by Zane Grey
experience
had taught him the land-marks, the trails, the distances, the difference
between smoke and dust and haze, when he could distinguish a band of
mustangs from cattle, and range-riders from outlaws or Indians; in a
word, when he had learned to know what it was that he saw, to trust his
judgment, he would have acquired the basic feature of a rider's
training. But he showed no gift for the lasso, that other essential
requirement of his new calling.
"It's funny," said Dave, patiently, "you can't get the hang of it. Maybe
it's born in a fellow. Now handling a gun seems to come natural for some
fellows, and you're one of them. If only you could get the rope away as
quick as you can throw your gun!"
Jack kept faithfully at it, unmindful of defeats, often chagrined when
he missed some easy opportunity. Not improbably he might have failed
altogether if he had been riding an ordinary horse, or if he had to try
roping from a fiery mustang. But Silvermane was as intelligent as he was
beautiful and fleet. The horse learned rapidly the agile turns and
sudden stops necessary, and as for free running he never got enough. Out
on the range Silvermane always had his head up and watched; his life had
been spent in watching; he saw cattle, riders, mustangs, deer, coyotes,
every moving thing. So that Hare, in the chasing of a cow, had but to
start Silvermane, and then he could devote himself to the handling of
his rope. It took him ten times longer to lasso the cow than it took
Silvermane to head the animal. Dave laughed at some of Jack's exploits,
encouraged him often, praised his intent if not his deed; and always
after a run nodded at Silvermane in mute admiration.
Branding the cows and yearlings and tame steers which watered at Silver
Cup, and never wandered far away, was play according to Dave's version.
"Wait till we get after the wild steers up on the mountain and in the
canyons," he would say when Jack dropped like a log at supper. Work it
certainly was for him. At night he was so tired that he could scarcely
crawl into bed; his back felt as if it were broken; his legs were raw,
and his bones ached. Many mornings he thought it impossible to arise,
but always he crawled out, grim and haggard, and hobbled round the camp-
fire to warm his sore and bruised muscles. Then when Zeke and George
rode in with the horses the day's work began. During these weeks of his
"hardening up," as Dave called it, Hare bore much pain, but he continued
well and never missed a day. At the most trying time when for a few days
he had to be helped on and off Silvermane--for he insisted that he would
not stay in camp--the brothers made his work as light as possible. They
gave him the branding outfit to carry, a running-iron and a little pot
with charcoal and bellows; and with these he followed the riders at a
convenient distance and leisurely pace.
Some days they branded one hundred cattle. By October they had August
Naab's crudely fashioned cross on thousands of cows and steers. Still
the stock kept coming down from the mountain, driven to the valley by
cold weather and snow-covered grass. It was well into November before
the riders finished at Silver Cup, and then arose a question as to
whether it would be advisable to go to Seeping Springs or to the canyons
farther west along the slope of Coconina. George favored the former, but
Dave overruled him.
"Father's orders," he said. "He wants us to ride Seeping Springs last
because he'll be with us then, and Snap too. We're going to have trouble
over there."
"How's this branding stock going to help the matter any, I'd like to
know?" inquired George. "We Mormons never needed it."
"Father says we'll all have to come to it. Holderness's stock is
branded. Perhaps he's marked a good many steers of ours. We can't tell.
But if we have our own branded we'll know what's ours. If he drives our
stock we'll know it; if Dene steals, it can be proved that he steals."
"Well, what then? Do you think he'll care for that, or Holderness
either?"
"No, only it makes this difference: both things will then be barefaced
robbery. We've never been able to prove anything, though we boys know;
we don't need any proof. Father gives these men the benefit of a doubt.
We've got to stand by him. I know, George, your hand's begun to itch for
your gun. So does mine. But we've orders to obey."
Many gullies and canyons headed up on the slope of Coconina west of
Silver Cup, and ran down to open wide on the flat desert. They contained
plots of white sage and bunches of rich grass and cold springs. The
steers that ranged these ravines were wild as wolves, and in the tangled
thickets of juniper and manzanita and jumbles of weathered cliff they
were exceedingly difficult to catch.
Well it was that Hare had received his initiation and had become inured
to rough, incessant work, for now he came to know the real stuff of
which these Mormons were made. No obstacle barred them. They penetrated
the gullies to the last step; they rode weathered slopes that were
difficult for deer to stick upon; they thrashed the bayonet-guarded
manzanita copses; they climbed into labyrinthine fastnesses, penetrating
to every nook where a steer could hide. Miles of sliding slope and
marble-bottomed streambeds were ascended on foot, for cattle could climb
where a horse could not. Climbing was arduous enough, yet the hardest
and most perilous toil began when a wild steer was cornered. They roped
the animals on moving slopes of weathered stone, and branded them on the
edges of precipices.
The days and weeks passed, how many no one counted or cared. The circle
of the sun daily lowered over the south end of Coconina; and the black
snow-clouds crept down the slopes. Frost whitened the ground at dawn,
and held half the day in the shade. Winter was close at the heels of the
long autumn.
As for Hare, true to August Naab's assertion, he had lost flesh and
suffered, and though the process was heartbreaking in its severity, he
hung on till he hardened into a leather lunged, wire-muscled man,
capable of keeping pace with his companions.
He began his day with the dawn when he threw off the frost-coated
tarpaulin; the icy water brought him a glow of exhilaration; he drank in
the spiced cold air, and there was the spring of the deer-hunter in his
step as he went down the slope for his horse. He no longer feared that
Silvermane would run away. The gray's bell could always be heard near
camp in the mornings, and when Hare whistled there came always the
answering thump of hobbled feet. When Silvermane saw him striding
through the cedars or across the grassy belt of the valley he would
neigh his gladness. Hare had come to love Silvermane and talked to him
and treated him as if he were human.
When the mustangs were brought into camp the day's work began, the same
work as that of yesterday, and yet with endless variety, with ever-
changing situations that called for quick wits, steel arms, stout
hearts, and unf
lagging energies. The darkening blue sky and the sun-
tipped crags of Vermillion Cliffs were signals to start for camp. They
ate like wolves, sat for a while around the camp-fire, a ragged, weary,
silent group; and soon lay down, their dark faces in the shadow of the
cedars.
In the beginning of this toil-filled time Hare had resolutely set
himself to forget Mescal, and he had succeeded at least for a time, when
he was so sore and weary that he scarcely thought at all. But she came
back to him, and then there was seldom an hour that was not hers. The
long months which seemed years since he had seen her, the change in him
wrought by labor and peril, the deepening friendship between him and
Dave, even the love he bore Silvermane--these, instead of making dim the
memory of the dark-eyed girl, only made him tenderer in his thought of
her.
Snow drove the riders from the canyon-camp down to Silver Cup, where
they found August Naab and Snap, who had ridden in the day before.
"Now you couldn't guess how many cattle are back there in the
