On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane
enough –– not a word about Kitty, and the year before Lucy had spoken about her in every letter! There was something mysterious about it, and sinister; they both felt it.
And when at last the wagon came in, bearing only Judge Ware and Lucy, somehow even Jeff’s sore heart was touched by a sense of loss. But while others might dissemble, Bill Lightfoot’s impulsive nature made no concealment of its chiefest thought.
“Where’s Miss Bunnair?” he demanded, as soon as Lucy Ware was free, and there was a sudden lull in the conversation roundabout as the cowboys listened for the answer.
“I’m sorry,” said Miss Ware, politely evasive, “but she wasn’t able to come with me.”
“She’ll be down bimeby, though, won’t she?” persisted Lightfoot; and when Lucy finally answered with a vague “Perhaps” he turned to the assembled cowboys with a triumphant grin. “Um, now, what’d I tell you!” he said; and one and all they scowled and stabbed him with their eyes.
The rodéo camp was already established beneath the big mesquite, and while three or four careless cowmen held the day herd over against the mesa the rest of the outfit was busy raking The Rolls. It was all very different from what Judge Ware and Lucy had anticipated. There was no sign of excitement in their midst, no ostentatious display of arms or posting of patrols, and what surprised the judge most of all was that in their friendly gatherings around the fire there was no one, save Hardy, who would argue against the sheep.
The judge had been on to Washington and was possessed of all the material facts, but nobody was interested any more in the Salagua Forest Reserve; he had consulted with the Chief Forester and even with the President himself, laying before them the imminence of the danger, and they had assured him that everything possible would be done to relieve the situation. Did it not, then, he demanded, behoove the law-abiding residents of prospective forest reserves to coöperate with such an enlightened administration, even at the risk of some temporary personal loss? And with one voice the Four Peaks cowmen agreed that it did. There was something eerie about it –– the old judge was dazed by their acquiescence.
Of all the cowmen at Hidden Water, Rufus Hardy was the only man who would discuss the matter at length. A change had come over him now; he was very thin and quiet, with set lines along his jaw, but instead of riding nervously up and down the river as he had the year before he lingered idly about the ranch, keeping tally at the branding and entertaining his guests. No matter how pedantic or polemical the old judge became, Hardy was willing to listen to him; and Lucy, hovering in the background, would often smile to hear them argue, the judge laying down the law and equity of the matter and Rufus meeting him like an expert swordsman with parry and thrust. Day by day, his prejudice wearing away from lack of any real opposition, Judge Ware became more and more pleased with his daughter’s superintendent; but Lucy herself was troubled. There was a look in his eyes that she had never seen before, a set and haggard stare that came when he sat alone, and his head was always turned aside, as if he were listening. The sheep came trooping in from the south, marching in long lines to the river’s edge, and still he sat quiet, just inside the door, listening.
“Tell me, Rufus,” she said, one day when her father was inspecting the upper range with Creede, “what is it that made you so sad? Is it –– Kitty?”
For a minute he gazed at her, a faint smile on his lips.
“No,” he said, at last, “it is not Kitty.” And then he lapsed back into silence, his head turned as before.
The wind breathed through the corredor, bringing with it a distant, plaintive bleating –– the sheep, waiting beyond the turbid river to cross.
“I have forgotten about Kitty,” he said absently. “For me there is nothing in the world but sheep. Can’t you hear them bleating down there?” he cried, throwing out his hands. “Can’t you smell them? Ah, Lucy, if you knew sheep as I do! I never hear a sheep now that I don’t think of that day last year when they came pouring out of Hell’s Hip Pocket with a noise like the end of the world. If I had been there to stop them they might never have taken the range –– but after that, all through the hot summer when the cattle were dying for feed, every time the wind came up and roared in my ears I would hear sheep –– baaa, baaa –– and now I hear them again.”
He paused and looked up at her intently.
“Do you know what that noise means to me?” he demanded, almost roughly. “It means little calves dying around the water hole; mothers lowing for their little ones that they have left to starve; it means long lines of cows following me out over the mesa for brush, and all the trees cut down. Ah, Lucy, how can your father talk of waiting when it means as much as that?”
“But last year was a drought,” protested Lucy pitifully. “Will it be as bad this year?”
“Every bit! Did you notice that plain between Bender and the river? It will be like that in a week if we let them cross the river.”
“Oh,” cried Lucy, “then you –– do you mean to turn them back?”
“The river is very high,” answered Hardy sombrely. “They cannot cross.” And then as a quail strikes up leaves and dust to hide her nest, he launched forth quickly upon a story of the flood.
The Salagua was long in flood that Spring. Day after day, while the sheep wandered uneasily along its banks rearing up to strip the last remnants of browse from the tips of willows and burro bushes, it rolled ponderously forth from its black-walled gorge and flowed past the crossing, deep and strong, sucking evenly into the turbid whirlpool that waited for its prey. At the first approach of the invaders the unconsidered zeal of Judge Ware overcame him; he was for peace, reason, the saner judgment that comes from wider views and a riper mind, and, fired by the hope of peaceful truce, he rode furtively along the river waving a white handkerchief whenever he saw a sheep-herder, and motioning him to cross. But however anxious he was for an interview the desires of the sheepmen did not lean in that direction, and they only stared at him stolidly or pretended not to see.
Thwarted in his efforts for peace the judge returned to camp deep in thought. The sheep were at his very door and nothing had been done to stay them; a deadly apathy seemed to have settled down upon the cowmen; after all their threats there were no preparations for defence; the river was not even patrolled; and yet if quick action was not taken the upper range might be irreparably ruined before the reserve was proclaimed. Not that he would countenance violence, but a judicious show of resistance, for instance, might easily delay the crossing until the President could act, or even so daunt the invaders that they would go around. It was not strictly legal, of course, but the judge could see no harm in suggesting it, and as soon as the cowmen were gathered about their fire that evening he went out and sat down by Creede, who lay sprawled on his back, his head pillowed on his hands, smoking.
“Well, Jefferson,” he began, feeling his way cautiously, “I see that the sheep have come down to the river –– they will be making a crossing soon, I suppose?”
Creede sucked studiously upon his cigarette, and shifted it to a corner of his mouth.
“W’y yes, Judge,” he said, “I reckon they will.”
“Well –– er –– do you think they intend to invade our upper range this year?”
“Sure thing,” responded Creede, resuming his smoke, “that’s what they come up here for. You want to take a last long look at this grass.”
“Yes, but, Jefferson,” protested the judge, opening up his eyes, “what will our cattle feed upon then?”
“Same old thing,” answered Creede, “palo verde and giant cactus. I’ve got most of mine in the town herd.”
“What!” exclaimed Judge Ware, astounded at the suggestion, “you don’t mean to say that you are preparing to go out of business? Why, my dear Jefferson, this country may be set aside as a forest reserve at any minute –– and think of the privileges you will be giving up! As an owner of cattle already grazing upon the range