Hidden Water. Coolidge Dane
the cook for somethin’ to eat. Say, you’re goin’ up the river, ain’t ye? Well, tell Pablo Moreno and them Mexicans I lost a cut of two hundred sheep up there somewhere. That son of a–of a herder of mine was too lazy to make a corral and count ’em, so I don’t know where they are lost, but I’ll give two bits a head for ’em, delivered here. Tell the old man that, will you?”
He paused to enter another weight in his book, then stepped away from the scales and came out to meet them.
“How’s the feed up your way?” he inquired, smiling grimly.
“Dam’ pore,” replied Creede, carrying on the jest, “and it’ll be poorer still if you come in on me, so keep away. Mr. Swope, I’ll make you acquainted with Mr. Hardy–my new boss. Judge Ware has sent him out to be superintendent for the Dos S.”
“Glad to meet you, sir,” said Swope, offering a greasy hand that smelled of sheep dip. “Nice man, the old judge–here, umbre, put that bag on straight! Three hundred and fifteen? Well I know a dam’ sight better–excuse me, boys–here, put that bag on again, and weigh it right!”
“Well,” observed Creede, glancing at his friend as the combat raged unremittingly, “I guess we might as well pull. His busy day, you understand. Nice feller, though–you’ll like ’im.” Once more the glint of quiet deviltry came into his eyes, but he finished out the jest soberly. “Comes from a nice Mormon family down in Moroni–six brothers–all sheepmen. You’ll see the rest of the boys when they come through next month–but Jim’s the best.”
There was something in the sardonic smile that accompanied this encomium which set Hardy thinking. Creede must have been thinking too, for he rode past the kitchen without stopping, cocking his head up at the sun as if estimating the length of their journey.
“Oh, did you want to git somethin’ to eat?” he inquired innocently. “No? That’s good. That sheep smell kinder turns my stomach.” And throwing the spurs into Bat Wings he loped rapidly toward the summit, scowling forbiddingly in passing at a small boy who was shepherding the stray herd. For a mile or two he said nothing, swinging his head to scan the sides of the mountains with eyes as keen as an eagle’s; then, on the top of the last roll, he halted and threw his hand out grandly at the panorama which lay before them.
“There she lays,” he said, as if delivering a funeral oration, “as good a cow country as God ever made–and now even the jack rabbits have left it. D’ye see that big mesa down there?” he continued, pointing to a broad stretch of level land, dotted here and there with giant cactus, which extended along the river. “I’ve seen a thousand head of cattle, fat as butter, feedin’ where you see them sahuaros, and now look at it!”
He threw out his hand again in passionate appeal, and Hardy saw that the mesa was empty.
“There was grass a foot high,” cried Creede in a hushed, sustained voice, as if he saw it again, “and flowers. Me and my brothers and sisters used to run out there about now and pick all kinds, big yaller poppies and daisies, and these here little pansies–and ferget-me-nots. God! I wish I could ferget ’em–but I’ve been fightin’ these sheep so long and gittin’ so mean and ugly them flowers wouldn’t mean no more to me now than a bunch of jimson weeds and stink squashes. But hell, what’s the use?” He threw out his hands once more, palms up, and dropped them limply.
“That’s old Pablo Moreno’s place down there,” he said, falling back abruptly into his old way. “We’ll stop there overnight–I want to help git that wagon across the river when Rafael comes in bymeby, and we’ll go up by trail in the mornin’.”
Once more he fell into his brooding silence, looking up at the naked hills from habit, for there were no cattle there. And Rufus Hardy, quick to understand, gazed also at the arid slopes, where once the grama had waved like tawny hair in the soft winds and the cattle of Jeff Creede’s father had stood knee-high in flowers.
Now at last the secret of Arizona-the-Lawless and Arizona-the-Desert lay before him: the feed was there for those who could take it, and the sheep were taking it all. It was government land, only there was no government; anybody’s land, to strip, to lay waste, to desolate, to hog for and fight over forever–and no law of right; only this, that the best fighter won. Thoughts came up into his mind, as thoughts will in the silence of the desert; memories of other times and places, a word here, a scene there, having no relation to the matter in hand; and then one flashed up like the premonitions of the superstitious–a verse from the Bible that he had learned at his mother’s knee many years before:
“Crying, Peace, Peace, when there is no peace.”
But he put it aside lightly, as a man should, for if one followed every vagrant fancy and intuition, taking account of signs and omens, he would slue and waver in his course like a toy boat in a mill pond, which after great labor and adventure comes, in the end, to nothing.
CHAPTER IV
DON PABLO MORENO
On the edge of the barren mesa and looking out over the sandy flats where the Salagua writhed about uneasily in its bed, the casa of Don Pablo Moreno stood like a mud fort, barricaded by a palisade of the thorny cactus which the Mexicans call ocotilla. Within this fence, which inclosed several acres of standing grain and the miniature of a garden, there were all the signs of prosperity–a new wagon under its proper shade, a storehouse strongly built where chickens lingered about for grain, a clean-swept ramada casting a deep shadow across the open doorway; but outside the inclosure the ground was stamped as level as a threshing floor. As Creede and Hardy drew near, an old man, grave and dignified, came out from the shady veranda and opened the gate, bowing with the most courtly hospitality.
“Buenos tardes, señores,” he pronounced, touching his hat in a military salute. “Pasa! Welcome to my poor house.”
In response to these salutations Creede made the conventional replies, and then as the old man stood expectant he said in a hurried aside to Hardy:
“D’ye talk Spanish? He don’t understand a word of English.”
“Sure,” returned Hardy. “I was brought up on it!”
“No!” exclaimed Creede incredulously, and then, addressing the Señor Moreno in his native tongue, he said: “Don Pablo, this is my friend Señor Hardy, who will live with me at Agua Escondida!”
“With great pleasure, señor,” said the old gentleman, removing his hat, “I make your acquaintance!”
“The pleasure is mine,” replied Hardy, returning the salutation, and at the sound of his own language Don Pablo burst into renewed protestations of delight. Within the cool shadow of his ramada he offered his own chair and seated himself in another, neatly fashioned of mesquite wood and strung with thongs of rawhide. Then, turning his venerable head to the doorway which led to the inner court, he shouted in a terrible voice:
“Muchacho!”
Instantly from behind the adobe wall, around the corner of which he had been slyly peeping, a black-eyed boy appeared and stood before him, his ragged straw hat held respectfully against his breast.
“Sus manos!” roared the old man; and dropping his hat the muchacho touched his hands before him in an attitude of prayer.
“Give the gentlemen a drink!” commanded Don Pablo severely, and after Hardy had accepted the gourd of cold water which the boy dipped from a porous olla, resting in the three-pronged fork of a trimmed mesquite, the old gentleman called for his tobacco. This the mozo brought in an Indian basket wrought by the Apaches who live across the river–Bull Durham and brown paper. The señor offered these to his guest, while Creede grinned in anticipation of the outcome.
“What?” exclaimed the Señor Moreno, astounded. “You do not smoke? Ah, perhaps it is my poor tobacco! But wait, I have a cigarro which the storekeeper gave me when I–No? No smoke nothing? Ah, well, well–no smoke, no Mexicano, as the saying goes.” He regarded his guest doubtfully, with a shadow of disfavor. Then, rolling a cigarette, he remarked: “You have a very white skin, Señor Hardy;