“Pussy!” he whispered, feeling hopelessly for his heart; and then, gathering the forlorn little wisp of fur in his arms, he hurried into the house without a word.
He was still in hiding when Jasper Swope came to and sat up, his hair drenched with water and matted with dirt. Staring doubtfully at the set face of Hardy he staggered to his feet; then the memory of the fight came back to him and he glared at him with a drunkard’s insolence.
“Where’s my gun?” he demanded, suddenly clapping his hand upon the empty holster.
“I’ll take care of that for you,” answered Hardy pointedly. “Now you pile onto that mule of yours and pull your freight, will you?” He led the black mule up close and boosted its master into the saddle, but Swope was not content.
“Where’s that dastard, Jeff Creede?” he demanded. “Well, I wanter see him, that’s all. And say, Mr. Smart Alec, I want that gun, too, see?”
“Well, you won’t get it,” said Hardy.
“I will that,” declared Swope, “’nd I’ll git you, too, Willie, before I git through with you. I’ve had enough of this monkey business. Now gimme that gun, I tell ye, or I’ll come back with more of ’em and take it!”
He raised his voice to a roar, muffled to a beast-like 355 hoarseness by his swollen jaws, and the ramada reverberated like a cavern as he bellowed out his challenge. Then the door was snatched violently open and Jefferson Creede stepped forth, looking black as hell itself. In one hand he held the sheepman’s pistol and in the other his own.
“Here!” he said, and striding forward he thrust Swope’s gun into his hand. “It’s loaded, too,” he added. “Now, you––if you’ve got any shootin’ to do, go to it!”
He stepped back quickly and stood ready, his masterful eyes bent upon his enemy in a scowl of unquenchable hate. Once before they had faced each other, waiting for that mysterious psychic prompting without which neither man nor beast can begin a fight, and Jim had stepped in between––but Hardy stood aside without a word. It was a show-down and, bulldog fighter though he was, Jasper Swope weakened. The anger of his enemy overcame his hostile spirit without a blow, and he turned his pistol away.
“That’s all I wanted,” he said, shoving the gun sullenly into its holster. “They’s two of you, and––”
“And you’re afraid,” put in Creede promptly. He stood gazing at the downcast sheepman, his lip curling contemptuously.
“I’ve never seen a sheepman yet,” he said, “that 356 would fight. You’ve listened to that blat until it’s a part of ye; you’ve run with them Mexicans until you’re kin to ’em; you’re a coward, Jasp Swope, and I always knowed it.” He paused again, his eyes glowing with the hatred that had overmastered his being. “My God,” he said, “if I could only git you to fight to-day I’d give everything I’ve got left!”
The sheepman’s gaze was becoming furtive as he watched them. He glanced sidewise, edging away from the door; then, pricking his mule with his spurs, he galloped madly away, ducking his head at every jump as if he feared a shot.
“Look at the cowardly dastard!” sneered Creede bitterly. “D’ye know what he would do if that was me? He’d shoot me in the back. Ah, God A’mighty, and that dog of his got Tommy before I could pull a gun! Rufe, I could kill every sheepman in the Four Peaks for this––every dam’ one of ’em––and the first dog that comes in sight of this ranch will stop a thirty-thirty.” He stopped and turned away, cursing and muttering to himself.
“God A’mighty,” he moaned, “I can’t keep nothin’!” And stumbling back into the house he slammed the door behind him.
A gloom settled down over the place, a gloom that lasted for days. The cowboys came back from driving 357 the town herd and, going up on the mesa, they gathered a few head more. Then the heat set in before its time and the work stopped short. For the steer that is roped and busted in the hot weather dies suddenly at the water; the flies buzz about the ears of the new-marked calves and poison them, and the mother cows grow gaunt and thin from overheating. Not until the long Summer had passed could the riding continue; the steers must be left to feed down the sheeped-out range; the little calves must run for sleepers until the fall rodéo. Sheep and the drought had come together, and the round-up was a failure. Likewise the cowmen were broke.
As they gathered about the fire on that last night it was a silent company––the rodéo boss the gloomiest of them all. Not since the death of Tommy had his eyes twinkled with the old mischief; he had no bets to offer, no news to volunteer; a dull, sombre abstraction lay upon him like a pall. Only when Bill Lightfoot spoke did he look up, and then with a set sneer, growing daily more saturnine. The world was dark to Creede and Bill’s fresh remarks jarred on him––but Bill himself was happy. He was of the kind that runs by opposites, taking their troubles with hilarity under the impression that they are philosophers. His pretext for this present happiness was a professed interview with Kitty Bonnair 358 on the evening that the town herd pulled into Moreno’s. What had happened at this interview was a secret, of course, but it made Bill happy; and the more morose and ugly Jeff became about it the more it pleased Lightfoot to be gay. He sat on a box that night and sang risqué ditties, his enormous Colt’s revolver dangling bravely at his hip; and at last, casting his weather eye upon Creede, he began a certain song.
|
“Oh, my little girl, she lives in the town––” |
And then he stopped.
“Bill,” said the rodéo boss feelingly, “you make me tired.”
“Lay down an’ you’ll git rested, then,” suggested Lightfoot.
|
“A toodle link, a toodle link, a too-oodle a day.” |
“I’ll lay you down in a minute, if you don’t shut up,” remarked Creede, throwing away his cigarette.
“The hell you say,” commented Lightfoot airily.
|
“And last time I seen her she ast me to come down.” |
At this raw bit of improvisation the boss rose slowly to his feet and stalked away from temptation.
|
“And if anybody sees her you’ll know her by this sign,” |
chanted the cowboy, switching to an out-and-out 359 bad one; and then, swaying his body on his cracker box, he plunged unctuously into the chorus.
|
“She’s got a dark and rolling eye, boys; |
He stopped there and leapt to his feet anxiously. The mighty bulk of the rodéo boss came plunging back at him through the darkness; his bruising fist shot out and the frontier troubadour went sprawling among the pack saddles.
It was the first time Creede had ever struck one of his own kind,––men with guns were considered dangerous,––but this time he laid on unmercifully.
“You’ve had that comin’ to you for quite a while, Bill Lightfoot,” he said, striking Bill’s ineffectual gun aside, “and more too. Now maybe you’ll keep shut about ‘your girl’!”
He turned on his heel after administering this rebuke and went to the house, leaving his enemy prostrate in the dirt.
“The big, hulkin’ brute,” blubbered Lightfoot, sitting up and aggrievedly feeling of his front teeth, “jumpin’ on a little feller like me––an’ he never give me no warnin’, neither. You jest wait, I’ll––”
“Aw, shut up!” growled Old Man Reavis, whose soul had long been harrowed by Lightfoot’s festive ways. “He give you plenty of warnin’, if you’d 360 only listen. Some people have to swallow a few front teeth before they kin learn anythin’.”
“Well, what call did he have to jump on me like that?” protested Lightfoot. “I wasn’t doin’ nothin’.”
“No, nothin’ but singin’ bawdy songs about his girl,” sneered Reavis sarcastically.
“His girl, rats!” retorted the cowboy, vainglorious even in defeat, “she’s my girl, if she’s anybody’s!”
“Well, about your girl then, you dirty brute!” snarled the old man, suddenly assuming a high moral plane for his utter annihilation. “You’re a disgrace to the outfit, Bill Lightfoot,” he added, with conviction. “I’m ashamed of ye.”
“That’s right,” chimed in the Clark boys, whose sensibilities had likewise been harassed; and with all the world against him Bill Lightfoot retired in a huff to his blankets. So the rodéo ended as it had begun, in disaster, bickering, and bad blood, and no man rightly knew from whence their misfortune came. Perhaps the planets in their spheres had cast a malign influence upon them, or maybe the bell mare had cast a shoe. Anyhow they had started off the wrong foot and, whatever the cause, the times were certainly not auspicious for matters of importance, love-making, or the bringing together of the estranged. Let whatsoever high-priced astrologer 361 cast his horoscope for good, Saturn was swinging low above the earth and dealing especial misery to the Four Peaks; and on top of it all the word came that old Bill Johnson, after shooting up the sheep camps, had gone crazy and taken to the hills.
For a week, Creede and Hardy dawdled about the place, patching up the gates and fences and cursing the very name of sheep. A spirit of unrest hovered over the place, a brooding silence which spoke only of Tommy and those who were gone, and the two partners eyed each other furtively, each deep in his own thoughts. At last when he could stand it no longer Creede went over to the corner, and dug up his money.
“I’m goin’ to town,” he said briefly.
“All right,” responded Hardy; and then, after meditating a while, he added: “I’ll send down some letters by you.”
Late that evening, after he had written a long letter to Lucy and a short one to his father, he sat at the desk where he had found their letters, and his thoughts turned back to Kitty. There lay the little book which had held their letters, just as he had thrust it aside. He picked it up, idly, and glanced at the title-page: “Sonnets from the Portuguese.” How dim and far away it all seemed now, this world of the poets in which he had once lived and dreamed, 362 where sweetness and beauty were enshrined as twin goddesses of light, and gentleness brooded over all her children. What a world that had been, with its graceful, smiling women, its refinements of thought and speech, its aspirations and sympathies––and Kitty! He opened the book slowly, wondering from whence it had come, and from the deckled leaves a pressed forget-me-not fell into his hand. That was all––there was no mark, no word, no sign but this, and as he gazed his numbed mind groped through the past for a forget-me-not. Ah yes, he remembered! But how far away it seemed now, the bright morning when he had met his love on the mountain peak and the flowers had fallen from her hair––and what an inferno of strife and turmoil had followed since! He opened to the place where the imprint of the dainty flower lay and read reverently:
The spell of the words laid hold upon as he read and he turned page after page, following the cycle of that other woman’s love––a love which waited for years to be claimed by the master hand, never faltering to the end. Then impulsively he reached for a fair sheet of paper to begin a letter to Kitty, a letter which should breathe the old gentleness and love, yet “for love’s sake only.” But while he sat dreaming, thinking with what words to begin, his partner lounged in, and Hardy put aside his pen and waited, while the big man hung around and fidgeted.
“Well, I’ll be in town to-morrer,” he said, drearily.
“Aha,” assented Hardy.
“What ye got there?” inquired Creede, after a long silence. He picked up the book, griming the dainty pages as he turned them with his rough fingers, glancing at the headings.
“Um-huh,” he grunted, “‘Sonnets from the Portegees,’ eh? I never thought them Dagos could write––what I’ve seen of ’em was mostly drivin’ fish-wagons or swampin’ around some slaughterhouse. How does she go, now,” he continued, as 364 his schooling came back to him, “see if I can make sense out of it.” He bent down and mumbled over the first sonnet, spelling out the long words doubtfully.
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“I thought once how The-o-crite-us had sung |
“Well say, what’s he drivin’ at, anyway?” demanded the rugged cowboy. “Is that Dago talk, or is he jest mixed in his mind? Perfectly clear, eh? Well, maybe so, but I fail to see it. Wish I could git aholt of some good po’try.” He paused, waiting for Hardy to respond.
“Say,” he said, at last, “do me a favor, will ye, Rufe?”
The tone of his voice, now soft and diffident, startled Hardy out of his dream.
“Why sure, Jeff,” he said, “if I can.”
“No, no ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ about it!” persisted Creede. “A lucky feller like you with everythin’ comin’ his way ought to be able to say ‘Yes’ once in a while without hangin’ a pull-back on it.”
“Huh,” grunted Hardy suspiciously, “you better tell me first what you want.”
“Well, I want you to write me a letter,” blurted 365 out Creede. “I can keep a tally book and order up the grub from Bender; but, durn the luck, when it comes to makin’ love on paper I’d rather wrastle a bear. Course you know who it is, and you savvy how them things is done. Throw in a little po’try, will you, and––and––say, Rufe, for God’s sake, help me out on this!”
He laid one hand appealingly upon his partner’s shoulder, but the little man squirmed out from under it impatiently.
“Who is it?” he asked doggedly. “Sallie Winship?”
“Aw, say,” protested Creede, “don’t throw it into a feller like that––Sal went back on me years ago. You know who I mean––Kitty Bonnair.”
“Kitty Bonnair!” Hardy had known it, but he had tried to keep her name unspoken. Battle as he would he could not endure to hear it, even from Jeff.
“What do you want to tell Miss Bonnair?” he inquired, schooling his voice to a cold quietness.
“Tell her?” echoed Creede ecstatically. “W’y, tell her I’m lonely as hell now she’s gone––tell her––well, there’s where I bog down, but I’d trade my best horse for another kiss like that one she give me, and throw in the saddle for pelon. Now, say, Rufe, don’t leave me in a hole like this. You’ve made your winnin’, and here’s your nice long letter to Miss 366 Lucy. My hands are as stiff as a burnt rawhide and I can’t think out them nice things to say; but I love Kitty jest as much as you love Miss Lucy––mebbe more––and––and I wanter tell her so!”
He ended abjectly, gazing with pleading eyes at the stubborn face of his partner whose lips were drawn tight.
“We––every man has to––no, I can’t do it, Jeff,” he stammered, choking. “I’d––I’d help you if I could, Jeff––but she’d know my style. Yes, that’s it. If I’d write the letter she’d know it was from me––women are quick that way. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is––every man has to fight out his own battle, in love.”
He paused and fumbled with his papers.
“Here’s a good pen,” he said, “and––and here’s the paper.” He shoved out the fair sheet upon which he had intended to write and rose up dumbly from the table.
“I’m going to bed,” he said, and slipped quietly out of the room. As he lay in his blankets he could see the gleam of light from the barred window and hear Jeff scraping his boots uneasily on the floor. True indeed, his hands were like burnt rawhide from gripping at ropes and irons, his clothes were greasy and his boots smelled of the corral, and yet––she had given him a kiss! He tried to picture it in his 367 mind: Kitty smiling––or startled, perhaps––Jeff masterful, triumphant, laughing. Ah God, it was the same kiss she had offered him, and he had run away!
In the morning, there was a division between them, a barrier which could not be overcome. Creede lingered by the door a minute, awkwardly, and then rode away. Hardy scraped up the greasy dishes and washed them moodily. Then the great silence settled down upon Hidden Water and he sat alone in the shadow of the ramada, gazing away at the barren hills.
The sun rose clear for the hundredth time over the shoulder of the Four Peaks; it mounted higher, glowing with a great light, and the smooth round tops of the bowlders shone like half-buried skulls along the creek-bed; it swung gloriously up to its zenith and the earth palpitated with a panting heat. Summer had come, and the long days when the lizards crawl deep into their crevices and the cattle follow the scanty shade of the box cañons or gather in standing-places where the wind draws over the ridges and mitigates the flies. In the pasture at Hidden Water the horses stood head and tail together, side by side, each thrashing the flies from the other’s face and dozing until hunger or thirst aroused them or perversity took them away. Against the cool face of the cliff the buzzards moped and stretched their dirty wings in squalid discomfort; the trim little sparrow-hawks gave over their hunting; and all the world lay tense and still. Only at the ranch house where Hardy kept a perfunctory watch was there any sign of motion or life.
For two weeks now he had been alone, ever since 369 Jeff went down to Bender, and with the solitary’s dread of surprise he stepped out into the ramada regularly, scanning the western trail with eyes grown weary of the earth’s emptiness.
At last as the sun sank low, throwing its fiery glare in his eyes, he saw the familiar figure against the sky––Creede, broad and bulky and topped by his enormous hat, and old Bat Wings, as raw-boned and ornery as ever. Never until that moment had Hardy realized how much his life was dependent upon this big, warm-hearted barbarian who clung to his native range as instinctively as a beef and yet possessed human attributes that would win him friends anywhere in the world. Often in that long two weeks he had reproached himself for abandoning Jeff in his love-making. What could be said for a love which made a man so pitiless? Was it worthy of any return? Was it, after all, a thing to be held so jealously to his heart, gnawing out his vitals and robbing him of his humanity? These and many other questions Hardy had had time to ask himself in his fortnight of introspection and as he stood by the doorway waiting he resolved to make amends. From a petty creature wrapped up in his own problems and prepossessions he would make himself over into a man worthy of the name of friend. Yet the consciousness of his fault lay heavy upon him and as Creede rode in he stood 370 silent, waiting for him to speak. But Jeff for his part came on grimly, and there was a sombre glow in his eyes which told more than words.
“Hello, sport,” he said, smiling wantonly, “could you take a pore feller in over night?”
“Sure thing, I can,” responded Hardy gayly. “Where’ve you been all the time?”
And Creede chanted:
|
“Down to Bender, |
“And I’m broke, too,” he added, sotto voce, dropping off his horse and sinking into a chair.
“Well, you don’t need to let that worry you,” said Hardy. “I’ve got plenty. Here!” He went down into his pocket and tossed a gold piece to him, but Creede dodged it listlessly.
“Nope,” he said, “money’s nothin’ to me.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Hardy anxiously. “Are you sick?”
“Yes,” answered Creede, nodding his head wearily, “sick and tired of it all.” He paused and regarded his partner solemnly. “I’m a miserable failure, Rufe,” he said. “I ain’t got nothin’ and I ain’t worth nothin’. I never done nothin’––and I ain’t got a friend in the world.”
He stopped and gazed at the barren land despondently, waiting to see if his partner would offer any protests.
“Rufe,” he said, at last, his voice tremulous with reproach, “if you’d only helped me out a little on that letter––if you’d only told me a few things––well, she might have let me down easy, and I could’ve took it. As it was, she soaked me.”
Then it was that Hardy realized the burden under which his partner was laboring, the grief that clutched at his heart, the fire that burned in his brain, and he could have wept, now that it was too late.
“Jeff,” he said honestly, “it don’t do any good now, but I’m sorry. I’m more than sorry––I’m ashamed. But that don’t do you any good either, does it?”
He stepped over and laid his hand affectionately upon his partner’s shoulder, but Creede hunched it off impatiently.
“No,” he said, slowly and deliberately, “not a dam’ bit.” There was no bitterness in his words, only an acknowledgment of the truth. “They was only one thing for me to do after I received that letter,” he continued, “and I done it. I went on a hell-roarin’ drunk. That’s right. I filled up on that forty-rod whiskey until I was crazy drunk, an’ then I picked out the biggest man in town and fought him to a whisper.”
He sighed and glanced at his swollen knuckles, which still showed the marks of combat.
“That feller was a jim-dandy scrapper,” he said, smiling magnanimously, “but I downed ’im, all right. I couldn’t quite lick the whole town, but I tried; and I certainly gave ’em a run for their money, while it lasted. If Bender don’t date time from Jeff Creede’s big drunk I miss my guess a mile. And you know, after I got over bein’ fightin’ drunk, I got cryin’ drunk––but I never did get drunk enough to tell my troubles, thank God! The fellers think I’m sore over bein’ sheeped out. Well, after I’d punished enough booze to start an Injun uprisin’, and played the faro bank for my wad, I went to sleep; and when I woke up it seemed a lo-ong time ago and I could look back and see jest how foolish I’d been. I could see how she’d jollied me up and got me comin’, playin’ me off against Bill Lightfoot; and then I could see how she’d tantalized me, like that mouse the cat had when you was down in Bender; and then I could see where I had got the big-head bad, thinkin’ I was the only one––and all the time she was laughin’ at me! Oh, it’s nothin’ now––I kin laugh at it myself in a month; but I’m so dam’ ’shamed I could cry.” He lopped down in his chair, a great hulk of a man, and shook his head gloomily.
“They ain’t but one girl I ever knowed,” he said 373 solemnly, “that wasn’t stringin’ me, and that was Sallie Winship. Sal liked me, dam’d if she didn’t. She cried when she went away, but the old lady wouldn’t stand for no bow-legged cowpuncher––and so I git euchred, every time.”
For lack of some higher consolation Hardy cooked up a big supper for his low-spirited partner, and after he had done the honors at the feast the irrepressible good health of the cowboy rose up and conquered his grief in spite of him. He began by telling the story of his orgy, which apparently had left Bender a wreck. The futile rage of Black Tex, the despair of the town marshal, the fight with the Big Man, the arrest by the entire posse comitatus, the good offices of Mr. Einstein in furnishing bail, the crying and sleeping jags––all were set forth with a vividness which left nothing to the imagination, and at the end the big man was comforted. When it was all over and his memory came down to date he suddenly recalled a package of letters that were tied up in his coat, which was still on the back of his saddle. He produced them forthwith and, like a hungry boy who sees others eat, sat down to watch Rufe read. No letters ever came for him––and when one did come it was bad. The first in the pack was from Lucy Ware and as Hardy read it his face softened, even while he knew that Creede was watching.
“Say, she’s all right, ain’t she?” observed Jeff, when his partner looked up.
“That’s right,” said Hardy, “and she says to take you on again as foreman and pay you for every day you didn’t carry your gun.”
“No!” cried Creede, and then he laughed quietly to himself. “Does that include them days I was prizin’ up hell down in Bender? Oh, it does, eh? Well, you can tell your boss that I’ll make that up to her before the Summer’s over.”
He leaned back and stretched his powerful arms as if preparing for some mighty labor. “We’re goin’ to have a drought this Summer,” he said impressively, “that will have the fish packin’ water in canteens. Yes, sir, the chaser is goin’ to cost more than the whiskey before long; and they’s goin’ to be some dead cows along the river. Do you know what Pablo Moreno is doin’? He’s cuttin’ brush already to feed his cattle. That old man is a wise hombre, all right, when it comes to weather. He’s been hollerin’ ‘Año seco, año seco,’ for the last year, and now, by Joe, we’ve got it! They ain’t hardly enough water in the river to make a splash, and here it’s the first of June. We’ve been kinder wropt up in fightin’ sheep and sech and hain’t noticed how dry it’s gittin’; but that old feller has been sittin’ on top of his hill watchin’ the clouds, and smellin’ of the wind, and measurin’ 375 the river, and countin’ his cows until he’s a weather sharp. I was a-ridin’ up the river this afternoon when I see the old man cuttin’ down a palo verde tree, and about forty head of cattle lingerin’ around to eat the top off as soon as she hit the ground; and he says to me, kinder solemn and fatherly:
“‘Jeff,’ he says, ‘cut trees for your cattle––this is an año seco.”
“‘Yes, I’ve heard that before,’ says I. ‘But my cows is learnin’ to climb.’”
“‘Stawano,’ he says, throwin’ out his hands like I was a hopeless proposition. But all the same I think I’ll go out to-morrow and cut down one of them palo verdes like he show’d me––one of these kind with little leaves and short thorns––jest for an expeeriment. If the cattle eat it, w’y maybe I’ll cut another, but I don’t want to be goin’ round stuffin’ my cows full of twigs for nothin’. Let ’em rustle for their feed, same as I do. But honest to God, Rufe, some of them little runty cows that hang around the river can’t hardly cast a shadder, they’re that ganted, and calves seems to be gittin’ kinder scarce, too. But here––git busy, now––here’s a letter you overlooked.”
He pawed over the pile purposefully and thrust a pale blue envelope before Hardy––a letter from Kitty Bonnair. And his eyes took on a cold, fighting glint as he observed the fatal handwriting.
“By God,” he cried, “I hain’t figured out yet what struck me! I never spoke a rough word to that girl in my life, and she certainly gimme a nice kiss when she went away. But jest as soon as I write her a love letter, w’y she––she––W’y hell, Rufe, I wouldn’t talk that way to a sheep-herder if he didn’t know no better. Now you jest read that”––he fumbled in his pocket and slammed a crumpled letter down before his partner––“and tell me if I’m wrong! No, I want you to do it. Well, I’ll read it to you, then!”
He ripped open the worn envelope, squared his elbows across the table, and opened the scented inclosure defiantly, but before he could read it Hardy reached out suddenly and covered it with his hand.
“Please don’t, Jeff,” he said, his face pale and drawn. “It was all my fault––I should have told you––but please don’t read it to me. I––I can’t stand it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” retorted Creede coldly. “I reckon you can stand it if I can. Now suppose you wrote a real nice letter––the best you knowed how––to your girl, and she handed you somethin’ like this: ‘My dear Mr. Creede, yore amazin’ letter––’ Here, what ye doin’?”
“I won’t listen to it!” cried Hardy, snatching the letter away, “it’s––”
“Now lookee here, Rufe Hardy,” began Creede, rising 377 up angrily from his chair, “I want to tell you right now that you’ve got to read that letter or lick me––and I doubt if you can do that, the way I happen to be feelin’. You got me into this in the first place and now, by God, you’ll see it out! Now you read that letter and tell me if I’m wrong!”
He reared up his head as he spoke and Hardy saw the same fierce gleam in his eyes that came when he harried the sheep; but there was something beside that moved his heart to pity. It was the lurking sadness of a man deep hurt, who fights the whole world in his anguish; the protest of a soul in torment, demanding, like Job, that some one shall justify his torture.
“All right, Jeff,” he said, “I will read it––only––only don’t crowd me for an answer.”
He spread the letter before him on the table and saw in a kind of haze the angry zigzag characters that galloped across the page, the words whose meaning he did not as yet catch, so swiftly did his thoughts rise up at sight of them. Years ago Kitty had written him a letter and he had read it at that same table. It had been a cruel letter, but unconsidered, like the tantrum of a child. Yes, he had almost forgotten it, but now like a sudden nightmare the old horror clutched at his heart. He steadied himself, and the words began to take form before him. Surely she 378 would be gentle with Jeff, he was so big and kind. Then he read on, slowly, grasping at the meaning, and once more his eyes grew big with horror at her words. He finished, and bowed his head upon the table, while the barren room whirled before him.
From his place across the table the big cowboy looked down upon him, grim and masterful, yet wondering at his silence.
“Well, am I wrong?” he demanded, but the little man made no answer.
Upon the table before Hardy there lay another letter, written in that same woman’s hand, a letter to him, and the writing was smooth and fair. Jeff had brought it to him, tied behind his saddle, and he stood before him now, waiting.
“Am I wrong?” he said again, but Hardy did not answer in words. Holding the crumpled letter behind him he took up his own fair missive––such a one as he would have died for in years gone by––and laid it on the fire, and when the tiny flame leaped up he dropped the other on it and watched them burn together.
“Well, how about it?” inquired Creede, awed by the long silence, but the little man only bowed his head.
“Who am I, to judge?” he said.
For a year the shadowy clouds had flitted past Hidden Water, drifting like flocks of snowy birds to their resting-place against the Peaks, and as the wind raged and the darkness gathered the cattle had raised their heads and bellowed, sniffing the wet air. In Summer the thunder-heads had mounted to high heaven and spread from east to west; the heat lightning had played along the horizon at night, restless and incessant; the sky had turned black and the south wind had rushed up, laden with the smell of distant showers. At last the rain had fallen, graciously, bringing up grass and browse, and flowers for those who sought them. But all the time the water lay in black pools along the shrunken river, trickling among the rocks and eddying around huge snags of driftwood, clear, limpid, sparkling, yet always less and less.
Where the winter floods had scoured the lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the 380 sun. Along the river’s edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat sprang up on the mesas, the myriad grass-seeds germinated and struggled forth, sucking the last moisture from the earth to endow it with more seeds. In springtime the deep-rooted mesquites and palo verdes threw out the golden halo of their flowers until the cañons were aflame; the soggy sahuaros drank a little at each sparse downpour and defied the drought; all the world of desert plants flaunted their pigmented green against the barren sky as if in grim contempt; but the little streams ran weaker and weaker, creeping along under the sand to escape the pitiless sun.
As Creede and Hardy rode out from Hidden Water, the earth lay dead beneath their horses’ feet––stark and naked, stripped to the rocks by the sheep. Even on Bronco Mesa the ground was shorn of its covering; the cloven hoofs of the sheep had passed over it like a scalping knife, tearing off the last sun-blasted fringe of grass. In open spaces where they had not found their way the gaunt cattle still curled 381 their hungry tongues beneath the bushes and fetched out spears of grass, or licked the scanty Indian wheat from the earth itself.
With lips as tough and leathery as their indurated faces, the hardiest of them worked their way into bunches of stick-cactus and chollas, breaking down the guard of seemingly impenetrable spines and munching on the juicy stalks; while along the ridges long-necked cows bobbed for the high browse which the sheep had been unable to reach.
The famine was upon them; their hips stood out bony and unsightly above their swollen stomachs as they racked across the benches, and their eyes were wild and haggard. But to the eye of Creede, educated by long experience, they were still strong and whole. The weaklings were those that hung about the water, foot-sore from their long journeyings to the distant hills and too weary to return. At the spring-hole at Carrizo they found them gathered, the runts and roughs of the range; old cows with importunate calves bunting at their flaccid udders; young heifers, unused to rustling for two; orehannas with no mothers to guide them to the feed; rough steers that had been “busted” and half-crippled by some reckless cowboy––all the unfortunate and incapable ones, standing dead-eyed and hopeless or limping stiffly about.
A buzzard rose lazily from a carcass as they approached, and they paused to note the brand. Then Creede shook his head bodingly and rode into the bunch by the spring. At a single glance the rodéo boss recognized each one of them and knew from whence he came. He jumped his horse at a wild steer and started him toward the ridges; the cows with calves he rounded up more gently, turning them into the upper trail; the orehannas, poor helpless orphans that they were, followed hopefully, leaving one haggard-eyed old stag behind.
Creede looked the retreating band over critically and shook his head again.
“Don’t like it,” he observed, briefly; and then, unlocking the ponderous padlock that protected their cabin from hungry sheepmen, he went in and fetched out the axe. “Guess I’ll cut a tree for that old stiff,” he said.
From his stand by the long troughs where all the mountain cattle watered in Summer, the disconsolate old stag watched the felling of the tree curiously; then after an interval of dreary contemplation, he racked his hide-bound skeleton over to the place and began to browse. Presently the rocks began to clatter on the upper trail, and an old cow that had been peering over the brow of the hill came back to get her share. Even her little calf, whose life had been 383 cast in thorny ways, tried his new teeth on the tender ends and found them good. The orehannas drifted in one after the other, and other cows with calves, and soon there was a little circle about the tree-top, munching at the soft, brittle twigs.
“Well, that settles it,” said Creede. “One of us stays here and cuts brush, and the other works around Hidden Water. This ain’t the first drought I’ve been through, not by no means, and I’ve learned this much: the Alamo can be dry as a bone and Carrizo, too, but they’s always water here and at the home ranch. Sooner or later every cow on the range will be goin’ to one place or the other to drink, and if we give ’em a little bait of brush each time it keeps ’em from gittin’ too weak. As long as a cow will rustle she’s all right, but the minute she’s too weak to travel she gits to be a water-bum––hangs around the spring and drinks until she starves to death. But if you feed ’em a little every day they’ll drift back to the ridges at night and pick up a little more. I’m sorry for them lily-white hands of yourn, pardner, but which place would you like to work at?”
“Hidden Water,” replied Hardy, promptly, “and I bet I can cut as many trees as you can.”
“I’ll go you, for a fiver,” exclaimed Creede, emulously. “Next time Rafael comes in tell him to bring me up some more grub and baled hay, and 384 I’m fixed. And say, when you write to the boss you can tell her I’ve traded my gun for an axe!”
As Hardy turned back towards home he swung in a great circle and rode down the dry bed of the Alamo, where water-worn bowlders and ricks of mountain drift lay strewn for miles to mark the vanished stream. What a power it had been in its might, floating sycamores and ironwoods as if they were reeds, lapping high against the granite walls, moving the very rocks in its bed until they ground together! But now the sand lay dry and powdery, the willows and water-moodies were dead to the roots, and even the ancient cottonwoods from which it derived its name were dying inch by inch. A hundred years they had stood there, defying storm and cloudburst, but at last the drought was sucking away their life. On the mesa the waxy greasewood was still verdant, the gorged sahuaros stood like great tanks, skin-tight with bitter juice, and all the desert trees were tipped with green; but the children of the river were dying for a drink.
A string of cattle coming in from The Rolls stopped and stared at the solitary horseman, head up against the sky; then as he rode on they fell in behind him, travelling the deep-worn trail that led to Hidden Water. At the cleft-gate of the pass, still following the hard-stamped trail, Hardy turned aside from his course and entered, curious to see his 385 garden again before it succumbed to the drought. There before him stood the sycamores, as green and flourishing as ever; the eagle soared out from his cliff; the bees zooned in their caves; and beyond the massive dyke that barred the way the tops of the elders waved the last of their creamy blossoms. In the deep pool the fish still darted about, and the waterfall that fed it was not diminished. The tinkle of its music seemed even louder, and as Hardy looked below he saw that a little stream led way from the pool, flowing in the trench where the cattle came to drink. It was a miracle, springing from the bosom of the earth from whence the waters come. When all the world outside lay dead and bare, Hidden Water flowed more freely, and its garden lived on untouched.
Never had Hardy seen it more peaceful, and as he climbed the Indian steps and stood beneath the elder, where Chupa Rosa had built her tiny nest his heart leapt suddenly as he remembered Lucy. Here they had sat together in the first gladness of her coming, reading his forgotten verse and watching the eagle’s flight; only for that one time, and then the fight with the sheep had separated them. He reached up and plucked a spray of elder blossoms to send her for a keep-sake––and then like a blow he remembered the forget-me-not! From that same garden he had fetched her a forget-me-not for repentance, 386 and then forgotten her for Kitty. Who but Lucy could have left the little book of poems, or treasured a flower so long to give it back at parting? And yet in his madness he had forgotten her!
He searched wistfully among the rocks for another forget-me-not, but the hot breath of the drought had killed them. As he climbed slowly down the stone steps he mused upon some poem to take the place of the flowers that were dead, but the spirit of the drought was everywhere. The very rocks themselves, burnt black by centuries of sun, were painted with Indian prayers for rain. A thousand times he had seen the sign, hammered into the blasted rocks––the helix, that mystic symbol of the ancients, a circle, ever widening, never ending,––and wondered at the fate of the vanished people who had prayed to the Sun for rain.
The fragments of their sacrificial ollas lay strewn among the bowlders, but the worshippers were dead; and now a stranger prayed to his own God for rain. As he sat at his desk that night writing to Lucy about the drought, the memory of those Indian signs came upon him suddenly and, seizing a fresh sheet of paper, he began to write. At the second stanza he paused, planned out his rhymes and hurried on again, but just as his poem seemed finished, he halted at the last line. Wrestle as he would he 387 could not finish it––the rhymes were against him––it would not come right. Ah, that is what sets the artist apart from all the under-world of dreamers––his genius endures to the end; but the near-poet struggles like a bee limed in his own honey. What a confession of failure it was to send away––a poem unfinished, or finished wrong! And yet––the unfinished poem was like him. How often in the past had he left things unsaid, or said them wrong. Perhaps Lucy would understand the better and prize it for its faults. At last, just as it was, he sent it off, and so it came to her hand.
As it had been a thousand years before, so it was that day at Hidden Water. The earth was dead, it gave forth nothing; the sky was clean and hard, without a cloud to soften its asperity. Another month and the cattle would die; two months and the water would fail; then in the last agonies of starvation and thirst the dissolution would come––the Four Peaks would be a desert. Old Don Pablo was right, the world was drying up. Chihuahua and Sonora were parched; all Arizona lay stricken with the drought; in California the cattle were dying on the ranges, and in Texas and New Mexico the same. God, what a thing––to see the great earth that had supported its children for ages slowly dying for water, its deserts first, and then its rivers, and then the pine-topped mountains that gave the rivers birth! Yet what was there for a man to do but take care of his own and wait? The rest was in the hands of God.
On the first morning that Hardy took his axe and went down to the river he found a single bunch of gaunted cattle standing in the shade of the big mesquites that grew against Lookout Point––a runty 389 cow with her two-year-old and yearling, and a wobbly calf with a cactus joint stuck across his nose. His mother’s face showed that she, too, had been among the chollas; there was cactus in her knees and long spines bristling from her jaws, but she could stand it, while it was a matter of life and death to the calf. Every time he came near his mother she backed away, and whenever he began to nudge for milk she kicked out wildly. So Hardy roped him and twitched the joint away with a stick; then he pulled out the thorns one by one and went about his work.
Selecting a fine-leaved palo verde that grew against the point, he cleared a way into its trunk and felled it down the hill. He cut a second and a third, and when he looked back he saw that his labor was appreciated; the runty cow was biting eagerly at the first tree-top, and the wobbly calf was restored to his own. As the sound of the axe continued, a band of tame cattle came stringing down the sandy riverbed, and before the morning was over there were ten or twenty derelicts and water-bums feeding along the hillside. In the afternoon he cut more trees along the trail to Hidden Water, and the next day when he went to work he found a little band of weaklings there, lingering expectantly in the shadow of the cañon wall. As the days went by more and more of them gathered about the water, the lame, the 390 sick, the crippled, the discouraged, waiting for more trees to be felled. Then as the feed on the distant ridges grew thinner and the number of cut trees increased, a great band of them hung about the vicinity of the ranch house constantly––the herds from Hidden Water and the river, merged into one––waiting to follow him to the hills.
For a mile up and down the cañon of the Alamo, the palo verde stumps dotted the hillside, each with its top below it, stripped to the bark and bared of every twig. As the breathless heat of July came on, Hardy was up before dawn, hewing and felling, and each day the long line of cattle grew. They trampled at his heels like an army, gaunt, emaciated; mothers mooing for their calves that lay dead along the gulches; mountain bulls and outlaws, tamed by gnawing hunger and weakness, and the awful stroke of the heat. And every day other bands of outlaws, driven at last from their native hills, drifted in to swell the herd. For a month Hardy had not seen a human face, nor had he spoken to any living creature except Chapuli or some poor cow that lay dying by the water. When he was not cutting trees on the farther ridges, he was riding along the river, helping up those that had fallen or dragging away the dead.
Worn and foot-sore, with their noses stuck full of cactus joints, their tongues swollen from the envenomed 391 thorns, their stomachs afire from thirst and the burden of bitter stalks, the wild cattle from the ridges would stagger down to the river and drink until their flanks bulged out and their bellies hung heavy with water. Then, overcome with fatigue and heat, they would sink down in the shade and lie dreaming; their limbs would stiffen and cramp beneath them until they could not move; and there they would lie helpless, writhing their scrawny necks as they struggled to get their feet under them. To these every day came Hardy with his rawhide reata. Those that he could not scare up he pulled up; if any had died he dragged the bodies away from the water; and as soon as the recent arrivals had drunk he turned them away, starting them on their long journey to the high ridges where the sheep had not taken the browse.
Ah, those sheep! How many times in the fever of heat and work and weariness had Hardy cursed them, his tongue seeking unbidden the wickedest words of the range; how many times had he cursed Jim Swope, and Jasper Swope, the Mexicans, and all who had rushed in to help accomplish their ruin. And as the sun beat down and no clouds came into the sky he cursed himself, blindly, for all that had come to pass. One man––only one––at the mouth of Hell’s Hip Pocket, and the sheep might have been turned back; 392 but he himself had seen the dust-cloud and let it pass––and for that the cattle died. The sheep were far away, feeding peacefully in mountain valleys where the pines roared in the wind and the nights were cool and pleasant; but if the rain came and young grass sprang up on Bronco Mesa they would come again, and take it in spite of them. Yes, even if the drought was broken and the cattle won back their strength, that great army would come down from the north once more and sheep them down to the rocks! But one thing Hardy promised himself––forgetting that it was the bootless oath of old Bill Johnson, who was crazy now and hiding in the hills––he would kill the first sheep that set foot on Bronco Mesa, and the next, as long as he could shoot; and Jasp Swope might answer as he would.
Yet, why think of sheep and schemes of belated vengeance?––the grass was gone; the browse was cleaned; even the palo verde trees were growing scarce. Day by day he must tramp farther and farther along the ridge, and all that patient, trusting army behind, waiting for him to find more trees! Already the weakest were left behind and stood along the trails, eying him mournfully; yet work as he would he could not feed the rest. There was no fine-drawn distinction now––every palo verde on the hillside fell before his axe, whether it was fine-leaved and 393 short-thorned, or rough and spiny; and the cattle ate them all. Mesquite and cat-claw and ironwood, tough as woven wire and barbed at every joint, these were all that were left except cactus and the armored sahuaros. In desperation he piled brush beneath clumps of fuzzy chollas, the thorniest cactus that grows, and burned off the resinous spines; but the silky bundles of stickers still lurked beneath the ashes, and the cattle that ate them died in agony.
Once more Hardy took his ax and went out in search of palo verdes, high or low, young or old. There was a gnarled trunk, curling up against a rocky butte and protected by two spiny sahuaros that stood before it like armed guards, and he climbed up the rock to reach it. Chopping away the first sahuaro he paused to watch it fall. As it broke open like a giant melon on the jagged rocks below, the cattle crowded about it eagerly, sniffing at the shattered parts––and then the hardiest of them began suddenly to eat!
On the outside the wiry spines stood in rows like two-inch knife blades; but now the juicy heart, laid open by the fall, was exposed, and the cattle munched it greedily. A sudden hope came to Hardy as he watched them feed, and, climbing higher, he felled two more of the desert giants, dropping them from their foothold against the butte far down into the 394 rocky cañon. As they struck and burst, and the sickly aroma filled the air, the starved cattle, bitten with a new appetite, rushed forward in hordes to eat out their bitter hearts. At last, when the battle had seemed all but over, he had found a new food,––one that even Pablo Moreno had overlooked,––each plant a ton of bitter pulp and juice. The coarse and wiry spines, whose edges would turn an axe, were conquered in a moment by the fall from the precipitous cliffs. And the mesa was covered with them, like a forest of towering pin-cushions, as far as the eye could see! A great gladness came over Hardy as he saw the starved cattle eat, and as soon as he had felled a score or more he galloped up to Carrizo to tell the news to Jeff.
The mesa was deserted of every living creature. There was not a snake track in the dust or a raven in the sky, but as he topped the brow of the hill and looked down into the cañon, Hardy saw a great herd of cattle, and Creede in the midst of them still hacking away at the thorny palo verdes. At the clatter of hoofs, the big man looked up from his work, wiping the sweat and grime from his brow, and his face was hard and drawn from working beyond his strength.
“Hello!” he called. “How’s things down your way––water holdin’ out? Well, you’re in luck, then; I’ve had to dig the spring out twice, and you can see 395 how many cows I’m feedin’. But say,” he continued, “d’ye think it’s as hot as this down in hell? Well, if I thought for a minute it’d be as dry I’d take a big drink and join the church, you can bet money on that. What’s the matter––have you got enough?”
“I’ve got enough of cutting palo verdes,” replied Hardy, “but you just lend me that axe for a minute and I’ll show you something.” He stepped to the nearest sahuaro and with a few strokes felled it down the hill, and when Creede saw how the cattle crowded around the broken trunk he threw down his hat and swore.
“Well––damn––me,” he said, “for a pin-head! Here I’ve been cuttin’ these ornery palo verdes until my hands are like a Gila monster’s back, and now look at them cows eat giant cactus! There’s no use talkin’, Rufe, the feller that wears the number five hat and the number forty jumper ain’t worth hell-room when you’re around––here, gimme that axe!” He seized it in his thorn-scarred hands and whirled into the surrounding giants like a fury; then when he had a dozen fat sahuaros laid open among the rocks he came back and sat down panting in the scanty shade of an ironwood.
“I’m sore on myself,” he said. “But that’s the way it is! If I’d had the brains of a rabbit I’d’ve stopped Jasp Swope last Spring––then I wouldn’t 396 need to be cuttin’ brush here all Summer like a Mexican wood-chopper. That’s where we fell down––lettin’ them sheep in––and now we’ve got to sweat for it. But lemme tell you, boy,” he cried, raising a mighty fist, “if I can keep jest one cow alive until Fall I’m goin’ to meet Mr. Swope on the edge of my range and shoot ’im full of holes! Nothin’ else will do, somebody has got to be killed before this monkey business will stop! I’ve been makin’ faces and skinnin’ my teeth at that dastard long enough now, and I’m goin’ to make him fight if I have to put high-life on ’im!”
He stopped and looked out over the hillside where the heat quivered in rainbows from the rocks, and the naked palo verdes, stripped of their bark, bleached like skeletons beside their jagged stumps.
“Say, Rufe,” he began, abruptly, “I’m goin’ crazy.”
He shook his head slowly and sighed. “I always thought I was,” he continued, “but old Bill Johnson blew in on me the other day––he’s crazy, you know––and when I see him I knowed it! W’y, pardner, Bill is the most reas-on-able son-of-a-gun you can imagine. You can talk to him by the hour, and outside of bein’ a little techy he’s all right; but the minute you mention sheep to him his eye turns glassy and he’s off. Well, that’s me, too, and has been for 397 years, only not quite so bad; but then, Bill is plumb sheeped out and I ain’t––quite!”
He laughed mirthlessly and filled a cigarette.
“You know,” he said, squinting his eyes down shrewdly, “that old feller ain’t so durned crazy yet. He wanted some ammunition to shoot up sheep-camps with, but bein’ a little touched, as you might say, he thought I might hold out on ’im, so he goes at me like this: ‘Jeff,’ he says, ‘I’ve took to huntin’ lions for the bounty now––me and the hounds––and I want to git some thirty-thirtys.’ But after I’d give him all I could spare he goes on to explain how the sheep, not satisfied with eatin’ ’im out of house and home, had gone and tolled all the lions away after ’em––so, of course, he’ll have to foller along, too. You catch that, I reckon.”
Creede drooped his eyes significantly and smoked.
“If it hadn’t been for old Bill Johnson,” he said, “we wouldn’t have a live cow on our range to-day, we’d’ve been sheeped down that close. When he’d got his ammunition and all the bacon and coffee I could spare he sat down and told me how he worked it to move all them sheep last Spring. After he’d made his first big play and see he couldn’t save the Pocket he went after them sheepmen systematically for his revenge. That thirty-thirty of his will shoot nigh onto two miles if you hold it right, and every 398 time he sees a sheep-camp smoke he Injuned up onto some high peak and took pot-shots at it. At the distance he was you couldn’t hear the report––and, of course, you couldn’t see smokeless powder. He says the way them Mexican herders took to the rocks was a caution; and when the fireworks was over they didn’t wait for orders, jest rounded up their sheep and hiked!
“And I tell you, pardner,” said the big cowman impressively, “after thinkin’ this matter over in the hot sun I’ve jest about decided to go crazy myself. Yes, sir, the next time I hear a sheep-blat on Bronco Mesa I’m goin’ to tear my shirt gittin’ to the high ground with a thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell ’em that your pore friend’s mind was deranged by cuttin’ too many palo verdes.” He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if God ever sent the rain.
On the day after the visit to Carrizo a change came over the sky; a haze that softened the edges of the hills rose up along the horizon, and the dry wind died away. As Hardy climbed along the rocky bluffs felling the giant sahuaros down into the ravines for his cattle, the sweat poured from his face in a stream. A sultry heaviness hung over the land, and at night 399 as he lay beneath the ramada he saw the lightning, hundreds of miles away, twinkling and playing along the northern horizon. It was a sign––the promise of summer rain!
In the morning a soft wind came stealing in from the west; a white cloud came up out of nothing and hovered against the breast of the Peaks; and the summer heat grew terrible. At noon the cloud turned black and mounted up, its fluffy summit gleaming in the light of the ardent sun; the wind whirled across the barren mesa, sweeping great clouds of dust before it, and the air grew damp and cool; then, as evening came on the clouds vanished suddenly and the wind died down to a calm. For a week the spectacle was repeated––then, at last, as if weary, the storm-wind refused to blow; the thunder-caps no longer piled up against the Peaks; only the haze endured, and the silent, suffocating heat.
Day after day dragged by, and without thought or hope Hardy plodded on, felling sahuaros into the cañons, his brain whirling in the fever of the great heat. Then one day as the sun rose higher a gigantic mass of thunder-clouds leapt up in the north, covering half the sky. The next morning they rose again, brilliant, metallic, radiating heat like a cone of fire. The heavens were crowned with sudden splendor, the gorgeous pageantry of summer clouds that rise rank 400 upon rank, basking like newborn cherubim in the glorious light of the sun, climbing higher and higher until they reached the zenith.
A moist breeze sprang up and rushed into the storm’s black heart, feeding it with vapors from the Gulf; then in the south, the home of the rain, another great cloud arose, piling in fluffy billows against the grim cliffs of the Superstitions and riding against the flying cohorts that reared their snowy heads in the north. The wind fell and all nature lay hushed and expectant, waiting for the rain. The cattle would not feed; the bearded ravens sat voiceless against the cliffs; the gaunt trees and shrubs seemed to hold up their arms––for the rain that did not come. For after all its pomp and mummery, its black mantle that covered all the sky and the bravery of its trailing skirts, the Storm, that rode in upon the wind like a king, slunk away at last like a beaten craven. Its black front melted suddenly, and its draggled banners, trailing across the western sky, vanished utterly in the kindling fires of sunset.
As he lay beneath the starlit sky that night, Hardy saw a vision of the end, as it would come. He saw the cañons stripped clean of their high-standing sahuaros, the spring at Carrizo dry, the river stinking with the bodies of the dead––even Hidden Water quenched at last by the drought. Then a heavy 401 sleep came upon him as he lay sprawling in the pitiless heat and he dreamed––dreamed of gaunt steers and lowing cows, and skeletons, strewn along the washes; of labor, never ending, and sweat, dripping from his face. He woke suddenly with the horror still upon him and gazed up at the sky, searching vainly for the stars. The night was close and black, there was a stir among the dead leaves as if a snake writhed past, and the wind breathed mysteriously through the bare trees; then a confused drumming came to his ears, something warm and wet splashed against his face, and into his outstretched hand God sent a drop of rain.