Hidden Water Part 6

"Begin to see light, eh?" he queried, as he pushed on up the river.

"Well, that's the only thing in G.o.d's world that wasn't made to order for these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across the country east and west without consultin' n.o.body, not even Jim Swope, and the sheep move north and south.

"How'd you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand _borregos_ and half of 'em with lambs, when the _rio_ was on a bender?

I've seen some of these sheepmen wadin' around up to their chins for two weeks, tryin' to float twenty-five hundred head across the river--and there wasn't turkey buzzards enough in the country when they got through.

"Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined with carca.s.ses two deep where they'd jest naturally crowded 'em into the river and let 'em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy.

After they'd wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin'

they got tired and shoved 'em in, regardless. Well, if this warm weather holds we'll be able to git our _roder_ good and started before the sheep come in. That's one reason why I never was able to do much with these sheepmen," he added. "They hit me right square in the middle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I'm too busy gatherin'

cattle to pay much attention to 'em. I did plan a little surprise party last year--but that was somethin' special. But now you're on the job, Rufe," he continued rea.s.suringly, "I'm goin' to leave all sheep and sheepmen strictly alone--you can bank on that. Bein' as we are goin' to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never made a cent fightin' 'em, that's a cinch, and if you can appeal to their better natures, w'y, go to it! I'd help you if I could, but bein' as I can't I'll git out of the road and give you a chanst.

"Now I'll tell you how it'll be," he continued, turning in his saddle and hooking one leg over the horn, "the boys'll come in for the _roder_ to-morrow or next day; we begin to gather on the first, and it takes us about a month. Well, we look for the sheep to come in on us at about the same time--first of April--and we ain't been fooled yet.

They'll begin to stack up on the other side any time now, and as soon as the water goes down they'll come across with a rush. And if they're feelin' good-natured they'll spread out over The Rolls and drift north, but if they're feelin' bad they'll sneak up onto Bronco Mesa and scatter the cattle forty ways for Sunday, and bust up my _roder_ and raise h.e.l.l generally. We had a little trouble over that last year," he added parenthetically.

"Well, I'll turn over the house and the grub and the whole business to you this year and camp out with the boys under the mesquite--and then you can entertain them sheepmen and jolly 'em up no end. They won't have a dam' thing--horse feed, grub, tobacco, matches, nothin'! Never do have anythin'. I'd rather have a bunch of Apaches camped next to me--but if you want to be good to 'em there's your chanst. Meanwhile, I'm only a cow-punch pullin' off a round-up, and your name is Mr.--you're the superintendent of the Dos S. Your job is to protect the upper range, and I begin to think you can do it."

There was a tone of half-hearted enthusiasm about this talk which marked it for a prepared "spiel," laboriously devised to speed the new superintendent upon his way; but, not being schooled in social deceit, Creede failed utterly in making it convincing.

"That's good," said Hardy, "but tell me--what has been your custom in the past? Haven't you been in the habit of feeding them when they came in?"

"Feed 'em?" cried Creede, flaring up suddenly. "Did I feed 'em? Well, I should guess yes--I never turned one away hungry in my life. W'y, h.e.l.l, man," he exclaimed, his anger growing on him, "I slep' in the same blanket with 'em--until I become lousy," he added grimly.

"What!" exclaimed Hardy, aghast. "You don't mean to say--"

"No," interrupted Creede ironically, "I don't mean to say anythin'--not from now on. But while we're on the subject and to avoid any future misunderstandin' I might just as well tell you right now that I can't see nothin' good in a sheepman--_nothin'!_ I'm like my cat Tom when he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears and I see h.e.l.l, d.a.m.nation, and sudden death!"

He rose up, frowning, on his mighty horse and gazed at Hardy with eyes that burned deep with pa.s.sion. "If every sheep and sheepman in Arizona should drop dead at this minute," he said, "it would simply give me a laughin' sensation. G.o.d d.a.m.n 'em!" he added pa.s.sionately, and it sounded like a prayer.

Half an hour later as they pa.s.sed through the gloomy silence of the box canon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwood cast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters, he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferent things along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill and looked down upon Hidden Water his anger was forgotten.

"Well," he remarked, throwing out a hand, "there's home--how do you like it?"

Hardy paused and looked it over critically--a broad V-shaped valley half a mile in length, beginning at the mouth of a great dry wash and spreading out through trees and hummocks down to the river. A broken row of cottonwoods and sycamores stretched along the farther side, following the broad, twisting bed of the sand wash where the last flood had ripped its way to the Salagua; and on the opposite side, close up against the base of the cliff, a flash of white walls and the shadow of a _ramada_ showed where man had built his puny dwelling high in order to escape its fury. At their feet lay the ranch pasture, a broad elbow of the valley rich with gra.s.s and mesquite trees and fenced in with barbed wire that ran from cliff to cliff. Beyond the eastern wall the ground was rough and broken, cut up by innumerable gulches and waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbidding crags of a black b.u.t.te whose shoulders ran down to and confined the silvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was even rougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towered a mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedral spire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence--purple with the regal robes of distance.

"That's Weaver's Needle," volunteered Creede, following his companion's eyes. "Every lost mine for a hundred miles around here is located by sightin' at that peak. The feller it's named after was picked up by the Apaches while he was out lookin' for the Lost Dutchman and there's been a Jonah on the hidden-treasure business ever since, judgin' by the results.

"D'ye see that big b.u.t.te straight ahead? That's Black b.u.t.te. She's so rough that even the mountain sheep git sore-footed, so they say--we have to go up there on foot and drive our cattle down with rocks. Old Bill Johnson's place is over the other side of that far b.u.t.te; he's got a fine rich valley over there--the sheep haven't got in on him yet. You remember that old feller that was drunk down at Bender--well, that's Bill. Calls his place h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket; you wait till you try to git in there some day and you'll know why."

He paused and turned to the north.

"Might as well give you the lay of the land," he said. "I'll be too busy to talk for the next month. There's the Four Peaks, northeast of us, and our cows run clean to the rocks. They's more different brands in that forty miles than you saw in the whole Cherrycow country, I bet ye. I've got five myself on a couple hundred head that the old man left me--and everybody else the same way. You see, when the sheep come in down on the desert and around Moreno's we kept pus.h.i.+n' what was left of our cattle east and east until we struck the Peaks--and here we are, in a corner. The old judge has got nigh onto two thousand head, but they's about twenty of us poor devils livin' up here in the rocks that has got enough irons and ear marks to fill a brand book, and not a thousand head among us.

"Well, I started out to show you the country, didn't I? You see that bluff back of the house down there? That runs from here clean to the Four Peaks without a break, and then it swings west in a kind of an ox bow and makes that long ridge up there to the north that we called the Juate. All that high country between our house here and the Peaks--everythin' east of that long bluff--is Bronco Mesa. That's the upper range the judge asked me to point out to you. Everythin' west of Bronco Mesa is The Rolls--all them rollin' hills out there--and they's feed enough out there to keep all the sheep in the country, twice over--but no water. Now what makes us cowmen hot is, after we've give 'em that country and welcome, the sheepmen're all the time tryin' to sneak in on our upper range. Our cows can't hardly make a livin'

walkin' ten or fifteen miles out on The Rolls every day, and then back again to water; but them dam' sheep can go a week without drinkin', and as much as a month in the winter-time.

"Why can't they give us a chanst, then? We _give_ 'em all the good level land and simply ask 'em as a favor to please keep off of the bench up there and leave our cows what little cactus and browse they is. But no--seems like as soon as you give one of them Chihuahua Mexicans a gun he wants to git a fight out of somebody, and so they come crowdin' in across our dead line, just to see if they can't git some of us goin'."

Once more his eyes were burning, his breath came hard, and his voice became high and sustained. "Well, I give one of 'em all he wanted," he said, "and more. I took his dam' pistol away and beat him over the head with it--and I _moved_ him, too. He was Jasper Swope's pet, and I reckon he had his orders, but I noticed the rest went round."

He stopped abruptly and sat silent, twisting his horse's mane uneasily. Then he looked up, smiling curiously.

"If you hadn't come up this year I would've killed some of them fellers," he said quietly. "I'm gittin' as crazy as old Bill Johnson--and he hears voices. But now lookee here, Rufe, you don't want to believe a word I say about this trouble. Don't you pay any attention to me; I'm bughouse, and I know it. Jest don't mention sheep to me and I'll be as happy as an Injun on a mescal jag. Come on, I'll run you to the house!"

Throwing his weight forward he jumped his big horse down the rocky trail and went thundering across the flat, whooping and laughing and swinging under mesquite trees as if his whole heart was in the race.

Catching the contagion Hardy's sorrel dashed madly after him, and the moment they struck the open he went by like a shot, over-running the goal and dancing around the low adobe house like a circus horse.

"By Joe," exclaimed Creede as he came up, "that _caballo_ of yours can run some. I'm goin' to make a little easy money off of Bill Lightfoot when he comes in. He's been blowin' about that gray of his for two years now and I'll match you ag'inst him for a yearlin'. And don't you forgit, boy, we're going after that black stallion up on Bronco Mesa just as soon as the _roder_ is over."

His face was all aglow with friendliness and enthusiasm now, but as they started toward the house, after turning their horses into the corral, he suddenly stopped short in the trail.

"Gee," he said, "I wonder what's keepin' Tom? Here Tom! Heere Tom!

p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y, p.u.s.s.y!" He listened, and called again. "I hope the coyotes ain't caught him while I was gone," he said at length. "They treed him a few times last year, but he just stayed up there and yelled until I came--spoiled his voice callin' so long, but you bet he can purr, all right."

He listened once more, long and anxiously, then his face lit up suddenly.

"Hear that?" he asked, motioning toward the bluff, and while Hardy was straining his ears a stunted black cat with a crook in his tail came into view, racing in wildly from the great pile of fallen bowlders that lay at the base of the cliff, and yowling in a hoa.r.s.e, despairing voice, like a condemned kitten in a sack.

"h.e.l.lo, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" cried Creede, and as the cat stopped abruptly, blinking warily at Hardy, he strode forward and gathered it gently into his arms. "Well, you poor little devil," he exclaimed, stroking its rough coat tenderly, "you're all chawed up again! Did them dam' coyotes try to git you while I was gone?" And with many profane words of endearment he hugged it against his breast, unashamed.

"There's the gamiest cat in Arizona," he said, bringing him over to Hardy with conscious pride. "Whoa, kitten, he won't hurt you. Dogged if he won't tackle a rattlesnake, and kill 'im, too. I used to be afraid to git out of bed at night without puttin' on my boots, but if any old rattler crawls under my cot now it's good-bye, Mr. Snake.

Tommy is right there with the goods--and he ain't been bit yet, neither. He killed three side-winders last Summer--didn't you, Tom, Old Socks?--and if any sheep-herder's dog comes snoopin' around the back door he'll mount him in a minute. If a man was as brave as he is, now, he'd--well, that's the trouble--he wouldn't last very long in this country. I used to wonder sometimes which'd go first--me or Tom.

The sheepmen was after me, and their dogs was after Tom. But I'm afraid poor Tommy is elected; this is a dam' bad country for cats."

He set him down with a glance of admiring solicitude, such as a Spartan mother might have bestowed upon her fighting offspring, and kicked open the unlocked door.

The Dos S ranch house was a long, low structure of adobe bricks, divided in the middle by the open pa.s.sageway which the Mexicans always affect to encourage any vagrant breeze. On one side of the _corredor_ was a single large room, half storehouse, half bunk room, with a litter of pack saddles, rawhide kyacks and leather in one corner, a heap of baled hay, grain, and provisions in the other, and the rest strewn with the general wreckage of a camp--cooking utensils, Dutch ovens, canvas pack covers, worn-out saddles, and ropes. On the other side the rooms were more pretentious, one of them even having a board floor. First came the large living-room with a stone chimney and a raised hearth before the fireplace; whereon, each on its separate pile of ashes, reposed two Dutch ovens, a bean kettle, and a frying-pan, with a sawed-off shovel in the corner for scooping up coals. Opening into the living-room were two bedrooms, which, upon exploration, turned out to be marvellously fitted up, with high-headed beds, bureaus and whatnots, besides a solid oak desk.

To these explorations of Hardy's Creede paid but slight attention, he being engaged in cooking a hurried meal and watching Tommy, who had a bad habit of leaping up on the table and stealing; but as Hardy paused by the desk in the front bedroom he looked up from mixing his bread and said:

"That's your room, Rufe, so you can clean it up and move in. I generally sleep outdoors myself--and I ain't got nothin', nohow. Jest put them guns and traps into the other room, so I can find 'em. Aw, go ahead, you'll need that desk to keep your papers in. You've got to write all the letters and keep the accounts, anyhow. It always did make my back ache to lean over that old desk, and I'm glad to git shent of it.

"Pretty swell rooms, ain't they? Notice them lace curtains? The kangaroo rats have chawed the ends a little, but I tell you, when Susie and Sallie Wins.h.i.+p was here this was the finest house for forty miles. That used to be Sallie's room, where you are now. Many's the time in the old days that I've rid up here to make eyes at Sallie, but the old lady wouldn't stand for no sich foolishness. Old Wins.h.i.+p married her back in St. Louie and brought her out here to slave around cookin' for _roder_ hands, and she wanted her daughters to live different. Nope, she didn't want no bow-legged cow-punch for a son-in-law, and I don't blame her none, because this ain't no place for a woman; but Sal was a mighty fine girl, all the same."

He shook a little flour over his dough, brushed the cat off the table absently, and began pinching biscuits into the sizzling fat of the Dutch oven, which smoked over its bed of coals on the hearth. Then, hooking the red-hot cover off the fire, he slapped it on and piled a little row of coals along the upturned rim.

"Didn't you never hear about the Wins.h.i.+p girls?" he asked, stroking the cat with his floury hands. "No? Well, it was on account of them that the judge took over this ranch. Old man Wins.h.i.+p was one of these old-time Indian-fightin', poker-playin' sports that come pretty nigh havin' their own way about everythin'. He had a fine ranch up here--the old Dos S used to brand a thousand calves and more, every round-up; but when he got old he kinder speculated in mines and loaned money, and got in the hole generally, and about the time the sheep drifted in on him he hauled off and died. I pulled off a big _roder_ for 'em and they sold a lot of cattle tryin' to patch things up the best they could, but jest as everythin' was lovely the drouth struck 'em all in a heap, and when the Widde' Wins.h.i.+p got the estate settled up she didn't have nothin' much left but cows and good will. She couldn't sell the cows--you never can, right after these dry spells--and as I said, she wouldn't let the girls marry any of us cowmen to kinder be man for the outfit; so what does she do but run the ranch herself!

"Yes, sir--Susie and Sallie, that was as nice and eddicated girls as you ever see, they jest put on overalls and climbed their horses and worked them cattle themselves. Course they had _roder_ hands to do the dirty work in the corrals--brandin' and ear-markin' and the like--but for ridin' the range and drivin' they was as good as the best. Well, sir, you'd think every man in Arizona, when he heard what they was doin', would do everythin' in his power to help 'em along, even to runnin' a Dos S on an _orehanna_ once in a while instead of hoggin' it himself; but they's fellers in this world, I'm convinced, that would steal milk from a sick baby!"

The brawny foreman of the Dos S dropped the cat and threw out his hands impressively, and once more the wild glow crept back into his eyes.

"You remember that Jim Swope that I introduced you to down on the desert? Well, he's a good sheepman, but he's on the grab for money like a wolf. He's got it, too--that's the h.e.l.l of it."

Creede sighed, and threw a sc.r.a.p of bacon to Tommy.

"He keeps a big store down at Moroni," he continued, "and the widde', not wantin' to shove her cows onto a fallin' market, runs up an account with him--somethin' like a thousand dollars--givin' her note for it, of course. It's about four years ago, now, that she happened to be down in Moroni when court was in session, when she finds out by accident that this same Jim Swope, seein' that cattle was about to go up, is goin' to close her out. He'd 'a' done it, too, like fallin' off a log, if the old judge hadn't happened to be in town lookin' up some lawsuit. When he heard about it he was so durned mad he wrote out a check for a thousand dollars and give it to her; and then, when she told him all her troubles, he up and bought the whole ranch at her own price--it wasn't much--and s.h.i.+pped her and the girls back to St.

Louie."

Creede brushed the dirt and flour off the table with a greasy rag and dumped the biscuits out of the oven.