The Coming of Cassidy, Clarence E. Mulford [best free novels .txt] 📗

I smell smoke again, an’ after a long time he comes back with some hot coffee an’ burned meat. I grab for th’ grub, an’ while I’m eatin’ I demands to know where I am.

“He laughs, real cheerful, an’ tells me. I’m under his waggin, surrounded by canvas an’ any G-d’s quantity of snow. Th’ drift over us is fifteen foot high, th’ wind has died down, an’ it’s still snowin’ so hard he can’t see twenty feet. It is also away down below freezin’.

“We stayed under that drift ‘most three weeks, livin’ on raw meat after our firewood gave out. We didn’t suffer none from th’ cold, though, under all that snow an’ with all th’ blankets we had. When it stopped snowin’ we discovered a drift shamefully high about a mile northeast of us, an’ from th’ smoke comin’ out of it I knew it was th’ bunkhouse.

“Well, to cut it short, it was. An’ mebby Buck wasn’t glad to see me! He was worried ‘most sick an’ as soon as we could, we got cayuses and started out to look for th’ others, scared stiff at what we expected to find.”

He paused and was silent a moment. “But only Ace was missin’,” he added. “We found him an’ th’ rustlers later, when th’ snow went off.”

He paused again and shook his head. “It shore was a miracle that we didn’t go with ‘em, all of us, except Buck. Pete was so plumb disgusted with travelin’ in th’ winter, an’ had lost his cayuses, that when Buck offers him Ace’s bunk he stays. An’ he ain’t never left us since. Huh! Cold? That cub don’t know nothin’ mebby he will when he grows up, but I dunno, at that. Idyho!”

IX THE DRIVE

THE Norther was a thing of the past, but it left its mark on Buck Peters, whose grimness of face told what the winter had been to him. His daily rides over the range, the reports of his men since that deadly storm had done a great deal to lift the sagging weight that rested on his shoulders; but he would not be sure until the round-up supplied facts and figures.

That the losses had not been greater he gave full credit to the valley with its arroyos, rock walls, draws, heavily grassed range and groves of timber; for the valley, checking the great southward drift by its steep ridges of rock, sheltered the herds in timber and arroyos and fed them on the rich profusion of its grasses, which, by some trick of the rushing winds, had been whirled clean of snow.

But over the cow-country, north, east, south and west, where vast ranges were unprotected against the whistling blasts from the north, the losses had been stupendous, appalling, stunning. Outfits had been driven on and on before the furious winds, sleepy and apathetic, drifting steadily southward in the white, stinging shroud to a drowsy death. Whole herds, blindly moving before the wind, left their weaker units in constantly growing numbers to mark the trail, and at last lay down to a sleep eternal. And astonishing and incredible were the distances traveled by some of those herds.

Following the Norther came another menace and one which easily might surpass the worst efforts of the blizzard. Warm winds blew steadily, a hot sun glared down on the snow-covered plain and then came torrents of rain which continued for days, turning the range into a huge expanse of water and mud and swelling the watercourses with turgid floods that swirled and roared above their banks. Should this be quickly followed by cold, even the splendid valley would avail nothing. Ice, forming over the grasses, would prove as deadly as a pestilence; the cattle, already weakened by the hardships of the Norther, and not having the instinct to break through the glassy sheet and feed on the grass underneath, would search in vain for food, and starve to death. The week that followed the cessation of the rains started gray hairs on the foreman’s head; but a warm, constant sun and warm winds dried off the water before the return of freezing weather. The herds were saved.

Relieved, Buck reviewed the situation. The previous summer had seen such great northern drives to the railroad shipping points in Kansas that prices fell until the cattlemen refused to sell. Rather than drive home again, the great herds were wintered on the Kansas ranges, ready to be hurled on the market when Spring came with better prices. Many ranches, mortgaged heavily to buy cattle, had been on the verge of bankruptcy, hoping feverishly for better prices the following year. Buck had taken advantage of the situation to stock his ranch at a cost far less than he had dared to dream. Then came the Norther and in the three weeks of devastating cold and high winds the Kansas ranges were swept clean of cattle, and even the ranges in the South were badly crippled. Knowing this, Buck also knew that the following Spring would show record high prices. If he had the cattle he could clean up a fortune for his ranch; and if his herd was the first big one to reach the railroad at Sandy Creek it would practically mean a bonus on every cow.

Under the long siege of uncertainty his impatience smashed through and possessed him as a fever and he ordered the calf round-up three weeks earlier than it ever had been held on the ranch. There was no need of urging his men to the task they, like himself, sprang to the call like springs freed from a restraining weight, and the work went on in a fever of haste. And he took his place on the firing line and worked even harder than his outfit of fanatics.

One day shortly after the work began a stranger rode up to him and nodded cheerfully. “Li’l early, ain’t you?” Buck grunted in reply and sent Skinny off at top speed to close a threatened gap in the lengthy driving line. “Goin’ to git ‘em on th’ trail early this year?” persisted the stranger. Buck, swayed by some swift intuition, changed his reply. “Oh, I dunno; I’m mainly anxious to see just what that storm did. An’ I hate th’ calf burnin’ so much I allus like to get it over quick.” He shouted angrily at the cook and waved his arms frantically to banish the chuck wagon. “He can make more trouble with that waggin than anybody I ever saw,” he snorted. “Get out of there, you fool!” he yelled, dashing off to see his words obeyed. The cook, grinning cheerfully at his foreman’s language and heat, forthwith chose a spot that was not destined to be the center of the cut-out herd. And when Buck again thought of the stranger he saw a black dot moving toward the eastern skyline.

The crowded days rolled on, measured full from dawn to dark, each one of them a panting, straining, trying ordeal. Worn out, the horses were turned back into the temporary corral or to graze under the eyes of the horse wranglers, and fresh ones took up their work; and woe unto the wranglers if the supply fell below the demand. For the tired men there was no relief, only a shifting in the kind of work they did, and they drove themselves with grave determination, their iron wills overruling their aching bodies. First came the big herds in the valley; then, sweeping north, they combed the range to the northern line in one grand, mad fury of effort that lasted day after day until the tally man joyously threw away his chewed pencil and gladly surrendered the last sheet to the foreman. The first half of the game was over. Gone as if it were a nightmare was the confusion of noise and dust and cows that hid a remarkable certainty of method. But as if to prove it not a dream, four thousand cows were held in three herds on the great range, in charge of the extra men.

Buck, leading the regular outfit from the north line and toward the bunkhouse, added the figures of the last tally sheet to the totals he had in a little book, and smiled with content. Behind him, cheerful as fools, their bodies racking with weariness, their faces drawn and gaunt, knowing that their labors were not half over, rode the outfit, exchanging chaff and banter in an effort to fool themselves into the delusion that they were fresh and “chipper.” Nearing the bunkhouse they cheered lustily as they caught sight of the hectic cook laboring profanely with two balking pintos that had backed his wagon half over the edge of a barranca and then refused to pull it back again. Cookie’s reply, though not a cheer, was loud and pregnant with feeling. To think that he had driven those two animals for the last two weeks from one end of the ranch to the other without a mishap, and then have them balance him and his wagon on the crumbling edge of a twenty-foot drop when not a half mile from the bunkhouse, thus threatening the loss of the wagon and all it contained and the mangling of his sacred person! And to make it worse, here came a crowd of whooping idiots to feast upon his discomfiture.

The outfit, slowing so as not to frighten the devilish pintos and start them backing again, drew near; and suddenly the air became filled with darting ropes, one of which settled affectionately around Cookie’s apoplectic neck. In no time the strangling, furious dough-king was beyond the menace of the crumbling bank, flat on his back in the wagon, where he had managed to throw himself to escape the whistling hoofs that quickly turned the dashboard into matchwood. When he managed to get the rope from his neck he arose, unsteady with rage, and choked as he tried to speak before the grinning and advising outfit. Before he could get command over his tongue the happy bunch wheeled and sped on its way, shrieking with mirth unholy. They had saved him from probable death, for Cookie was too obstinate to have jumped from the wagon; but they not only forfeited all right to thanks and gratitude, but deserved horrible deaths for the conversation they had so audibly carried on while they worked out the cook’s problem. And their departing words and gestures made homicide justifiable and a duty.

It was in this frame of mind that Cookie watched them go.

Buck, emerging from the bunkhouse in time to see the rescue, leaned against the door and laughed as he had not laughed for one heartbreaking winter. Drying his eyes on the back of his hand, he looked at the bouncing, happy crowd tearing southward with an energy of arms and legs and lungs that seemed a miracle after the strain of the round-up. Just then a strange voice made him wheel like a flash, and he saw Billy Williams sitting solemnly on his horse near the corner of the house.

“Hullo, Williams,” Buck grunted, with no welcoming warmth in his voice. “What th’ devil brings you up here?”

“I want a job,” replied Billy. The two, while never enemies nor interested in any mutual disagreements, had never been friends. They never denied a nodding acquaintance, nor boasted of it. “That Norther shore raised h—l. There’s ten men for every job, where I came from.”

The foreman, with that quick decision that was his in his earlier days, replied crisply. “It’s your’n. Fifty a month, to start.”

“Keno. Lemme chuck my war-bag through that door an’ I’m ready,” smiled Billy. He believed he would like this man when he knew him better. “I thought th’ Diamond Bar, over east a hundred mile, had weathered th’ storm lucky. You got ‘em