CHAPTER XIII
THE INVISIBLE MENACE
At the close of the second day the big trail herd halted at the edge ofthe vast level over which it had come. The herd had been driven fortymiles. Cattle, men, and horses had passed through a country which wasfamiliar to them; a country featured by long grama grass, greasewood,and cactus plants.
There was no timber on the plains. The gray of the grama grass and thebare stretches of alkali shone white in the glare of a sun that swam ina cloudless sky of deepest azure. Except for the men, the cattle, thehorses, and the two slow-moving, awkward-looking canvas-covered wagons,there had been no evidence of life on the great plain. In a silenceunbroken save by the clashing of horns, the bleating and bawling of thecattle, the ceaseless creaking of the wagons, and the low voices of themen, the cavalcade moved eastward.
The wind that swept over the plains was chill. It carried a tang thatpenetrated; that caused the men, especially in the early morning, toturn up the collars of their woolen shirts as they rode; a chill thatbrought a profane protest from the tawny-haired giant who had disclosedto Lawler the whereabouts of Joe Hamlin that night in the Circle Lbunkhouse.
The first camp had been made on the Wolf--at a shallow about five milesnorth of the Two Bar, Hamlin's ranch. And with the clear, sparkling,icy water of the river on his face, and glistening beads of it on hiscolorless eyelashes, the giant had growled to several of his brothercowboys, who were likewise performing their ablutions at the river:
"This damn wind is worse'n a Kansas regular. You lean ag'in' it an' itfreezes you; you turn your back to it an' you've got to go to clawin'icicles out of your back. Why in hell can't they have a wind that's gotsome sense to it?"
"It ain't c-cold, Shorty," jibed a slender puncher with a saturnine eyeand a large, mobile mouth.
"Kells," grinned the giant; "your voice is froze, right now!"
And yet the men enjoyed the cold air. It had a tonic effect upon them;they were energetic, eager, and always ravenously hungry. The cookoffered testimony on that subject, unsolicited.
"I never seen a bunch of mavericks that gobbled more grub than this hereoutfit!" he stated on the second morning. "Or that swilled more coffee,"he added. "Seems like all they come on this drive for is to eat!"
Toward the close of the second day corrugations began to appear in thelevel. Little ridges and valleys broke the monotony of travel; rocksbegan to dot the earth; the gray grass disappeared, the barren stretchesgrew larger and more frequent, and the yucca and the lancelike octillabegan to appear here and there. The trend of the trail had been upwardall afternoon--gradual at first, hardly noticeable. But as the day drewto a close the cattle mounted a slope, progressing more slowly, and thehorses hitched to the wagons began to strain in the harness.
The rise seemed to be endless--to have no visible terminus. For it wentup and up until it melted into the horizon; like the brow of a hillagainst the sky. But when, after hours of difficult travel, herd and mengained the summit, a broad, green-brown mesa lay before them.
The mesa was miles wide, and ran an interminable distance eastward.Looking back over the way they had come, the men could see that thelevel over which they had ridden for the past two days was in realitythe floor of a mighty valley. Far away into the west they could see abreak in the mesa--where it sloped down to merge into the plains nearWillets. The men knew that beyond that break ran the steel rails thatconnected the town with Red Rock, their destination. But it was plain tothem that the rails must make a gigantic curve somewhere in theinvisible distance, or that they ran straight into a range of lowmountains that fringed the northern edge of the mesa.
Lawler enlightened the men at the camp fire that night.
"The railroad runs almost straight from Willets," he said. "There's atunnel through one of the mountains, and other tunnels east of it. Andthere's a mountain gorge with plenty of water in it, where the railroadruns on a shelving level blasted out of the wall. The mountains form abarrier that keeps Willets and the Wolf River section blocked in thatdirection. It's the same south of here, the only difference being thatin the south there is no railroad until you strike the Southern Pacific.And that's a long distance to drive cattle."
When the herd began to move the following morning, Blackburn sent themover the mesa for several miles, and then began to head them down agradual slope, leaving the mesa behind. There was a faint trail, narrow,over which in other days cattle had been driven. For the grass had beentrampled and cut to pieces; and in some places there were still printsof hoofs in the baked soil.
The slope grew sharper, narrowing as it descended, and the cattle moveddown it in a sinuous, living line, until the leaders were out of sightfar around a bend at least a mile distant.
Blackburn was at the head of the herd with three men, riding some littledistance in front of the cattle, inspecting the trail. Lawler and theothers were holding the stragglers at the top of the mesa, endeavoringto prevent the crowding and confusion which always results when massedcattle are being held at an outlet. It was like a crowd of eager humansattempting to gain entrance through a doorway at the same instant. Thecattle were plunging, jostling. The concerted impulse brought theinevitable confusion--a jam that threatened frenzy.
By Lawler's orders the men drew off, and the cattle, relieved of themenace which always drives them to panic in such a situation, began tofilter through and to follow their leaders down the narrow trail.
Down, always down, the trail led, growing narrower gradually, until atlast cattle and men were moving slowly on a rocky floor with the sheerwall of the mesa on one side and towering mountains on the other.
The clatter of hoofs, the clashing of horns, the bellowing, the rumbleof the wagons over the rocks and the ring of iron-shod hoofs, created abedlam of sound, which echoed and re-echoed from the towering wallsuntil the uproar was deafening.
Shorty, the tawny-haired giant, was riding close to Lawler.
He never had ridden the trail, though he had heard of it. He leaned overand shouted to Lawler:
"Kinney's canon, ain't it?"
Lawler nodded.
"Well," shouted Shorty; "it's a lulu, ain't it?"
For a short time the trail led downward. Then there came a levelstretch, smooth, damp. The day was hours old, and the sun was directlyoverhead. But down in the depths of the canon it was cool; and a strongwind blew into the faces of the men.
The herd was perhaps an hour passing through the canon; and when Lawlerand Shorty, riding side by side, emerged from the cool gloom, they sawthe cattle descending a shallow gorge, going toward a wide slope whichdipped into a basin of mammoth size.
Lawler knew the place; he had ridden this trail many times in the yearsbefore the coming of the railroad; and when he reached the crest of theslope and looked out into the hazy, slumbering distance, he was notsurprised, though his eyes quickened with appreciation for its beauty.
Thirty miles of virgin land lay before him, basking in the whitesunlight--a green-brown bowl through which flowed a river that shimmeredlike silver. The dark bases of mountains loomed above the basin at theeastern edge--a serrated range with lofty peaks that glowed white in theblue of the sky. South and north were other mountains--somber, purplegiants with pine-clad slopes and gleaming peaks--majestic, immutable.
Looking down from where he sat on Red King, Lawler could see the head ofthe herd far down the ever-broadening trail. The leaders were so faraway that they seemed to be mere dots--black dots moving in an emeraldlake.
The cattle, too, had glimpsed the alluring green that spread beforethem; and at a little distance from Lawler and several of the other menthey were running, eager for the descent.
"She's a whopper, ain't she?" said Shorty's voice at Lawler's side."I've seen a heap of this man's country, but never nothin' like that. Ireckon if the Lord had spread her out a little mite further she'd havetook in mighty near the whole earth. It's mighty plain he wasn'tskimpin' things none, anyway, when he made this here little hollow."
&
nbsp; He grinned as he rode, and then waved a sarcastic hand toward thecattle.
"Look at 'em runnin'! You'd think, havin' projected around this herecountry for a year or so, they'd be better judges. They're thinkin'they'll be buryin' their mugs in that right pretty grass in aboutfifteen seconds, judgin' from the way they're hittin' the breeze towardit. An' it'll take them half a day to get down there."
Shorty was a better judge of distance than the cattle. For it wasafternoon when the last of the herd reached the level floor of thebasin. They spread out, to graze industriously; the men not caring,knowing they would not stray far from such a wealth of grass.
By the time the chuck-wagon had come to a halt and the cook hadclambered stiffly from his seat to prepare the noonday meal, Lawler andthe others saw the horse-wrangler and his assistant descending the longslope with the _remuda_. The horses had fallen far behind, and Lawlerrode to meet them, curious to know what had happened.
When he rode up, the horse-wrangler, a man named Garvin--a stockyindividual with keen, inquiring eyes--advanced to meet him.
"Boss," he said, shortly; "there's somethin' mighty wrong goin' onbehind us. Me an' Ed--my helper--has been kind of hangin' back, bein'sort of curious. They's a bunch of ornery-lookin' guys trailin' us. Ifirst saw 'em after we'd struck the bottom of that canon. They was justcomin' around that big bend, an' I saw 'em. They lit out, turnin'tail--mebbe figurin' I hadn't seen 'em; but pretty soon I seen 'emagain, sort of sneakin' behind us. I reckon if they was square guys theywouldn't be sneakin' like that--eh?"
The Trail Horde Page 14
