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

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СКАЧАТЬ saw his eyes fixed curiously upon some object in the outer darkness. He followed the glance and beheld a hound –– gaunt, lame, beseeching –– limping about among the mesquite trees which lined the edge of the flat.

      “There’s one of Bill’s dogs,” he remarked sociably, speaking to the crowd in general. “Must’ve got sore-footed and come back. Here, Rock! Here, Rye! Here, Ring!” he called, trying the most likely names. “Here, puppy –– come on, boy!” And he scraped a plate in that inviting way which is supposed to suggest feed to a dog. But Hardy rose up quietly from his place and went out to the dog. A moment later he called to Jeff and, after a hurried conference, the two of them brought the wanderer up to the fire.

      “Hey!” called Bill Lightfoot, “that ain’t one of Bill’s pack –– that’s old Turco, his home dog.”

      “Don’t you think I know Bill’s dogs yet?” inquired Creede scathingly. “Now if you’ll jest kindly keep your face shet a minute, I’ll see what’s the matter with this leg.”

      He clamped Turco between his knees and picked up his fore leg, while the old dog whined and licked his hands anxiously. There was a stain of blood from the shoulder down, and above it, cut neatly through the muscles, a gaping wound.

      “That was a thirty-thirty,” said Creede grimly, and every man looked up. Thirty-thirty was a sinister number on the range –– it was the calibre of a sheep-herder’s carbine.

      “Aw, go on,” scoffed Bill Lightfoot, rushing over to examine the wound. “Who could have shot him –– away over in Hell’s Hip Pocket?”

      “Um –– that’s it,” observed Creede significantly. “What you goin’ to do, Rufe?”

      “I’m going over there,” answered Hardy, throwing the saddle on his horse. He looked over his shoulder as he heaved on the cinch. “That’s where that dust was,” he said, and as the outfit stood gaping he swung up and was off into the darkness.

      “Hey, take my gun!” yelled Jeff, but the clatter of hoofs never faltered –– he was going it blind and unarmed. Late that night another horseman on a flea-bitten gray dashed madly after him over the Pocket trail. It was Old Bill Johnson, crazed with apprehension; and behind him straggled his hounds, worn from their long chase after the lion, but following dutifully on their master’s scent. The rest of the outfit rode over in the morning –– the punchers with their pistols thrust into the legs of their shaps; Creede black and staring with anger; the judge asking a thousand unanswered questions and protesting against any resort to violence; the women tagging along helplessly, simply because they could not be left alone. And there, pouring forth from the mouth of Hell’s Hip Pocket, came the sheep, a solid phalanx, urged on by plunging herders and spreading out over the broad mesa like an invading army. Upon the peaks and ridges round about stood groups of men, like skirmishers –– camp rustlers with their packs and burros; herders, whose sheep had already passed through –– every man with his gun in his hand. The solid earth of the trail was worn down and stamped to dust beneath the myriad feet, rising in a cloud above them as they scrambled through the pass; and above all other sounds there rose the high, sustained tremolo of the sheep:

      “Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay! Blay-ay-ay-ay!”

      To the ears of the herders it was music, like the thunder of stamps to a miner or the rumble of a waterfall to a lonely fisher; the old, unlistened music of their calling, above which the clamor of the world must fight its way. But to the cowmen it was like all hell broken loose, a confusion, a madness, a babel which roused every passion in their being and filled them with a lust to kill.

      Without looking to the right or to the left, Jefferson Creede fixed his eyes upon one man in that riot of workers and rode for him as a corral hand marks down a steer. It was Jasper Swope, hustling the last of a herd through the narrow defile, and as his Chihuahuanos caught sight of the burly figure bearing down upon the padron they abandoned their work to help him. From the hill above, Jim Swope, his face set like iron for the conflict, rode in to back up his brother; and from far down the cañon Rufus Hardy came spurring like the wind to take his place by Creede.

      In the elemental clangor of the sheep they faced each other, Creede towering on his horse, his face furious with rage; Swope gray with the dust of his driving but undaunted by the assault.

      “Stop where you are!” shouted Swope, holding out a warning hand as the cowman showed no sign of halting. But Creede came straight on, never flinching, until he had almost ridden him down.

      “You low-lived, sheep-eatin’ hound,” he hissed, piling in the wickedest of his range epithets, “you and me have had it comin’ fer quite a while, and now I’ve got you. I’ve never yet seen a sheepman that would fight in the open, but you’ve got to or take that!” He leaned over suddenly and slapped him with his open hand, laughing recklessly at the Mexicans as they brandished their guns and shouted.

      “Quite se, cabrones,” he jeered, sorting out the worst of his fighting Spanish for their benefit, “you are all gutter pups –– you are afraid to shoot!”

      “Here,” rasped out Jim Swope, spurring his horse in between them, “what are you fellers tryin’ to do? Git out of here, umbre –– go on now! Never mind, Jasp, I’ll do the talkin’. You go on away, will ye! Now what’s the matter with you, Mr. Creede, and what can I do for you?”

      Jasper Swope had whirled back from the blow as a rattler throws his coils. His gray eyes gleamed and he showed all his broken teeth as he spat back hate and defiance at Creede; but Jim was his elder brother and had bested him more than once since the days of their boyish quarrels. Slowly and grudgingly he made way, backing sullenly off with his Mexicans; and Jim stood alone, opposing his cold resolution to the white-hot wrath of Creede.

      “You can turn back them sheep and git off my range!” yelled Creede. “Turn ’em back, I say, or I’ll leave my mark on some of you!”

      “How can I turn ’em back?” argued Swope, throwing out his hands. “They’s ninety thousand more behind me, and all headin’ through this pass.”

      “You know very well that this is a put-up job,” retorted Creede hotly. “You sheepmen have been crawlin’ around on your bellies for a month to get a chanst to sheep us out, and now you say you can’t help yourself! You’re the crookedest, lyingest sheep-puller in the bunch, Jim Swope. You’d rob a graveyard and show up for prayers the next mornin’. I can lick you, you big Mormon-faced stiff, with one hand tied behind me, and what’s more –– ”

      “Here now –– here no-ow –– ” protested Swope, holding out his hand for peace, “they ain’t no call for no such talk. Mebbe you can lick me, and mebbe you can’t, but it won’t do you any good to try. My sheep is here, and here they’ll stay, until I git good and ready to move ’em. This is a free range and a free country, and the man ain’t born that can make me stop.”

      He paused, and fixed his keen eyes upon Creede, searching him to the heart; and before that cold, remorseless gaze the fighting frenzy in his brain died away. Meanwhile Hardy had come up from where he had been turning back sheep, and as he rode in Jeff instinctively made way for him.

      “No,” replied Hardy, fastening his stern eyes upon the iron visage of the sheepman, “not if the lives of a thousand cattle and the last possessions of a dozen men lay in your way. You and your legal rights! It is men like you who make the law worse than nothing and turn honest cowmen into criminals. If there is anything in it you will lie to the assessor or rob a poor man’s cabin with the best of them, but when it comes to your legal right to sheep us out СКАЧАТЬ