bob in many ways, and for that Thurston liked him and, stayed with him in the line-camp when he might have been taking his ease at the home ranch.

It was wild and lonely down there between the bare hills and the frozen river, but the wildness and the loneliness appealed to him. It was primitive and at times uncomfortable. He slept in a bunk built against the wall, with hard boards under him and a sod roof over his head. There were times when the wind blew its fiercest and rattled dirt down into his face unless he covered it with a blanket. And every other day he had to wash the dishes and cook, and when it was Gene's turn to cook, Thurston chopped great armloads of wood for the fireplace to eat o'

nights. Also he must fare forth, wrapped to the eyes, and help Gene drive back the cattle which drifted into the river bottom, lest they cross the river on the ice and range where they should not.

But in the evenings he could sit in the fire-glow and listen to the wind and to the coyotes and the gray wolves, and weave stories that even the most hyper-critical of editors could not fail to find convincing. By day he could push the coffee-box that held his typewriter over by the frosted window--when he had an hour or two to spare--and whang away at a rate which filled Gene with wonder. Sometimes he rode over to the home ranch for a day or two, but Mona was away studying music, so he found no inducement to remain, and drifted back to the little, sod-roofed cabin by the river, and to Gene.

The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and never a chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast.

Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter for days, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds.

By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When the wind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushed reluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene and Thurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn them pitilessly back into the teeth of the storm.

They came by hundreds--thin, gaunt from cold and hunger. They came by thousands, lowing their misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking that which none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilled bodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave over trying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch a dozen others were straggling out from sh.o.r.e, the timid following single file behind a leader more venturesome or more desperate than his fellows.

So the march went on and on: big, Southern-bred steer grappling the problem of his first Northern winter; thin-flanked cow with shivering, rough-coated calf trailing at her heels; humpbacked yearling with little nubs of horns telling that he was lately in his calfhood; red cattle, spotted cattle, white cattle, black cattle; white-faced Herefords, Short-horns, scrubs; Texas longhorns--of the sort invariably pictured in stampedes--still they came drifting out of the cold wilderness and on into wilderness as cold.

Through the shifting wall of the worst blizzard that season Thurston watched the weary, fruitless, endless march of the range. "Where do they all come from?" he exclaimed once when the snow-veil lifted and showed the river black with cattle.

"Lord! I dunno," Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against the pity of it. "I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in the Cypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the whole darned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run.

I'm looking for reindeer next."

"Something ought to be done," Thurston declared uneasily, turning away from the sight. "I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my ears day and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves."

"It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse," Gene told him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bit through even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in the fireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. "There's going to be the biggest loss this range has ever known."

"It's the owners' fault," snapped Thurston, whose nerves were in that irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Even argument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be a relief. "It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't they take care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in the house and watch them starve through the winter?"

"What if yuh owned more than yuh could feed? It'd be a case uh have-to then. There's fifty thousand Lazy Eight cattle walking the range somewhere today. How the d.i.c.kens is old Hank going to feed them fifty thousand? or five thousand? It takes every spear uh hay he's got to feed his calves."

"He could buy hay," Thurston persisted.

"Buy hay for fifty thousand cattle? Where would he get it? Say, Bud, I guess yuh don't realize that's some cattle. All ails you is, yuh don't savvy the size uh the thing. I'll bet yuh there won't be less than three hundred thousand head cross this river before spring."

"Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself."

"I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cow States. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runs the range, you're plumb foolish."

"Anyway, it's a d.a.m.nable pity!" Thurston a.s.serted petulantly.

"Sure it is. The gra.s.s is there, but it's under fourteen inches uh snow right now, and more coming; they say it's twelve feet deep up in the mountains. You'll see some great old times in the spring, Bud, if yuh stay. You will, won't yuh?"

Thurston laughed shortly. "I suppose it's safe to say I will," he answered. "I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It will probably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, but I won't."

"You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last spring wasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives till spring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll be scattered clean down to the Yellowstone, and every Northern outfit has got to go down and help work the range from there back. I tell yuh, Bud, yuh want to lay in a car-load uh films and throw away all them little, jerk-water snap-shots yuh got. There's going to be roundups like these old Panhandle rannies tell about, when the green gra.s.s comes." Gene, thinking blissfully of the tented life, sprawled his long legs toward the snapping blaze and crooned dreamily, while without the blizzard raged more fiercely, a verse from an old camp song:

"Out on the roundup, boys, I tell yuh what yuh get Little chunk uh bread and a little chunk uh meat; Little black coffee, boys, chuck full uh alkali, Dust in your throat, boys, and gravel in your eye!

So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, For we're bound for Lonesome Prairie when the green gra.s.s comes."

CHAPTER X. THE CHINOOK

One night in late March a sullen, faraway roar awakened Thurston in his bunk. He turned over and listened, wondering what on earth was the matter. More than anything it sounded like a hurrying freight train only the railroad lay many miles to the north, and trains do not run at large over the prairie. Gene snored peacefully an arm's length away. Outside the snow lay deep on the levels, while in the hollows were great, white drifts that at bedtime had glittered frostily in the moonlight. On the hill-tops the gray wolves howled across coulees to their neighbors, and slinking coyotes yapped foolishly at the moon.

Thurston drew the blanket up over his ears, for the fire had died to a heap of whitening embers and the cold of the cabin made the nose of him tingle. The roar grew louder and nearer-then the cabin shivered and creaked in the suddenness of the blast that struck it. A clod of dirt plumbed down upon his shoulder, bringing with it a shower of finer particles. "Another blizzard!" he groaned, "and the worst we've had yet, by the sound."

The wind shrieked down the chimney and sought the places where the c.h.i.n.king was loose. It howled up the coulees, putting the wolves themselves to shame. Gene flopped over like a newly landed fish, grunted some unintelligible words and slept again.

For an hour Thurston lay and listened to the blast and selfishly thanked heaven it was his turn at the cooking. If the storm kept up like that, he told himself, he was glad he did not have to chop the wood. He lifted the blanket and sniffed tentatively, then cuddled back into cover swearing that a thermometer would register zero at that very moment on his pillow.

The storm came in gusts as the worst blizzards do at times. It made him think of the nursery story about the fifth little pig who built a cabin of rocks, and how the wolf threatened: "I'll huff and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down!" It was as if he himself were the fifth little pig, and as if the wind were the wolf. The wolf-wind would stop for whole minutes, gather his great lungs full of air and then without warning would "huff and puff" his hardest. But though the cabin was not built of rocks, it was nevertheless a staunch little shelter and st.u.r.dily withstood the shocks.

He pitied the poor cattle still fighting famine and frost as only range-bred stock can fight. He pictured them drifting miserably before the fury of the wind or crowding for shelter under some friendly cutback, their tails to the storm, waiting stolidly for the dawn that would bring no relief. Then, with the roar and rattle in his ears, he fell asleep.

In that particular line-camp on the Missouri the cook's duties began with building a fire in the morning. Thurston waked reluctantly, shivered in antic.i.p.ation under the blankets, gathered together his fort.i.tude and crept out of his bunk. While he was dressing his teeth chattered like castanets in a minstrel show. He lighted the fire hurriedly and stood backed close before it, listening to the rage of the wind. He was growing very tired of the monotony of winter; he could no longer see any beauty in the high-turreted, snow-clad hills, nor the bare, red faces of the cliffs frowning down upon him.

"I don't suppose you could see to the river bank," he mused, "and Gene will certainly tear the third commandment to shreds before he gets the water-hole open."

He went over to the window, meaning to scratch a peep-hole in the frost, just as he had done every day for the past three months; lifted a hand, then stopped bewildered. For instead of frost there was only steam with ridges of ice yet clinging to the sash and dripping water in a tiny rivulet. He wiped the steam hastily away with his palm and looked out.

"Good heavens, Gene!" he shouted in a voice to wake the Seven Sleepers.

"The world's gone mad overnight. Are you dead, man? Get up and look out.

The whole d.a.m.n country is running water, and the hills are bare as this floor!"

"Uh-huh!" Gene knuckled his eyes and sat up. "Chinook struck us in the night. Didn't yuh hear it?"

Thurston pulled open the door and stood face to face with the miracle of the West. He had seen Mother Nature in many a changeful mood, but never like this. The wind blew warm from the southwest and carried hints of green things growing and the song of birds; he breathed it gratefully into his lungs and let it riot in his hair. The sky was purplish and soft, with heavy, drifting clouds high-piled like a summer storm. It looked like rain, he thought.

The bare hills were sodden with snow-water, and the drifts in the coulees were dirt-grimed and forbidding. The great river lay, a gray stretch of water-soaked snow over the ice, with little, clear pools reflecting the drab clouds above. A crow flapped lazily across the foreground and perched like a blot of fresh-spilled ink on the top of a dead cottonwood and cawed raucous greeting to the spring.

The wonder of it dazed Thurston and made him do unusual things that morning. All winter he had been puffed with pride over his cooking, but now he scorched the oatmeal, let the coffee boil over, and blackened the bacon, and committed divers other grievous sins against Gene's clamoring appet.i.te. Nor did he feel the shame that he should have felt. He simply could not stay in the cabin five minutes at a time, and for it he had no apology.

After breakfast he left the dishes un-washed upon the table and went out and made merry with nature. He could scarce believe that yesterday he had frosted his left ear while he brought a bucket of water up from the river, and that it had made his lungs ache to breathe the chill air. Now the path to the river was black and dry and steamed with warmth. Across the water cattle were feeding greedily upon the brown gra.s.ses that only a few hours before had been locked away under a crust of frozen snow.