by Zane Grey
Out in the park the cattle were bawling. The air was drowsy and warm, and thunder muttered over the ramparts of the Blue Mountains. The peaks were hidden in black clouds. Low down in the west the gold and purple lights of sunset burned. Night was coming and a cool breeze edged down from the green slopes. Coyotes were calling from the foothills.
“Aboot time fer Baldy, Dot an’ Mex to rustle in,” observed one of the riders. “Boss, who’re you sendin’ out on watch?”
“Fix thet up among yourselves next watches. You can put Hepford’s punchers on guard at three,” replied Anderson.
“Looks like a storm,” spoke up another rider. “Them cattle are none too quiet as it is. Might stampede.”
“Shore, if we have thunder an’ lightnin’,” was the reply. “But I reckon we won’t get none heah.”
Ernest and Nebraskie, having heard their orders, moved away from the fire to the spruce tree where they had unrolled their beds. Nebraskie sat on his tarpaulin to kick off his boots.
“Pard, I ain’t stuck on this heah Anderson or his outfit. Air you?”
“Aw, they’re all right,” replied Ernest. “That boy Lee is a real good chap.”
“Wal, Lee is sorta human, I’ll agree. But the rest are N.G. . . . Ernie, you’re new to the range. You don’t get underneath. Things are what they look to you. But a real cowpuncher like your Uncle Dudley–he sees through all these heah tight-lipped fellers.”
“I suppose I am a dumbhead, Nebraskie,” admitted Selby, laughing. “It’s up to you to coach me.”
“You shore air a curious cuss. An’ I reckon I like you the better fer thet. If you was experienced an’ curious you’d find this stock deal a little queer.”
“Queer? What do you mean, pardner?” asked the Iowan. “What’s wrong with it?” He was somewhat shy about this way of addressing Nebraskie. He saved it for emergencies. Nebraskie was always visibly and pleasantly responsive to that appellation.
“Wal, ask yourself this. Why does Hepford want to make this long drive with a big herd–most fifteen hundred haid, I’d say–when he could sell at Springertown for forty dollars a haid, or forty-five at the railroad? He cain’t get thet price over heah. Course I don’t know thet, but I’d gamble on it. Then why this roundabout way of sellin’ his stock?”
“It is queer if you are figuring right,” replied Ernest thoughtfully. “But there seem to be lots of funny things about ranching.”
“My figgerin’ is mostly pretty good,” observed Nebraskie sagely. “My father was a rancher. I’ve lived all my life with cattle. An’ if I had enough money to start a herd–even a few hundred haid–I could shore make a success of cattle raisin’ an’ sellin’. But hell, I cain’t raise enough money to buy Dais a ring.”
“You will someday, Nebraskie. Or I’ll lend it to you.”
“Huh! You forty dollar fence-post digger! But doggone you, if you did strike it rich, I’ll bet you’d stake me at that!”
“I sure would, pard. But what’s your angle on Hepford’s selling over here, if he could get more in town?”
“I’ve got my idee. More’n ever now since I tried to feel out Hawk Siebert the other day. Hawk shore gave me a funny look. But he didn’t say nuthin’.”
“Ranchers help one another now and then, don’t they?” asked Ernest.
“Shore they do. But this is the sixth big drive Hepford has made over heah since I joined his outfit. An’ you can bet your chaps he ain’t helpin’ nobody but himself.”
“Well, what’s your idee, pard?” continued Ernest soberly.
“I reckon Hepford is workin’ a trick as old as rustlin’. Only it’s safer. Many a foreman has got a start for himself workin’ thet dodge. It’s coverin’ sales, an’ it’s plumb easy to do if the owner of the ranch isn’t aboot.”
“Covering sales? Just what is that?”
“Wal, it means sellin’ so many cattle, an’ reportin’ considerable less to haidquarters. Shore Hepford has to report to somebody. Down east, I’ve heerd.”
“Oh, I see,” replied Ernest dubiously, as if he did not see. “But how would this–this sort of thing make it easy to be crooked? For that’s what it amounts to.”
“Wal, it’s hard to trace an’ check up. An’ after considerable time it couldn’t ever be checked. For instance, I was on two of them drives over heah, years ago, an’ I’ll be darned if I can remember how many cattle was in the herds. Now suppose I had to testify in court, if I’d do such a thing. I shore couldn’t swear there was two hundred haid or a thousand haid in them particular herds. An’ most cowpunchers would be wuss off than me. Do you savvy now, Ernie?”
“It’s clearing up. If your surmise is correct Hepford will sell this bunch, send in a report of so many less than he actually did sell, and pocket the difference in cash.”
“Exactly. An’ I’ll tell you if a foreman wanted to work such deals an’ not be a hawg–to be satisfied with a little profit–he could never be ketched.”
“Ahuh. Is Hepford that kind of a foreman?”
“I couldn’t swear to thet. Strikes me he’s pretty highhanded. He’s well-heeled, I’ve heerd say. Fifteen years he’s run this ranch since Brooks had it. An’ the big boss has never been heah. I reckon there won’t be much left of Red Rock when he does come.”
Ernest bent over his boots to hide his face, and laboriously pulled them off.
“Nebraskie, let’s make a count of this herd, just for fun,” he suggested.
“Shore, I’m game. But it’d be risky tellin’. They shoot fellers out heah for thet. . . . It wouldn’t have no point, though, onless you got the figgers Hepford reports.”
“I suppose not. All the same we could satisfy ourselves.”
“Siebert is goin’ to take you an’ me with him, when he leaves. Be tough on you, Ernie, to say good-by to the green-eyed girl. Huh?”
“It’ll be terrible, pard.”
“Air you thet bad over her?”
“I couldn’t be worse.”
Nebraskie sighed and maintained a thoughtful silence, during which he rolled and lighted a cigarette. Finally he said: “Love is a turrible disease. Sometimes I feel like a sick cow thet has eat too much larkspur. But I always get over it. Thet’s the blessin’ hid in love, Ernie. You always get over it, an’ ready fer another attack right away.”
“Could you ever love any girl but Daisy?”
“I don’t feel like it now. But I know damn well I could.”
“Then you shouldn’t blame her for kicking over the traces.”
“Wal, I won’t blame her next time,” replied Nebraskie gruffly, “but I’ll spank the everlastin’ daylights out of her.”
“Fine! That’s an original idea. How’d it do for me to try the same on Anne?”
Nebraskie whooped under his breath. “Glory, it’d be grand! An’ it might work bootiful, Ernie. Wimmen are so blamed oncertain. I’m afraid, though, Anne would jest turn around and lambaste you back. An’ she’s husky....Nope, you gotta use strategee with that un. But be straight as an arrowweed, Ernie.”
“She’s not so honest. I can testify to that all right.”
“Don’t you fool yourself. Thet gurl is honest. Not in her flirt in’ ways, of course. No purty gurl is thet. She’d jest naturally lead on a hundred fellers an’ fool ’em all, an’ laugh. Thet’s wimmen’s privilege, they seem to reckon. But I’ll bet you–if Hepford is even a little shady–Anne isn’t wise to it.”
“Nebraskie, I’m glad you think that,” said Ernest warmly, as he folded his coat for a pillow. “Cause when Anne and I are married I couldn’t invite you to our house, if you’d ever entertained any suspicions of her.”
“Aw, you locoed gent, go to sleep,” declared Nebraskie disgustedly. “Dream of love an’ Anne an’ a big ranch, an’ lots of other guff. An’ at three A.M. when I have to kick you in the slats to get you up then you’ll know you’re only a low-down poverty-stricken cowpoke.”
Ernest laughed, but could not take his friend’s advice. His
mind was active with a number of things. Night had fallen. The threat of storm had passed. White stars shone through the dark boughs above where he lay. The summer heat had blown away on the wings of the nightwind. The cattle were quiet once more, but coyotes still called plaintively in the distance. A deep booming bay of a wolf rang out. Ernest had mistaken that once for the bay of a hound. It sent the cold shivers up his spine. The wind appeared to be laden with the aroma of pine from the stands of pines in the foothills. Dark forms of bigsombreroed cowboys crossed and recrossed between him and the flickering campfire. Their voices were low and now and then one yawned.
It was all marvelously real and enticing to the tenderfoot from Iowa. He felt sure he could still be happy in this country, even if Anne Hepford broke his heart, if that was what she had set out to do. He suddenly made up his mind that he would postpone taking over the ranch as long as he possibly could. Just so he could continue to live in his fool’s paradise a little longer! Then the old baffling hopes, doubts, conjectures, misgivings assailed him again, as was inevitable when the image of Anne Hepford returned to his consciousness. His happy moments were not these.
From Anne, however, his thoughts drifted to her father, and to Nebraskie’s shrewd observations, and lastly to the actual fact that he was on one of those questionable cattle drives, about which the few cowboys and stock men aware of them had personal opinions which they did not air. He had to keep his wits about him if he were to prevent the ruin of the ranch his uncle had bequeathed him.
What would the next few weeks bring forth? Before the snow fell there surely were bound to be great changes at Red Rock. Ernest thought that he would like to retain Hawk Siebert, and of course Nebraskie. How was Nebraskie’s love affair going to turn out? For that matter how was his own? And then he was right back where he had started with thoughts of the beauty, the strong charm, the doubtful virtues, the unlimited possibilities of Anne Hepford.
9
ARUDE hard object, with a rotary movement and a jingle to it, violently disrupted Ernest from his dreams.
“Roll out, you Ioway greenhorn,” called Nebraskie’s drawling voice. “Wake up an’ see how you like it in the cold dark mawnin’.”
Selby roused himself, but he did not enjoy the shock to his sensibilities, nor the cloudy darkness, nor the icy air. He pulled on his boots and his coat and gloves, but he could not find his sombrero.
“Did’y swipe m-m-my hat?” he queried, his teeth chattering.
“Quiet! If you wake thet outfit they’ll kill you,” warned Nebraskie. “Pard, your haidgear must be under the chiffoneer.”
Ernest vouchsafed no reply to that facetious sally. He found his sombrero where the wind had blown it.
“Say, I’d like a cup of hot coffee and a biscuit,” he said, forgetting the fact that he had experienced this dreary dawn business twice before.
“Haw! Haw!” laughed Nebraskie, low and scornful. “Th’ deuce you say. Wal, I’d like some hot cakes an’ maple surrup, an’ some big fat fresh–Aw, what’s eatin’ you? Get out heah an’ raise hair on your chest.”
Not long after that Ernest found himself alone, out in the wide gray park, where spectral forms of cattle were revealed motionless in the dusk of early morning. His beat was on the protected side. Nebraskie had generously seen to that. Nevertheless the wind pierced right through him. Dismounting he led his horse to and fro. The cattle appeared to be huddled together and quiet. No stars shone. Ernest had neglected to fetch a warm coat or even a slicker. And for a while he was pretty miserable. Yet still his enthusiasm, though dampened, stayed with him, even though he had never been so cold in his life.
An hour dragged by. Then a faint paleness appeared in the east. The day was dawning. Nebraskie saw it too. From far across the park came a cowboy song. Not a cheerful rollicking song, but a sad lament of a cowboy’s unrequited love.
In another hour day had broken, and Ernest thrilled to the glory of an Arizona sunrise. It burst slowly over the endless range, as if unwilling to unfold all its beauty at once. Rose and pink limned the horizon. A vast, clear, golden span of light followed the appearance of the blazing sun. Then the shadows stole away. The crisp air was full of a fresh sweetness and songs of birds and the lowing of cattle.
Nebraskie and Ernest were the last two called to breakfast, and they had to be satisfied with the last and least of the food, too. By the time they had made away with what was left the herd was in motion. They followed and soon caught up with the hindmost riders. The park proved to be the head of a magnificent valley, gray with bleached grass and dotted with green clumps of trees. Mountains rose beyond and it was easy to see why they had been called the Blue Range. Ernest espied a ranch not many miles down and calculated that the drive did not have many more hours to go. Across the wide valley a winding road, white in the sunlight, led south into a pass through the mountains. Beyond that range he knew lay another and different cattle country.
Soon sun and heat and dust, not to count hard riding, made the Iowan forget everything save the weariness of the hour. He wondered why he and Nebraskie were kept on the outskirts of the scattering herd. But he was sure of one thing, and that was that when the cattle had been driven through wide gates into an immense fenced pasture he had not been given any chance to ascertain their number. Moreover he was sure that Nebraskie had had no better opportunity.
The drive ended late in the afternoon. It was none too soon for Ernest. He fell in with Nebraskie and rode up to the ranch houses, which contrasted markedly with those of Red Rock. The buildings were old, gray, and weather-beaten; the cowboy quarters consisted of a couple of dingy log cabins, the courtyards and corrals were dry, devoid of green. There was no running water in sight. Nebraskie vouchsafed that it was a big ranch, but no place for two Romeos.
“Wal, we’re aboot as welcome heah as two snowballs in Hades,” he continued. “But, doggone it, they ought at least to feed us.”
“Sure we’ll stay all night?” asked Ernest eagerly.
“Boy, we will sleep out under the stars again, an’ don’t you forget thet. Suits me better, too. We’ll hang around an’ let our hosses rest, then pull out after dark sometime.”
Ernest took his cue from Nebraskie, and gave no evidence that he noticed the aloofness of the Anderson outfit. The exception was the cowboy Lee, who appeared to be friendly and agreeable. There never had been any love lost between Red Rock and Blue Valley, Lee remarked dryly, with a significant little laugh.
“I wouldn’t know. I’m new on this range,” said Selby with a smile.
“So I seen,” drawled Lee.
“First big drive I was ever in,” the tenderfoot continued, with enthusiasm. “Must have been over two thousand head.”
“Laws, cowpuncher, you’re missin’ it by a mile,” replied Lee.
“Gosh, pard,” put in Nebraskie, who was sitting with them against the corral fence that fronted on the cabins, “I’d shore hate to ride fer you, if you ever get to be a rancher.”
“How many do you figger?” asked Lee.
“Wal, I wouldn’t say. I never had one doggone chance to see the herd bunched.”
“Fifteen hundred eighty-six haid exactly,” declared Lee. “I heered Baldy tell thet to Anderson. Dot’s count was fifteen sixty-two. But Baldy’s count will take the money, you can lay to that.”
Ernest dropped his head, as had become his habit when he did not trust his eyes. “Gosh, it’d be great to own that many cattle.”
“Lee, who’s the heavy-set guy in the boiled shirt, talkin’ to Anderson an’ Mr. Wilkins?” asked Nebraskie, indicating the group of dusty-booted men in front of the ranch house.
“Buyer from Mariposa, so I heered. Didn’t ketch his name. He was heah once before. Reckon Wilkins will make a quick turnover of most of this stock we drove in.”
Ernest entered no more into the conversation. His thoughts were running rampant again, and his resentment against Hepford waxed hot. He had wit enough, however, to listen to all that was said within
his hearing, especially when they were called to supper, which was served to the riders in a big kitchen of the ranch house. The cook was a Mexican and the food good. Ernest had felt starved for three days. Nebraskie, too, made away with a prodigious amount of hearty food.
After the meal Lee bade them good-by, saying he had a girl, and they were left to themselves. Selby suggested that they stroll round the ranch house. The front proved to be little more prepossessing than the rear. There was no porch. The door to the living room stood open. In the dusk Ernest could not see inside, but he could hear voices.
“Nebraskie, I’ve an idea I’d like to slip up there and listen,” he said without shame.
“What fer?”
“I don’t know. Guess you just made me curious.”
“Wal, it’s too durn light yet. Wait till it’s dark. But take a good look aboot, so you’ll know the lay of the land. I’m sorta curious, too–”
They sauntered back to the corral, leisurely packed their pack mule, and saddled their horses. Meanwhile dusk fell. The log cabins grew indistinct. They led their horses down the lane to the open country.
“Better slip off your boots,” advised Nebraskie. “Be careful Run like hell if they see or heah you. This isn’t no healthy place fer a eavesdroppin’ Red Rock puncher.”
“You can bet I won’t be caught,” replied Ernest.
Bootless and hatless he stole stealthily down the lane, eyes and ears vigilant, slipped through the fence before he got to the corrals, and with the lay of the ground well fixed in mind he worked his way around to the front of the house. Here he felt reasonably safe. A bright light streamed from the living-room door, and also from a window which Ernest had not observed before. As there were no stars shining the night was dark. It was very still, however, and he had to make sure there were no persons outside. Gradually he drew into the deep shadow of the house. Then he sank to hands and knees and crawled up to the open window. Now that he was there it seemed a senseless risk. Yet, he felt urged to do it. He tried to hold his breath while he listened.
