On the Cowboy's Trail: Western Boxed-Set. Coolidge Dane

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СКАЧАТЬ had lambed in the springtime, and as if by magic the tender grass shot up to feed their little ones. Surely, God was good to the sheep. They were ranging far, now that the shearing was over, but though they fed to the topmost peaks of the Superstitions, driving the crooked-horned mountain sheep from their pastures, their destiny lay to the north, in the cool valleys of the Sierra Blancas; and there in the end they would go, though they left havoc in their wake. Once before the sheep had vanished in this same way, mysteriously; and at last, travelling circuitous ways and dealing misery to many Tonto cowmen, they had poured over the very summit of the Four Peaks and down upon Bronco Mesa. And now, though they were hidden, every man on the round-up felt their presence and knew that the upper range was in jeopardy.

      After amusing the ladies with inconsequential tales, the rodéo outfit therefore rose up and was gone before the light, raking the exposed lowland for its toll of half-fed steers; and even Rufus Hardy, the parlor-broke friend and lover, slipped away before any of them were stirring and rode far up along the river. What a river it was now, this unbridled Salagua which had been their moat and rampart for so many years! Its waters flowed thin and impotent over the rapids, lying in clear pools against the base of the black cliffs, and the current that had uprooted trees like feathers was turned aside by a snag. Where before the sheep had hung upon its flank hoping at last to swim at Hidden Water, the old ewes now strayed along its sandy bed, browsing upon the willows. From the towering black buttes that walled in Hell’s Hip Pocket to the Rio Verde it was passable for a spring lamb, and though the thin grass stood up fresh and green on the mesas the river showed nothing but drought. Drought and the sheep, those were the twin evils of the Four Peaks country; they lowered the price of cattle and set men to riding the range restlessly. For the drought is a visitation of God, to be accepted and endured, but sheep may be turned back.

      As he rode rapidly along the river trail, halting on each ridge to search the landscape for sheep, Hardy’s conscience smote him for the single day he had spent in camp, dallying within sight of Kitty or talking with Lucy Ware. One such day, if the sheepmen were prepared, and Bronco Mesa would be a desert. Threats, violence, strategy, would be of no avail, once the evil was done; the sheep must be turned back at the river or they would swarm in upon the whole upper range. One man could turn them there, for it was the dead line; but once across they would scatter like quail before a hawk, crouching and hiding in the gulches, refusing to move, yet creeping with brutish stubbornness toward the north and leaving a clean swath behind. There were four passes that cut their way down from the southern mountains to the banks of the river, old trails of Apaches and wild game, and to quiet his mind Hardy looked for tracks at every crossing before he turned Chapuli’s head toward camp.

      The smoke was drifting from the chimney when, late in the afternoon, he rode past the door and saw Lucy Ware inside, struggling with an iron kettle before the fireplace. Poor Lucy, she had undertaken a hard problem, for there is as much difference between camp cooking and home cooking as there is between a Dutch oven and a steel range, and a cooking-school graduate has to forget a whole lot before she can catch the knack of the open fire. For the second time that day Rufus Hardy’s conscience, so lately exercised over his neglect of the sheep, rose up and rebuked him. Throwing Chapuli into the corral he kicked off his spurs and shaps and gave Lucy her first lesson in frontier cookery; taught her by the force of his example how to waste her wood and save her back; and at the end of the short demonstration he sat down without ceremony, and fell to eating.

      “Excuse me,” he said, “if I seem to be greedy, but I had my breakfast before sun-up. Where’s your father, and Kitty?”

      “Oh, they had the Mexican boy catch their horses for them and have ridden up the valley to watch for the cattle. I stayed behind to make my first water color, and then –– I thought you would be coming back soon, so I tried to cook supper instead. I’m a pretty good housekeeper –– at home,” she said apologetically.

      Hardy watched her as she experimented painstakingly with the fire, scooping out shovelfuls of coal from beneath the glowing logs and planting her pots and kettles upon them with a hooked stick, according to instructions.

      “You look like a picture of one of our sainted Puritan ancestors,” he observed, at last, “and that’s just exactly the way they cooked, too –– over an open fire. How does it feel to be Priscilla?”

      “Well, if Priscilla’s hands looked like mine,” exclaimed Lucy despairingly, “John Alden must have been madly in love with her. How do you keep yours clean?”

      “That’s a secret,” replied Hardy, “but I’ll tell you. I never touch the outside of a pot –– and I scour them with sandsoap. But I wish you’d stop cooking, Lucy; it makes me feel conscience-stricken. You are my guests, remember, even if I do go off and neglect you for a whole day; and when you go back to Berkeley I want you to have something more interesting than housekeeping to talk about. Didn’t I see two ladies’ saddles out in the wagon?”

      Miss Lucy’s eyes lighted up with pleasure as, anticipating his drift, she nodded her head.

      “Well then,” said Hardy, with finality, “if you’ll get up early in the morning, I’ll catch you a little pony that I gentled myself, and we can ride up the river together. How does that strike you?”

      “Fine!” exclaimed Lucy, with sudden enthusiasm.

      “Oh, Rufus,” she cried impulsively, “if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman –– and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home and cook the meals.”

      “Well, you just let me cook those meals for a while,” said Rufus, with brotherly authority, “and come out and be a man for a change. Can you ride pretty well?”

      Lucy glanced at him questioningly, and thought she read what was in his mind.

      “Yes,” she said, “I can ride, but –– but I just couldn’t bring myself to dress like Kitty!” she burst out. “I know it’s foolish, but I can’t bear to have people notice me so. But I’ll be a man in everything else, if you’ll only give me a chance.” She stood before him, radiant, eager, her eyes sparkling like a child’s, and suddenly Hardy realized how much she lost by being always with Kitty. Seen by herself she was as lithe and graceful as a fairy, with a steady gaze very rare in women, and eyes which changed like the shadows in a pool, answering every mood in wind and sky, yet always with their own true light. Her cheeks glowed with the fresh color which her father’s still retained, and she had inherited his generous nature, too; but in mind and stature she took after her dainty mother, whose exquisite grace and beauty had made her one of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of the petite in her which appealed to him –– for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret –– or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which she most loved to hear.

      “Ah, Lucy,” he said, “you need never try to be a man in order to ride with me. It would be hard luck if a woman like you had to ask twice for anything. Will you go out with me every day? No? Then I shall ask you every day, and you shall go whenever you please! But you know how it is. The sheepmen are hiding along the river waiting for a chance to sneak across, and if I should stay in camp for a single day they might make a break –– and then we would have a war. Your father doesn’t understand that, but I do; and I know that Jeff will never submit to being sheeped out without a fight. Can’t you see how it is? I should like to stay here and entertain you, and yet I must protect your father’s cattle, and I must protect Jeff. But if you will ride out with me when it is not too hot, I –– it –– well, you’ll go to-morrow, won’t you?”

      He СКАЧАТЬ