The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ prairie,

       In a grave six foot by three..."

      It was protested instantly. They were jaded, and an uneasy fear rode each of them. "What fool is that? Lord a'mighty, shut up! Cow critters don't deserve no melody tonight."

      The crest of the storm had passed some little while ago; the rain lessened. Thunder echoed from a remote distance, and it seemed to be getting lighter. And so the hours dragged by, the Circle G crew sodden to the skin, riding weary paths in the trampled earth, and every now and then one of them would announce discovery of another member, only to be contradicted. Talk came in shorter spurts. Silence grew the more prolonged, though on occasion there was a crackling rapid-fire exchange of comment. Anything to relieve the tedium.

      "What started this cussed party, anyhow?"

      "Somebody spit over the wrong shoulder, I reckon."

      "Yo' ain't funny, Baldy. Say, did anybody hear a sorter yippy- yip about ten seconds before it happened?"

      "Ask Joe Priest. He was on circle then."

      "I oughter been out there singin' bass," opined Quagmire, riding into the conversation. "It never would of happened. Tom—hey, Tom."

      "Present and accounted for," drawled Tom.

      Quagmire drew alongside and his arm rested on Tom's shoulder. "Knew yo' was ridin' with me. But I kinda lost yo' fo' a piece and I..." But he was not given to sentiment. That was as far as he would go.

      Tom swore at him. "You galoot, I'm riding a good horse."

      "Sho'. An' the good Lord was watchin' yo' too. Else yo' pony wouldn't he'ped none."

      The squealing of the chuck-wagon wheels announced Old Mose's approach. He had smelled them out somehow and was coming on the dead run. How or where he had found his horses no one knew. His falsetto voice assailed them.

      "Ain' yo' boys got nuthin' else to do but run offen the earth? Gittin' sho'ly tough when doctor has to foller with the grub."

      The rain still fell, and there wasn't a dry twig within twenty miles. But the cook knew his business. Presently a fire twinkled directly under the wagon bed, shielded from the downpour. When it had grown enough to threaten the vehicle, Old Mose drove clear of it, threw on the coffee pot, and in ten minutes hailed them. "Come an' wa'm yo' gizzards."

      The first gray beam of false dawn crept out of the cast. In a half hour it was light enough to take stock and recount noses. Nothing was said for a good five minutes, and in the end it was Major Bob who brusquely broke the silence. "Guess Billy's out followin' a stray bunch. We'll look. Quagmire, Tom, Joe Priest—you—Carolina—light out that way. Rest of you spread."

      They strung to the four corners of the gray and sodden morning. Tom galloped directly back upon the trail—the broad trail flailed by the stampeding herd. The mark of ruin was on the earth, the grass churned into the mud, here and there a cow that had gone down in the rush. Tom rode steadily, tired clear to his bones. Drab tendrils of rain hung raggedly from the dark sky; it would be a sullen day.

      Of a sudden he came to a coulee half awash with water. And he stopped dead, his eyes fastened there. Then he turned, pulled his revolver and shot thrice, spacing each shot. The extended riders swung and converged toward him. Those tarrying at the chuck wagon sprang to saddle and came on the dead run. Tom waited until they had assembled before pointing to the coulee.

      "Pony threw him, I guess. Must've been tangled in the herd. Never had a Chinaman's chance."

      Billy—the skeptic Billy who forever liked to contradict Quagmire—was sprawled in the coulee's bottom, half covered with water and mud, arms outflung, face down. And it was Quagmire who first got from his horse and descended. Somebody broke back for the chuck wagon, returning with a pair of shovels. And while the rain sluiced over the earth the crew stood grimly about as the grave was dug and Billy lifted into it. It was a hard silence to break, a difficult place to say what had to be said. When the last shovel of earth had been tamped down, Major Bob took off his hat.

      "If anybody wants to say a prayer, let him do it. I reckon nobody wants to, though. Well, men have got to die, and men have got to be buried. Where is a better place than here? We'll see the boy again, make no doubt of that. It's the same story for us all. The candle burns strongly, but the candle burns fast."

      Quagmire's voice rose angrily. "Well, Billy was a good gent—a good gent! Put another shovel o' dirt on that grave, Red. He shore was a good gent. He'll ride in marble halls! Dammit, Red, put another shovel o' earth on that grave! It's awful cold this mornin'!"

      V. MURDER IN THE CIRCLE G

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      The Circle G herd was flung to the four corners of the compass. Fifteen hundred of them were with the leaders; the other thousand had scattered over an area of ten miles, and for three days the outfit camped, rounding up the strays. In they came, by pairs and squads and fifties; gaunt-eyed kine that had left Texas with no flesh on their ribs and now were nothing but bone and skin. They grazed on the open prairie, they were off in the pockets of the broken land. From starlight to dusk the men of the Circle G rode a widening arc, following the plain prints in the soft and sandy soil. Tom counted a dozen dead animals along the path of the stampede, and later, when he rode into the rugged country to the west, he came upon a cutbank where a hundred of them had gone over and piled up, tier on tier, all dead. But on the morning of the fourth day Major Bob called a halt and flung his arm ahead, signal to be on with the drive.

      "We're still shy a hundred or more," said Tom. "Give us to-day and we'll find most of 'em off there in the coulees and cedar brakes."

      Major Bob shook his head. "I'll take the loss. No more time to be wasted. Riding north this morning I found the tracks of another herd. Somebody's before us, cutting west. San Saba!"

      The foreman rode slowly to the fore, eyeing the Gillettes warily. "Yes, suh."

      "Time for us to be watching our direction," said Major Bob. "Seems to me we ought to swing westerly somewhere round here. You remember the country from last year?"

      San Saba swept the horizon. "Yes, suh, tole'bly well."

      "Lead out, then. There's a party ahead of us. Steer as straight a line as you can."

      The foreman nodded. The swing and drag pressed against the herd. It moved forward, on the last leg of the journey. The sullen skies gave way, the sun beat down day after day, the prairie steamed and grew dry, the coulees were bereft of water once more. North they travelled, arrow straight, with San Saba in the lead, never saying a word, never revealing what thoughts stirred behind his small red eyes. They crossed the trail of the other herd and lost it at a point where it swung directly into the dark and timbered land westward. Tom kept his peace. Yet all the while a vague suspicion stirred in the back of his head. And one day he came alongside his father and spoke quietly.

      "You said you were bound for the country around the head waters of the Little Missouri, didn't you?"

      "Yes."

      "Then it seems to me we're going too far north. We've passed the Grand and it sticks to my mind the Little Missouri makes an ox bow and sweeps south. I think I remember it from a map I've seen."

      Major СКАЧАТЬ