“That’s right,” assented Hardy, “he’s only been broke about a month. I got him over in the Sulphur Springs Valley.”
“I knowed it,” said the cowboy sagely, “one of them wire-grass horses––an’ I bet he can travel, too. Did you ride him all the way here?”
“Clean from the Chiricahuas,” replied the young man, and Jefferson Creede looked up, startled.
“What did you say you was doin’ over there?” he inquired slowly, and Hardy smiled quietly as he answered:
“Riding for the Cherrycow outfit.”
“The hell you say!” exclaimed Creede explosively, and for a long time he stood silent, smoking as if in deep meditation.
“Well,” he said at last, “I might as well say it––I took you for a tenderfoot.”
The morning dawned as clear on Bender as if there had never been storm nor clouds, and the waxy green heads of the greasewood, dotting the level plain with the regularity of a vineyard, sparkled with a thousand dewdrops. Ecstatic meadow larks, undismayed by the utter lack of meadows, sang love songs from the tops of the telegraph poles; and the little Mexican ground doves that always go in pairs tracked amiably about together in the wet litter of the corral, picking up the grain which the storm had laid bare. Before the early sun had cleared the top of the eastern mountains Jefferson Creede and Hardy had risen and fed their horses well, and while the air was yet chill they loaded their blankets and supplies upon the ranch wagon, driven by a shivering Mexican, and went out to saddle up.
Since his confession of the evening before Creede had put aside his air of friendly patronage and, lacking another pose, had taken to smoking in silence; for there is many a boastful cowboy in Arizona who has done his riding for the Cherrycow outfit on the 47 chuck wagon, swamping for the cook. At breakfast he jollied the Chinaman into giving him two orders of everything, from coffee to hot cakes, paid for the same at the end, and rose up like a giant refreshed––but beneath this jovial exterior he masked a divided mind. Although he had come down handsomely, he still had his reservations about the white-handed little man from Cherrycow, and when they entered the corral he saddled his iron-scarred charger by feeling, gazing craftily over his back to see how Hardy would show up in action.
Now, first the little man took a rope, and shaking out the loop dropped it carelessly against his horse’s fore-feet––and that looked well, for the sorrel stood stiffly in his tracks, as if he had been anchored. Then the man from Cherrycow picked up his bridle, rubbed something on the bit, and offered it to the horse, who graciously bowed his head to receive it. This was a new one on Creede and in the excitement of the moment he inadvertently cinched his roan up two holes too tight and got nipped for it, for old Bat Wings had a mind of his own in such matters, and the cold air made him ugly.
“Here, quit that,” muttered the cowboy, striking back at him; but when he looked up, the sorrel had already taken his bit, and while he was champing on it Hardy had slipped the headstall over his ears. 48 There was a broad leather blind on the hacamore, which was of the best plaited rawhide with a horsehair tie rope, but the little man did not take advantage of it to subdue his mount. Instead he reached down for his gaudy Navajo saddle blanket, offered it to the sorrel to smell, and then slid it gently upon his back. But when he stooped for his saddle the high-headed horse rebelled. With ears pricked suspiciously forward and eyes protruding he glared at the clattering thing in horror, snorting deep at every breath. But, though he was free-footed, by some obsession of the mind, cunningly inculcated in his breaking, the sorrel pony was afraid to move.
As the saddle was drawn toward him and he saw that he could not escape its hateful embrace he leaned slowly back upon his haunches, grunting as if his fore-feet, wreathed in the loose rope, were stuck in some terrible quicksands from which he tried in vain to extricate them; but with a low murmur of indifferent words his master moved the saddle resolutely toward him, the stirrups carefully snapped up over the horn, and ignoring his loud snorts and frenzied shakings of the head laid it surely down upon his back. This done, he suddenly spoke sharply to him, and with a final groan the beautiful creature rose up and consented to his fate.
Hardy worked quickly now, tightening the cinch, 49 lowering the stirrups, and gathering up the reins. He picked up the rope, coiled it deftly and tied it to the saddle––and now, relieved of the idea that he was noosed, the pony began to lift his feet and prance, softly, like a swift runner on the mark. At these signs of an early break Creede mounted hurriedly and edged in, to be ready in case the sorrel, like most half-broken broncos, tried to scrape his rider off against the fence; but Hardy needed no wrangler to shunt him out the gate. Standing by his shoulder and facing the rear he patted the sorrel’s neck with the hand that held the reins, while with his right hand he twisted the heavy stirrup toward him stealthily, raising his boot to meet it. Then like a flash he clapped in his foot and, catching the horn as his fiery pony shot forward, he snapped up into the saddle like a jumping jack and went flying out the gate.
“Well, the son of a gun!” muttered Creede, as he thundered down the trail after him. “Durned if he can’t ride!”
There are men in every cow camp who can rope and shoot, but the man who can ride a wild horse can hold up his head with the best of them. No matter what his race or station if he will crawl a “snake” and stay with him there is always room on the wagon for his blankets; his fame will spread quickly from camp to camp, and the boss will offer to raise him when he 50 shows up for his time. Jefferson Creede’s face was all aglow when he finally rode up beside Hardy; he grinned triumphantly upon horse and man as if they had won money for him in a race; and Hardy, roused at last from his reserve, laughed back out of pure joy in his possessions.
“How’s that for a horse?” he cried, raising his voice above the thud of hoofs. “I have to turn him loose at first––’fraid he’ll learn to pitch if I hold him in––he’s never bucked with me yet!”
“You bet––he’s a snake!” yelled Creede, hammering along on his broad-chested roan. “Where’d you git ’im?”
“Tom Fulton’s ranch,” responded Hardy, reining his horse in and patting him on the neck. “Turned in three months’ pay and broke him myself, to boot. I’ll let you try him some day, when he’s gentled.”
“Well, if I wasn’t so big ’n’ heavy I’d take you up on that,” said Creede, “but I’m just as much obliged, all the same. I don’t claim to be no bronco-buster now, but I used to ride some myself when I was a kid. But say, the old judge has got some good horses runnin’ on the upper range,––if you want to keep your hand in,––thirty or forty head of ’em, and wild as hawks. There’s some sure-enough wild horses too, over on the Peaks, that belong to any man that can git his rope onto ’em––how would that strike you? 51 We’ve been tryin’ for years to catch the black stallion that leads ’em.”
Try as he would to minimize this exaggerated estimate of his prowess as a horse-tamer Hardy was unable to make his partner admit that he was anything short of a real “buster,” and before they had been on the trail an hour Creede had made all the plans for a big gather of wild horses after the round-up.
“I had you spotted for a sport from the start,” he said, puffing out his chest at the memory of his acumen, “but, by jingo, I never thought I was drawin’ a bronco-twister. Well, now, I saw you crawl that horse this mornin’, and I guess I know the real thing by this time. Say,” he said, turning confidentially in his saddle, “if it’s none of my business you can say so, but what did you do to that bit?”
Hardy smiled, like a juggler detected in his trick. “You must have been watching me,” he said, “but I don’t mind telling you––it’s simply passing a good thing along. I learned it off of a Yaqui Mayo Indian that had been riding for Bill Greene on the Turkey-track––I rubbed it with a little salt.”
“Well, I’m a son of a gun!” exclaimed Creede incredulously. “Here we’ve been gittin’ our fingers bit off for forty years and never thought of a little thing like that. Got any more tricks?”
“Nope,” said Hardy, “I’ve only been in the Territory 52 a little over a year, this trip, and I’m learning, myself. Funny how much you can pick up from some of these Indians and Mexicans that can’t write their own names, isn’t it?”
“Umm, may be so,” assented Creede doubtfully, “but I’d rather go to a white man myself. Say,” he exclaimed, changing the subject abruptly, “what was that name the old man called you by when he was makin’ that talk about sheep––Roofer, or Rough House––or something like that?”
“Oh, that’s my front name––Rufus. Why? What’s the matter with it?”
“Nothin’, I reckon,” replied Creede absently, “never happened to hear it before, ’s all. I was wonderin’ how he knowed it,” he added, glancing shrewdly sideways. “Thought maybe you might have met him up in California, or somewheres.”
“Oh, that’s easy,” responded Hardy unblinkingly. “The first thing he did was to ask me my full name. I notice he calls you Jefferson,” he added, shiftily changing the subject.
“Sure thing,” agreed Creede, now quite satisfied, “he calls everybody that way. If your name is Jim you’re James, John you’re Jonathan, Jeff you’re Jefferson Davis––but say, ain’t they any f’r short to your name? We’re gittin’ too far out of town for 53 this Mister business. My name’s Jeff, you know,” he suggested.
“Why, sure,” exclaimed Hardy, brushing aside any college-bred scruples, “only don’t call me Rough House––they might get the idea that I was on the fight. But you don’t need to get scared of Rufus––it’s just another way of saying Red. I had a red-headed ancestor away back there somewhere and they called him Rufus, and then they passed the name down in the family until it got to me, and I’m no more red-headed than you are.”
“No––is that straight?” ejaculated the cowboy, with enthusiasm, “same as we call ’em Reddy now, eh? But say, I’d choke if I tried to call you Rufus. Will you stand for Reddy? Aw, that’s no good––what’s the matter with Rufe? Well, shake then, pardner, I’m dam’ glad I met up with you.”
They pulled their horses down to a Spanish trot––that easy, limping shuffle that eats up its forty miles a day––and rode on together like brothers, heading for a distant pass in the mountains where the painted cliffs of the Bulldog break away and leave a gap down to the river. To the east rose Superstition Mountain, that huge buttress upon which, since the day that a war party of Pimas disappeared within the shadow of its pinnacles, hot upon the trail of the Apaches, and never 54 returned again, the Indians of the valley have always looked with superstitious dread.
Creede told the story carelessly, smiling at the pride of the Pimas who refused to admit that the Apaches alone, devils and bad medicine barred, could have conquered so many of their warriors. To the west in a long fringe of green loomed the cottonwoods of Moroni, where the hard-working Mormons had turned the Salagua from its course and irrigated the fertile plain, and there on their barren reservation dwelt the remnant of those warlike Pimas, the unrequited friends of the white men, now held by them as of no account.
As he heard the history of its people––how the Apaches had wiped out the Toltecs, and the white men had killed off the Apaches, and then, after pushing aside the Pimas and the Mexicans, closed in a death struggle for the mastery of the range––Hardy began to perceive the grim humor of the land. He glanced across at his companion, tall, stalwart, with mighty arms and legs and features rugged as a mountain crag, and his heart leaped up within him at the thought of the battles to come, battles in which sheepmen and cattlemen, defiant of the law, would match their strength and cunning in a fight for the open range.
As they rode along mile after mile toward the north 55 the road mounted gently; hills rose up one by one out of the desert floor, crowned with towering sahuaros, and in the dip of the pass ahead a mighty forest of their misshapen stalks was thrust up like giant fingers against the horizon. The trail wound in among them, where they rose like fluted columns above the lesser cactus––great skin-covered tanks, gorged fat with water too bitter to quench the fieriest thirst, yet guarded jealously by poison-barbed spines. Gilded woodpeckers, with hearts red as blood painted upon their breasts, dipped in uneven flight from sahuaro to sahuaro, dodged into holes of their own making, dug deep into the solid flesh; sparrow hawks sailed forth from their summits, with quick eyes turned to the earth for lizards; and the brown mocking bird, leaping for joy from the ironwood tree where his mate was nesting, whistled the praise of the desert in the ecstatic notes of love. In all that land which some say God forgot, there was naught but life and happiness, for God had sent the rain.
The sun was high in the heavens when, as they neared the summit of the broad pass, a sudden taint came down the wind, whose only burden had been the fragrance of resinous plants, of wetted earth, and of green things growing. A distant clamor, like the babble of many voices or the surf-beats of a mighty sea, echoed dimly between the chuck-a-chuck of their 56 horses’ feet, and as Hardy glanced up inquiringly his companion’s lip curled and he muttered:
“Sheep!”
They rode on in silence. The ground, which before had been furred with Indian wheat and sprouting six weeks’ grass, now showed the imprints of many tiny feet glozed over by the rain, and Hardy noticed vaguely that something was missing––the grass was gone. Even where a minute before it had covered the level flats in a promise of maturity, rising up in ranker growth beneath the thorny trees and cactus, its place was now swept bare and all the earth trampled into narrow, hard-tamped trail. Then as a brush shed and corrals, with a cook tent and a couple of water wagons in the rear, came into view, the ground went suddenly stone bare, stripped naked and trampled smooth as a floor. Never before had Hardy seen the earth so laid waste and desolate, the very cactus trimmed down to its woody stump and every spear of root grass searched out from the shelter of the spiny chollas. He glanced once more at his companion, whose face was sullen and unresponsive; there was a well-defined bristle to his short mustache and he rowelled his horse cruelly when he shied at the blatting horde.
The shearing was in full blast, every man working with such feverish industry that not one of them 57 stopped to look up. From the receiving corral three Mexicans in slouched hats and jumpers drove the sheep into a broad chute, yelling and hurling battered oil cans at the hindmost; by the chute an American punched them vigorously forward with a prod, and yet another thrust them into the pens behind the shearers, who bent to their work with a sullen, back-breaking stoop. Each man held between his knees a sheep, gripped relentlessly, that flinched and kicked at times when the shears clipped off patches of flesh; and there in the clamor of a thousand voices they shuttled their keen blades unceasingly, stripping off a fleece, throwing it aside, and seizing a fresh victim by the foot, toiling and sweating grimly. By another chute a man stood with a paint pot, stamping a fresh brand upon every new-shorn sheep, and in a last corral the naked ones, their white hides spotted with blood from their cuts, blatted frantically for their lambs. These were herded in a small inclosure, some large and browned with the grime of the flock, others white and wobbly, newborn from mothers frightened in the shearing; and always that tremendous wailing chorus––Ba-a-a, ba-a-a, ba-a-a––and men in greasy clothes wrestling with the wool.
To a man used to the noise and turmoil of the round-up and branding pen and accustomed to the 58 necessary cruelties of stock raising there was nothing in the scene to attract attention. But Hardy was of gentler blood, inured to the hardships of frontier life but not to its unthinking brutality, and as he beheld for the first time the waste, the hurry, the greed of it all, his heart turned sick and his eyes glowed with pity, like a woman’s. By his side the sunburned swarthy giant who had taken him willy-nilly for a friend sat unmoved, his lip curled, not at the pity of it, but because they were sheep; and because, among the men who rushed about driving them with clubs and sacks, he saw more than one who had eaten at his table and then sheeped out his upper range. His saturnine mood grew upon him as he waited and, turning to Hardy, he shouted harshly:
“There’s some of your friends over yonder,” he said, jerking his thumb toward a group of men who were weighing the long sacks of wool. “Want to go over and get acquainted?”
Hardy woke from his dream abruptly and shook his head.
“No, let’s not stop,” he said, and Creede laughed silently as he reined Bat Wings into the trail. But just as they started to go one of the men by the scales hailed them, motioning with his hand and, still laughing cynically, the foreman of the Dos S turned back again.
“That’s Jim Swope,” he said, “one of our big sheep men––nice feller––you’ll like him.”
He led the way to the weighing scales, where two sweating Mexicans tumbled the eight-foot bags upon the platform, and a burly man with a Scotch turn to his tongue called off the weights defiantly. At his elbow stood two men, the man who had called them and a wool buyer,––each keeping tally of the count.
Jim Swope glanced quickly up from his work. He was a man not over forty but bent and haggard, with a face wrinkled deep with hard lines, yet lighted by blue eyes that still held a twinkle of grim humor.
“Hello, Jeff,” he said, jotting down a number in his tally book, “goin’ by without stoppin’, was ye? Better ask the cook for somethin’ to eat. Say, you’re goin’ up the river, ain’t ye? Well, tell Pablo Moreno and them Mexicans I lost a cut of two hundred sheep up there somewhere. That son of a––of a herder of mine was too lazy to make a corral and count ’em, so I don’t know where they are lost, but I’ll give two bits a head for ’em, delivered here. Tell the old man that, will you?”
He paused to enter another weight in his book, then stepped away from the scales and came out to meet them.
“How’s the feed up your way?” he inquired, smiling grimly.
“Dam’ pore,” replied Creede, carrying on the jest, “and it’ll be poorer still if you come in on me, so keep away. Mr. Swope, I’ll make you acquainted with Mr. Hardy––my new boss. Judge Ware has sent him out to be superintendent for the Dos S.”
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Swope, offering a greasy hand that smelled of sheep dip. “Nice man, the old judge––here, umbre, put that bag on straight! Three hundred and fifteen? Well I know a dam’ sight better––excuse me, boys––here, put that bag on again, and weigh it right!”
“Well,” observed Creede, glancing at his friend as the combat raged unremittingly, “I guess we might as well pull. His busy day, you understand. Nice feller, though––you’ll like ’im.” Once more the glint of quiet deviltry came into his eyes, but he finished out the jest soberly. “Comes from a nice Mormon family down in Moroni––six brothers––all sheepmen. You’ll see the rest of the boys when they come through next month––but Jim’s the best.”
There was something in the sardonic smile that accompanied this encomium which set Hardy thinking. Creede must have been thinking too, for he rode past the kitchen without stopping, cocking his head up at the sun as if estimating the length of their journey.
“Oh, did you want to git somethin’ to eat?” he 61 inquired innocently. “No? That’s good. That sheep smell kinder turns my stomach.” And throwing the spurs into Bat Wings he loped rapidly toward the summit, scowling forbiddingly in passing at a small boy who was shepherding the stray herd. For a mile or two he said nothing, swinging his head to scan the sides of the mountains with eyes as keen as an eagle’s; then, on the top of the last roll, he halted and threw his hand out grandly at the panorama which lay before them.
“There she lays,” he said, as if delivering a funeral oration, “as good a cow country as God ever made––and now even the jack rabbits have left it. D’ye see that big mesa down there?” he continued, pointing to a broad stretch of level land, dotted here and there with giant cactus, which extended along the river. “I’ve seen a thousand head of cattle, fat as butter, feedin’ where you see them sahuaros, and now look at it!”
He threw out his hand again in passionate appeal, and Hardy saw that the mesa was empty.
“There was grass a foot high,” cried Creede in a hushed, sustained voice, as if he saw it again, “and flowers. Me and my brothers and sisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, big yaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies––and ferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget ’em––but 62 I’ve been fightin’ these sheep so long and gittin’ so mean and ugly them flowers wouldn’t mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and stink squashes. But hell, what’s the use?” He threw out his hands once more, palms up, and dropped them limply.
“That’s old Pablo Moreno’s place down there,” he said, falling back abruptly into his old way. “We’ll stop there overnight––I want to help git that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we’ll go up by trail in the mornin’.”
Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the naked hills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy, quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once the grama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle of Jeff Creede’s father had stood knee-high in flowers.
Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desert lay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, and the sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there was no government; anybody’s land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, to hog for and fight over forever––and no law of right; only this, that the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will in the silence of the desert; memories of other 63 times and places, a word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand; and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious––a verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother’s knee many years before:
“Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace.”
But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.
On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the casa of Don Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the thorny cactus which the Mexicans call ocotilla. Within this fence, which inclosed several acres of standing grain and the miniature of a garden, there were all the signs of prosperity––a new wagon under its proper shade, a storehouse strongly built where chickens lingered about for grain, a clean-swept ramada casting a deep shadow across the open doorway; but outside the inclosure the ground was stamped as level as a threshing floor. As Creede and Hardy drew near, an old man, grave and dignified, came out from the shady veranda and opened the gate, bowing with the most courtly hospitality.
“Buenos tardes, señores,” he pronounced, touching his hat in a military salute. “Pasa! Welcome to my poor house.”
In response to these salutations Creede made the 65 conventional replies, and then as the old man stood expectant he said in a hurried aside to Hardy:
“D’ye talk Spanish? He don’t understand a word of English.”
“Sure,” returned Hardy. “I was brought up on it!”
“No!” exclaimed Creede incredulously, and then, addressing the Señor Moreno in his native tongue, he said: “Don Pablo, this is my friend Señor Hardy, who will live with me at Agua Escondida!”
“With great pleasure, señor,” said the old gentleman, removing his hat, “I make your acquaintance!”
“The pleasure is mine,” replied Hardy, returning the salutation, and at the sound of his own language Don Pablo burst into renewed protestations of delight. Within the cool shadow of his ramada he offered his own chair and seated himself in another, neatly fashioned of mesquite wood and strung with thongs of rawhide. Then, turning his venerable head to the doorway which led to the inner court, he shouted in a terrible voice:
“Muchacho!”
Instantly from behind the adobe wall, around the corner of which he had been slyly peeping, a black-eyed boy appeared and stood before him, his ragged straw hat held respectfully against his breast.
“Sus manos!” roared the old man; and dropping 66 his hat the muchacho touched his hands before him in an attitude of prayer.
“Give the gentlemen a drink!” commanded Don Pablo severely, and after Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a porous olla, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the mozo brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the river––Bull Durham and brown paper. The señor offered these to his guest, while Creede grinned in anticipation of the outcome.
“What?” exclaimed the Señor Moreno, astounded. “You do not smoke? Ah, perhaps it is my poor tobacco! But wait, I have a cigarro which the storekeeper gave me when I––No? No smoke nothing? Ah, well, well––no smoke, no Mexicano, as the saying goes.” He regarded his guest doubtfully, with a shadow of disfavor. Then, rolling a cigarette, he remarked: “You have a very white skin, Señor Hardy; I think you have not been in Arizona very long.”
“Only a year,” replied Hardy modestly.
“Muchacho!” cried the señor. “Run and tell the señora to hasten the dinner. And where,” he inquired, with the shrewd glance of a country lawyer, 67 “and where did you learn, then, this excellent Spanish which you speak?”
“At Old Camp Verde, to the north,” replied Hardy categorically, and at the name Creede looked up with sudden interest. “I lived there when I was a boy.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Don Pablo, raising his eyebrows. “And were your parents with you?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Hardy, “my father was an officer at the post.”
“Ah, sí, sí, sí,” nodded the old man vigorously, “now I understand. Your father fought the Apaches and you played with the little Mexican boys, no? But now your skin is white––you have not lived long under our sun. When the Apaches were conquered your parents moved, of course––they are in San Francisco now, perhaps, or Nuevo York.”
“My father is living near San Francisco,” admitted Hardy, “but,” and his voice broke a little at the words, “my mother has been dead many years.”
“Ah, indeed,” exclaimed Don Pablo sympathetically, “I am very sorry. My own madre has been many years dead also. But what think you of our country? Is it not beautiful?”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Hardy honestly, “and you have a wonderful air here, very sweet and pure.”
“Seguro!” affirmed the old man, “seguro que sí! 68 But alas,” he added sadly, “one cannot live on air alone. Ah, que malo, how bad these sheep are!”
He sighed, and regarded his guest sadly with eyes that were bloodshot from long searching of the hills for cattle.
“I remember the day when the first sheep came,” he said, in the manner of one who begins a set narration. “In the year of ’91 the rain came, more, more, more, until the earth was full and the excess made lagunas on the plain. That year the Salagua left all bounds and swept my fine fields of standing corn away, but we did not regret it beyond reason for the grass came up on the mesas high as a horse’s belly, and my cattle and those of my friend Don Luís, the good father of Jeff, here, spread out across the plains as far as the eye could see, and every cow raised her calf. But look! On the next year no rain came, and the river ran low, yet the plains were still yellow with last year’s grass. All would have been well now as before, with grass for all, when down from the north like grasshoppers came the borregos––baaa, baaa, baaa––thousands of them, and they were starving. Never had I seen bands of sheep before in Arizona, nor the father of Don Jeff, but some say they had come from California in ’77, when the drought visited there, and had increased in Yavapai and fed out all the north country until, when this second año seco came 69 upon them, there was no grass left to eat. And now, amigo, I will tell you one thing, and you may believe it, for I am an old man and have dwelt here long: it is not God who sends the dry years, but the sheep!
“Mira! I have seen the mowing machine of the Americano cut the tall grass and leave all level––so the starved sheep of Yavapai swept across our mesa and left it bare. Yet was there feed for all, for our cattle took to the mountains and browsed higher on the bushes, above where the sheep could reach; and the sheep went past and spread out on the southern desert and were lost in it, it was so great.
“That was all, you will say––but no! In the Spring every ewe had her lamb, and many two, and they grew fat and strong, and when the grass became dry on the desert because the rains had failed again, they came back, seeking their northern range where the weather was cool, for a sheep cannot endure the heat. Then we who had let them pass in pity were requited after the way of the borregueros––we were sheeped out, down to the naked rocks, and the sheepmen went on, laughing insolently. Ay, que malo los borregueros, what devils they are; for hunger took the strength from our cows so that they could not suckle their calves, and in giving birth many mothers and their little ones died together. In that year we lost half our cows, Don Luís Creede and I, and those that 70 lived became thin and rough, as they are to this day, from journeying to the high mountains for feed and back to the far river for water.
“Then the father of Jeff became very angry, so that he lost weight and his face became changed, and he took an oath that the first sheep or sheep-herder that crossed his range should be killed, and every one thereafter, as long as he should live. Ah, what a buen hombre was Don Luís––if we had one man like him to-day the sheep would yet go round––a big man, with a beard, and he had no fear, no not for a hundred men. And when in November the sheep came bleating back, for they had promised so to do as soon as the feed was green, Don Luís met them at the river, and he rode along its bank, night and day, promising all the same fate who should come across––and, umbre, the sheep went round!”
The old man slapped his leg and nodded his head solemnly. Then he looked across at Creede and his voice took on a great tenderness. “My friend has been dead these many years,” he said, “but he was a true man.”
As Don Pablo finished his story the Señora opened the door of the kitchen where the table was already set with boiled beans, meat stewed with peppers, and thin corn cakes––the conventional frijoles, carne con chili, and tortillas of the Mexicans––and some fried 71 eggs in honor of the company. As the meal progressed the Señora maintained a discreet silence, patting out tortillas and listening politely to her husband’s stock of stories, for Don Pablo was lord in his own house. The big-eyed muchacho sat in the corner, watching the corn cakes cook on the top of the stove and battening on the successive rations which were handed out to him. There were stories, as they ate, of the old times, of the wars and revolutions of Sonora, wherein the Señor Moreno had taken too brave a part, as his wounds and exile showed; strange tales of wonders and miracles wrought by the Indian doctors of Altár; of sacred snakes with the sign of the cross blazoned in gold on their foreheads, worshipped by the Indians with offerings of milk and tender chickens; of primitive life on the haciendas of Sonora, where men served their masters for life and were rewarded at the end with a pension of beans and carne seco.
Then as the day waned they sat at peace in the ramada, Moreno and Creede smoking, and Hardy watching the play of colors as the sun touched the painted crags of the Bulldog and lighted up the square summit of Red Butte across the river, throwing mysterious shadows into the black gorge which split it from crown to base. Between that high cliff and the cleft red butte flowed the Salagua, 72 squirming through its tortuous cañon, and beyond them lay Hidden Water, the unknown, whither a single man was sent to turn back the tide of sheep.
In the silence the tinkle of bells came softly from up the cañon and through the dusk Hardy saw a herd of goats, led by a long-horned ram, trailing slowly down from the mesa. They did not pause, either to rear up on their hind feet for browse or to snoop about the gate, but filed dutifully into their own corral and settled down for the night.
“Your goats are well trained, Don Pablo,” said Hardy, by way of conversation. “They come home of their own accord.”
“Ah, no,” protested Moreno, rising from his chair. “It is not the goats but my goat dogs that are well trained. Come with me while I close the gate and I will show you my flock.”
The old gentleman walked leisurely down the trail to the corral, and at their approach Hardy saw two shaggy dogs of no breed suddenly detach themselves from the herd and spring defiantly forward.
“Quita se, quita se!” commanded Don Pablo, and at his voice they halted, still growling and baring their fangs at Hardy.
“Mira,” exclaimed the old man, “are they not bravo? Many times the borregueros have tried to steal my bucks to lead their timid sheep across the 73 river, but Tira and Diente fight them like devils. One Summer for a week the chivas did not return, having wandered far up into the mountains, but in the end Tira and Diente fetched them safely home. See them now, lying down by the mother goat that suckled them; you would not believe it, but they think they are goats.”
He laughed craftily at the idea, and at Hardy’s eager questions.
“Seguro,” he said, “surely I will tell you about my goat dogs, for you Americans often think the Mexicans are tonto, having no good sense, because our ways are different. When I perceived that my cattle were doomed by reason of the sheep trail crossing the river here at my feet I bought me a she-goat with kids, and a ram from another flock. These I herded myself along the brow of the hill, and they soon learned to rear up against the bushes and feed upon the browse which the sheep could not reach. Thus I thought that I might in time conquer the sheep, fighting the devil with fire; but the coyotes lay in wait constantly to snatch the kids, and once when the river was high the borregueros of Jeem Swopa stole my buck to lead their sheep across.
“Then I remembered a trick of my own people in Sonora, and I took the blind pups of a dog, living far from here, and placed each of them with a she-goat 74 having one newborn kid; and while the kid was sucking at one teat the mother could not help but let down milk for the puppy at the other, until at last when the dog smell had left him she adopted him for her own. Now as the pups grew up they went out on the hills with their goat mother, and when, they being grown, she would no longer suckle them, they stole milk from the other she-goats; and so they live to-day, on milk and what rabbits they can catch. But whenever they come to the house I beat them and drive them back––their nature is changed now, and they love only goats. Eight years ago I raised my first goat dogs, for many of them desert their mothers and become house dogs, and now I have over a hundred goats, which they lead out morning and night.”
The old man lashed fast the gate to the corral and turned back toward the house.
“Ah, yes,” he said musingly, “the Americanos say continually that we Mexicanos are foolish––but look at me! Here is my good home, the same as before. I have always plenty beans, plenty meat, plenty flour, plenty coffee. I welcome every one to my house, to eat and sleep––yet I have plenty left. I am muy contento, Señor Hardy––yes, I am always happy. But the Americanos? No! When the sheep come, they fight; when their cattle are gone, they move; 75 fight, fight; move, move; all the time.” He sighed and gazed wearily at the barren hills.
“Señor Hardy,” he said at last, “you are young, yet you have seen the great world––perhaps you will understand. Jeff tells me you come to take charge of the Dos S Rancho, where the sheep come through by thousands, even as they did here when there was grass. I am an old man now; I have lived on this spot twenty-four years and seen much of the sheep; let me advise you.
“When the sheepmen come across the river do not fight, as Don Jeff does continually, but let them pass. They are many and the cowmen are few; they are rich and we are very poor; how then can a few men whip many, and those armed with the best? And look––if a sheepman is killed there is the law, you know, and lawyers––yes, and money!” He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, peeping ruefully through the fingers to symbolize prison bars.
“Is it not so?” he asked, and for the first time an Americano agreed with him.
“One thing more, then,” said Don Pablo, lowering his voice and glancing toward the house, where Creede was conversing with the Señora. “The papá of Don Jeff yonder was a good man, but he was a fighting Texano––and Jeff is of the same blood. Each year as the sheep come through I have fear for him, lest he 76 should kill some saucy borreguero and be sent to prison; for he has angry fits, like his father, and there are many bad men among the sheep-herders,––escaped criminals from Old Mexico, ladrones, and creatures of low blood, fathered by evil Americanos and the nameless women of towns.
“In Sonora we would whip them from our door, but the sheepmen make much of their herders, calling them brothers and cuñados and what not, to make them stay, since the work is hard and dangerous. And to every one of them, whether herder or camp rustler, the owners give a rifle with ammunition, and a revolver to carry always. So they are drunk with valor. But our Jeff here has no fear of them, no, nor decent respect. He overrides them when the fit is on him, as if they were unfanged serpents––and so far he has escaped.”
The old man leaned closer, and lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper, acting out his words dramatically.
“But some day––” he clasped his heart, closed his eyes, and seemed to lurch before a bullet. “No?” he inquired, softly. “Ah, well, then, you must watch over him, for he is a good man, doing many friendships, and his father was a buen hombre, too, in the days when we all were rich. So look after him––for an old man,” he added, and trudged wearily back to the house.
The trail to Hidden Water leads up the Salagua, alternately climbing the hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the river bottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box cañon, it swings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purling brook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of mill ponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name the Salagua is a Rio, broad and swift, with a current that clutches treacherously at a horse’s legs and roars over the brink of stony reefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad mill race, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they took their plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.
“Swim?” he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse into the water. “Keep your head upstream, then,” he said, “we’ll try it a whirl, anyhow.”
Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feeling their way among the submerged 78 bowlders, while twenty feet below them the irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim, sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled up the opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creede looked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.
“How’s that for high?” he inquired, slapping his wet legs. “I tell you, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. I wouldn’t cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She’s away up since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you’ll hear her talk––snow’s meltin’ on the mountains. I wish to God she’d stay up!” he added fervently, as he poured the water out of his boots.
“Why?” asked Hardy innocently. “Won’t it interfere with your bringing in supplies?”
“Sure thing,” said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. “But when you’ve been up here a while,” he observed, “you’ll savvy a lot of things that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on its hind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f’r a month, we cowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don’t give a dam’ for supplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.
“Begin to see light, eh?” he queried, as he pushed on up the river. “Well, that’s the only thing in God’s world that wasn’t made to order for these 79 sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the country east and west without consultin’ nobody, not even Jim Swope, and the sheep move north and south.
“How’d you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand borregos and half of ’em with lambs, when the rio was on a bender? I’ve seen some of these sheepmen wadin’ around up to their chins for two weeks, tryin’ to float twenty-five hundred head across the river––and there wasn’t turkey buzzards enough in the country when they got through.
“Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined with carcasses two deep where they’d jest naturally crowded ’em into the river and let ’em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy. After they’d wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin’ they got tired and shoved ’em in, regardless. Well, if this warm weather holds we’ll be able to git our rodér good and started before the sheep come in. That’s one reason why I never was able to do much with these sheepmen,” he added. “They hit me right square in the middle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I’m too busy gatherin’ cattle to pay much attention to ’em. I did plan a little surprise party last year––but that was somethin’ special. But now you’re on the job, Rufe,” he continued reassuringly, “I’m goin’ to leave all sheep and 80 sheepmen strictly alone––you can bank on that. Bein’ as we are goin’ to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never made a cent fightin’ ’em, that’s a cinch, and if you can appeal to their better natures, w’y, go to it! I’d help you if I could, but bein’ as I can’t I’ll git out of the road and give you a chanst.
“Now I’ll tell you how it’ll be,” he continued, turning in his saddle and hooking one leg over the horn, “the boys’ll come in for the rodér to-morrow or next day; we begin to gather on the first, and it takes us about a month. Well, we look for the sheep to come in on us at about the same time––first of April––and we ain’t been fooled yet. They’ll begin to stack up on the other side any time now, and as soon as the water goes down they’ll come across with a rush. And if they’re feelin’ good-natured they’ll spread out over The Rolls and drift north, but if they’re feelin’ bad they’ll sneak up onto Bronco Mesa and scatter the cattle forty ways for Sunday, and bust up my rodér and raise hell generally. We had a little trouble over that last year,” he added parenthetically.
“Well, I’ll turn over the house and the grub and the whole business to you this year and camp out with the boys under the mesquite––and then you can entertain them sheepmen and jolly ’em up no end. They 81 won’t have a dam’ thing––horse feed, grub, tobacco, matches, nothin’! Never do have anythin’. I’d rather have a bunch of Apaches camped next to me––but if you want to be good to ’em there’s your chanst. Meanwhile, I’m only a cow-punch pullin’ off a round-up, and your name is Mr.––you’re the superintendent of the Dos S. Your job is to protect the upper range, and I begin to think you can do it.”
There was a tone of half-hearted enthusiasm about this talk which marked it for a prepared “spiel,” laboriously devised to speed the new superintendent upon his way; but, not being schooled in social deceit, Creede failed utterly in making it convincing.
“That’s good,” said Hardy, “but tell me––what has been your custom in the past? Haven’t you been in the habit of feeding them when they came in?”
“Feed ’em?” cried Creede, flaring up suddenly. “Did I feed ’em? Well, I should guess yes––I never turned one away hungry in my life. W’y, hell, man,” he exclaimed, his anger growing on him, “I slep’ in the same blanket with ’em––until I become lousy,” he added grimly.
“What!” exclaimed Hardy, aghast. “You don’t mean to say––”
“No,” interrupted Creede ironically, “I don’t mean to say anythin’––not from now on. But while we’re on the subject and to avoid any future misunderstandin’ 82 I might just as well tell you right now that I can’t see nothin’ good in a sheepman––nothin’! I’m like my cat Tom when he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears and I see hell, damnation, and sudden death!”
He rose up, frowning, on his mighty horse and gazed at Hardy with eyes that burned deep with passion. “If every sheep and sheepman in Arizona should drop dead at this minute,” he said, “it would simply give me a laughin’ sensation. God damn ’em!” he added passionately, and it sounded like a prayer.
Half an hour later as they passed through the gloomy silence of the box cañon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters, he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and looked down upon Hidden Water his anger was forgotten.
“Well,” he remarked, throwing out a hand, “there’s home––how do you like it?”
Hardy paused and looked it over critically––a broad V-shaped valley half a mile in length, beginning at the mouth of a great dry wash and spreading out through trees and hummocks down to the river. A broken row of cottonwoods and sycamores stretched 83 along the farther side, following the broad, twisting bed of the sand wash where the last flood had ripped its way to the Salagua; and on the opposite side, close up against the base of the cliff, a flash of white walls and the shadow of a ramada showed where man had built his puny dwelling high in order to escape its fury. At their feet lay the ranch pasture, a broad elbow of the valley rich with grass and mesquite trees and fenced in with barbed wire that ran from cliff to cliff. Beyond the eastern wall the ground was rough and broken, cut up by innumerable gulches and waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbidding crags of a black butte whose shoulders ran down to and confined the silvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was even rougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towered a mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedral spire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence––purple with the regal robes of distance.
“That’s Weaver’s Needle,” volunteered Creede, following his companion’s eyes. “Every lost mine for a hundred miles around here is located by sightin’ at that peak. The feller it’s named after was picked up by the Apaches while he was out lookin’ for the Lost Dutchman and there’s been a Jonah on the hidden-treasure business ever since, judgin’ by the results.