30,000 On the Hoof

by Grey, Zane

  Her task was infinite, almost insurmountable, but her faith grew stronger. When night came, while she lay awake by Logan's side, with Barbara's corner silent as the grave, and the old wind-song mourning in the tips of the pines, then she seemed divided between hope and terror.

  In the hours when she wooed slumber she became prey to the past, to her early years here, to memory of her awakening to real love for her pioneer husband, to the coming of their first-born, to that terrible and fascinating Matazel, to Abe's birth in a cow-manger, and so on through all the succeeding years of trial down to this agonizing end for the Huetts.

  However, when morning came and the sun shone and the canyon smiled in its early summer dress, Lucinda did not fall prey to such memories. Her hope for the future battled with realism, with the thought of age and poverty, of her insupportable task with Logan and Barbara.

  Night and day then for a week her mind worked from the sombre to the bright, from the material fact to the spiritual belief, before she noted a gain for the latter. She grasped something to her soul that she could not explain. She no longer pondered over the inscrutable ways of God. She forgot the horror of war and the crawling maggots of men who fostered it.

  Her work lay here in this wild canyon and was still a long way from being finished.

  Lucinda soon began her labours in the garden. About the only thing she could keep Logan steadily at was chopping wood. He seemed to enjoy that, and his swing of axe had much of its old vigour; but when she sent him to the pasture to bring in one of the horses, saddle and snake down dead aspen and oak to chop, he seldom materialized unless she hunted him up.

  Manifestly this was what she must do! Mostly she found Logan beside the old unfinished 'stone corral. At these sad times she hated to break in on his reveries, and some days she could not bring herself to this cruelty, and she left him alone with his memories. Nevertheless it was forced on her to see that she must keep him working.

  With Barbara she had less trouble. Barbara would obey as long as the idea of work lingered in her mind, but when sooner or later it faded, she would wander away. She always wanted to go into the woods. There seemed to be something beckoning to her off under the dark pines. She would sit by the door on the old porch bench and watch the canyon trail, a habit appearing to Lucinda to be the one nearest rationality. It had to do, Lucinda thought, with vague mind-pictures of Abe riding up the canyon. It was heart-rending to watch, but Lucinda found some inexplicable grain of hope in it.

  Little Abe had improved and grew like a weed. Sometimes Barbara neglected to nurse him, but he never forgot when he was hungry. When Lucinda told Logan that they must have a milk cow very soon, Logan agreed, and almost instantly let the need slip from his mind.

  Lucinda, with some help from Logan and Barbara, succeeded in planting her garden patch by the end of June. This time, in a normal season, was not too late to ensure a crop before the severe frosts came, and with their supplies and the meat she hoped Logan would provide they could live well through even a fairly severe winter.

  "Logan," she said one night as he sat by the fire, "summer is getting along. You must snake down a lot of firewood and chop it for winter."

  "Plenty of time, wife," he said. "Why, it can't be June yet."

  "June has passed, husband," she replied patiently. "You should have all the wood cut and stowed before Indian-summer comes."

  "Why ought I?"

  "Because at that season you roam around the forest locating the game.

  Getting ready for your fall hunt! You forget. There never was anything you'd let interfere with that. We must have plenty of venison hung up and frozen, a lot of turkeys, an elk haunch or two--and some of those nice juicy bear-ribs that always pleased you."

  She did not betray her intense hope for his reception of these suggestions. Long she had refrained from urging them. If he showed no interest--if he failed to respond... She dared not follow out her train of thought.

  "Huntin' season!--By gosh, I never thought of that," he ejaculated, lifting his shaggy head with a flare of grey-stone eyes. She had struck fire from him and was overjoyed. Next instant he sagged back. "Aw hell!--Huntin' without Abe?--I don't know... I reckon I couldn't."

  "Logan, you must feed Abe's boy so that he can grow up fast and hunt with you," replied Lucinda, sagely.

  "My Gawd, Luce, do you expect me to live that long?" he asked, haggardly.

  "Of course I do."

  "Humph. I reckon I don't want to," he said gloomily. But he seemed to be disturbed and haunted by the idea. "Wal, there won't be any game when little Abe gets big enough to pack a gun."

  "You once said there would always be turkey and deer in the breaks of the canyons."

  "That's so, Luce. I'll think it over... Have you seen my rifles?"

  "Yes. I rolled them in canvas. And Al bought a new stock of shells."

  "Ahuh... Doggone me!" he added mildly.

  Lucinda wept that night while Logan slept heavily beside her. It was not from exhaustion and pain, although after she lay down she could not move, and her raw, blistered hands and aching limbs hurt her excruciatingly, that Lucinda shed slow, hot tears. They were tears of joy at some little reward to her prayers for Logan.

  But Logan never unrolled the canvas bundles of rifles which Lucinda leaned against the fireplace, nor did he take down the pipe and tobacco which she placed in plain sight on the jutting corner of the chimney, where he had always kept them.

  Lucinda toiled on, unquenchable in faith that Logan would rise out of his gloom of despondency, and that Barbara was not permanently deprived of her sanity. If there were not daily almost imperceptible things to keep this hope alive in her, then she suffered under a delusion. Work was a blessing. It sustained Lucinda in this period which tried her soul.

  One summer morning, towards noon, when the great forest was so still that a dropping pine-cone could be heard far away, Lucinda bent over her work at the table under the back window of the cabin.

  Occasionally she looked out to peer down the brook at Logan, who sat beside the unfinished stone wall staring at space. He made a pathetic figure. All about him expressed the catastrophe in which the labour of a lifetime, fortune, comfort, his sons, his patriotism, his faith in man and God, had vanished.

  Lucinda sighed. She had moments of despair, in which she had to fight like a tigress for her young. It was ever-present, the stark, naked fact; against which she had only mother love, an ineradicable faith, and a nameless, groundless hope. Yet in the last analysis of her terrible predicament she had the profoundest of all reasons to fight and never to yield, never to lose faith--the task of bringing up Abe's son. When gloom lay thick upon her soul she was carried ahead by that duty.

  Barbara was outside on the porch, in her favourite place facing the canyon and the trail, and the fact that she was humming a little song to the boy indicated that she was in one of her placid states of apathy.

  All at once Lucinda ceased her work to gaze out up the forested canyon.

  No differing sounds had caused this. She was puzzled. The brook murmured on, the soft wind moaned on, a stillness pervaded the canyon. The sun was directly overhead, as she ascertained by the shadows of the pines.

  Something had checked her actions, stopped her train of thought. It did not come from outside.

  Suddenly a stentorian yell burst the silence.

  "Waa-hoo-oo!"

  That was Logan's hunting-yell. Had he gone mad? Lucinda became rooted to the spot. Then her ears strung to the swift, hard hoof-beats of a running horse. Who was riding in? What had happened? Logan's whoop to a visiting cowboy? It seemed unnatural. The charged moment augmented unnaturally.

  How that horse was running! His hoofs rang on the hard trail up the bench. A grind of iron on stone, a sliding scrape and a pattering of gravel--then a thud of jangling boots!

  "Bab, old girl--here I am!" called a trenchant voice, deep and rich and sweet.

  Lucinda recognized it; and her frightened heart leaped pulsingly
to her throat.

  Barbara's piercing shriek followed. It had the same wild note that had characterized Logan's, and above and beyond 434 a high-keyed exquisite rapture which could only have burst from recognition.

  "Abe!... Abe!"

  "Yes, darling. It's Abe. Alive and well. Didn't you get my telegram from New York?... My God, I--I expected to see you... But not--not so thin, so white. Dad must be okay--the way he yelled. And... Aw, my boy!... So this is little Abe? He has your eyes, Barbara... Brace up, honey. I'm home.

  It'll all be jake pronto."

  "Abe!... You've come back--to me," cried Barbara, in solemn bewilderment.

  Lucinda heard Abe's kisses, but not his incoherent words. She lost all sensation from her head down. Her body seemed stone. She could not move.

  Abe had come home, and the shock had restored Barbara's mind. Lucinda felt that she was dying: joy had saved, but joy could also kill.

  "Mother!" cried Abe. "Come out!"

  If Lucinda had been on the verge of death itself his call at that moment would have drawn her back, imbued her through arid through with revivifying life. She rushed out. There stood Abe in uniform, splendid as she had never seen him, bronzed and changed, with one arm clasping Barbara and the boy, the other outstretched for her, and his grey eyes marvellously alight.

  "Doggone! Here we are again," Logan kept saying.

  It was an hour later. The incredible and insupportable transport of the reunion had yielded to some semblance of deep, calm joy. Logan seemed utterly carried out of his apathetic self. Barbara had recovered her reason; there was no doubt of that. Spent and white, she lay back against Abe, but her eyes shone with a wondrous love and gratitude and intelligence. Lucinda knew herself to be the weakest of the four. She had just escaped collapse. The hope of this resurrection, though she had not divined it, had been upholding her for weeks.

  "Some day--not soon--I'll tell you about George and Grant," Abe was saying gently. "When you hear what they did--what their buddies and officers thought of them--you won't feel their loss so terribly... My case was simple. I had shell-shock and lay weeks in the hospital unidentified.

  When I came to my senses I proved who I was and got invalided home. I was in bad shape then. Once started homeward I got well pronto. That's all.

  The Germans are licked. They'll never last another winter."

  "Abe, I reckon you smoked 'em up," said Logan, intensely.

  "Dad--I knew you'd ask me that," replied Abe, a grey convulsion distorting his face, ageing and changing it horribly. "Yes, I did. At first I had a savage joy in my skill... It was sheer murder for me to shoot at those poor devils. A hard-nosed thirty Government bullet would get right through their metal helmets... But in time I grew sick of it... And now--well, let's bury it for ever."

  "Sorry, son. Just the same, it's good for me to know. I'm holding on by an eyelash."

  "Abe, did anyone in Flagg or on the way out tell you what happened to your father?" asked Lucinda.

  "No. I got in late, borrowed a horse and came araring... What happened?"

  "He sold out to the army cattle-buyers. Thirty thousand and nine hundred, at twenty-eight dollars a head... They swindled him. Not one dollar did he ever receive of that money."

  "Good God!" exclaimed Abe, furiously.

  It was for Logan then to confess shamefacedly his monstrous carelessness and trust.

  "Aw, Dad!--Then we're back in the old rut again?"

  "Poor as Job's turkey, son," replied Logan, huskily.

  "I don't care on my own account," said Abe, dubiously. "But for mother and Bab--it'll be tough to begin all over again."

  "Darling, I needed only you," whispered Barbara.

  "Dad, I forgot to tell you," went on Abe, brightening. "You'll never believe it. Cattle are selling at fifty dollars a head, and going up."

  "For the land's sake!... Who's buying?"

  "Kansas City and Chicago."

  "Did I ever hear the like of that!... My Gawd, why didn't I wait!" ejaculated Logan, with a spasm working his visage.

  "Never mind, Dad," returned Abe, slowly. "We're not licked yet."

  Abe's return acted miraculously not alone upon Barbara. Logan hung around him as if fascinated; as if he could not believe the evidence of his senses. Lucinda knew they were all saved. The war had not impaired Abe physically. And spiritually she thought he was finer, stronger. Abe was of the wilderness. The old potent loneliness and solitude, the trails and trees, the cliff walls, and home with Barbara and his boy--these would soon blot out whatever horror it was that haunted him.

  The family sat together for hours until late afternoon.

  "By gum, I forgot to unsaddle that nag," said Abe. "Bab, if you'll let go of me for a spell I'll ride down the old trail a ways."

  "Abe, are you really home?" she asked, eloquently. "What do you say, sweet?"

  "This is not a dream? You are not among the missing?" Abe stood upright to swing her aloft and clasp her endearingly.

  "Bab, I've caught you looking at me--I believe you've been a little loco.

  Dad seems kind of daffy, too. But I am home. I'm well. I'm so happy I--I---... There's no words to express how I feel."

  He strode across the garden to the field where the horse was grazing, dragging its bridle; and mounting with the old incomparable cowboy step into the saddle he rode down the canyon.

  They all watched him disappear around the jutting corner. "Gosh, Luce," ejaculated Logan, coming out of a trance, "must rustle some firewood. I don't want Abe knowing..." He shook his head ponderingly and slowly made for the empty space around the chopping-block.

  "Hurry. I must get supper. Abe will be starved," called Lucinda.

  "Just as little Abe is this moment," declared Barbara, as she took up the crying boy.

  Verily, thought Lucinda with fervent thanksgiving, the return of the lost soldier had reclaimed that family.

  Barbara watched for Abe from her old waiting-place on the porch. The afternoon waned, the sun set in golden splendour, the purple shadows fell, and twilight came with its lingering after-glow.

  "He's coming, Mother," Barbara called joyfully from outside, and she ran down the path to meet him. Presently they came in, with arms around each other. Barbara's face was flushed and rosy.

  "Maw, I'm starved," yelped Abe, at sight of the steaming Pots.

  "Come and get it, boy," she replied happily.

  "Dad, just wait till I eat, and I'll sure take a fall out of you," declared Abe, as he straddled the bench. "I've a swell joke on you."

  "You have, huh?" said Logan. "Wal, son, if you can make anythin' in this God-forsaken world of mine look like a joke, come out with it pronto."

  "Wal, I shore can, old-timer," drawled Abe.

  It was not a bountiful supper, to Lucinda's regret; she had been caught unprepared. But never wider that cabin roof, where Abe had grown to manhood, where he had sat hundreds of times after a gruelling drive or two days' hunt, had he eaten so ravenously. Lucinda waited on him, Barbara hung over him, Logan watched him, and they all forgot their own suppers. Their feelings transcended happiness.

  "How about that joke?" demanded Logan, impatiently.

  "I'm afraid I'm too full to talk," declared Abe, as he threw off the snug-fitting khaki jacket and unloosened his belt. His powerful shoulders had lost their brawn. "Dad, you were telling me this afternoon how poor we are. One team, one wagon, a few tools, no horses, no help--and only a little money left. Wasn't that it?"

  "Yes, son. I wish to heaven I didn't have to confess it. But we're as bad off as ever in our lives."

  "Dad, you sure are a rotten cattleman," went on Abe, with a smile and a fine flash of eyes upon his father.

  Logan took that amiss. Manifestly it hurt him deeply, for I he crushed his big hands between his knees and almost rocked double. That was one of the moments when Lucinda could not look at him.

  "Dad!... I was talking in fun. That's my joke," cried Abe, contritely.

  "Wal, I can't see i
t--son."

  "Listen. And you will darned pronto... Do you remember Three Spring Wash?"

  "I reckon so. Why?" rejoined Logan, lifting his head.

  "Do you remember the time we trapped the wild horses there?"

  "Sure do."

  "Oh, Abe, I remember that," cried Barbara, wonderingly.

  "Well, Dad, do you remember we had a bunch of cattle running in there before the big drive?"

  "I reckon we had, same as in those other side canyons."

  "Do you remember that Grant and I, with the help of some Indians, had the job of tearing down that fence in Three Springs and driving the cattle out into the main herd?"

  "I remember that, too," declared Logan.

  "We didn't tear it down."

  "Huh!" grunted Logan, stupidly.

  "Grant forgot, and I missed that job on purpose. I knew there were more than thirty thousand head in the main canyons. So I left that bunch in Three Springs. We never tore the fence down. Nobody tore it down for that drive. It has not been torn down since."

  "My Gawd, son--what you--sayin'?"

  "Dad, the fence is there still... And I counted around fifteen hundred head of cattle, all fine and fat. And you can bet that's a short count, for I didn't ride up in the oak draws and pine swales."

  Logan's big square jaw wobbled and dropped over a query he could not enunciate.

  "That's my joke on you, Dad. And I think it's a peach."

  "Abe!" cried Barbara.

  "You sure are a locoed old cattleman. Here you've been moping around Sycamore, heart-broke and pocket-broke, when you've got sixteen or eighteen hundred head of cattle worth fifty dollars a head."

  "For God's sake, son, you wouldn't play a joke--like that--on your poor old Dad?" implored Logan.

  "I wouldn't if it were a lie, Dad, but this is true. Absolutely true.

  I'll show you to-morrow."

  It seemed to Lucinda that while she watched with beating heart and bated breath, a slow change worked in her husband. He stared into the fire. A rumbling cough issued from his broad breast. Then he stood up, apparently seeing straight through the cabin wall. He expanded. His shoulders squared. His grey eyes began to kindle and gleam, and all the slack lines and leaden shades vanished ruddily from his visage. When Logan reached for the old black pipe and the little buckskin bag, and' began to stuff tobacco in the bowl, then Lucinda realized she was witness to a miracle.