Kitabı oku: «With Hoops of Steel», sayfa 5
CHAPTER VIII
The round-up was almost finished, and, so far, Emerson Mead had won the day. Backed always by his two friends, he had compelled the recognition of every general claim which had been made, and in most of the daily quarrels his side had come out victor.
Toward the end of the round-up, Mead and two vaqueros, accompanied by Tuttle and Ellhorn, had worked all day, getting together a scattered band of cattle, and at night had them bunched at a water hole near the edge of his range. The next day they were to be driven a few miles farther and joined with the droves collected by the Fillmore Company’s men and by two or three of his neighbors for the last work of the spring round-up. In the evening one of the cow-boys was sent to the ranch house with a message to the foreman, and a little later the other was seized with a sudden illness from having drunk at an alkali spring during the day. Mead, Tuttle and Ellhorn then arranged to share the night in watches of three hours each with the cattle. Mead’s began at midnight. He saddled and mounted his horse and began the monotonous patrol of the herd.
There were some three hundred steers in the bunch of cattle. They lay, sleeping quietly, so closely huddled together that there was barely room for them to move. Occasionally, one lying at the outer edge got up, stretched himself, nibbled a few bunches of grass, and then lay down again. Now and then, as one changed his position, a long, blowing breath, or a satisfied grunt and groan, came out of the darkness. When Mead started his horse on the slow walk round and round the sleeping herd the sky was clear. In its violet-blue the stars were blazing big and bright, and he said to himself that the cattle would sleep quietly and he would probably have an uneventful watch. He let the horse poke round the circle at its own pace, while his thoughts wandered back to his last visit to Las Plumas and hovered about the figure of Marguerite Delarue as she stood beside her gate and took little Paul from his hands. With a sudden warming of the heart he saw again her tall figure in the pink gown, with the rose bloom in her cheeks and the golden glimmer in her brown hair and the loving mother-look in her eyes as she smiled at the happy child. But with a sigh and a shake of the head he checked his thoughts and sent them to the mass-meeting and the days he had spent in the jail.
Presently it occurred to him that his watch must be nearly over and he looked up at the Great Dipper, swinging on its north star pivot. Then he smiled at himself, for it seemed scarcely to have changed position since he had mounted his horse. “Not an hour yet,” was his mental comment. Clouds were beginning to roll up from the horizon, and he could hear low mutterings of thunder and among the mountain tops see occasional flashes of lightning. Soon the sky was heavily overcast, and the darkness was so dense that it seemed palpable, like an enveloping, smothering cover, which might almost be grasped in the hands, torn down and thrown away. Mead could not see the horse’s head, so, letting the reins lie loosely on its neck, he allowed the animal to pick its own way around the circle.
The cattle began to show signs of nervousness, and from the huddled mass there came sounds of uneasy movements. Mead urged his horse into a quicker walk and with one leg over its neck as they went round and round the herd, he sang to them in a crooning monotone, like a mother’s lullaby to a babe that is just dropping into dreamland. It quieted the incipient disturbance, the rumbling thunder ceased for a time, and after a little moving about the cattle settled down to sleep again.
Suddenly, without forerunner or warning, a vivid flash of lightning cleft the clouds and a roar of thunder rattled and boomed from the mountain peaks. And on the instant, as one animal, hurled by sudden fright, the whole band of cattle was on its feet and plunging forward. There was a snorting breath, a second of muffled noise as they sprang to their feet, and the whole stampeded herd was rushing pell-mell into the darkness. They chanced to head toward Mead, and he, idling along with one leg over his saddle horn, with a quick jab of the spur sent his pony in a long, quick leap to one side, barely in time to escape their maddened rush. A second’s delay and he and his horse would have been thrown down by the sheer overpowering mass of the frenzied creatures and trampled under their hoofs, for the horn of a plunging steer tore the leg of his overalls as the mad animals passed. Away went the herd, silent, through the dense blackness of the night, running at the top of their speed. And Mead, spurring his horse, was after them without a moment’s loss of time, galloping close beside the frightened beasts, alertly watchful lest they might suddenly change their course and trample him down. They ran in a close mass, straight ahead, paying heed to nothing, beating under their hoofs whatever stood in their way.
They rushed crazily on through the darkness which was so intense that Mead’s face seemed to cleave it as the head cleaves water when one dives. He galloped so close to the running band that by reaching out one arm he could almost touch one or another heaving side. But he could see nothing, not a tossing horn nor a lumbering back of the whole three hundred steers, except when an occasional flash of lightning gave him a second’s half-blinded glimpse of the plunging mass. By hearing rather than by sight he could outline the rushing huddle at his right hand. And watching it as intently as if it had been a rattlesnake ready to strike, he galloped on by its side in a wild race through the darkness, over the plain, up and down hills, through cactus and sagebrush, over boulders and through treacherous, tunneled prairie dog towns, plunging headlong into whatever might be in front of them.
From the rushing herd beside him there came the muffled roar of their thousand hoofs, overtoned by the constant popping and scraping of their clashing horns. The noise filled his ears and could not quite be drowned even by the rattling peals of thunder. Swift drops of rain stung his face and the water of a pelting shower dripped from his hat brim and trickled from his boot heels. The beating rain, the vivid flashes of lightning and the loud peals of thunder drove the maddened creatures on at a still faster pace. Mead put frequent spurs to his horse and held on to the side of the mob of cattle, bent only on going wherever they went and being with them at the dawn, when it might be possible to get them under control.
They plunged on at a frenzied gallop through the darkness and the storm, and when at last the sky brightened and a wet, gray light made the earth dimly visible, Mead could see beside him a close huddle of lumbering, straining backs and over it a tangle of tossing and knocking horns. The crowding, crazy herd, and he beside it, were rushing pell-mell down a long, sloping hill. With one keen, sweeping glance through the dim light and the streaming rain he saw a clump of trees, which meant water, at the foot of the hill, and near it a herd of cattle, some lying down, and some standing with heads up, looking toward him; while his own senseless mass of thundering hoofs and knocking horns was headed straight toward them.
With a whooping yell he dashed at the head of the plunging herd, sent a pistol ball whizzing in front of their eyes and with a quick, sharp turn leaped his horse to one side, barely in time to escape the hoofs and horns of the nearest steer. They swerved a little, and making a detour he came yelling down upon them again, with his horse at its topmost speed, and sent a bullet crashing through the skull of the creature in the lead. It dropped to its knees, struggled a moment, fell over dead, and the herd turned a little more to the right. Spurring his horse till it leaped, straining, with outstretched legs, he charged the head of the rushing column again, and bending low fired his revolver close over their heads. Again they swerved a little to the right, and dashing past the foremost point he sent a pistol ball into the eye of the leader. It fell, struggling, and with a sudden jerk he swung the horse round on its hind legs and struck home the spurs for a quick, long leap, for he was directly in the front of the racing herd. As the horse’s fore feet came down on the wet earth it slipped, and fell to its knees, scrambled an instant and was up again, and leaped to one side with a bleeding flank, torn by the horns of the leading steer. The startled animals had made a more decided turn to the right, and by scarcely more than a hand’s breadth horse and rider had escaped their hoofs. The crazy, maddened creatures slackened their pace and the outermost ones and those in the rear began to drop off, one by one, grazing and tailing off behind in a straggling procession. Another rush, and Mead had the mob of cattle, half turned back on itself, struggling, twisting and turning in a bewildered mass. The stampeding impulse had been checked, but the senseless brutes were not yet subdued to their usual state.
Glancing down the hill to the clump of trees, he saw men rushing about and horses being saddled. Shouting and yelling, he rushed again at the turned flank of his herd, firing his pistol under their noses, forcing the leaders this time to turn tail completely and trot toward the rear of the band. The rest followed, and with another furious yell he swerved them again to the right and forced them into a circle, a sort of endless chain of cattle, trotting round and round. He knew they would keep up that motion until they were thoroughly subdued and restored to their senses, and would then scatter over the hillside to graze.
He had conquered the crazy herd of cattle, but four horsemen were galloping up the hill, and he knew they were part of the Fillmore Company’s outfit. He reloaded his revolver, put it in its holster, and rode a little way toward them. Then he checked his horse and waited, with his back to the “milling” herd, for them to come near enough to hail. Through the lances of the rain he could see that one of the men was Jim Halliday, the deputy sheriff from Las Plumas, who had arrested him on the night of the mass-meeting. Another he recognized as the Fillmore Company’s foreman, and the two others he knew were cow-boys. One of these he saw was a red-headed, red-whiskered Mexican known as Antone Colorow – Red Antony – who was famous in all that region for the skill with which he could throw the lariat. His eye was accurate and his wrist was quick and supple, and it was his greatest pride in life that the rope never missed landing where he meant it should.
CHAPTER IX
The thunder clap which frightened the herd of cattle also roused Tuttle and Ellhorn, and through half-awakened consciousness they heard the noise of the stampede.
“What’s that! The cattle?” exclaimed Tuttle, rising on his elbow. Ellhorn jumped to his feet.
“Tom, there goes ten thousand dollars on the hoof and a-runnin’ like hell!”
“Where are the horses? Come on, Nick! Buck! Buck! Hello, Buck! Whoa! Here’s mine, Nick! Yours is over by the chuck wagon!”
Fumbling in the darkness, they hurried to release and saddle the hobbled horses, and, calling to the sick cow-boy that when the foreman should come in the morning he must make haste after them, they jumped upon the ponies and set out on the gallop through the darkness to trail the noise of the running cattle. With every flash of lightning Nick Ellhorn looked about with keen, quick glances, and with half-blinded eyes located mountain peaks and arroyos, considered the direction in which they were headed, and the general lay of the land, and after a time he broke out with a string of oaths:
“Tommy, them cow-brutes are headed straight for Sweetwater Springs, and the Fillmore outfit’s camped there to-night! Jim Halliday is there, and so is that measly Wellesly, if he hasn’t gone back to town. He was out here two days ago. Emerson and the cattle will sure strike the Springs just about daylight, if they keep up their gait and nothing stops ’em!”
Tuttle swore angrily under his breath. “That’s just the snap they’ve been waitin’ for all this time! Their only show to get Emerson, or to kill him either, is to come down on him half a dozen to one, and they know it. Well, if they kill him he won’t be the first to drop – nor the last, either,” he added with a little break in his voice, as he gave his sombrero a nervous pull over his forehead.
“I reckon,” Ellhorn replied, “they don’t want to kill Emerson, as long as you and me are alive. They know what would happen afterward. Jim Halliday has got that same old warrant over there, and what they want to do is to shut him up in jail again.”
The first stinging drops of rain dashed in their faces and they buttoned their coats and galloped on in silence. Tuttle was the first to speak again:
“What’s that scrub Wellesly doing out here?”
“I don’t know, unless he came to bring ’em some brains. They need some bad enough. Wellesly and Colonel Whittaker have been ridin’ around over the range for the last two or three days, though I didn’t know about it till yesterday. I guess they’ve been so everlastingly beaten on every proposition that he thought he’d better come out himself and see if he couldn’t save the day for ’em on something.”
They hurried on in the trail of the roar from the stampeding herd, but suddenly Ellhorn’s horse struck his fore feet on the slope of a wet and slippery mound beside a prairie dog’s hole. Before the animal could recover, its feet slid down the bank into the mouth of the hole with a forward jerk, and it came down with a groaning cry of pain. Ellhorn rose to his feet in the stirrups, and as the horse struck the ground he stood astride its body and with a quick leap jumped to one side unhurt. By the light of a match, which Tuttle sheltered under his sombrero, standing bareheaded, meanwhile, with the rain running in streams down his neck, Ellhorn examined the fallen horse.
“He’s broke both his forelegs, Tom. There’s only one thing to do with him, now.”
Tuttle stroked the beast’s nose. “I reckon so, Nick. You-all better do it.” Then he turned away, while Ellhorn put his revolver to the horse’s head and ended its pain.
“Now, Tom, you go on after Emerson as fast as you can and I’ll hoof it back to camp and get Bob’s horse.”
“No, you-all jump on behind me, Nick, and we’ll go on together. Emerson will need us both in the morning. If that crowd gets after him maybe he can stand ’em off till we-all get there. But he’ll need us by daylight, Nick.”
“I ’low you’re right, Tommy, but ain’t you on that horse that always bucks at double?”
“Yes, but I reckon he’ll have to pack double, if you and me fork him.”
“You bet he will!” and Ellhorn leaped to the horse’s back behind Tuttle. “Whoo-oo-ee-ee!” Two pairs of spurs dug the horse’s flank and a rein as tight as a steel band held its head so high that bucking was impossible. The horse jumped and danced and stood on its hind legs and snorted defiance and with stiffened legs did its best to hump its back and dismount its unwelcome double burden. It might as well have tried to get rid of its own mane. The riders swayed and bent with its motion as if they were a part of its own bounding body. Tuttle gave the animal its head just enough to allow it to work off its disapproval harmlessly, and for the rest, it did nothing that he did not allow it to do. Finally it recognized the mastery, and, pretending to be dreadfully frightened by a sudden vivid flash of lightning, it started off on a run.
“Hold on there, old man!” said Tuttle. “This won’t do with two heavy weights on top of you. You’ve got to pack double, but you’d better go slow about it.”
Calming the horse down to a quick trot, they hurried on in the wake of the stampede. They had lost all sound of the herd, and the trail which the ploughing hoofs had made at the beginning of the storm had been nearly obliterated by the beating rain. Once they thought they caught the sound again and must be off the track. They followed it and found it was the roaring of a high wave coming down an arroyo from a cloudburst farther up in the mountain. Hurrying back, they kept to the general direction the cattle had taken until the trail began to show more plainly in the soaked earth, like a strip of ploughed land across the hills. When they reached the next arroyo, they found it a torrent of roaring water. The greater part of the cloudburst had flowed down this channel, and where Mead and the cattle had to cross merely wet sand and soaked earth, they would have to swim.
“See here, Tom,” said Ellhorn, “two’s too much for this beast in the water. You take care of my belt and gun and I’ll swim across.”
“That’s a mighty swift current, Nick. Don’t you think we-all can make it together?”
“I don’t want to take any chances. Buck can get across with you all right, but if he’s got us both on him he might go down and then we’d have to follow Emerson on foot. We’re coverin’ ground almighty slow, anyway. I’m the best swimmer, and you-all can take care of my boots and gun.”
They waited a few moments for a flash of lightning to show them the banks of the arroyo. By its light they saw a water course thirty feet wide and probably ten feet deep, bank-full of a muddy, foaming flood, in which waves two feet high roared after one another, carrying clumps of bushes, stalks of cactus, bones, and other debris. As they plunged into the torrent, Ellhorn seized the tail of Tuttle’s horse, and, holding it with one hand and swimming with the other, made good progress. But in mid-stream a big clump of mesquite struck him in the side, stunning him for an instant, and he let go his hold upon the pony’s tail. A high wave roared down upon him the next moment, and carried him his length and more down stream. He fought with all his strength against the swift current, but, faint and stunned, could barely hold his own. He shouted to Tuttle, who was just landing, and Tom threw the end of his lariat far out into the middle of the stream. Ellhorn felt the rope across his body, grasped it and called to Tuttle to pull.
“Tommy,” he said, when safe on land, “I hope we’ll find the whole Fillmore outfit just a-walkin’ all over Emerson. I don’t want more’n half an excuse to get even with ’em for this trip. Sure and I wish I had ’em all here right now! I’m just in the humor to make sieves of ’em!”
CHAPTER X
Emerson Mead waited until the four horsemen were within two hundred yards of him, and then he called out a good-natured “hello.” The others checked their horses to a slow walk, and after a moment one of them hastily shouted an answering salutation. Mead instantly called in reply:
“I reckon you’d better stay where you are, boys. We can talk this way just as well as any other.” The others halted and he went on: “Suppose you say, right now, whether you want anything particular.”
They looked at one another, apparently surprised by this speech, and presently the foreman said:
“We thought you must be having trouble with your cattle. Stampede on you?”
“They’re all right now. They’re ‘milling,’ and won’t give me any more trouble. But I reckon you didn’t ride up here to ask me if my cattle had stampeded. You better talk straight just what you do want.”
They hesitated again, looking at one another as if their plans had miscarried. “They expected I’d begin poppin’ at ’em and give ’em an excuse to open out on me all at once,” Mead thought. Then he called out:
“Jim, you out here to buy some cattle? Can I sell you some of mine?”
“You know I don’t want to buy cattle,” Halliday replied, sulkily.
“No? Then maybe you’ve come to ask me if it’s goin’ to rain?” Mead smilingly replied.
“I reckon you know what I want, Emerson Mead,” Halliday said angrily, as if nettled by Mead’s assured, good-natured tone and manner. “You know you’re a fugitive from justice, and that it’s my duty to take you back to jail.”
“Oh, then you want me!” said Mead, as if greatly surprised.
“That’s what, old man!” Halliday’s voice and manner suddenly became genial. He thought Mead was going to surrender, as he had done before. He had no desire for a battle, even four to one, with the man who had the reputation of being the best and coolest shot in the southwest, for he knew that he would be the first target for that unerring aim, and he was accordingly much relieved by the absence of defiance and anger in Mead’s manner.
“You want me, do you?” said Mead, his voice suddenly becoming sarcastic. “Is that what you’ve been waitin’ around the Fillmore ranch the last three weeks for? Why didn’t you come straight over to my house and say so, like a man who wasn’t afraid? You want me, do you? Well, now, what are you goin’ to do about it?” There was a taunt in Mead’s tone that stirred the others to anger. Mead knew perfectly well what his reputation was, and he knew, too, that they were afraid of him.
“You won’t surrender?”
“Whenever you’ve got any evidence for a warrant to stand on I’ll give myself up. I let you take me in before to stop trouble, but I won’t do it again, and you, and all your outfit, had better let me alone. I’m not goin’ to be run in on any fool charge fixed up to help the Fillmore Company do me up. That’s all there is about it, and you-all had better turn tail and go back to camp.”
While he was speaking the foreman said something to Antone Colorow, and the man left the group and trotted away toward Mead’s left as if he were going back to camp. Without seeming to notice his departure, Mead watched the cow-boy’s actions from a corner of his eye while he listened to Jim Halliday:
“Now, Emerson, be reasonable about this matter and give yourself up. You know I’ve got to take you in, and I don’t want to have any gun-fight over it. The best thing you can do is to stand trial, and clear yourself, if you can. That’ll end the whole business.”
Antone Colorow turned and came galloping back, his lariat in his hand. Mead’s revolver was still untouched in his holster, and his horse, standing with drooping mane and tail, faced Halliday and the others. The cow-boy came galloping through the rain from Mead’s left, and so far behind him that he could barely see the man from the corner of his eye. He was apparently unconscious of Antone’s approach as he quietly replied to Halliday, but his fingers tightened on the bridle, and the horse, answering a closer pressure of heel and knee, suddenly lifted its head and stiffened its lax muscles into alertness.
“I’d hate to make you lose your job, Jim,” said Mead, smiling, “but you can’t expect a fellow to let himself be arrested for nothing, just so you can keep a soft snap as deputy sheriff. You get some evidence against me, and then I’ll go with you as quiet as any maverick you ever saw.”
As Mead spoke he was listening intently. He heard Antone’s horse stop a little way behind him, and, as the last word left his lips, the hiss of the rope through the air. With a dig of the spurs and a sharp jerk of the bridle the horse reared. The noose fell over Mead’s head, but his revolver was already in his hand, and with a turn as quick as a lightning flash he swung the horse round on its hind legs in a quarter circle and before the astounded Mexican could tighten the loop there were two flashing reports and a bullet had crashed through each wrist. Antone’s arms dropped on his saddle, and through the shrill din of the mingled Spanish and English curses he shrieked at Mead came the sharp cracking of three revolvers. Emerson Mead felt one bullet whistle through his sleeve and one through the rim of his sombrero, as, with the rope still on his shoulders, he whirled his horse round again with his smoking revolver leveled at Halliday.
“Whoo-oo-oo-ee-ee!” Ellhorn’s long-drawn-out yell came floating down from the top of the hill and close on its heels the report of a pistol.
“That was a very pretty trick, Emerson,” said the foreman, in a voice which tried hard to sound unconcerned, “even if it was my man you played it on.”
“It will be played on you if you make another break,” Mead replied in an even tone, with his revolver still leveled at Halliday. He turned his horse slightly so that a sidewise glance up the hill showed Tom Tuttle and Nick Ellhorn, guns in hand, both astride one horse, coming toward them on a gallop. Tuttle’s deep-lunged voice bellowed down the slope:
“We’re a-comin’, Emerson! Hold ’em off! We’re a-comin’!” and another pistol ball sung through the rain and dropped beside Halliday’s horse. Mead flung the rope from his shoulders and grinned at Halliday and his party.
“Well, what are you going to do now? Do you want to fight?”
Halliday put his gun in its holster: “I don’t want any pitched battle over this business. We’ll call the game off for this morning.”
“It’s all right, boys,” Mead yelled to his friends. “Don’t shoot any more.”
“You’re a fool, Emerson,” Halliday went on, “or you’d give yourself up, go down to Plumas and clear yourself, – if you can – and have this thing over with. For we’re goin’ to get you yet, somehow.”
Antone Colorow spurred his horse close to Mead and with all the varied and virulent execration of which the cow-boy is capable shouted at him:
“Yes, and if they don’t get you, I will! I come after you till I get you, and I come a-smoking every time! You won’t need a trial after I get through with you! You’ve done me up, but I’ll get even and more too!”
Mead listened quietly, looking the man in the eye. “Look here,” he said, “what did you reckon would happen to any man who tried to rope me? Did you think I’d let you-all drag me into camp at your horse’s tail? I’m sorry I had to do that, but I didn’t want to kill you. Here, Jim, you fellows better tie up Antone’s wrists.” Mead offered his own handkerchief to help out the bandages, and, suddenly remembering the whisky flask in his breast pocket, took it out and told the wounded man to finish its contents.
While this was going on Tuttle and Ellhorn rode up. The rain had stopped, and through a rift in the eastern clouds the level, red rays of the sun were shining. Mead met their eager, anxious faces with a smile.
“It’s all right, boys. Jim says the game’s off for this morning.”
Nick and Tom turned black and scowling looks on Halliday and his party, and the deputy sheriff, manifestly nervous, rode toward them with an exaggeratedly genial greeting:
“Howdy, boys! Put up your guns! We ain’t goin’ to have any gun-fight this morning.”
“How do you know we ain’t?” growled Tom.
“Well, Emerson says so,” he replied, with an apprehensive glance at Mead.
“Well,” said Nick, “if Emerson says so it’s all right. But we’ve had a devil of a ride, and we’d like to get square somehow!”
Mead laughed. “You can tally up with Jim, who’s going to lose his job because I’m too mean to let him run me in.”
Tuttle and Ellhorn turned grimly joyous faces toward Halliday. “If you want to arrest Emerson this morning,” said Ellhorn, “just begin right now! We’re three to three! Come on now and try it!”
The officer edged his horse away: “I’ll wait till the round-up is over. Then you can’t have the excuse that the Fillmore Company’s doing it. But I’ll have him yet, and don’t you forget it!”
“Just like you got him this time!” taunted Ellhorn.
Halliday turned back a red and angry face: “I’ll have him,” he yelled, “if I have to kill the whole damned three of you to get him!”
A derisive shout of laughter was the only answer he received as he and his party galloped back to camp.
