The Settling of the Sage Part 9

"Let's go!" he ordered, and headed his horse for the left-hand flank of the valley. They ascended the first slopes, picked a long ridge and followed it to the crest of the low divide between that valley and the next.

Harris increased the pace and they swept up-country along the divide at a steady lope. When traveling or making a long day's ride on a single horse the cowhand saves his mount and travels always at a trail-trot, but with work to be done, three circles to be thrown in a day and with a string of fresh horses for every hand, the paramount issue of the circle is the saving of time rather than the saving of mounts. As they reached the head of the first draw that led back down into the valley Harris waved an arm.

"Carp," he called, and a middle-aged man named Carpenter, abbreviated to Carp, wheeled his horse from the group and headed down the draw.

A half-mile farther on they reached the head of another gulch.

"Hanson!" the new foreman called, and the man who repped for the Halfmoon D dropped out. One man was detailed to work each draw and when some five miles up the divide there were but half the crew left.

Harris dropped down a long ridge and crossed the bottoms. Far down the valley the wagon showed through the thin, clear air. The foreman led the way to the opposite divide and doubled back, sending a man down every gulch.

The girl rode with him. Down in the bottoms they could see the riders detailed on the opposite side hazing the cows out of their respective draws and heading them toward the wagon. The first few men left their cows in the flat and veered past them to station themselves near the wagon and block the valley, sitting their horses at hundred-yard intervals across it.

Harris and the girl worked the last draw themselves and when they drove their cows out of the mouth of it they found a herd already milled, two hundred yards above the wagon. Harris left her and circled the bunch, estimating it.

A few belated riders were bringing their quotas to swell the herds.

Frequently a bunch of cows made a break to leave and many were allowed to make good their escape to the safety of the broken slopes. But these were only marked stuff previously branded and any attempt including a cow with an unbranded calf was instantly blocked. Each rider noted the brands of any cows which he let escape and more particularly still he scanned them with an eye for the presence of a "slick," an animal missed in previous round-ups and wearing no brand.

Slick cows were fair prey for any man who first put his rope on them and he was ent.i.tled to run his own brand on a slick or to mark it with the brand for which he rode and draw down a certain scale of premiums at the end of the round-up season.

Harris changed mounts, throwing his saddle on the paint-horse. When the last rider appeared with his bunch and threw it into the herd Harris signaled all hands to change mounts. Half the men repaired to the rope corral and caught up cow horses while the balance of the crew held the herd, each one relieving some other as soon as he had saddled a fresh horse.

When the hands commenced working the herd the Three Bar girl watched the trained cow horses with an interest that was always fresh, for from long experience they thoroughly understood every move of the game.

A sagebrush fire was burning fifty yards above the wagon and each man rode past it, leaned from his saddle and dropped his running iron in the flame.

The men worked round the edge of the bunch and slipped a noose on every calf that was thrown to the edge of the constantly shifting ma.s.s.

Morrow roped the first calf and dragged it to the fire. A cow darted away with her calf and Bangs's horse whirled to head her back. As Bangs shook out his rope the horse changed tactics and abandoned the course that would have carried him past to turn them, following in close behind them instead. After two preliminary swings Bangs made his throw and missed. The horse did not miss a step but kept on close behind the calf while his rider coiled the rope. The second throw fell fair and the horse set his feet and braced himself as the calf hit the end of the rope.

As much as she loved the round-up, many times as she had seen it, Billie Warren had never become calloused to the brutalities perpetrated on the calves. She withdrew and sat in the shade of the wagon. She was downwind and the dust raised by the trampling hoofs floated down to her, mingled with the odor of steaming cows, the acrid smoke of the sage fire and the taint of scorched hair and flesh.

Some of the men handled their hot irons with makeshift tongs of split sage, which were soon burnt through and replaced. Others used slender, long-handled pliers for the work.

The horses held the calves helpless, moving just enough to keep the ropes taut. Evans loosed a fresh-branded calf and rode over to the wagon for a drink. Several cows raced wildly round at a distance from the fire.

"One of those old sisters will go on the prod and make a break for some one right soon," he predicted to the girl.

A calf bawled in pain and a cow, maddened by the appeal of her offspring, charged the group around the fire. The horses that stood there, holding calves, p.r.i.c.ked their ears and watched her rush alertly but before it was necessary for any one of them to dodge, Slade's rep slipped his rope on her, jumped his horse off at an angle and brought her down.

Evans pointed to where Harris, seated on the big pinto, was working slowly through the center of the herd.

"He's gone in after another slick," Evans said. "Watch the paint-horse work."

Calico was moving after the animal Harris wanted, working easily and without a single sharp rush that would cause undue disturbance among the cows.

"A good cow horse is like a hound," Lanky observed. "Let him spot the critter you're wanting and nothing can shake him off."

Calico followed a serpentine course through the ma.s.s, crowded a three-year-old to the edge and cut him out. The animal attempted to dodge back among his fellows but the paint-horse turned as on a pivot and blocked him, then started him off in a straightaway run.

"There's a real rope-horse," Lanky said. "I've been noticing him work.

Look!"

Calico had braced himself as the slick was roped, shoving his hind feet out ahead, squatting on his haunches and raising his forefeet almost clear of the ground.

"Cal broke him without shoes in front," Evans explained. "His feet got tender after he'd jerked a steer or two and he learned to sock his hind feet ahead and take the jar on them. He'll last two years longer that way. A horse that takes all the weight on his front feet in jerking heavy stuff soon gets stove up in the shoulders and has to be condemned. This Cal Harris has one whole bagful of knowing tricks."

He rode back to the work after this endors.e.m.e.nt of her choice of a foreman.

Through all the turmoil the nighthawk slept peacefully in the shade of a sage-clump. Waddles dozed in the wagon but suddenly came to life with a start and signaled to the wrangler who, in his turn, waved an arm to the man nearest him. The four wagon horses were roped and harnessed while Waddles loaded the bed rolls on the tailgate and lashed them fast. The rope corral was dismantled and loaded. The chuck wagon veered past the herd and lumbered up the valley and the wrangler and one other followed with the horse herd.

In a short s.p.a.ce of time the herd had been worked, the last calf branded, and Harris led the men up the bottoms. As they rode each one reported the brands of all stock which he had let break away from his bunch before reaching the herd. Each rep entered the number and kind of his own brand so reported to the former tally taken of the herd.

Five miles up the valley, at the spot where Harris had crossed it a few hours before, they found the wagon waiting at the new stand, the corral refashioned and the remuda inside it. It was but ten o'clock but the first circle had commenced at four. The noon meal on the round-up was served whenever the first circle was completed. The men fell ravenously on the hot meal, changed to fresh circle horses and started again.

It was falling dusk when the herd gathered in the third circle had been worked and the last calf branded for the day. The men had unsaddled and spread their bed rolls before Waddles had announced the meal. The nighthawk came riding up on the horse he had picketed prior to going to sleep before sunup at the first stand. His bed roll was lashed on a half-wild range horse he had roped and it sagged to one side, having no pack saddle to keep it from slipping, and he spoke in no gentle terms of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His fretfulness pa.s.sed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he repaired to the wagon, his ill humor dissipated.

There was no music that night, every man retiring to his bed roll the instant he finished his meal.

At the end of the first week out from the ranch Harris pulled up his horse beside the girl's and showed her his tally book.

"We've run Slade's mark on more calves than we have our own," he said.

"That's one way he works."

"But that's not his fault and it doesn't mean anything," she said.

"His cows are sure to drift. This first strip we've worked is the southernmost edge of our range and his north wagon works the strip right south of us. We're sure to find a number of his cows. As we double back on our next lap we'll not find the same proportion."

"Not quite--but plenty," he predicted. "We've marked more calves for Slade in one week than all his three wagon crews will mark for the Three Bar in a year. The first three weeks of each season your men do a little more work for Slade than they do for you. It's a safe bet that the Halfmoon D does the same, and so on through every brand that joins his range. That puts him way off ahead."

"But that is pure accident," she said.

"It's pure design," he stated. "His boys are busy shoving his cows from the middle all ways so that when fall comes he has a good inside block that's only been lightly fed over. They fall back on that for winter feed. Last winter, when cows were dying like rats, his men were out drifting Slade's stuff back toward his middle range."

"That's true enough," she admitted. "But----"

"But you thought he was doing it as a favor to you--getting his surplus off your territory so your own cows would have a better chance. That's the same kind of talk he floated all round the line; playing the benevolent neighbor when in reality the old pirate had deliberately planned, year after year, to overcrowd your range and feed you out."

"But his men would know," she objected.

"Not many of them would grasp the whole scheme of it," he said. "You hadn't thought of it yourself. He'd detail a pair of boys to shove a few hundred head way off to the south. A few days later another couple would be throwing a bunch off northeast. See? And what if a few of them did surmise? They're riding for his brand."

The girl nodded. That unalterable code again,--the religion of being loyal to one's brand. Not one of Slade's men would balk at doing it knowingly; each would do anything to advance his interests as long as he drew his pay from Slade.

"I doubt if there's a dozen men within two hundred miles that haven't lifted a few calves now and then for the brand they were riding for.

That's the way it goes. A rule that was fine to start--loyalty to the hand that paid you; then carried too far until it's degenerated into a tool that's often abused," he said.

As they talked Harris detailed men for each draw but when they reached the point where they were due to drop down and cross the valley he pulled up his horse.

"You take the rest of the circle, Carp," he instructed Carpenter. "I'm going to ride off up the ridge a piece." The girl regarded him curiously. No less than three times in the last week he had stopped midway of the circle and asked her to complete it. Now he had turned it over to Carp and he signaled her to remain with him.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she watched the men ride down toward the bottoms. "And why?"