by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER XV
WHEN CAMP-FIRES BLINK
Down the valley they rode, gathering numbers to swell the cavalcade ateach ranch they passed. La Laguna Seca, San Vincente, Las Uvas senttheir quota of vaqueros, each headed by a majordomo and accompanied byembaladors with the camp equipment and supplies packed upon steady-goinglittle mustangs. The bell-mares of the various herds jangled a chorus ofpleasant discords with their little, iron bells. The scent of themustard rose pungently under the trampling hoofs. At dusk, thecamp-fires blinked at one another through the purpling shadows; and thevaqueros, stretched lazily upon their saddle blankets in the glow,stilled the night noises beneath the pleasant murmur of their voiceswhile they talked. From the camp of the San Vincente riders rose a voicebeautifully clear and sweet, above the subdued clamor.
Dade was listening to the song and dreaming a little while he listened,with his head lying cradled in his clasped hands and his face to thestars, when the group around the next camp-fire tittered and broke intoan occasional laugh. Then a question was called to whoever might bewithin hearing:
"Who's the best vaquero in California?"
"Jack Allen, the gringo!" shouted a dozen voices, so that every campmust hear. Then came jeering laughter from every camp save one, the campof the Picardo vaqueros.
Valencia's dark head lifted from the red and green blanket beyond theblaze; and Dade, watching, could see his profile sharply defined in theyellow light of the fire, as he stared toward the offending camp. Thelips that smiled so often were drawn tight and thin; the nostrils flaredlike a frightened horse. While the laughs were still cackling derision,Valencia jumped up and ran; and Dade, even before he sat up to look,knew where he was going.
At the fire where the question was put, a young fellow, whose heavy,black mustache prudently hid lips coarse and sneering, came to his feetlike a dummy of a man and glared dazedly at his companions, as if theirfaces should tell him whose hand it was that gripped the braided collarof his jacket. He was not long in doubt, however. The voice of Valenciagrated vitriolic sentences in his ear, and the free hand of Valencia waslifted to deal him a blow fair upon the blank face of him. The circleof faces watched, motionless, above crouched bodies as quiet as thestars overhead.
A hand grasped Valencia's wrist while his arm was lifted to strike, sothat the three men stood, taut-muscled and still, like a shadowy,sculptured group that pictured some mythological conflict.
"Let go, Valencia. This is nothing to fight over. Let go."
Valencia's angry eyes questioned the unreadable ones of his majordomo;but he did not let go, and so the three stood for a moment longer.
"But they insult the Senor Allen with their jeers," he protested. "Me, Ifight always for my friends who are not present to fight for themselves.Would not the Senor Allen fight this fool who flouts him so?"
"No!" Dade's eyes flicked the circle of faces upon which the firelightdanced. "If the Senor Allen were here, there would be no jeering."
"And for that will I fight them all!" Valencia twisted his arm a little,in the hope that Dade would let go his wrist. "Ah, Senor! Shall a mannot be true to his friends?"
"Si, he shall be true, and he shall be sensible. Is the Senor Jack aweakling, that he cannot fight for himself?"
"But he is not here! If he were--" The tone of him gloated over thepicture of what would happen in that case.
"There shall be no fighting." If Dade's voice was quiet, it did notcarry the impression of weakness, or indecision. "Come to your own fire,Valencia. If it is necessary to fight for the Senor Allen--I am also hisfriend."
"You are right. There shall be no fighting." Dade started and glanced atJose, standing beside him. "If the Senor Allen thinks himself the best,surely it is I, who hold the medalla that calls me el vaquero supremo,who have the right to question his boast; not you, amigos!"
"Who's the best vaquero, the bravest and the best in California?"queried a voice--the voice of the singer, who had come up with others tosee what was going on here. And at his elbow another made answer boldly:
"Don Jose Pacheco!"
Jose smiled and lifted his shoulders deprecatingly at the tribute, whilefifty voices shouted loyally his name. Dade, pressing his hand uponValencia's shoulder, led him back into the dancing shadows that laybetween the fires.
"Let it go," he urged. "Don Jose holds the medal, and he's entitled tothe glory. We must keep peace, Valencia, or else I must leave the rodeo.Personal quarrels must wait."
"Si, Senor, personal quarrels must wait," assented Jose, again coming upunexpectedly behind them. "I but wish to say that I regret the badmanners of those caballeros, whose best excuse is that they are myfriends. I hope the senor does not accuse me of spreading the news ofthe senor's boast. There are others, as the senor well knows, who heardit before even it came to my ears."
"It doesn't matter," Dade repeated. "They'll have their joke, and Idon't blame them for putting the joke on a stranger, especially whenhe's a gringo--and absent."
"The senor is wise as he is loyal," stated Jose and bowed himself intothe shadows. "Buenos noches, Senor."
"Good-night," answered Dade, speaking English to show he was not ashamedof it; and rolled himself in his blankets as a deliberate hint toValencia that he did not want to discuss the incident, much to thatone's disappointment.
It is to be feared that Valencia did not share in Dade's determinationto keep the peace; for, before he slept, he promised himself that hewould yet tell that pig-faced vaquero from Las Uvas what he thought ofhim. But outwardly the incident was closed, and closed permanently.
The sun was not risen above the mountains before they were hurriedlydrinking their black coffee, and making ready to break camp; the flurryof emotions seemed to have died with the evening fire. If the men of theother camps were cool in their manner towards Dade when they met him, atleast they were civil; except Manuel, who passed him by with loweredbrows, and of him Dade took no notice. If he were watched curiously, inhope of detecting the awkwardness which would betray unfamiliarity withhis work, Dade took no notice of that, either, except to grin now andthen when he rode away. Altogether, he was well pleased with hisreception and inclined to laugh at the forebodings he had felt;forebodings born of the knowledge that, unless these natives ofCalifornia were minded to tolerate the presence of a gringo majordomo,it would be absolutely useless for him to attempt to work with them.
If he had only known it, his own men had done much towards lessening theprejudice of those who joined the main outfit. Valencia was not the onlyone of the Picardo vaqueros whose friendship might be counted upon. LikeManuel before he became jealous, they forgot that Dade was not ofSpanish birth; for his eyes and his hair were dark as many of thenative-born Californians, and his speech was as their own; he wasgood-humored, just in his judgments, reasonable in his demands. He couldtell a good story well if he liked, or he could keep silent and listenwith that sympathetic attention that never fails to flatter the tellerof a tale. To a man they liked him, and they were not slow to show theirliking after the manner of their kind.
By the time they reached Tres Pinos, which was the rendezvous of all thevaqueros from the Picardo ranch on the north to San Miguel on the south,Dade had quite lost the constraint that comes of feeling that one isdisliked and only tolerated for the moment. He whistled while he rodealong the creek bank looking for a comfortable camp site; and whenValencia loped up to him, as he was hesitating over a broad, shadedstrip under a clump of willows, he turned and smiled upon his headvaquero.
"See, Senor, how well we Californians work together!" cried Valencia,pointing pridefully. "Here they come, the vaqueros from Agua Amargo,Durasno, Corral de Terre, Salinas--not yet have our embaladors thrownoff the ropes from our packs, before they are here, these others whom wecame to meet! Not one hour late, even! And the word was given weeks agothat we would meet this day."
From the mouth of the canyon trotted a band of saddle horses, kicking upa dust cloud that filmed the picture made by the gay caballeros wh
ogalloped behind. A gallant company were they; and when they met andmingled with those who came down from the north, it was as though asmall army was giving itself a holiday in that vivid valley, with theTres Pinos gurgling at the fun.
Having had experience in these matters, Dade was able to do his part anddo it like a veteran, although he tactfully left to the other majordomosall those little details that would make of the various camps oneorderly company. Two men he chose from his outfit and sent to thecaptain, as the Picardo contribution to the detail told off to herd thehorses, but beyond that he confined himself chiefly to making himself asunobtrusive as was consistent with dignity.
Six men were sent out after beef; and although Dade had many times inTexas done exactly what they were doing, he watched interestedly theseCalifornians at their work.
Cattle were everywhere except in the immediate vicinity of the camp.Half a mile or so the vaqueros galloped; then two of the leaders singledout a fat, young steer and made after him with their riatas hissing asthe rawhide circled over their heads.
A loop dropped neatly over the wide horns, and a moment later the secondsettled upon the first. The first man turned and headed towards campwith the steer at his heels, ready at the slightest opportunity to makeuse of those long, sharp-pointed horns which nature had given him forjust such need as this. The steer quite forgot the man behind, until hemade a vicious lunge and was checked by the rope that had hung slack andunnoticed over his back. Furious, the steer turned and chargedresentfully at the caballero who was following him and shouting taunts.But there again he was checked by the first.
So, charging this way and that; galloping wildly in pursuit of the manwho seemed to be fleeing for his life, or wheeling to do battle with therider who kept just so far in his rear, he was decoyed to the veryoutskirts of the camp.
If he had been qualified to weigh motives, the heart that brindle-roansteer would surely have burst at; the pure effrontery of the thing: notonly must he yield his life and give his body for meat, that thoseyearning stomachs might be filled with his flesh; he must deliver thatmeat at the most convenient spot, as a butcher brings our chops to thekitchen door. For that purpose alone they were cunningly luring himcloser and closer, that they need not carry the meat far when they hadslaughtered him.
At least his last moments were lighted with hope. He made one grand,final dash, tripped in a noose that had somehow dropped neatly in theway of his front feet, and went down with a crash and a bellow ofdismay. Some one ran lightly in--he did not see that it was the vaquerohe had been pursuing all this time--and drove a dagger into the brainjust back of the horns. Thus that particular gust of rage was wiped outof existence forever.
Later, when the camp-fires burned low, the pleasant odor of meatbroiling upon the forked ends of long, willow branches over the redcoals, proved how even a brindle steer may, at the last, in every savorymorsel have justified his existence.
Life in those days was painted upon a big canvas, with broad sweep ofbrushes dipped in vivid colors. Although the branding of the season'scalves was a matter of pure business, the manner in which that work wasaccomplished was a spectacle upon which we of the present generationwould give much to look.
When the sun parted the fog and looked down inquisitively, the wholevalley was pulsing with life, alight with color. The first real work ofthe rodeo was beginning, like the ensemble of some vast, spectacularplay; and the stage was managed by Nature herself, creator of theharmony of colors. The dark, glossy green of live oak, the tender greenof new willow leaves, the pale green of the mustard half buried in thepaler yellow of its blossoms, had here and there a splash of orange andblue, where the poppies were refusing to give place to the lupines whichApril wished to leave for May, when she came smiling to dwell for onesweet month in the valley. The poppies had had their day. March hadbrought them, and then had gone away and left them for the April showersto pelt and play with; and now, when the redwoods on the mountainsideswere singing that May was almost here, a whole slope of poppies lingeredrebelliously to nod and peer and preen over the delights of the valleyjust below. The lupines were shaking their blue heads distressfully atthe impertinence; and then here came the vaqueros galloping, and eventhe lupines and poppies forgot their dispute in the excitement ofwatching the fun.
As the roundups of our modern cattlemen "ride circle," so did thosevelvet-jacketed, silver-braided horsemen gallop forth in pairs from acommon center that was the chosen rodeo ground. As if they were tracingthe invisible spokes of a huge wheel laid flat and filling the valleyfrom mountain range to mountain range, they rode out until they hadreached the approximate rim of the circle. Then, turning, they rode moreslowly back to the rodeo ground, driving before them the cattle theyfound there.
Not cattle only; here and there an antelope herd was caught in thecircle and ran bewilderedly toward the common center; beautifulcreatures with great eyes beseeching the human things to be kind, evenwhile riatas were hissing over their trembling backs. Many a rider rodeinto camp with an antelope haunch tied to his gorgeous red and blacksaddle; and the wooden spits held delicious bits of antelope steak thatnight, broiling over the coals while the vaqueros sang old Spanishlove-songs to lighten the time of waiting.
A gallant company, they. A care-free, laughter-loving, brave company,with every man a rider to make his womenfolk prate of his skill to allwho would listen; with every man a lover of love and of life and theprimitive joys of life. They worked, that company, and they made oftheir work a game that every man of them loved to play. And Dade, lovingthe things they loved and living the life they lived, speedily forgotthat there was still an undercurrent of antagonism beneath that surfaceof work and play and jokes and songs and impromptu riding and ropingcontests (from which Jose Pacheco was laughingly barred because of hisskill and in which Dade himself was, somehow, never invited to join). Heforgot that the antagonism was there--except when he came face to facewith Manuel, perhaps, or when he chanced to see on the face of Jose abrooding look of dissatisfaction, and guessed that he was thinking ofJack and Teresita.
