So they went into the sitting-room, where Dad was already sitting with his shoes off, warming his feet before the open fire.
The ranch sitting-room was magnificent by firelight. It was long and fairly wide, with heavy, irregular beams studding its ceiling. Mesquite roots and dried tulas burned in an uncommonly large fireplace, built with a projecting hood by some Mexican craftsman with a cunning hand. The firelight leaped ruddily on the cream plastered walls, and on trophies of ranch hunts hanging there.
On the floor were Navajo rugs, black and white, gray and red, and angora sheep pelts, dyed to inconceivable Mexican hues. The furniture was of various kinds, mostly ugly, except for a set of willow which belonged on the porch, a couch covered with a fine old Chimayo rug, blue and white as only those Indians can make them, and a battered old Spanish table, hand-carved, but, alas, not valued by any one but Jimmy Hovey.
Raquel sank upon the sofa and Jimmy seated himself beside her, lighting a cigarette.
“Just one, old Jim,” warned Raquel.
Jimmy grinned. “Bossing me straight off, aren’t you? But honestly, Big Boss, I haven’t coughed in six months.”
“That’s because I made you cut it out.”
Jimmy smiled gently and nodded. Jimmy had a most gentle way. It might deceive you unless you saw him angry, the way he got that time when Pancho Esquibal’s brother beat the Alezan mare over the head. Ugh-h-h. It made her shiver to think of it. But she had liked Jimmy ever since. Now she noticed for the first time how good-looking he was. His head was so round and so straight on his shoulders. And he seemed taller than she remembered him, bigger.
“I’ve gained twenty pounds, you know, since last year.” Jimmy’s eyes twinkled. “You mustn’t tell all you think, Raquel—with your eyes.”
Jimmy’s hair was crisp and wavy, rather blonde, and his eyes were extremely blue. He had a cleft in his chin when he smiled, and he smiled often. Yes, Raquel decided, he was the same old Jimmy, and the only reason she hadn’t thought about how he looked was that he was just so nice that she had never thought of anything else. And then he was thin and ever so sick when he first came.
Jimmy was studying Raquel thoughtfully and appreciatively. He had done little else since her return. By George, what a development in three months! First of all, the clothes. Jimmy’s city-bred eye could scarcely fail to take them in at once. By George, the right clothes, cloth, cut, color, and all that, certainly did show a pretty girl off to advantage!
But the other change, inside, he was studying now. The same Raquel in most ways—her smile was as warm and unaffected as when she had left. But she didn’t talk as much as one would expect of Raquel on getting back from school. And she seemed to avoid him somehow, in little strange evasions.
“Tell me a bit about it, Raquel,” he begged, “about school. How did it go off? I had only one letter from you, you know, and that was largely taken up describing the difference in the training of the eastern girls’ high school horse, and our western horses!”
“Oh, Jimmy, I did too write you another letter!”
“Yes, that one was all about how much further advanced we were in our Medieval History. But not a word of yourself.” Jimmy knocked out his cigarette.
“What of my little cousin?”
Raquel knew no arts. Three months before she would have said, “Well, she and I kept to opposite sides of the corral.” But three months had tempered her frankness with consideration. Three months of association with Anne had added ease to her forthright manners.
“Lois is even more beautiful than when you saw her, Jimmy,” she answered, “and she is so popular. All the girls in the school were crazy about her.”
“She would be, she would be,” Jimmy nodded as a matter of course. A sharp pang of something or other set Raquel’s blood racing. “I haven’t heard from Uncle in some time. I wonder how they are.”
Raquel started to speak. Anne had told her on the way to the train that Lois was gone, and why.
But as she hesitated, Jimmy pressed, “Did she make a good roommate? That’s what I want to know. She didn’t answer my letter, but Uncle wrote me a note in which he said that he knew Lois would do all she could.”
“Jimmy, I had the nicest roommate in the whole school,” Raquel looked straight at Jimmy with disarming candor.
And Jimmy, mere man that he was, was foiled by this newly developed astuteness. Raquel had a sense of shame. Never before had she deceived, unless it were unintentionally by silence. A confusion of pressing reasons flooded her mind. If they didn’t think enough of Jimmy to let him know, why should she do it? Maybe he’d get a letter any day now—he’d have to go straight where they were then. Oh, he mustn’t do that! He mustn’t go to Lois again. And she heard herself talking of the war, of her Thanksgiving vacation, and Anne and the Marvin family.
“Their house was just like a palace inside. But you’re used to that. You’d understand them, too. They were just folks. After you got used to their ways you could see how they were just human beings like us Texans underneath.”
Jimmy laughed. “Well, I guess we are all pretty much alike under the skin.”
“No, we aren’t, Jimmy. Take Dad for instance. He thinks honor is dearer than life, and that justice is his, not the Lord’s—nor the state’s. When he shot those three men who killed his Dad he said he was going to get them the same way they got him—in the back. And he did. Every one of them.
“When he had to serve three years he didn’t complain. Said it was worth it. But he thought a year of his life was worth more to the community than any one of the men, living.”
“It was, at that,” Jimmy agreed.
“Well, I think people should pay up for what they do.” She said it so fiercely that Jimmy looked at her in mock amazement.
They had been talking in low tones, but Dad was reminiscing, and his narrative filled the room.
“Yes,” he recounted, “I’ve fit to make this country a place for white men to live in; Indians, varmints, bad men an’ killers, are pretty near cleaned out. I never thought we’d have to go clear back across them plains, and across the ocean, to a country where cows, I hear, is family pets tied up in the parlor, and men tote knives instid of guns, to keep it fittin’.
“Fightin’ is goin’ to be a sight different than what we see in the old days when we fit the Indians and the rustlers.
“I remember when my father carried me along up into the Carrizozo country in New Mexico. I was about eleven year old. At the hot springs there we was set upon by the sneakiest bunch o’ Navajos I ever see. We fit and fit, for three days, never stoppin’ to eat more’n a chew of tobaccy (that’s why I never could tolerate chewin’ since) an’ the only water we had to drink was what we could dip out the boilin’ springs an’ cool in the sun.
“Then we got out o’ water an’ Everett Eames—he was a good ole scout—slipped out easy after dark to the springs. We heard a splash an’ a fearful screech, and Paw says, ‘Poor ole Eames, the varmints have boiled him alive.’
“An’ just then ole Eames comes crawlin’ in, drippin’ an madder’n wet wildcats. It was the first time water had touched his hide in nigh on thutty years, an’ hot at that!
“By mornin’ we had got down to nothin’ but rabbit shot and we was pepperin’ away at a bush where a few Indians still held out, when out tumbles a young feller, full o’ buck shot, an’ the fight was over an’ so was our shot.
“Well, I spent the rest o’ the mornin’ pickin’ shot out o’ that young Navajo’s back and easin’ him o’ the lead, an’ he was the gratefullest Indian you ever see. Used to bring me presents every year up till a couple o’ years ago. An’ I was grateful too, for we needed the shot to go out an git us some breakfast.
“Them were cruel days in some ways. When this very house was a sort o’ fortified hotel still, I was stayin’ here and there stopped a sickly lookin’ young feller, real dapper, who had a holler cough. Tuber-coo-losis, in the last stages, I says to myself.
“From the East he was, he says, an’ afeared o’ shootin’ irons. Towards the third day there rode in from the west the Sheriff o’ Doña Ana County, and from the east the Sheriff o’ Alamogordo, Lincoln County.
“They was bent their man was there an’ started round the house. The young feller was comin’ up from the corral when they seed him and he seed them an’ was scared stiff I reckon. He dodged round the corner. We was lookin’ out the dinin’-room window an’ we seed the two Sheriffs start to stalk him round the house, one side, t’other.
“The kid came runnin’ in, skeered. Never carried a shootin’ iron, he said, an’ I hid him in that very cellar where Russell got shut up this evenin’. The Sheriffs ran round the house and shot each other through their two-gallon hats, an’ when I opened the cellar door Billy the Kid had made a clean get-away. Though we never figgered how, for I was a-sittin’ on the lid all the time, an there’s nary other openin’.”
“Well, sir,” said Jimmy, amidst the general shout over the story, “I never heard you tell that one about the famous boy bandit of New Mexico before.”
“Oh, I got a passel of stories you never heard me tell yet.” Old Man Daniels’ eyes twinkled.
“Ever tell you about Pecos Bill an’ the time he rid a Kansas cyclone clear through these parts an’ on into Arizony? He came so fast an’ raised up such a dust he carried a part o’ Texas clear into New Mexico. You c’n see it there yet, down in the corner. Pecos Bill he could step clear over that peak yonder an’ never notice it, accordin’ to them that seed him at the time, an’ he flavored his beans with tarantulas.”
Amidst the laugh that followed, Ole Hossfoot Cantnor spoke up from the bench by the fireplace where he sat working at a piece of leather, as he always was.
“I kin tell ye a tale more stranger than that, an’ a true one. You recollec’, Jim, that the last bounty the Govinmint put on the Custer wolf brought the price on that outlaw’s head up to five hundid dollars. Well, Bill Marsden, owner the Bar X, swears, or has swore, to git that animal for six or seven years past.
“Bill’s killed a couple litters of the old Lobo but can’t get the wolf himself. He’s tore up more prize ewes for Bill, an’ more yearlin’s, than they could keep track of. Sixty sheep one night that bloody devil killed an’ et nary a bite hisself.
“But he’s too cute for all of ’em, hunters and trappers. Won’t touch pizen, won’t let his pack bite bait. Smells a trap under a snowfall. Many’s the trap he’s sprung with his forepaw. I seed him with my field glasses, a-strikin’ as light an’ powerful as a cat an’ then jumpin’ away.
“He’s four inches between the eyes, an’ his paws’re as big’s my hand, an’ it ain’t no trouble at all to him to fell a two-year-old bull by hisself.
“Well, Marsdens has got a little girl, on’y one left o’ six babies. She’s up in the mountings last summer durin’ the drouth, at the ranger’s cabin. Plays with his police dog. Strays off one day an’ gits lost. But they’s a cloud burst bustin’ the drouth that night an’ the ranger’s off over the mountain an’ don’t find it out till next mornin’.
“They starts out on a hunt, fearin’ to hope, what with the rain an’ the wolves, and Bill scared she’s fallen into a trap he rigged for the Lobo. Found the trap sprung all right, but no Lobo, no Lutie.
“Well, to make a long story short, they finds her, asleep, in a cave, with the Custer wolf lyin’ down beside her.
“Bill shoots, thinkin’ maybe she’s dead. But she’s all right. Wakes up as the wolf leaps outen the cave, an’ up over the rocks an’ gits away agin. An’ the little girl cries after her ‘doggie’; seems she’d been playin’ with him in the woods. Give him water when he was caught in the trap; rolled off a log Bill rigged so he got free; an’ when the rain burst, the Lobo carries her in his teeth to an ole lair.
“Bill swears he’ll never set hand nor hound to him agin.”
“Well, I always did say there was more dog than coyote in a lobo,” Dad observed. “Come on, boys, give us some songs. Let’s have some music for remembrance. Mother here looks a little sad.”
Blushing and scraping, Jami and Russell got out their mandolin and guitar and, after some tuning and picking, began—Russell in a surprisingly sweet light tenor, and Jami in a disconcerting voice that was trying to be a deep baritone, and would be, when he grew to full manhood. A stirring cowboy ballad, an epic of frontier days; The Cattle Rustler’s Daughter, a mournful ditty with the tender passion which strikes the sentimental cowboy—Russell and Jami warbled them all feelingly.
Then the soft-eyed Angel, sitting back of the others, and plucking a vibrant guitar, sang La Paloma and Sobre Las Olas (Over the Waves), so beautiful a barcarole that Mom rocked in her chair in time, Dad’s foot waved, and every one swayed to the air.
Home again. Raquel, sitting beside her mother, was seeing it all with new eyes. Yet everything was the same. Oh, it was dear; close to her—yes, that was it.
There was Mom; her plain hair, combed straight back, her calico dress, her silent ways. Of course she could see now the difference between Mom and a woman like Mrs. Marvin. The difference in the things she had had! What Mom had gone without all these years! Yet she was sweet, sweet. Almost a pang of jealousy for Mom swept over Raquel. Who would change Mom for anything? And what would Los Ranchos be without Mom? Why, the whole range centered round Mom in her kitchen, and every trail led straight back home.
And Dad, he was just as she had always seen him when she shut her eyes—and heard him talking as he was now. You loved Dad—and obeyed him. Of course you couldn’t do anything with him when he’d made up his mind. Raquel began to realize dimly that there was prejudice in the opinions she’d always accepted as gospel. But he was big; there was nothing petty about Dad. The eyes of his mind saw things from afar just as his eagle blue eyes, accustomed to distances, saw across the mesas, detecting the true water hole from the mirage.
Tonight it all seemed more like real living, happier even than on that far-off day when she had left for school. Yet how different it was from life back there! Why, back there Ole Hossfoot would never get any further than the garage door. He’d never get to set a foot inside the parlor.
And nobody would ever know what a wonderful hand with horses he was, nor hear his good stories, nor go to him for advice on almost any subject, for if he didn’t know about it first hand he’d be sure to have read about it when it was first invented ’way back the year of the World’s Fair.
Jimmy was the one unchanged quantity, the only person that linked up with that other world, her new knowledge of which had laid a claim on her. Some day, of course, she’d like to have some things different at Los Ranchos, now since she’d been back there. Jimmy could understand. And yet he “wouldn’t go back there now to live if he could.”
Raquel turned suddenly to him with a shy smile of mutual understanding. Jimmy smiled back and reached out to pat her hand.
“I’ve been waiting all evening for that smile, Raquel,” he said. “Began to fear it wasn’t going to come.”
“Raquel, give us a tune, can’t you, daughter? Let’s hear somethin’ sweet and sad.” Dad remembered that this would be his last night at home for a long time, perhaps a very long time. Indeed, this knowledge weighed on every one, though no one spoke of it, and no one mentioned that Grant’s ship had sailed the day before.
“Raquel’s awful tired, Father; she’s had a hard trip,” said Mom. “I don’t guess she’s even been to her room yet, and I think she ought to get to bed.” They were the first words she had spoken since dinner. But when Mom did speak it was law.
Sleepily they dragged themselves up from before the dying fire, Georgie had already said goodnight and disappeared. Mrs. Daniels went with Raquel to her room, leading the way with a kerosene lamp.
“Everything’s just as you left it, Raquel, ’cept for one thing,” she said, shy now at this new Raquel, whom she felt had changed ’way off at school there “in the East.”
“Oh, Mom! it sure looks lovely.”
The big, high-ceilinged room, which had been hers since she was a little girl, was both strange and familiar. A warm fire had been kindled in the corner fireplace, so cozy with its raised hearth, where you could dry your boots or toast your cold toes. The crackling flames threw rosy lights on the painted bedroom set.
Yes, it was as pretty, prettier, than she remembered it. Lovely apple green—oh, wait until Anne saw it—with sprays of flowers and dull, yellow-gold shadows. And now at the windows which had been bare always, hung chintz curtains, soft yellow, with green and black, and dashes of cunning cherry color.
“Mom! Did you make them?”
“Yes’m. Miz Sperry, over in town, at the Emporium you know, she come out and looked at the furniture an’ then sent me the goods. The hems aren’t so good.... I didn’t expect to get ’em up till Spring. I—I don’t suppose they look anything like those curtains of Anne’s you wrote about?”
“Mom, they’re just as pretty as any I ever did see.”
After Mom had said good night, tucking her in and blowing out the light, Raquel lay snugly in bed, enjoying the firelight, looking about, up at the high ceiling where the same old mud dauber’s nest still clung in a corner; up over her head where the five-foot rattlesnake skin was looped around an old musket. It had twelve rattles; she could count them all from where she lay. Then she laughed out loud. It did look funny, a snake skin, over a Louis Quinze bed. She used to think it was Louis Kahn’s, after the store in San Antone. And those deer antlers on each side her dressing table! They didn’t go so well either.
A wonder Jimmy had never told her. Good old Jimmy. He always gave a fellow a chance to find out for himself. How had he ever stood table manners at Los Ranchos? Specially Russell, though Ole Hossfoot was pretty bad.
And how was she ever going to take the place of Dad, and Custer and Grant—all three. But Mom had had to take the place of three—she had done the work of three women—without runnin’ water, for so long, and—things must be easier for Mom, from now on.
Raquel fell into dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER III
PROBLEMS
They were gone. Raquel and Mom stood at the end of the long veranda running the length of the house, and watched the car as it climbed towards the pass.
Mom looked like some hurt thing; she was too unconscious of anything but that they had gone to try to hide her feelings. She and Raquel walked side by side back into the house, Georgie following.
Raquel put her arm around Mom’s waist. She felt strong, and tender, and it comforted Mom. Words and caresses were few, but understanding was there.
“Georgie.” Mom reached out and drew him, the only baby she had left, into her lap, rocking him there tight in her arms. She rocked and rocked till gradually the strain eased and they began to talk about how much milk Ruth was giving, and all the jobs Georgie would have to take on.
Georgie at twelve was very round of face, very skinny of leg, snubby of nose, and liberally freckled. His two front teeth had reached their majority before the rest of him had, thus endowing him with the hated nickname of “Tooth,” but to Mom he had not yet lost his pearly baby teeth.
“Look after your mother and sister, Georgie,” was all that Dad had told him when he said good-by. “Remember you’re man breed.”
Dad had looked strange in a store suit, with a white collar that parted fearlessly each side of his Adam’s apple. In his red tie there gleamed like a cat’s eye a huge yellow diamond, purchased from a Mexican refugee.
It was the outfit Dad usually wore to Bank Directors’ meetings. Now that he was gone, his flannel shirt hung limply on a nail on the kitchen porch. His famous two-gallon hat, without which he never left the house, hung beside it. There it would hang till his return.
Raquel, looking at it, grinned ruefully.
“I wish what Dad kept under his hat was there now.”
Old Man Daniels had made plenty of enemies in his time, but there was no one, at the time of our story, who would rather have shot his hat and what was under it, full of holes than “A. B.” Meyers. It was not only the matter of losing out on fresh range, but that called loan at the bank had filled “A. B.” so full of poisoned hatred that he would stop at little to get back at the Boss of the Lazy L.
As the Pathfinder, carrying Dad to the railroad station, swooped down through Red Dog, and swirled past the saloon, “A. B.” looked out.
“Daniels off to take charge of cattle transportation overseas,” reported Red Bailey, the proprietor of the saloon, as the car disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Got his gal home from school in the East to run the rancho.”
“Takes more than fancy ropin’ and trick ridin’ to carry on the cattle biz,” remarked “A. B.” drily.
“You said it,” Red agreed. “A little money comes in handy.”
“A. B.” grew an angry red and made an impatient gesture. Then an evil smile came to his face. And at that moment he knew how he would get back at Bill Daniels. He would strike at him through his girl. A grand chance to get even, if Daniels wanted to be such a fool.
Raquel, meanwhile, all unconscious of the forces that were preparing to fight her, was thinking back over her parting conversation with Jimmy.
They had gone into the little school room together so that Jimmy could show her the school work laid out for Georgie that winter. Raquel was wearing a green jersey sports dress, a pretty thing, the most becoming she had—she had slipped into it at the last minute instead of pulling on her ranch clothes. How glad she was Anne had finally persuaded her to buy it!
Jimmy pompously took his seat at the teacher’s desk, while Raquel squeezed into one of the mutilated old desks which Dad had brought out from town when Grant and Custer were little, so that his children would have all the advantages of real school atmosphere.
“What’s it to be now, Raquel?” Jimmy had asked. “Oh, I know you’ve come back to handle a job that releases three able-bodied men to go to war”—an expression of momentary bitterness pulled at Jimmy’s mouth—“but how does it all seem, apart from the fact that there’s no life like the old ranch? I mean to say, what did you bring back with you from the East, from School, besides some mighty stunning clothes and three months’ good schooling? Got any new ideas?”
Raquel looked puzzled. What did Jimmy mean? She was not particularly analytical; she took things as she found them. She was going to run the ranch and that was all there was to it. If she could just hang on till Dad’s return, that was all she asked.
“Well, I couldn’t exactly get any new ideas about cattle ranching back East, could I? But I can think of one improvement. It seems to me I sort of hanker after a good shower bath and a couple of large porcelain tubs in place of that green tin tug boat we lug around to the warmest fire. Seems that if the Lazy L could afford a cattle dip and a couple of pianos it ought to be able to stand at least one genuine bath tub.”
Jimmy roared his delight.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Jimmy, it was really a wonderful experience, but somehow it seemed to me that the girls, none of them, had ever had a real responsibility outside of their monthly marks, and what they learned didn’t have much real meaning to them because of it. I mean—well, having lived out here you could just understand how the discoverers and pioneers felt when they found all the new countries of America. And that made me interested in history; the people seemed more real to me, and the growth of a country something about human beings, instead of just dry writing on a page.
“And I never realized till then how easy you had made it for me, Jimmy, tellin’ me such interestin’ things about the people in history as we went along. So I got fine marks in history and it was only because I knew their lives.”
Jimmy’s face broke into the smile that had won him the instantaneous liking of the Ranch of the Lazy L.
“It’s worth a lot to hear you say that, Raquel; I—oh, well, you know. There’s nothing I could do would repay what this ranch and this family have done for me.”
Raquel had a vague feeling of disappointment. Well, Jimmy was so nice of course he would feel like doing all he could. But she wished he hadn’t said that about repaying—or that he’d said he taught her because he wanted to anyway.
And Jimmy, strangely at a loss for him, was trying to find words to make his appreciation more personal; to say what she herself had meant to him, and that there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her. And then—it was time to go, and he hadn’t said anything.
They were blowing the horn outside. He and Raquel hurried out to the Pathfinder where Dad was already stowing away his grip, the same one that Raquel had taken away to school and had hastily unpacked for Dad’s use last night.
In the sorrow at parting with Dad, Raquel forgot Jimmy’s going.
But Jimmy himself thought about his lost opportunity all the way into town, and was kicking himself for his stiffness, his tongue-tied stupidity.
CHAPTER IV
TAKING STOCK
Raquel had been home two weeks. It had been, as luck would have it, a busy time from the minute of Dad’s going. Jami had driven Mr. Daniels and Jimmy into town and had come roaring back within an hour and a half at nearly sixty miles an hour, so that even with the handicap of the arroyo to cross he had to brake the Pathfinder down with a skidding of tires that brought Russell and Raquel running from the corrals.
Jami, heady with the freedom of the car, swung carelessly out and, without a backward glance at the steaming radiator, strode off toward the bunkhouse.
Raquel went quickly up to the car. The engine was fairly smoking. The tires were hot and showed the wear of the sudden braking down and skidding. The back tires were gouged with bad stone bruises, and as she and Russell stood there suddenly one went flat. It had been perforated by a sharp rock.
Raquel was furious. She followed quickly down towards the bunkhouse.
“Jami,” she called softly, “Jami. Come here a minute, will you?” And to Russell, “You go on in and take Mom these packages, will you, Russ?”
“Jami,” as he came up sheepishly, sensing something wrong, “do you think that’s the way to treat property, the minute Dad’s back is turned? Look at the radiator. Not a drop left in it. And on a winter’s day at that. Look at the tires. Six months’ wear taken out of them so you can ’ride ’em, cowboy, ride ’em.”
“Engine smoking, rear tire flat, got to have a shoe. No need in it. Now, Jami,” looking at him severely, “it isn’t as though you hadn’t been through this before, and been warned and respectfully requested.”
Which was all too true. Jami, crestfallen, dejectedly started to tote water for the engine now that it was too late.
Jami was a good mechanic, but he simply couldn’t be trusted to run the car, Raquel thought, a bit discouraged. And there was no one else but herself now to drive.
When she went down with Russ to inspect the garage she found that the lavish supply of oils which had been there when she left for school was almost gone. A couple of spare tires were also missing.
Raquel was aghast. “Why, Russ, where—what’s happened to the supply shop?”
“Well, ma’am, you know how the old man is. Every one comes along, ocean to ocean tin-tourer, shorthorn sports, grub-line riders, hunters, politicians, friends, give ’em what they want. Sure, stranger, help yourself. An’ then after they’ve filled up on our gas an’ your ma’s cookin’ they’re off. An’ when the ladies have cold-creamed the dust of Los Ranchos off their faces and the hombres have wiped it off their boots, that’s the last of us.”
Raquel could not help but laugh at Russell’s rage. “But, Russ, you ought not to fuss that way about strangers eating here. Where else would they eat within fifteen or twenty miles?”
“Well, you Westerners is open-handed, but I’m a Yankee, come from Kansas, an’ we don’t believe in scatterin’. Let ’em tank up before they come.”
“Well, we’re going to save every penny from now on, and we ship a thousand head March first, remember, or not later than the seventh.”
“We’ll need it,” said Russ. “So little seed this year, an’ the quail et up a lot.... I’ve got Angel and Pancho going over all the leather on the place this week, and Jami makin’ the rounds of the windmills. Catamounts and coyotes been pretty bad this year, an’ that angora goat you set such store by, Raquel, a mountain cat got her an’ her summer’s kids—le’s see, last month it was.”
“Oh, Russ, she was such a beauty! What did you do with the pelts?”
“Well, the kids was sort o’ spoiled, but Angel made a right purty rug for your ma’s sittin’ room o’ the old she. I got near enough lobo skins for a new carriage robe for you, curin’ down back o’ the coolin’ house now.”
They went down so that Raquel could see the thick, lustrous pelts, tawny, with flecks of black.
“You know,” said Russ, “we been losin’ too many cattle this winter.” He looked ominous.
“What do you mean, Russ? Wild animals?”
Russ nodded. “An’ more’n that, I’d guess. Last spring I made sure I counted at least two hundred calves over on that plain yonder alone. This fall I can’t see more’n half that. Coyotes didn’t get ’em all.”
Raquel laughed. “Why, there’s nobody in this country would rustle a calf off Los Ranchos. Come on, Russ, I want to show you how I want the grove cleaned up. If it’s goin’ to be a dry spring we’ll need the reservoir there.”
The cottonwood grove down in the glen southeast of the house was an oasis in a desert of grass, the heavy white trunks towering up against the blue sky. In summer it was a green-lighted refuge from the brilliance of the sun, and in the autumn a golden glory, as though the leaves had been marvelously hammered out of beaten gold.
But now the grove was a welter of brushwood, old iron and ranch junk: an old plow, an old buggy, an ancient cart with wooden wheels. And the great reservoir in the center was filled with leaves and twigs. When the rainy season was on, the tiny stream that ran through the glade from the mountains behind it would fill the reservoir. There had been a time when the boys used this tank as a swimming hole, to which the cattle did not seem to object.
Raquel had in mind to pipe the overflow from the windmill tank at the house down to the glen, and to rely on wind and rain to keep the reservoir water fresh and renewed. She had been wanting to clean the place out for several years, but while Dad spent lavishly on cars, musical instruments and upkeep, he had little use for improvements that were out of sight of the house.
The house itself had been newly whitewashed in the early fall and the patio wall given a fresh layer of pink plaster, mixed from a pink silica outcrop in the mountains back of the ranch. Everything else was in excellent shape—pumps, windmills, sheds.
Mom had always tended the patio, a small velvet oasis, shut away from desert winds by the pink wall, against which stood vivid hollyhocks. A square of “onhealthy” grass, the boys considered it, because it was so soft and fine; here, too, were beds of old-fashioned flowers, with honeysuckle and bougainvillea hanging thick over the cloistered porches.
Mom had a gracia in her fingers that made things grow, just as it made bread rise, Raquel often thought, looking disgustedly at a sickly vine of her own planting.
“But Raquel can sew beautiful. Her seams and hems’re so fine you can hardly see ’em,” Mom would defend.
“But I can’t make anything a-sewing, Mom! Look at the fit of this darn dress!” They always seemed to turn out very queerly, it was true.
So after that Raquel bought what dresses she had in town. They hadn’t been many, for she was only seven when Ole Hossfoot had brought her down a tiny pair of woolies to wear over her ginghams, and before she was in her teens she rode on the roundups always in her cowboy rig. It was so that Jimmy was used to seeing her, like a slim boy, with clustering dark hair, wearing a sombrero, a bright neckerchief, a leather jacket.
Raquel had ridden bareback at three, and before she was five had clambered aboard a cowboy saddle, clinging to the pommel, hard, bare feet thrust into the straps above the stirrups, dark hair flying, eyes round with daring. Dad had forbidden her to ride bareback as she grew older. He was afraid she would climb on a bad broncho some day. She had done so, but not to be thrown. That, however, is a story all to itself.
By the time she was fourteen her gift for “gentling” horses had become known throughout the county. There were times when Raquel took the place of a grown man, and in some kinds of work she was better than a man. Her lithe, tireless body could be carried over more ground without wearing out her horse than the heavy weight of a man; and whether the animal was a biter or a bucker, if it had the qualifications of a good cowhorse, Raquel could have it behaving when she rode it.
Sometimes she stayed home and helped Mom cook for the hands, and sometimes Mom had a Chinaman out from town to help. Sometimes, as now, she got on with the little Mexican girls, for during the shipping and branding seasons it took all hands to look after the cattle.
The Daniels had not long had so much money. There had been years and years when Mom did everything at the ranch house, and carried all her water in from the windmill when the men folks were out on the range and Dad was his own riding boss, in the saddle sometimes for twenty hours out of the twenty-four.
And then one autumn Dad said, “Mom, we got seventy-five thousand dollars reposin’ in the bank. Let’s all take a trip to Chiny or Californy.” So he had drawn five thousand dollars from the bank and they stayed in California until it was spent.
The Boss of Los Ranchos was not up to ring the rising bell herself the morning after Dad’s departure. Dad or one of the boys always rang it every morning, at six o’clock in winter and five in summer.
Now it was the crackling of the fire on her hearth that roused Raquel. Panchito Esquibal was slipping quietly out as she opened her eyes. The fires were Georgie’s job, but he was now doing the milking and the young milch cow would give down her milk to no one else.
Raquel remembered in a flash, and in a flash came wide awake, with the glorious aliveness of the healthy young. Jumping up she crossed to the sheepskin rug before the open fire. The crackling tulas gave out an extraordinary amount of heat and yet over in the corner by her washstand she could have seen her breath.
Tingling with an exhilaration that she had not felt at sea level, she splashed herself with the icy water and five minutes later was pulling on her boots before the fire. Not such riding boots as are found in smart city booteries but a cowboy’s pair, elaborately stitched, and perhaps a trifle quaint as to cut about the toe, but nevertheless beautiful.
Breakfast was already on the table when she opened the dining-room door. Hot bread, yellow corn meal and salt pork, stewed dried peaches and coffee. At Raquel’s place was a little pitcher of cream.
“It’s from Ruth,” explained Georgie proudly. “I’m goin’ to let her sleep in the shed off the summer kitchen from now on. It’s gettin’ too cold for her.”
“You certainly are not,” said Raquel with a grin. “From there it would be just a step into the kitchen. You’ll be wanting to put Old Whitey into the patio next.”
Georgie clanked out in disgust, his leather chaps concealing the fact that as yet his legs were unbowed in the manner befitting a real cowman. At his heels rattled a murderous-looking pair of spurs, which were in reality so blunt that at best they could only massage Old Whitey’s hide.
In fact the spurs were just a sort of friendly hint to Whitey as between friends. And being a faithful cowhorse of many years’ standing, Whitey always tried to oblige when Georgie gave the signal, and would break into a run. Perhaps the run lasted only a few steps before subsiding into an apologetic trot. But at a scratch of the spur Whitey was off again.
“Georgie, you’re to ride with Angel over to the second windmill and see if everything’s all right. Mom, why hasn’t Elena been up to the house? I was down there yesterday and no one was at home. I’m going down there right now. I want to see Pancho.”
Elena Esquibal, Pancho’s wife, had lived at Los Ranchos ever since she was a girl. Somewhere there was a strain of proud Spanish blood, and her father had owned his own rancho. He had been a friend of Old Man Daniels, and when at his death it was found that the rancho, on which Dad had already loaned him money, was lost on a mortgage, Dad brought the girl back and gave her a home.
“I don’t know what’s come over Elena,” said Mom. “She’s sort of queer these days. But the little girls’re sweet little old things, and Panchito’s too young to be mean yet.
“I never did take much to Pancho Esquibal, though he’s got real purty manners,” added Mom, “and it was sort of a pity that Elena couldn’t have kept that rancho of her father’s; but it wasn’t your father’s fault that the bank had to take it over for his debts. Seems like Esquibal didn’t seem to sense that; he thinks Dad was to blame some way. They think influence should do anything.”
“Well, I’m going down there now, Mom; I want to go over some things with Pancho.”
The Esquibal casita, a flat-roofed adobe house, nestled down at the foot of a hill below the corral, and faced the Alamos, the cottonwood grove. There seemed to be no one at home, but back of the house Raquel found Panchito asleep in the sun, his back to some empty oil cans.
As she stood looking at him Panchito awoke, rubbed his eyes, and stood up, grinning shyly. His papa and mamma had gone in the wagon over to visit a sick tio [uncle]. They would be back tomorrow, tonight maybe. “Si Señorita.”
The ranchito they had gone to? La Bolsa, they had called it, he thought.
Raquel pushed one of the oil cans with the toe of her boot. “What does your papa use these for, Panchito?”
“Oh, those are just the empty cans. He has sold already the oil,” Panchito answered innocently. “Since the gate below the Alamos was closed there come by our house many automovil-es.”
Raquel walked back to the big house thoughtfully. Pancho Esquibal was a bad hombre all right. And going off like that without a word. He always had an excuse. And there was nothing to do but shrug the shoulders at the institution of a Latin-American family and the demands of relatives upon the time of first, second and third cousins.
But this business of the oil—no wonder they couldn’t keep oil! What else was Pancho selling? Passing by the bunk house, where Angel was sweeping out with a tender regard for the broom, she called to him to saddle the Alezan mare. The horse was a quivering, high-strung creature which Raquel herself had cured of fright and which she would let no one but herself or Jami ride. Jami was hard on a car but easy on a critter.
Raquel swung quickly into the saddle. It was a pretty thing to watch her mount. There were times when she simply vaulted in, her feet seeming to find the stirrup leathers by instinct. But now she did not wish to startle the Alezan.
Left hand grasping the reins smoothly at the base of the horse’s neck, left foot thrust under the stirrup hood, she made a quick upward flight of her slim body, feet together, until the right foot swung quicker than the eye over the saddle—it never seemed to sprawl over the horse’s flank. She rode with a somewhat shorter stirrup than a good Panhandler usually does, and didn’t lean back for a lope or a slow trot. This morning the mare was off like the wind, down the road leading to the pass.
Beyond the arroyo Raquel turned back to the right, and followed the road that led past the cottonwood grove, round which ran a fork that joined the main road again beyond the Alamos. The inner road had always been closed with a gate, but now a new gate closed the main road, and the inner road, which led past Pancho’s house, was open. Cars would have to go this way now, and the detour could not be seen from the big house.
“Easy way to make a little money.” Raquel was angry as she loped back. “But I wouldn’t have thought it of Elena.”
Pancho would never have been hired at Los Ranchos had it not been for Elena. When she married, Dad took Esquibal on because of her, rather than because he was an expert cowpuncher and brander.
Well, selling oil could be settled easily enough. But what else was Pancho Esquibal up to?
At that moment Pancho was concluding a very satisfactory sale of La Bolsa, the ranchito of Elena’s uncle, to “A. B.” Meyers for a sum satisfactory to both parties, and terms that were most agreeable. The ancient uncle and aunt were to continue to live there the remainder of their lives, and Esquibal was to work the place for “A. B.” on shares.
La Bolsa was what the name implied, a pocket of land lying in a tiny valley that ran down to the Daniels range and was entirely surrounded by Los Ranchos property, except on the northwest corner.
CHAPTER V
DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
A cold spell had come, and Russell, Jami and Raquel had ridden up to the Reservation range to bring down the cattle. A large part of the herd were always left up on the mountain ranges as long as possible in order to take advantage of the fine grass, and spare the lower slopes. They were brought down before the winter grew too cold, or there was danger of blizzards and snow, and had been left overlong this year.
Russell did not want Raquel to ride so far, since she had not been in the saddle for three months.
“But I have been riding, Russell, two or three times a week anyway.”
Russell wouldn’t allow that there could be any real riding back there. But Raquel was going.
They had left Los Ranchos at six in the morning and it was now noon. By ten o’clock they had reached the foothills and, striking off from the mesas, had ridden steadily upward ever since. Through a rocky canyon, the steep sides of which were covered with stunted piñon, cedar, and oak rubble, they picked their way, following a trail which led up and over a great rounded slope—an upland meadow, sparsely wooded with pine.
It was sharply cold in the mountains, and as they mounted higher and higher the wind became keener. Raquel buttoned her sheepskin jacket tighter about her throat and was glad she had worn “woolies,” the sheepskin chaps with fleece turned out.
Some of the cattle had been put on fenced ranges early in the summer by her father. He usually divided the herd into several lots and put them on different fenced ranges in order to make it easier to bring them down, as a few men could easily handle a hundred at a time.
“Oughtn’t take us more’n a hour now,” Russell, riding ahead, called back. “Guess we’ll have to put up to Peevey’s tonight after we locate them fellers. Then we c’n round ’em up and herd ’em down to the pastures on the lee side of yon peak.”
Peevey was a mountaineer who managed to eke out a living for himself and his family by trapping. He had also a few cattle. He lived with his wife, a sixteen-year-old girl and a ten-year-old son in a log cabin at an altitude of more than eight thousand feet. Old Man Daniels had allowed him to “squat” on land adjoining a rented range, because the old fellow had lived there for twenty years, without bothering any one or paying anything.
Peevey’s place nestled in a thicket of pine at the foot of a tall cliff. So like a very part of the forest it was that you could not see it until you were right on it. As they rode through the trees and came suddenly upon the cabin a boy darted away and disappeared behind a rock.
“That’s Boy Peevey,” said Jami. “Ain’t it funny the way he runs like a deer whenever any one heaves in sight? He’s a reg’lar wild boy, ’fraid o’ no four-footed thing, but skeert at the sound of a human voice.”
“Well, he’s never spoken to any one but his family, so that’s natural,” Raquel replied. She had known the Peeveys for years and remembered Boy had always been so.
“Ma Peevey says he don’t hardly speak to his fam’ly no more,” said Russell. “Won’t talk to his Dad at all, don’t hardly speak to his sister, and won’t come for no one but his mother. He sets a lot o’ store by her.”
They had reached the cabin and Old Man Peevey came out to meet them. He was a strange little man, gloomy and passionate by turns, whiskered up to his cap. “Fences down, gates open, cattle’s all in together,” was his greeting, in an accusing tone of voice. He was supposed to keep an eye on gates and fences.
Russell was in an instant fury at the news and Raquel turned to question Peevey, but just then Mrs. Peevey came to the door, all aflutter to see Raquel, the Boss’s daughter.
Mrs. Peevey called back as she came hurrying out, “Lena, come, here is Raquel Daniels.”
Lena Peevey had sometimes been down at the Daniels ranch for a few days at a time, and she had been at school in Alamogordo one winter when her mother, who was a good cook, had taken a job in town. It had been a cold winter, bitter, and Mrs. Peevey had had to supply bacon and flour, and meal, as Pop had been laid up with the rheumatics, never setting foot out of the cabin all that winter.
Lena came running now to see the visitors, her pimply face beaming with delight. They had dismounted, and leaving their horses to forage and find their way down into a little gully where ran a mountain stream, the three entered the cabin to warm themselves at the fire, while Mrs. Peevey and Lena bustled about getting something to eat.
Within an hour a steaming meal was on the table. Rabbit stew—“Boy ketched ’em in his hands,” Mrs. Peevey said—hot biscuits, coffee with condensed milk. It was nearly four when Raquel started out again with Russell, Jami following with Pop Peevey.
Some spite work, Pop thought, but it mought a been fall hunters layin’ down the barbed wire fer to let their cars through. Most likely that’s what it was, come to think of it. He’d aimed to get down last week and let Mr. Daniels know about it, didn’t know it hisself till then. Boy’d seen some o’ the Ranchos’ cattle on the lower slope when he was layin’ his traps. He’d had rheumatics ever since, though, an’ couldn’t stir. Jami winked and tilted his elbow behind Pop’s back. Peevey’s attacks of rheumatics were known to come from a bottle.
Well, there was nothing to do about it but go after them all. Russell made straight for the Corona, a high peak from which the surrounding country could be seen. An hour’s climb through spruce, pine and cedar, so fresh and lovely that it did not seem like winter weather; then a somber glade of hemlock, mysterious, forbidding—and they were out in the open at the top of the world.
It was already dark in the canyons far below, but up in these high regions the sun still rode well above the horizon and they could see for miles in every direction; light and shadow, light and shadow, of crest and peak and valley; timberline, where the forest stopped abruptly at creation’s gesture.
Raquel was silent under the solemn vast beauty. She had not been up on the Corona in more than a year, and then it was summer. The cold, the quiet, were intense now. The air was strangely still, as it often is just before sunset, and the riders did not feel the cold.
Each of them carried field glasses; Russell was already searching the valleys below for whitefaces, the Ranchos cattle, unmistakable even at a distance of several miles. Raquel came out of her dreaming with a start, guiltily. She was the Boss of the Rancho; she’d better be looking for her cattle!
Glasses raised, she and Jami scanned the lower levels in different directions. Yes, they were there, full five hundred head all together, Jami thought. Yeah, Russell allowed that many. They’d not move afore mornin’ lessen a blizzard came up and it didn’t look like it from that clear sky.
The sun was sinking with sudden speed over the edge of the world. You had a sense of the world’s being round, up there; it curved and dropped away to the horizon. It seemed up there as though it were not such a very big globe after all because you could see all the sides, and you were on the top of it.
They were back at Peevey’s in less than an hour, but it was already dark in the forest, and a wind rustled mournfully in the bare branches of the pallid aspen groves. The log cabin was pleasant and warm and smelling of salt pork and frijoles. They were ready to eat again.
“Boy, he’s et and gone to bed in the loft,” Ma Peevey indicated as they came in. “He’s clean run out. Had to doctor his legs. Huntin’ cat, he says; but he’s friends with the bars, an’ the bulls an’ the deer too.”
“It’s a hard winter,” Pop Peevey mumbled over his food. “Froze tight many a night, withouten any snow, and gonna be worse. Watch out fer the bars and catamounts, says I, and the coyotes and lobos down on the range.
“It were just such a winter as this’n when early spring that young engineer took his bride down by the Rio Grande near the dam, an’ she was et by a grizzly. It was after the bacon, an’ they didn’t have no bacon, so the bar took her.” He chewed gloomily on his own salt pork.
“Never throw nothin’ at a bar, specially a grizzly,” Ma Peevey contributed piously. “I alwiz give a bar what it wants. Recollec’, Lena, when the big brown bar came in the door last spring lookin’ fer bacon an’ took it from the shelf, an’ took the surrup; we didn’t bother him none, an’ he didn’t bother us. Just went out ’thouten any trouble.”
“How would you and Lena like to come down to the ranch for the spring roundup and help Mom with the cookin’, Miz Peevey?” Raquel asked.
Mrs. Peevey started to reply affirmatively and then looked questioningly at her husband.
“She don’t have to work out,” he decided grandly. “Sooner’n have her go out to work I’d work myself even.”
“That sure is noble an’ generous of you, Pop.” Jami winked at Russell.
Pop Peevey relished his wife’s cooking too well to part with it as long as there was a strip of bacon in the house, or a rabbit in Boy’s traps. Boy Peevey, wild little faun that he was, really kept the family in food, bringing his tribute each day to his mother.
“I hate to go away count o’ Boy,” she decided, “but Lena can go if she wants.”
Lena showed her wishes by a broad smile.
Raquel shared Lena’s room that night, while Russell and Jami slept on shakedowns before the fire in the living-room. Lena insisted that Raquel take the bed, with its lumpy mattress of pine needles, while she slept on a shakedown on the floor at Raquel’s side.
Lena took off only her dress and her shoes, and pulled a somewhat soiled flannel nightgown over her underwear. Raquel unrolled her gown, her comb, her toothbrush, and a cake of soap in a little case, from a red neckerchief which she always carried in her saddle pocket. She was tired enough with the long ride and the cold to relax comfortably into the hollows of her pine mattress, redolent of the forests that closed about the tiny cabin.
Less than a month ago she had been sleeping across from Anne in a beautiful big room, fresh and fragrant. How clean and straight Anne was, how beautiful her skin, so clear and rosy, and creamy! They were just the same age, Anne and Lena. And look at poor Lena!
“I want to be a school teacher.” Lena’s unexpected words, ending with a silly-sounding giggle, broke in on Raquel’s thoughts.
“Why, Lena, where did you get that idea?”
“Down to district school.” Lena’s eagerness dispelled her embarrassment, although she always laughed at everything Raquel said, because poor Lena was so glad to be with another girl that she could express her happiness only by laughing.
“The teacher there said I could learn. I think it’s awful nice to be a teacher. I bin through the sixth grade.”
“I think it would be lovely, Lena,” Raquel answered. “Perhaps you could work this summer and save some money, and then if you got work in Alamo this winter you could get ready for the State Normal.”
Raquel opened the tiny window, and although Lena looked at her in astonishment, she felt that everything Raquel did must be perfect. The fresh wind blew in and put out their candle, and as Raquel went to sleep she thought how pitiful, how different Lena’s life was from hers or Anne’s.
Well, how different her own life was from Anne’s, though she had never thought that way about it before she went to school. She wondered if Lena could ever possibly get to be a teacher.
“I aim I’m goin’ to do it all right,” Lena’s voice came startlingly out of the darkness.
And Raquel was vaguely troubled in her dreams by seeing her wonderful Anne with a diploma in her hands laughingly refusing to teach the little mountain district school when they asked her to, while Lena, struggling up the mountain side, kept calling, “Wait, I’m coming. I’ll be the teacher.”
It was still dark when they left Peevey’s cabin the next morning. As they trotted briskly along the sun rose somewhere behind the mountain and a green dawn filtered down through the pine needles. Jami led the way, a shepherd dog belonging to Custer, which he had left up at the Peevey cabin for use on the upper range, running along with them, leaping about their horses’ heads to show them how glad he was to be with his ranch folks again.
When they had climbed half way up the Corona suddenly the sun burst upon them, an hour before it would reach into the valley below. From a vantage point on the hill Russell cupped hands to his mouth, gave the salt cry, “Coo-ee-coo-ee-ee. Coo-oo-ee.” Down the thin air it carried, echoing back from distant mountain sides, spreading over mountain meadow, into canyon and thicket.
Raquel tingled at the thrill of the call, and her own clear shrill voice took up the echo and sent its vibrant message down into far-off glades, full four miles away.
From where they were they could see the cattle come running from all sides, hurrying down to an open space below them, towards which Russell was already riding, still calling his “Coo-ee, coo-ee-ee.” Down there sounded such a lowing and bellowing as would have terrified a tenderfoot.
Great bulls, young bulls, white-faced cows, fawn-colored heifers with horns still short, were milling and seething in their efforts to get at the salt which Russell was scattering on the “licks,” the hollows worn in the flat rocks of the meadow by the rough tongues of countless cattle.
Jami rode herd on the edge of the roundup, turning back the strays or those that had had their fill of salt and were turning back to their feeding grounds. The shepherd dog rode before him on the saddle leaping down among the crowding animals to nip at a pair of hocks, here and there, and leaping back to safety when menacing horns were lowered at him.
Raquel and Pop Peevey circuited the herd and slowly drove the animals toward the outleading valley. Had it been on the plains instead of in the mountains the four could not have ridden herd on the wild bunch. But the hills hemmed them in, the older cattle responded from habit to the yells, and the younger cattle followed.
Nevertheless, it made them busy to keep the great mass moving along, and moving in the right direction. Russell’s hoarse shouts, Raquel’s high call, piercing, but clear as a flute, echoed now from this side, now from that. On one hand there were at one time five contests going on between as many pairs of young bulls, which snorted, pawed the dirt in great clots over their backs, while with lowered heads pressed together, they pushed back and forth furiously.
On the other hand a bunch of cows would pile up, finally clambering upon each other’s backs in the crush. The cattle became jammed; packed. It looked as if they would not be out for hours. Jami, with the aid of the collie and a sharply pointed pole, was riding back and forth, trying to separate them, to prod them along with the slowly moving mass.
There was a time when, as they approached the narrow exit to the meadow, chaos reigned. It was nearing noon, the sun was high, and in that upturned pocket so near the sky, unprotected from the fierce light that beat so straight down upon them, it was unbelievably hot.
Would they never get out?
Then suddenly the confusion quieted. The mooing and bellowing became less frantic, the cattle seemed to be following along easily. Far off in the center of the herd Raquel saw a tiny figure, like a little old mountain gnome, atop the magnificent back of Big Cap, the blooded black bull, patriarch of the herd.
It was Boy Peevey, legs straight out, hands grasping firmly the horns of the big bull as he rode him down the glade. Big Cap raised his head in a long deep-throated bellow, full of majesty and command, calling the herd after him.
The powerful vibrations filled the glade with a thunder that even the great crouching cats of Corona respected.
“That’s music to my ears,” called Raquel to Russell. “Look at Boy bringin’ home the cows.”
“He talks their tongue all right. He’s a wild un. Yoo-ee-ee.” And Russell was off whirling his rope after a straying cow.
And so they came down from the upper mountain, and by four in the afternoon had their cattle safely within the Daniels’ fences, with twenty miles to roam in between them and the Rancho.
Elated, glowing with the exhilaration of the rare air, and the successful outcome, Raquel was for returning to the Rancho that night. So with a wave to Pop Peevey, and a tightening of their cinches, they were off, the horses apparently as fresh as when they had started out that morning.
Although there was only an hour of daylight left, stars were out with the twilight, and it was by their bright radiance that the three trotted briskly along across the open mesa towards that far spot on the mountain slope which was Los Ranchos.
Even before they saw the lights in the windows a pale, brilliant moon had risen over the tops of the craggy mountains to guide them on their way.
CHAPTER VI
THE HUNT
Bad news greeted Raquel when they clumped into the Rancho’s kitchen shortly after midnight. A mountain lion had got Ruth’s calf. Georgie was disconsolate.
The thermometer dropped that night to well below freezing, and two weeks of extremely cold weather followed the mountain roundup. Frost lay white each morning, silvering the sage and cactus and sparkling under a brilliant sun that gave no heat.
A week after the disappearance of Ruth’s calf, Jami came across the mutilated remains of a white-faced steer up in an arroyo back of the big house. It was the work of a lion by the signs—the hide ripped to ribbons by cat claws.
Then two sheep that the Esquibals had been caring for at their place disappeared. Every one wanted to go hunting.
“Well, I guess we might as well go after those fellows now while it’s so cold,” Raquel reluctantly agreed. She sent Jami into Los Pasos to bring back the two hounds that her father had loaned in the fall to a friend.
That afternoon Raquel and Georgie rode north to a branding cabin that was not used save during the season. A spring in the mountains behind La Boka had been piped down to a circular reservoir, now covered with a thin coating of ice except where the cattle had broken it around the edges.
Not far from here they found a fallen heifer, another victim of the wild creatures which disputed their ownership of land and cattle. The torn throat told its own tale.
Georgie’s freckled face paled. He rose from where he had knelt at the heifer’s side. “The Lobo of the Magdalena did that. It’s a killer.... But say, Rake”—the boy’s eyes were fairly popping—“that’s not the Lazy L’s cow.” He touched the branded flank of the heifer with the toe of his boot.
A large and cruel leaning H marked the animal. Raquel nodded. She stooped and gazed intently at the scar, her hand fondling a velvety ear.
“That brand’s about six months old, Tooth. A brand that deep takes just about that long to look like this. Yes, it belongs to us, all right. See that little notch hidden at the bottom of its ear. That was the calf I brought home and raised on the bottle when it got lost from its mother. Remember? And I wanted to mark it, it was so fat and cute.
“I thought I knew that heifer some way the minute I saw her. A slick job, whoever covered the Lazy L. They didn’t get away with it, though! But how many have they got away with, I wonder. And who would do a thing like that?”
“Quien sabe! I don’t know who’d dare. Gee, if Dad had known this!”
“Well, it’s a bad piece of business for somebody.”
Raquel was so upset by this evidence of cattle rustling that she forgot for the time being the more successful rustler who had got away with his theft. Such killings meant thousands of dollars loss to the ranchman every year.
“Well, looks like we’ll have to go huntin’ for two kinds of varmints, old Tooth,” said Raquel, as they turned their horses’ heads back towards the ranch house, “four-footed and two-footed.”
“Dad said all the hoss thieves was cleared out,” grunted Georgie, “but I guess they left a few cattle thieves for us to clean out.”
“We’ll start in the morning after the cats, unless it comes on to snow. It’s too cold to do anything else just now and it’ll give me a good chance to see something more of the range back of the ranch house.”
Back at the house they found Jami with the dogs, fat, and crazy to run after their well-fed stay in town. They were barking and milling around in the kennel house.
Guns were got out, cleaned and oiled. Raquel would carry her little twenty-two. Russell and Jami were going, Angel and Georgie. Mrs. Daniels made sandwiches almost as big as plates, filled with salt pork and ham of her own curing. They were all in bed and asleep by eight o’clock for Mom was to get them up at four in the morning.
In the cold dark dawn Raquel slipped quietly down towards the corrals. Overhead a million stars were sparkling with a brilliance such as Eastern skies never know. Russ was roping himself a horse. The winter string were running round and round in the dark, away from the sound of his whirring rope.
As Raquel came up Russ drew into the light a little foolish-faced pony. “Aw, shucks, I don’t want you at all,” and it had to be done all over again. Raquel picked for herself one of Custer’s string, a swift, sturdy cow pony that would bite if it was crowded.
Raquel’s rope stopped him easily as he passed, and with a swift turn around the snubbing post she had him. “You’re not a-going to bite at me, old boy.” Her caressing voice arrested the wicked little laying back of the ears, yet as her hand crept up his nose the lips curled back with a look of singular meanness.
“Look out, there, Rakie, ain’t you got any sense? He’s fixin’ to bite. Drive him in the saddlin’ pen.”
“You’re loco, Russ; he’s smilin’ at me, that’s all. Glad to see an old friend, aren’t you, little feller?” And indeed the pony seemed merely to be exhibiting his pleasure as Raquel quickly smoothed her saddle blanket and dropped the saddle over his back.
She liked to see to saddling her own horse, the single cinch tight but an inch farther back than was customary, the blankets well forward. Then as the saddle worked looser in going down hill there would be no chafing when it was impossible to get off and readjust a blanket.
The dogs were already tumbling about in their kennels, sensing a hunt. As Raquel and the boys went back towards the house the smell of hot coffee came deliciously down the wind. Fortified by incredible breakfasts of hominy, pork chops, corn cakes and molasses syrup, the hunters hurried down again to the corral.
Just as the east grew crimson, Russ took the two lead hounds out on leash. The four others that made the pack strung eagerly along, following down to Pancho’s house, from which the start was to be made. Esquibal was waiting for them and at once informed Raquel that he could not go on the hunt because he had had word from Elena’s uncle to go to La Bolsa today, but he would certainly return tonight and would go around by Los Pasos and call for that bunch of oil cakes for calf feeding.
Raquel was annoyed, but as it did not seem to make any real difference, except that they would be a man short, she nodded, for the dogs were straining at the leash.
Whining and trembling with excitement, the powerful leader of the pack ran round and round, nose to the ground, trying to pick up a scent already three days stale. Baffled, he threw up his head to sniff the air time and again, leaping towards the old oxcart that lay in the yard.
“Never seen him act that way,” said Russ, worried, and unsnapped the leash.
With a deep-throated yelp, the hound shot off towards the foothills and was out of sight in a minute, the rest of the pack after him. Raquel was a close second and her pony needed no quirting.
As the first ray of the sun flashed over the mesas below them, the hounds gave tongue from a canyon ahead, the deep music of their baying echoing roundly.
The hunt pressed forward, the horses racing on the morning wind, Raquel, as usual, in the lead. With the wind in her face and the blood singing through her veins, with delight in the chase and the springing earth beneath her horse’s feet, her light body and lighter hand guided the cow pony unerringly.
Now, a good cow pony usually does not rely on other than its own quick eye and quicker feet, but in such a chase as this it trusts the rider somewhat to help it avoid gopher holes and rough rocky going. And where Jami put his horse at fence or bush, Raquel rode to save her pony.
“Hey, cowboy, spare that hoss,” she cried as she passed Jami. “That’s not a crow you’re ridin’. Go round a few mountains.”
Far away to the left, and now to the right, the belling of the leader of the pack could be heard.
“Gato grande,” called Angel; “he always sings so when he smells the big cat.”
The horses slowed up at the mouth of a deep canyon, and the hunters stopped to breathe them. There was no more baying for a space, so after five minutes they pressed forward again, Raquel bearing off to the right with Russ and Georgie, while Jami, Panchito and Angel took to the left. They would follow two ridges until they should meet all together again near the summit.
Climbing quietly and carefully for the better part of an hour, occasionally they heard the bell-like notes of the leader of the hounds and the sharper, lighter baying of the pack.
“You’d think the ole feller would shut his trap and not make such a noise,” fretted Georgie, riding beside Raquel. “How in time can he expect to steal up on a lion thataway!”
“Let him do his own huntin’, Tooth,” growled Russ. “You ain’t no hound, so you shut up. I notice we get to draw a bead on a critter more often follerin’ a hound’ dawg and his racket than we do makin’ Injun tracks through the woods by ourselves.”