Judith of the Plains

The stars were still shining when Peter Hamilton looked at his watch next morning, but he sternly fought the temptation to lie another two minutes by remembering the day’s work before him, and went in search of the horse that he had not picketed overnight, as the beast required a full belly after the hard night’s ride he had given him. Peter had rolled out of his blankets with a keen anticipatory relish for the day ahead. It was well, he knew, that there was ample work of a definite nature for Peter the cow-puncher; as for Peter the man, he was singularly at sea. Had Judith Rodney been his desert comrade all these cheerful years for him to get his first belated insight into the real Judith only a few little hours back? Or was it, he wondered, her seeming unconsciousness of him, as she rode brave and sorrowful through the night, to avert, if might be, her brother’s death—at all events, to comfort and inspirit the frightened woman and her little children—that had freshly tinged the friendship he had so long felt for her? Many were the questions that Peter vaguely put to himself as he started out for his long day in the saddle; and none of them he answered. Indeed, he could not satisfactorily explain to himself why he should think of Judith at all in this way—Judith, whom he had known so long, and upon whom he counted so securely—Judith, who understood things, and was as good a comrade as a man. Surely it was a strange thing that he should discover himself in a sentimental dream of Judith!

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

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

Peter tightened his cinch and turned his horse westward. The stars had grown dim in the sky. The world that the night before had seemed to float in a silvery effulgence looked gray and old. The cabin in the valley flaunted its wretched squalor, like a beggar seeking alms on the highway. Riding by, Peter lifted his sombrero. “Sweet dreams, gentle lady!” He dug the rowel into his horse’s side and began his day at no laggard pace. Nor did he spare his horse in the miles that lay between him and breakfast. The beast would have no more work to do that day, when once he reached camp, and Peter was not in his tenderest mood as he spurred through the gray of the morning. The pale, chastened world was all his own at this hour. Not a creature was stirring. The mountains, the valleys, the softly huddled hills slept in the deep hush that is just before the dawn. He looked about with questioning eyes. Last night this very road had been a pale silver thread winding from the mountain crests into a world of dreams. To-day it was but a trail across the range. “Where are the snows of yester year?” he quoted, with a certain early-morning grimness. At heart he was half inclined to believe Judith responsible for the vanished world; Judith, Judith—he was riding away from her as fast as his horse could gallop, and yet his thoughts perversely lingered about the cabin in the valley.

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

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

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

Peter Hamilton, whose particular skill as a cow-puncher lay in that branch of the profession known as “cutting out,” found that the work of the rustlers had been carried on with no unsparing hand since the early spring round-up. Calves bearing the “H L” brand—that claimed by a company known to be made up of cattle-thieves—followed mothers bearing almost every brand that grazed herds in that part of the State. The Wetmore outfit, that used a “W” enclosed in a square, were apparently the heaviest losers. The cows and calves were herded at the right of the plain, convenient to the branding-pen, the steers well away to the opposite side. As Peter drove a “W-square” cow, followed by a little, white-faced calf, whose brand had plainly been tampered with, he heard one of his associates say:

“There’s nothing small about the ‘H L’ except their methods.”

“What’s ‘H L’ stand for, anyway?” the other cow-puncher asked.

“Why, Hell, or, How Long; depends whether you’re with ’em or again ’em.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“As far as the regularity is concerned, that would be a pretty hard thing to answer, but he’s had an interest in the ‘XXX’ since—since—”

“He drove Rodney’s sheep over the cliff?”

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

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

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

The foreman of the “Circle-Star” waved his hand after the slowly moving herd that gradually pressed forward like an army in loose marching order. Outriders galloped ahead, like darting insects, and pointing the lumbering mass that trailed its half-mile length at a snail’s-pace. The great column steadily advanced, checked, turned, led as easily as a child trails his little steam-cars after him on the nursery floor, and always by the little force of a handful of men and a few horses.

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

“Indeed,” said Peter, who had not the faintest notion who “her” could be. “Let me congratulate you.”

“Yes, sir,” and there was conviction in the cow-puncher’s tone; “it’s from old man Kinson’s girl, up to the Basin, and the parson’s goin’ to give us the life sentence soon. A man gets sick o’ helling it all over creation.” He rolled a cigarette, lit it, took a puff or two, then turned to Peter, as one whose acquaintance with the broader side of life entitled him to speak with a certain authority. “Is it that, or is it that we’re getting on, a little long in the tooth, logy in our movements?”

“I think we’re just sick of helling it.” Peter looked towards the star that last night had been the beacon towards which he and Judith had scaled the heights. “Yes, we get sick of helling it after we’ve turned thirty.”

“Then I can’t be making a mistake. If I thought it was because I was getting on, I’d stampede this here range. It don’t seem fair to a girl to allow that you’re broke, tamed, and know the way to the corral, when it’s just that you’re needin’ to go to an old man’s home.”

“Now this is really love,” said Peter to himself, with interest. “This is humility.” A sympathetic liking for the self-distrustful lover surged hot and generous into Peter’s heart, and he continued to himself: “Now that’s what Judith would appreciate in a man, some directness, some humility!” Poor Judith! Poor burden-bearer! Who was to love her as she deserved to be loved, even as old man Kinson’s girl, of the Basin, was loved? Yet suppose some one did love her in such fashion and she returned it? It was a picture Peter had never conjured up before. Nonsense! he was accustomed to think of Judith a great deal, and that was not the way to think of her. “Dear Judith!” said Peter, half unconsciously to himself, and looked again at the fellow, who had gone back to his dingy letter and continued to reread it in the fire-light as if he hoped to extract some further meaning from the now familiar words. Nature had fitted him out with a rag-bag assortment of features—the nose of a clown, the eyes of a ferret, the mouth that hangs agape like a badly hinged door, the mouth of the incessant talker. And withal, as he lounged in the fire-light, dreamily turning his love-letter, he had a sort of superphysical beauty, reflected of the glow that many waters cannot quench.

Costigan, who had led the merriment against Simpson at Mrs. Clark’s eating-house, was playing “mumbly-peg” with Texas Tyler. They had been working like Trojans all day at the round-up, but they pitched their pocket-knives with as keen a zest as school-boys, bickering over points in the game, accusing each other of cheating, calling on the rest of the company to umpire some disputed point.

But presently, from the opposite side of the fire, some one began to sing, in a rich barytone, a dirgelike thing that caught the attention of first one then another of the men, making them stop their yarning and knife-throwing to listen. The tune, in its homely power to evoke the image of the ceremonial of death, was more or less familiar to most of them. There was a conscious funeral pageantry in the ring of its measured phrases that recalled to many burials of the dead that had taken place in their widely scattered homes. Mrs. Barbauld’s hymn, “Flee as a Bird to the Mountain,” are the words usually sung to the air.

Costigan presently cut across the dirgelike refrain with: “Phwat th’ divil is ut about that chune that Oi’m thinkin’ of?”

“This,” said the man with the barytone voice, “is the tune that Nick Steele saved his neck to.”

“Begorra, that’s ut. I wasn’t there mesilf, but Oi’ve heard th’ story told more times than Oi’ve years to me credit.”

“My father was in that necktie party,” spoke up a young cow-puncher, “and I’ve heard him tell the story scores of times, and he always wondered why the devil they let Steele off. Never could understand it after the thing was done. He was talking of it once to a man who was a sharp on things like mesmerism, and the man called it hypnotic suggestion. Said that Steele got control of the whole outfit and mesmerized ’em so they couldn’t do a thing to him.”

Several of the men asked for the story, echoes of which had come down through all the forty years since its happening. And the cow-puncher, lighting a cigarette, began:

“It was in the good old forty-nine days in California, when gold was sometimes more plentiful than bread, and women were so scarce that one day when they found a girl’s shoe on the trail they fitted a gold heel to it and put it up in camp to worship. But sentiment wasn’t exactly their long suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by the vigilance committee—and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a gun, that didn’t belong to him, was found among this man Steele’s traps, and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the committee thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way out of the argument. And this here Steele party finds himself, at the age of twenty-four, with something like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He don’t take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor try any fancy speech-making. He just waits round, kinder pale, but seemin’ indifferent, considerin’ it was his funeral that was impendin’. I’ve heard my father say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a kind of girlish prettiness, and the committee looked some for hysterics and they didn’t get none. The noose was made ready and they told Steele he could have five minutes to pray, if he wanted to, or he could take it out in cursing, just as he chose. The boy said he felt that he hadn’t quite all that was coming to him in the way of enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising the vigilance committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of his demise, and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or cursing, he’d take that five minutes for a song.

“They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was mighty proud of, it bein’ about the only substantial structure the town could boast. He began to sing that thing you’ve all been listening to, and he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below. They crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put to it were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read about, and at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as the moment after something great has happened. There wasn’t a hangin’-face in the crowd after he was started. At some time or other every man had heard somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune, and his voice got to workin’ on their imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I don’t remember anything but the chorus—that went like this:

“‘Who’ll weep for me, on the gallows tree,
    As I sway in the wind and swing?
Is there never a tear to be shed for me,
    As I swing by a hempen string?
Who’ll weep, who’ll keep
Watch, as I’m rocked to sleep,
    Rocked by a hempen string?’”

There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the camp-fire and the night sounds of the lonely plain. The leaping flames showed a group of thoughtful faces. Finally, Costigan broke the silence with:

“Begorra, ’tis some av thim ’ud be doin’ well to be lukin’ to their music-lessons about here, Oi’m thinkin’, afther th’ day’s wurruk.”

The Irishman, with his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none of the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the giving way of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the “XXX” men were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was “meet, right, just, and available” for the cattle-thief. And Peter felt himself false to his creed, false to his employer, false to himself, in seeking to evade the question. And yet that pitiful cabin, the white-faced woman running to the door so often that she knew not what she did, and the little rosy boy, who had put out his arms so trustfully! Peter broke into their grewsome yarning. “Lord, but you’re like a lot of old women just come from a funeral!”

“Whin the carpse died hard, and th’ wake was a success.” Costigan turned over. “Werra, werra, but we’ll be seein’ fairies the night!”

A “XXX” man turned his head with a deliberate slowness and regarded Peter with narrowing eyes: “If the subject of cattle-thieves and their punishment is unpleasant to the gentleman from New York, perhaps he will favor us with something more cheerful.” It was the same man who had given the two definitions of the “H L” brand that morning at the round-up.

“Delighted,” said Peter, affecting not to notice the significance of the man’s remark. “Did you ever hear of the time that Tony Neville was burned with snow?”

The “XXX” man yawned long and audibly. No one seemed especially interested in Tony Neville’s having been burned with snow, but Peter struck out manfully, just in time to head off a man who said that he had seen Jim Rodney or some one who looked like him, following the trail-herd.

“Once on a time, when it paid to be a cattle-man,” began Peter, “there was an outfit near Laramie that hailed from the United Kingdom, every mother’s son of them. A fine, manly lot of fellows, but wedded to calamity along of their cooks—not the revered range article,” and Peter waved his hand towards the “W-square” cook, who was one of the party, “but the pampered ranch article that boasts a real stove, planted in a real kitchen, the spoiled darling that never has to light a fire out of wet wood in the rain.

“These unhappy Britons had every species of ill luck that could befall an outfit, in the way of cooks; they were of every nationality, age, and sex, and they stole, drank, quarrelled, till the outfit determined to sweep the house clear of them and do its own cooking. Every man was to have a turn at it for a week. There was a Scotchman, who gave them something called ‘pease bannocks,’ three times a day; followed by an Irishman, who breakfasted them on potatoes and whiskey. There was an Englishman, who had a beef slaughtered every time he fancied a tenderloin. There was a Welshman, who sang as he cooked. There were as many different kinds of indigestion as there were men in the outfit. They would beg to do night-herding, anything to get them away from that ranch. Finally, when their little tummies got so bad that their overcoats thickened, or wore through, or whatever happens to stomachs’ overcoats that are treated unkindly, some one’s maiden aunt sent him a tract saying that rice was the salvation of the human race, as witness the Chinese. Whosever turn it was to cook that week determined to try the old lady’s prescription. Rice was procured, about a peck, I think; and the man who was cooking, pro tem, put the entire quantity on to boil in a huge ham-boiler, over a slow fire, as per the directions of the maiden aunt. The rice seemed to be doing nicely, when some one came in and said that a bunch of antelope was over on the hills and there was a good chance to get a couple. Every man got his gun, all but the cook, and he looked at the rice, that hadn’t done a thing over the slow fire, in a way that would melt your heart. ‘Just my luck that it should be my week to pot-wrestle when there’s good hunting right at one’s front door.’

“‘Oh, come on,’ some one said. ‘Didn’t Kellett’s aunt say the rice ought to be cooked over a slow fire? Kellett, get your aunt’s letter and read the directions for cooking that rice again.’

“The cook didn’t need a second invitation, and they got into their saddles, cook and all, and went for the antelope.

“Now antelope are not like stationary wash-tubs; they move about. And when that particular outfit arrived at the spot where those antelope were last seen, they had moved, but the boys found traces of them, and continued on their trail. They went in the foot-hills and they searched for those antelope all day. They caught up with old man Hall’s outfit at dinner-time and were invited to take a bite. Coming home by way of the ‘Circle-Star’ ranch, Colonel Semmes asked them in to have a mint-julep; the colonel was a South Carolinian, and he had just succeeded in raising some mint. They had several—I fear more than several—drinks before leaving for home, with never a trace of antelope nor a thought of the rice cooking over the slow fire. The colonel remembered some hard cider that he had, and topping off on that, they set out. The weather was pretty warm, and on their way home they experienced some remorse over the hard cider. Now hard cider is an accumulative drink; it piles up interest like debt or unpaid taxes. And by the time those Englishmen had turned the little lane leading into their home corral, they saw a sight that made their sombreros rise. As I have said before, it was hot, being somewhere in the month of August. Gentlemen, I hardly expect you to believe me when I say it was snowing on their house, and not on another God blessed thing in the landscape.

“The blame thing about it was, that every man took the phenomenon to be his own private view of snakes, or their bibulous equivalent, manifested in another and more terrifying form. Here was the August sun pouring down on the plain where their ranch-house was situated; everything in sight hot and dry as a lime-kiln, grasshoppers chirping in a hot-wave prophecy, and snow covering the house and the ground, about to what seemed a depth of four inches. Every one of them felt sensitive about mentioning what he saw to the others. You see, gentlemen, being unfamiliar with American drinks, and especially old Massachusetts cider, they merely looked to keep their saddles and no questions asked.

“But when they got a bit closer the horror increased. Flying right out of their windows were perfect drifts of snow, banks of it, gentlemen, and the thermometer up past a hundred. One of the men looked about him and noticed the pallor on the faces of the rest:

“‘Do you notice anything strange, old chap? These cursed American drinks!’

“‘Strange!’—the boy he had spoken to was about eighteen, a nice, red-cheeked English lad out with his uncle learning the cattle business. ‘Good God!’ the boy said. ‘I’ve always tried to lead a good life, and here I am a paretic before I’ve come of age.’

“They halted their horses and held a consultation. The boss came to the conclusion that since they had all seen it, there was nothing to do but continue the investigation and send the details to the ‘Society for Psychical Research,’ when he got down from his horse and walked towards the door of the house. At his approach, as if to rebuke his wanton curiosity, a great blast of snow blew out of the window and got him full in the face. He howled—the snow was scalding hot.

“Then they remembered the rice.”

“Is that all?” demanded the man who had wanted to talk about rustling.

“Isn’t it enough?” said Peter, who could afford to be magnanimous, now that he had accomplished his point.

“When I first heard that story, ’bout ten years ago, it ended with the Britishers riding like hell over to the Wolcott ranch to borrow umbrellas to keep off the hot rice while they got into the house,” said the man, still sulky.

“That’s the way they tell it to tenderfeet,” and Peter turned on his heel. The story-telling for the evening was over, the boys got their blankets and set about making their beds for the night.