With Hoops of Steel. Kelly Florence Finch
boys.” Then on they went, clattering down the long adobe street, flanked by dim houses, dark and silent; and out into the rising edge of the plain, where it lifted itself into the uplands. The black silence was unbroken now save as a distant coyote filled the night with its yelping bark, or a low word from one or another of the riders told of human presence. On and on they galloped, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace. At last they swerved to the right and began mounting the low, rolling foothills of the Fernandez mountains. The cold night air, dry and sharp, stung their faces and cooled the sweating flanks of their horses. The creatures’ ears were bent forward, as if they recognized their surroundings, and their springing muscles were still strong and willing. Over the hills they galloped, the lance-like point of the road cleaving the black wall in front and the hoof-beats volleying into the silence and darkness behind them.
The gray walls of an adobe house took dim shape in the darkness, and beyond it a mass of trees, their leaves rustling in the night wind, told of running water. The three men halted and with lowered bridles allowed their horses to drink.
“Is this old Juan Garcia’s ranch?” Tuttle asked.
“Yes,” Mead replied, “old Juan still lives here. And a very good old fellow he is, too. He isn’t any lazier than he has to be, considering he’s a Mexican. He keeps his ranch in pretty good order, and he raises all the corn and chili and wheat and frijoles that he needs himself and has some to sell, which is a very good record for a Mexican.”
“What’s become of his pretty daughter?” asked Ellhorn. “Is she married yet?”
“Amada? She’s still here, and she’s about the prettiest Mexican girl I ever saw. She’s a great belle among all the Mexicans from Muletown to the other side of the Fernandez mountains, and with some of the Americans, too. Will Whittaker used to hang around here a good deal, and Amada seemed to be pretty well stuck on him.”
Again the horses sprang to the pace they had kept so gallantly, and on and on their hoofs flew over the low, rolling hills. The riders sat their horses as if they were part and parcel of the beasts, horse and rider with one will and one motion, and all galloping on with rhythmic hoof-beats, neck to neck and heel to heel, without pause or slackened pace, while the cold, dry night wind whistled past their ears and the stars measured their courses through the violet blue of the bending vault above. On they went over the slowly rising hills, and the slender, silver sickle of the old moon shone brightly in the graying east. Soon the mountains ranged themselves against the brightening sky, and as they galloped, on and on, the stars vanished, and from out the black void below the plain emerged, gray-green and grim, spreading itself out, miles and miles into the distance, to the rimming mass of mountains in the west. Still the hoof-beats rang out as the sky blushed with the dawn and the cloud-flecks flamed crimson and the peaks of the distant mountain range glittered with the first golden rays.
Neck to neck and heel to heel they galloped on over the faint track of the road, which now they could see, winding over the hills in front of them. The men spoke cheerily to the horses and patted their wet sides, and the spirited beasts still bent willingly to their task. The three riders sat erect, straight-shouldered, graceful in their saddles and the gentle morning breeze bathed their faces as on they rode over the hills, while the sun mounted above the Fernandez range and flooded all the plain with its soft, early light.
They swept around the curving bend in the road, where it half-circled the corrals, and Ellhorn’s lusty “Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee” rang out as they drew rein at Mead’s door; Las Plumas, the night and ninety miles behind them. Ellhorn’s yell brought the cook to the door, coffee-pot in hand, with two vaqueros following close behind. One of these took the horses to the stables and the three friends stood up against the wall in the sunshine, stretching themselves. Mead took out his pocket-knife and began cutting the cactus spines from his swollen hands.
“I’m glad to have a chance to get rid of these things,” he said. “They’ve been stinging like hornets all night.”
CHAPTER VII
Emerson Mead’s ranch house was a small, white, flat-roofed adobe building, with cottonwood trees growing all about it, and the water from a spring on the hillside beyond, flowing in a little rill past the kitchen door. Inside, on the whitewashed walls, hung the skins of rattlesnakes, coyotes, wild cats, the feet, head and spread wings of an eagle, and some deer heads and horns. There were also some colored posters and prints from weekly papers. A banjo stood in one corner of the dining room, while guns and revolvers of various kinds and patterns and belts heavy with cartridges hung against the walls or sprawled in corners.
The cook and housekeeper was a stockily built, round-faced Englishman, whom Mead had found stranded in Las Plumas. He had been put off the overland train at that place because the conductor had discovered that he was riding on a scalper’s ticket. Mead had taken a liking to the man’s jovial manner, and, being in need of a cook, had offered him the place. The Englishman, who said his name was Bill Haney, had accepted it gladly and had since earned his wage twice over by the care he took of the house and by the entertainment he afforded his employer. For he told many tales of his life in many lands, enough, had they all been true, to have filled the years of a Methuselah to overflowing. Mead did not believe any of his stories, and, indeed, strongly suspected that they were told for the purpose of throwing doubt upon any clue to his past life which he might inadvertently give. Good-natured and jovial though he was in face and talk and manner, there was a look at times in his small, keen, dark eyes which Mead did not like.
As Haney bustled about getting a fresh breakfast for the three men he said to Mead, “It’s mighty lucky you’ve come ’ome, sir. There’s been merry ’ell ’erself between our boys and the Fillmore boys, and they’re likely to be killin’ each other off at Alamo Springs to-day. They ’ad shots over a maverick yesterday, and the swearin’ they’ve been doin’ ’ad enough fire and brimstone in it to swamp ’ell ’erself.”
Haney’s conversation contained frequent reference to the abode of lost spirits, and always in the feminine gender. Mead asked him once why he always spoke of “hell” as “her,” and he replied:
“Well, sir, accordin’ to my reckonings, ’ell is a woman, or two women, or a thousand of ’em, accordin’ as a man ’as made it, and bein’ female it ’as to be called ’er.”
As the three men mounted fresh horses after a hasty breakfast, Nick Ellhorn said to Mead:
“Emerson, you’re in big luck that that confounded thug in the kitchen hasn’t cut your throat yet.”
“Oh, he won’t do anything to me,” Mead replied, smiling. “I reckon likely he is a thug, or a crook of some sort, but he won’t do me any harm.”
“Don’t you be too sure, Emerson,” said Tuttle, looking concerned. “It’s the first time I’ve ever seen him, but I don’t think I’d like to have him around me on dark nights.”
“He is a good cook and he keeps the house as neat and clean as a woman would. He won’t try to do anything to me because I’m not big enough game. He knows I never keep money at the ranch, and that I haven’t got very much, any way. Besides, he’s seen me shoot, and I don’t think he wants to run up against my gun.”
They were hurrying to Alamo Springs, a watering place which Mead controlled farther up in the Fernandez mountains, where they arrived just in time to stop a pistol fight between the cow-boys of the opposing interests, half-a-dozen on each side, who had quarreled themselves into such anger that they were ready to end the whole matter by mutual annihilation.
Mead found that the round-up had progressed slowly during his absence. There had been constant quarreling, occasional exchange of shots, and unceasing effort on each side to retard the interests of the other. The Fillmore Company had routed the cow-boys of the small cattlemen, Mead’s included, and for the last two days had prevented them from joining in the round-up. Mead found his neighbors and their and his employees disorganized, angry, and determined on revenge. Accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, he galloped over the hills all that day and the next, visiting the camps on his own range and on the ranges of his neighbors who were leagued with him in the fight against the Fillmore Cattle Company. He