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

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СКАЧАТЬ two seasons with great toil and danger they had fought their way up onto Bronco Mesa and established their right to graze there –– to go around now would be to lose all that had been gained.

      But for once the cowmen of the Four Peaks were equal to the situation. There were no cattle to gather, no day herds to hold, no calves to brand in the pens –– every man was riding and riding hard. There was wood on every peak for signal fires and the main camp was established on the high ridge of the Juate, looking north and south and west. When that signal rose up against the sky –– whether it was a smoke by day or a fire by night –– every man was to quit his post and ride to harry the first herd. Wherever or however it came in, that herd was to be destroyed, not by violence nor by any overt act, but by the sheepmen’s own methods –– strategy and stealth.

      For once there was no loose joint in the cordon of the cowmen’s defence. From the rim of the Mogollons to the borders of Bronco Mesa the broad trail of the sheep was marked and noted; their shiftings and doublings were followed and observed; the bitterness of Tonto cowmen, crazy over their wrongs, was poured into ears that had already listened to the woes of Pleasant Valley. When at last Jasper Swope’s boss herder, Juan Alvarez, the same man-killing Mexican that Jeff Creede had fought two years before, turned suddenly aside and struck into the old Shep Thomas trail that comes out into the deep crotch between the Peaks, a horseman in chaparejos rode on before him, spurring madly to light the signal fires. That night a fire blazed up from the shoulder of the western mountain and was answered from the Juate. At dawn ten men were in the saddle, riding swiftly, with Jefferson Creede at their head.

      It was like an open book to the cowmen now, that gathering of the sheep along the Alamo –– a ruse, a feint to draw them away from the Peaks while the blow was struck from behind. Only one man was left to guard that threatened border –– Rufus Hardy, the man of peace, who had turned over his pistol to the boss. It was a bitter moment for him when he saw the boys start out on this illicit adventure; but for once he restrained himself and let it pass. The war would not be settled at a blow.

      At the shoulder of the Peak the posse of cowmen found Jim Clark, his shaps frayed and his hat slouched to a shapeless mass from long beating through the brush, and followed in his lead to a pocket valley, tucked away among the cedars, where they threw off their packs and camped while Jim and Creede went forward to investigate. It was a rough place, that crotch between the Peaks, and Shep Thomas had cut his way through chaparral that stood horse-high before he won the southern slope. To the north the brush covered all the ridges in a dense thicket, and it was there that the cow camp was hid; but on the southern slope, where the sun had baked out the soil, the mountain side stretched away bare and rocky, broken by innumerable ravines which came together in a redondo or rounded valley and then plunged abruptly into the narrow defile of a box cañon. This was the middle fork, down which Shep Thomas had made his triumphal march the year before, and down which Juan Alvarez would undoubtedly march again.

      Never but once had the sheep been in that broad valley, and the heavy rains had brought out long tufts of grama grass from the bunchy roots along the hillsides. As Creede and Jim Clark crept up over the brow of the western ridge and looked down upon it they beheld a herd of forty or fifty wild horses, grazing contentedly along the opposite hillside; and far below, where the valley opened out into the redondo, they saw a band of their own tame horses feeding. Working in from either side –– the wild horses from the north, where they had retreated to escape the drought; the range animals from the south, where the sheep had fed off the best grass –– they had made the broad mountain valley a rendezvous, little suspecting the enemy that was creeping in upon their paradise. Already the distant bleating of the sheep was in the air; a sheepman rode up to the summit, looked over at the promised land and darted back, and as the first struggling mass of leaders poured out from the cut trail and drifted down into the valley the wild stallions shook out their manes in alarm and trotted farther away.

      A second band of outlaws, unseen before, came galloping along the western mountain side, snorting at the clangor and the rank smell of the sheep, and Creede eyed them with professional interest as the leaders trotted past. Many times in the old days he had followed along those same ridges, rounding up the wild horses and sending them dashing down the cañon, so that Hardy could rush out from his hiding place and make his throw. It was a natural hold-up ground, that redondo, and they had often talked of building a horse trap there; but so far they had done no more than rope a chance horse and let the rest go charging down the box cañon and out the other end onto Bronco Mesa.

      It was still early in the morning when Juan Alvarez rode down the pass and invaded the forbidden land. He had the name of a bad hombre, this boss herder of Jasper Swope, the kind that cuts notches on his rifle stock. Only one man had ever made Juan eat dirt, and that man now watched him from the high rocks with eyes that followed every move with the unblinking intentness of a mountain lion.

      “Uhr-r! Laugh, you son of a goat,” growled Creede, as the big Mexican pulled up his horse and placed one hand complacently on his hip. “Sure, make yourself at home,” he muttered, smiling as his enemy drifted his sheep confidently down into the redondo, “you’re goin’ jest where I want ye. Come sundown and we’ll go through you like a house afire. If he beds in the redondo let’s shoot ’em into that box cañon, Jim,” proposed the big cowman, turning to his partner, “and when they come out the other end all hell wouldn’t stop ’em –– they’ll go forty ways for Sunday.”

      “Suits me,” replied Jim, “but say, what’s the matter with roundin’ up some of them horses and sendin’ ’em in ahead? That boss Mexican is goin’ to take a shot at some of us fellers if we do the work ourselves.”

      “That’s right, Jim,” said Creede, squinting shrewdly at the three armed herders. “I’ll tell ye, let’s send them wild horses through ’em! Holy smoke! jest think of a hundred head of them outlaws comin’ down the cañon at sundown and hammerin’ through that bunch of sheep! And we don’t need to git within gunshot!”

      “Fine and dandy,” commented Jim, “but how’re you goin’ to hold your horses to it? Them herders will shoot off their guns and turn ’em back.”

      “Well, what’s the matter with usin’ our tame horses for a hold-up herd and then sendin’ the whole bunch through together? They’ll strike for the box cañon, you can bank on that, and if Mr. Juan will only –– ” But Mr. Juan was not so accommodating. Instead of holding his sheep in the redondo he drifted them up on the mountain side, where he could overlook the country.

      “Well, I’ll fix you yet,” observed Creede, and leaving Jim to watch he scuttled down to his horse and rode madly back to camp.

      That afternoon as Juan Alvarez stood guard upon a hill he saw, far off to the west, four horsemen, riding slowly across the mesa. Instantly he whistled to his herders, waving his arms and pointing, and in a panic of apprehension they circled around their sheep, crouching low and punching them along until the herd was out of sight. And still the four horsemen rode on, drawing nearer, but passing to the south. But the sheep, disturbed and separated by the change, now set up a plaintive bleating, and the boss herder, never suspecting the trap that was being laid for him, scrambled quickly down from his lookout and drove them into the only available hiding-place –– the box cañon. Many years in the sheep business had taught him into what small compass a band of sheep can be pressed, and he knew that, once thrown together in the dark cañon, they would stop their telltale blatting and go to sleep. Leaving his herders to hold them there he climbed back up to his peak and beheld the cowboys in the near distance, but still riding east.

      An hour passed and the sheep had bedded together in silence, each standing with his head under another’s belly, as is their wont, when the four horsemen, headed by Jeff Creede himself, appeared suddenly on the distant mountain side, riding hard along the slope. Galloping ahead of them in an avalanche of rocks was СКАЧАТЬ