Bat Wing Bowles Part 19

"Don't know," grumbled Brig. "She's got us all a-guessin'. All I know is, I won't last long as a straw-boss. You wait till we git up in the mountains where old Henry can't git no more hands, and then watch the fur begin to fly. Didn't they all eat dirt to git took back fer green hands? Didn't you see 'em talkin' it over? All they got to do now is to git _us_ fired, and then _they'll_ be the top hands. Huh! That's easy!"

The second-in-command would say no more, but a few days gave token of the coming storm. As they pulled in at the upper ranch, where cowboys and "station-men" did duty all the year, the stray men from other outfits threw in with them again and increased their number to a scant twenty. Bar Seven was there, after a return to his own headquarters, and several of the other men; but the men who dwelt in the hills were of a different breed, with hair long and beards scrubby, and overalls greasy from lonely cooking; and they looked at Bowles askance.

"Who's that feller?" they asked; and the answer was always the same, if they asked it of a Texan.

"Oh, that's a young English dude," they said. "He's got his eye on Dixie."

Strange how these men of the frontier were so quick to read his heart--Bowles had talked with Dixie Lee only twice in a month but they had read him like a book. Or perhaps it was just plain jealousy, since they, too, had their eyes on Dixie--jealousy and a sneaking knowledge that he had a chance to win. They cast appraising glances at his expensive saddle, his silver-mounted spurs and eleven-dollar Stetson, and hated him for his prosperity; they watched him work in the corral, and scoffed at him for his horsemans.h.i.+p; and when he talked, they listened to his broad "a's," his soft "r's" and his purling "er's" with wonder and contempt. Not that they listened very much, for they took pains to break in on him as grown folks do when a child is speaking; but they curled their lips at his coming, and exchanged glances behind his back, and finally, as the work progressed, their hostility began to take form.

For three days the outfit lay at headquarters while fresh horses were caught and shod; and here Hardy Atkins and his followers suffered the humiliation of losing their mounts. As top hands they had taken the pick of the remuda, the fleetest runners, the gentlest night horses, the best-reined cutting horses; but now in the reapportionment they found themselves reduced to "skates and bronks." Three days of shoeing the skates, and especially the bronks, did not tend to sweeten their tempers any, and as they moved up to Warm Springs and began to rake the range the spirit of rebellion broke loose.

Warm Springs lies at the bottom of a gash in the face of the mesa, and the cow-trails lead to it for miles. Above there is no water, below it is shut in by the rim of the canon, and the cattle file down the long trail day and night. Consequently the nearby gra.s.s is fed down to the roots, and the remuda had to be held up on the high mesa. All day the horse wrangler grazed his charges in distant swales, bringing them in for water and the horse-changing morning and noon; and at night the cowboys watched them beneath the cold stars--that is, when they kept awake.

On the second morning three horses were missing, the next day two more, and on the next eight horses more were gone and several men were practically afoot.

"Who let those horses get away?" demanded Henry Lee, as he rounded up his night herders by the corral.

"Not me!" said the members of the first guard.

"We never stopped ridin'," said the second guard.

"They was gone when we come on," said the third guard.

And the fourth guard swore they were innocent.

"Well, somebody's been asleep--that's all I know!" said Henry Lee; and he sent off two mountain men on their best mounts to trail the runaways down and bring them back. Then he listened to the mutual recriminations of the night herders, and guessed shrewdly at who was at fault. For when the night herders get to quarreling among themselves, waking each other up ahead of time, and sleeping on one hand till it slips and wakes them up, that is a sure sign and precursor of greater troubles to come, and it calls for an iron hand. Even as he was listening, a row broke out in the round corral, where the cowboys were roping their mounts.

"Turn that hawse loose!" roared Brigham, suddenly mounting up on the fence.

"I will not!" retorted the voice of Hardy Atkins from within.

"He belongs to my mount!" protested Brigham with appropriate oaths.

"I don't care whose mount he belongs to!" snarled the ex-straw-boss, dragging the horse out by the neck. "You top hands mash yore ear all night and let my hawses drift--and then expect me to walk. You bet yore boots that don't go--I'll take the best I can find. You can't put _me_ afoot!"

"I'll put you on yore back," rumbled Brigham, dropping truculently down from his perch, "if you try to git gay with me. You may be from Bitter Crick, Texas, but you got to whip me before you break into my mount!"

"Well, he's got the Bat Wing brand on 'im," sulked Atkins; "that's all I know. And as long as they's a hawse left in the remuda----"

"Here, here!" said Henry Lee, walking in on the squabble. "What's all this about? What are you doing with Brig's hawse, Hardy? Why don't you ride your own?"

"Well, these hyer nester kids and Mormons went to sleep on guard and let my top hawses pull--now I got nothin' but bronks to ride!"

"Well, ride 'em, then!" commanded Henry Lee severely. "And, another thing, Mr. Atkins! Next time you've got a grievance, come to me--don't try to correct it yourself!"

He regarded his former straw-boss with narrowing eyes, and Atkins roped out a bronk; but in the evening he took the first occasion to pick a quarrel with Brigham. They were gathered about the fire in the scant hour between branding and first guard, and Brigham was telling a story.

As was his custom, Henry Lee had pitched his tent to one side, for he never mixed with his men; and Brig had the stage to himself.

"Well, you fellers talk about gittin' lost," he was saying; "you ought to be up in that Malapai country. We had a land-sharp along--claimed to know the world by sections--and he----"

"Aw, what do you know about the Malapai country?" broke in Atkins rudely. "You cain't even lead a circle on the Black Mesa and git back to camp the same day! My hawse give out this mornin' tryin' to----"

"Say," interposed Brigham peaceably, "you know what the boss said this mornin'--if you got any grievance, tell it to him. I'm tellin' these gentlemen a story."

"A dam' lie would come nearer to it!" sneered Hardy, curling his lips with spleen; and at the word Brigham rose swiftly to his feet.

"If you're lookin' fer trouble, Mr. Atkins," he said, taking off his hat and laying it carefully to one side, "you don't need to go no further.

And if you _ain't_," he cried, suddenly advancing with blood in his eye, "you take back what you said, or I'll slap yore face off!"

The astounding ease with which he got a rise out of his adversary seemed to take all the fight out of Hardy Atkins, and he mumbled some vague words of apology; but Brigham was hard to mollify.

"Well, that's all right," he grumbled. "It ain't my fault if you go on a drunk and lose yore job, and it ain't my fault if the boss makes me straw--but don't you try to crowd me, Hardy Atkins, or I'll make you match yore words. The man never lived that can call me a liar and git away with it, and I'll thank you to let me alone."

He went back and sat down by the fire, puffing and panting with the violence of his emotions; but as he gazed thoughtfully into the fire and no one interrupted his mood he fell into a cynical philosophy.

"Mighty funny about these Tee-hannos," he said, glancing around at the respectful company. "They say, back in Texas, when a man gits where he can count fifty they set him to teachin' school--and when he can count up to a hundred he gits on to himse'f and leaves the cussed country.

Ordinary folks kin only count to twenty--ten fingers and ten toes, like an Injun. It's sure a fine country to emigrate from."

He looked about with a superior smile, and Buck Buchanan took up the cudgels for Texas.

"They tell me, Brig," he said, "that them Mormons down on the river cain't talk no mo'--jest kinder git along by signs and a kind of sheep-blat they have."

"Nope," answered Brigham; "they is sech people, but they don't live along the Heely. Them fellers you're thinkin' of is in the goat business--they don't say _baaa_, like a sheep; they go _maaa_ like a goat. I've heard tell of them, too. It seems they don't wear no pants--nothin' but s.h.i.+rts. They live on them goat ranches back in western Texas."

He paused and looked around for appreciation, but only the nester kids smiled.

"I was drivin' a bunch of strays down through that Mormon country one time," explained Buck Buchanan; "that's where I got the idee. That's a great country, ain't it, Brig? Lots of houses, too. I remember I stopped one time at a street crossin' and they was houses on all four corners.

They was a lot of kids playin' around, and I asked one of 'em whose houses they were, and he says: 'My father's.'

"'How comes yore father to have so many houses?' I says. 'Does he rent 'em?'

"'No, sir,' the kid says, 'he lives in 'em. Don't you know him? He's the bishop!'"

A roar of laughter followed this brutal innuendo, but Brigham was not set back. His mind had become accustomed to all such jests.

"Aw, you're jealous," he grunted, and let the Gentiles rage until, as the talk ran on, he gradually a.s.sumed the lead.

"That's one thing you'll never find around a Mormon town," he began, still speaking with philosophical calm; "you'll never find no Texican.

Of course, a Mormon has to work, and that bars most of 'em at the start; but, I dunno, seems like the first settlers took a prejudice ag'inst 'em. I remember my old man tellin' how it come that way--course they must be mistaken, but the Mormons think a Texan ain't got no sense.

"It seems the Mormons was the first folks to settle along the Heely, and my grandpaw was one of the leaders--he killed a lot of Injuns, believe me! But one day when he was gittin' kinder old and feeble-like, he got a notion in his head that he wanted a squirrel-skin, and so he called in my father and said:

"'Son, you take yore rifle and go out and git me a gray squirrel; and be careful not to shoot 'im in the head, because I want the brains to tan the skin with.'

"So my father he went up in the pines and hunted around; but the only squirrel he could find was stickin' his head over the limb, and rather than not git nothin' he shot him anyhow. Well, he brought him back to the old man and he said to 'im:

"'I'm mighty sorry, Dad; the squirrels was awful scarce, and rather than not git any I had to shoot this one through the head.'