On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane
country," he went on, as Pecos shook his head, "it ain't stealin' to rob a thief, is it?"
"Oh, ain't it?" inquired the cow-puncher, gravely, and he smiled grimly to himself as Crittenden endeavored to set his mind at rest. "All right then," he said, cutting short the cowman's labored justification of cattle-rustling, "I'll go you—for a hundred."
"A hundred!" repeated Crittenden, aghast. "Well, for—all right, all right," he cried, as Pecos moved impatiently away. "Now you pull out of here the way you did before and I'll have Joe pack you over some more grub. A hundred dollars," he murmured, shaking his head at the thought, "that boy will ruin me."
Early the next morning Pecos Dalhart rode slowly up the trail that led to Carrizo Springs and the deserted country beyond, a land where as yet the cowmen had not extended their sway. To his left rose the sharp granite spires of the Four Peaks, to the right gleamed the silvery thread of the Salagua, that mighty river that flowed in from the east; and all the country between was a jumble of cliffs and buttes and ridges and black cañons, leading from the mountains to the river.
"So it ain't no crime to rob a thief, hey?" he muttered, when, topping the last ridge, he gazed down at Carrizo Springs and across at the white-worn trail which led into the wilderness beyond. "Well, if that's the case I might as well search out that country over there and git busy on Old Crit. A man's a dam' fool to steal a thousand dollars' worth of cattle and only git eighty dollars for it."
Three days later, riding by a trail that led ever to the east, Pecos came upon a narrow valley filled with cottonwoods and wild walnuts and echoing to the music of running water. A fine brook, flowing down from the brushy heights of the Peaks, leaped and tumbled over the bowlders and disappeared through a narrow cleft below, where the two black walls drew together until they seemed almost to block the cañon. As Pecos rode cautiously down the creek-bed he jumped a bunch of cattle from the shade of the alders and, spurring after them as they shambled off, he saw that they bore the familiar U, even to the young calves. Undoubtedly they belonged to the same bunch that he had been working on over at Carrizo Springs—the fresh-branded calves and U cows that Crittenden was shoving over the Peaks. Riding farther down the gulch Pecos came upon a cave at the base of the overhanging cliff. In time past the Indians had camped there, but the ashes of their fires were bedded and only their crude pictures on the smoke-grimed rocks remained to tell the tale. It was the cave of Lost Dog Cañon.
On their trip over the simple-minded José had spoken of a lost cañon somewhere over in the mountains but Pecos had never dreamed of finding a paradise like this. According to José the Cañon of Perro Perdito was haunted by a spirit which was muy malo, throwing down great rocks from the sides of the cañon and howling like a lost dog at night, but in the broad light of noonday Pecos was undaunted and he rode on into the tunnel-like box cañon until it pinched down to a mere cleft. It was an eerie place, but there never was a ghost yet that threw a track like a cow and, led on by their familiar foot-prints among the rocks, Pecos forged ahead until he stepped out suddenly into a new world. Behind him the pent and overhanging walls shut out the light of day but here the sun was shining into a deep valley where in exquisite miniature lay parks and grassy meadows, while cathedral spires of limestone, rising from the cañon floor, joined their mighty flanks to the rim-rock which shut the whole space in. The glittering waters of the Salagua, far below, marked a natural barrier to the south and as Pecos Dalhart looked at the narrow trail which had brought him in he began instinctively to figure on a drift fence, to close the entrance to the pocket, and make the hidden valley a mile-wide pasture and corral. All nature seemed conspiring to make him a cattle-rustler and this hidden pasture, with its grass and water and the gate opening at his very door, cast the die. Two days later he moved his camp to Lost Dog Cañon and flew at the fence with feverish energy. Within a week he had the box cañon barricaded from wall to wall and then, as the U cows came down to the creek to drink, he roped them, worked over their brands, and threw them into his new pasture. By this time, with his tongue in his cheek, he attached a circle instead of a bar to the U and named his new brand the Monkey-wrench (
CHAPTER IV
THE SHOW-DOWN
It is a great sensation to feel that you are a prospective cattle king, but somehow when Pecos Dalhart rode back to Verde Crossing his accustomed gaiety had fled. There were no bows and smiles for Marcelina, no wordy exchanges with the garrulous Babe—there is a difference, after all, between stealing cows for eighty dollars a month and stealing for yourself, and while a moralist might fail to see the distinction it showed in its effect on Pecos's spirits.
"I'm goin' down to Geronimo," he grumbled, after an uneasy hour at the store, during which he had tried in vain the cheering power of whiskey; "you can tell Crit I'll be back to-morrow night for my time," and without volunteering any further information he rode down to the river, plunged across the rocky ford and was swallowed up in the desert. Two days later he returned, red-eyed and taciturn, and to all Babe's inquiries he observed that the Geronimo saloons were the worst deadfalls west of the Rio Grande, for a certainty. His mood did not improve by waiting, and when Crittenden finally rode in after his long day's work he demanded his money so brusquely that even that old-timer was startled.
"Well, sho, sho, boy," he soothed, "don't git excited over nothin'! To be sure I'll pay you your money." He went down into his overalls with commendable promptitude, but Pecos only watched him in surly silence. Something in his pose seemed to impress the shifty cowman; he drew forth a roll of bills and began to count them out, reluctantly. "Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, a hundred—there it is—now what's all this racket about?"
"Nothin'," responded Pecos, stowing away the greenbacks, "but you can git somebody else to finish up that job."
"Well, here," snapped the cowman, warming up a little as Dalhart cooled down, "don't I git no accountin' for this month's work? How many did you brand and what you quittin' for?"
"I branded sixty-seven cows, fifty-five calves, and thirty two-year-olds," replied the cowboy, boldly, and Crittenden, not knowing in what iron they were branded, chuckled gleefully.
"Umm," he murmured, "wall, say now, that ain't so bad. Old Upton will make a buck-jump at the moon when he finds this out. But lookee here, boy, I'm goin' to be driftin' cows into that country for another month yet, and that'll be as long as we can brand and ear-mark on account of the flies in June. Now I want to make a dicker with you for jest one more month and I'll be generous with you—how about a hundred and ten—that's pretty nigh four months' wages for a cow-punch!"
"No, I've done quit!" protested Pecos, vigorously. "Steal your own cattle! When I want to go into the rustlin' business I'll rustle for myse'f!"
"Jest one more month," insisted Old Crit, "I'll give you a hundred and twenty!"
The cowboy looked at him a minute and smiled sneeringly. "Well, bein' as yore money seems to be burnin' a hole in yore pocket," he said, "I guess I'll have to take it away from you, but I'll tell you right now I don't approve of this cow-stealin'—it's likely to git a man into trouble!"
"All right, all right," said Crittenden, making haste to clinch the bargain, "a hundred and twenty, then; and they hain't nobody ever been convicted in Geronimo County yet for stealin' cows, so you don't need to worry none. Pull your freight, now, and I'll be over later on to see what you've done."
As Pecos Dalhart and José Garcia rode up the Carrizo trail the next morning driving their pack animals before them, the conversation was chiefly between José and his mules. Pecos did not approve