When A Man's A Man Part 18

"But there are the earmarks," said Patches, a few moments later, when Phil had released the branded and marked calf--"the earmarks and the brand wouldn't agree."

"They would if I were Nick," said the cowboy. Then he added quickly, as if regretting his remark, "Our earmark is an under-bit right and a split left, you said. Well, the Four-Bar-M earmark is a crop and an under-bit right and a swallow-fork left." With the point of his iron now he again marked in the dirt. "Here's your Cross-Triangle: [Ill.u.s.tration]; and here's your Pour-Bar-M: [Ill.u.s.tration]."

"And if a calf branded with a Tailholt iron were to be found following a Cross-Triangle cow, then what?" came Patches' very natural question.

"Then," returned the foreman of the Cross-Triangle grimly, "there would be a mighty good chance for trouble."

"But it seems to me," said Patches, as they rode on, "that it would be easily possible for a man to brand another man's calf by mistake."

"A man always makes a mistake when he puts his iron on another man's property," returned the cowboy shortly.

"But might it not be done innocently, just the same!" persisted Patches.

"Yes, it might," admitted Phil.

"Well, then, what would you do if you found a calf, that you knew belonged to the Dean, branded with some other man's brand? I mean, how would you proceed?"

"Oh, I see what you are driving at," said Phil in quite a different tone. "If you ever run on to a case, the first thing for you to do is to be dead sure that the misbranded calf belongs to one of our cows. Then, if you are right, and it's not too far, drive the cow and calf into the nearest corral and report it. If you can't get them to a corral without too much trouble, just put the Cross-Triangle on the calf's ribs. When he shows up in the next rodeo, with the right brand on his ribs, and some other brand where the right brand ought to be--you'll take pains to remember his natural markings, of course--you will explain the circ.u.mstances, and the owner of the iron that was put on him by mistake will be asked to vent his brand. A brand is vented by putting the same brand on the animal's shoulder. Look! There's one now." He pointed to an animal a short distance away. "See, that steer is branded Diamond-and-a-Half on hip and shoulder, and Cross-Triangle on his ribs.

Well, when he was a yearling he belonged to the Diamond-and-a-Half outfit. We picked him up in the rodeo, away over toward Mud Tanks. He was running with our stock, and Stillwell didn't want to go to the trouble of taking him home--about thirty miles it is--so he sold him to Uncle Will, and vented his brand, as you see."

"I see," said Patches, "but that's different from finding a calf misbranded."

"Sure. There was no question of owners.h.i.+p there," agreed Phil.

"But in the case of the calf," the cowboy's pupil persisted, "if it had left its mother when the man owning the iron was asked to vent it, there would be no way of proving the real owners.h.i.+p."

"Nothing but the word of the man who found the calf with its mother, and, perhaps, the knowledge of the men who knew the stock."

"What I am getting at," smiled Patches, "is this: it would come down at last to a question of men, wouldn't it?"

"That's where most things come to in, the end in this country, Patches.

But you're right. With owners like Uncle Will, and Jim Reid, and Stillwell, and dozens of others; and with cowboys like Curly and Bob and Bert and 'Shorty,' there would be no trouble at all about the matter."

"But with others," suggested Patches.

"Well," said Phil slowly, "there are men in this country, who, if they refused to vent a brand under such circ.u.mstances, would be seeing trouble, and mighty quick, too."

"There's another thing that we've got to watch out for, just now," Phil continued, a few minutes later, "and that is, 'sleepers'. We'll suppose," he explained, "that I want to build up my, bunch of Five-Bars, and that I am not too particular about how I do it. Well, I run on to an unbranded Pot-Hook-S calf that looks good to me, but I don't dare put my iron on him because he's too young to leave his mother. If I let him go until he is older, some of Jim Reid's riders will brand him, and, you see, I never could work over the Pot-Hook-S iron into my Five-Bar. So I earmark the calf with the owner's marks, and don't brand him at all.

Then he's a sleeper. If the Pot-Hook-S boys see him, they'll notice that he's earmarked all right, and very likely they'll take it for granted that he's branded, or, perhaps let him go anyway. Before the next rodeo I run on to my sleeper again, and he's big enough now to take away from the cow, so all I have to do is to change the earmarks and brand him with my iron. Of course, I wouldn't get all my sleepers, but--the percentage would be in my favor. If too many sleepers show up in the rodeo, though, folks would get mighty suspicious that someone was too handy with his knife. We got a lot of sleepers in the last rodeo," he concluded quietly.

And Patches, remembering what Little Billy had said about Nick Cambert and Yavapai Joe, and with the talk of the visiting cowboys still fresh in his mind, realized that he was making progress in his education.

Riding leisurely, and turning frequently aside for a nearer view of the cattle they sighted here and there, they reached Toohey a little before noon. Here, in a rocky hollow of the hills, a small stream wells from under the granite walls, only to lose itself a few hundred yards away in the sands and gravel of the wash. But, short as its run in the daylight is, the water never fails. And many cattle come from the open range that lies on every side, to drink, and, in summer time, to spend the heat of the day, standing in the cool, wet sands or lying in the shade of the giant sycamores that line the bank opposite the bluff. There are corrals near-by and a rude cook-shack under the wide-spreading branches of an old walnut tree; and the ground of the flat open s.p.a.ce, a little back from the water, is beaten bare and hard by the thousands upon thousands of cattle that have at many a past rodeo-time been gathered there.

The two men found, as the Diamond-and-a-Half riders had said, several animals suffering from those pests of the Arizona ranges, the screwworms. As Phil explained to Patches while they watered their horses, the screwworm is the larva of a blowfly bred in sores on living animals. The unhealed wounds of the branding iron made the calves by far the most numerous among the sufferers, and were the afflicted animals not treated the loss during the season would amount to considerable.

"Look here, Patches," said the cowboy, as his practiced eyes noted the number needing attention. "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll just run this hospital bunch into the corral, and you can limber up that riata of yours."

And so Patches learned not only the unpleasant work of cleaning the worm-infested sores with chloroform, but received his first lesson in the use of the cowboy's indispensable tool, the riata.

"What next?" asked Patches, as the last calf escaped through the gate which he had just opened, and ran to find the waiting and anxious mother.

Phil looked at his companion, and laughed. Honorable Patches showed the effect of his strenuous and bungling efforts to learn the rudiments of the apparently simple trick of roping a calf. His face was streaked with sweat and dust, his hair disheveled, and his clothing soiled and stained. But his eyes were bright, and his bearing eager and ready.

"What's the matter?" he demanded, grinning happily at his teacher. "What fool thing have I done now?"

"You're doing fine," Phil returned. "I was only thinking that you don't look much like the man I met up on the Divide that evening."

"I don't feel much like him, either, as far as that goes," returned Patches.

Phil glanced up at the sun. "What do you say to dinner? It must be about that time."

"Dinner?"

"Sure. I brought some jerky--there on my saddle--and some coffee. There ought to be an old pot in the shack yonder. Some of the boys don't bother, but I never like to miss a feed unless it's necessary." He did not explain that the dinner was really a thoughtful concession to his companion.

"Ugh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Patches, with a shrug of disgust, the work they had been doing still fresh in his mind. "I couldn't eat a bite."

"You think that now," retorted Phil, "but you just go down to the creek, drink all you can hold, wash up, and see how quick you'll change your mind when you smell the coffee."

And thus Patches received yet another lesson--a lesson in the art of forgetting promptly the most disagreeable features of his work--an art very necessary to those who aspire to master real work of any sort whatever.

When they had finished their simple meal, and lay stretched full length beneath the overhanging limbs of the age-old tree that had witnessed so many stirring scenes, and listened to so many camp-fire tales of ranch and range, they talked of things other than their work. In low tones, as men who feel a mystic and not-to-be-explained bond of fellows.h.i.+p--with half-closed eyes looking out into the untamed world that lay before them--they spoke of life, of its mystery and meaning. And Phil, usually so silent when any conversation touched himself, and so timid always in expressing his own self thoughts, was strangely moved to permit this man to look upon the carefully hidden and deeper things of his life. But upon his cherished dream--upon his great ambition--he kept the door fast closed. The time for that revelation of himself was not yet.

"By the way, Phil," said Patches, when at last his companion signified that it was time for them to go. "Where were you educated? I don't think that I have heard you say."

"I have no education," returned the young man, with a laugh that, to Patches, sounded a bitter note. "I'm just a common cow-puncher, that's all."

"I beg your pardon," returned the other, "but I thought from the books you mentioned--"

"Oh, the books! Why, you see, some four years ago a real, honest-to-goodness book man came out to this country for his health, and brought his disease along with him."

"His disease?" questioned Patches.

Phil smiled. "His books, I mean. They killed him, and I fell heir to his trouble. He was a good fellow, all right--we all liked him--might have been a man if he hadn't been so much of a scholar. I was curious, at first, just to see what it was that had got such a grip on him; and then I got interested myself. About that time, too, there was a reason why I thought it might be a good thing for me; so I sent for more, and have made a fairly good job of it in the past three years. I don't think that there's any danger, though, of the habit getting the grip on me that it had on him," he reflected with a whimsical grin. "It was our book friend who first called Uncle Will the Dean."

"The t.i.tle certainly fits him well," remarked Patches. "I don't wonder that it stuck. I suppose you received yours for your riding?"

"Mine?"

"'Wild Horse Phil,' I mean," smiled the other.

Phil laughed. "Haven't you heard that yarn yet? I reckon I may as well tell you. No, wait!" he exclaimed eagerly. "We have lots of time. We'll ride south a little way and perhaps I can show you."

As they rode away up the creek, Patches wondered much at his companion's words and at his manner, but the cowboy shook his head at every question, answering, simply, "Wait."

Soon they had left the creek bed--pa.s.sing through a rock gateway at the beginning of the little stream--and were riding up a long, gently sloping hollow between two low but rugged ridges. The crest of the rocky wall on their left was somewhat higher than the ridge on their right, but, as the floor of the long, narrow hollow ascended, the sides of the little valley became correspondingly lower. Patches noticed that his companion was now keenly alert and watchful. He sat his horse easily, but there was a certain air of readiness in his poise, as though he antic.i.p.ated sudden action, while his eyes searched the mountain sides with eager expectancy.

They had nearly reached the upper end of the long slope when Phil abruptly reined his horse to the left and rode straight up that rugged, rock-strewn mountain wall. To Patches it seemed impossible that a horse could climb such a place; but he said nothing, and wisely gave Snip his head. They were nearly at the top--so near, in fact, that Phil could see over the narrow crest--when the cowboy suddenly checked his horse and slipped from the saddle. With a gesture he bade his companion follow his example, and in a moment Patches stood beside him. Leaving their horses, they crept the few remaining feet to the summit. Crouching low, then lying p.r.o.ne, they worked their way to the top of a huge rounded rock, from which they could look over and down upon the country that lies beyond.