Hidden Water Part 14

"Whose sheep were they?" inquired Hardy, as he sat down to a hasty meal.

"Don't ask me, boy," replied Johnson. "I never had time to find out.

One of them Mexicans took a shot at Rye and I pulled my gun on him, and then the boss herder he jumped in, and there we had it, back and forth. He claimed I was tryin' to stompede his sheep, but I _knowed_ his greaser had tried to shoot my dog, and I told him so! And I told him furthermore that the first sheep or sheepman that p'inted his head down the Pocket trail would stop lead; and every one tharafter, as long as I could draw a bead. And by Gawd, I mean it!" He struck his gnarled fist upon the table till every tin plate jumped, and his fiery eyes burned savagely as he paced about the room.

At first peep of dawn Bill Johnson was in the saddle, his long-barrelled revolver thrust pugnaciously into his boot, his 30-30 carbine across his arm, and his hounds slouching dutifully along in the rear. Close behind followed Hardy, bound for the Peaks, but though the morning was cold he had stripped off his coat and shaps, and everything which might conceal a weapon, leaving even his polished Colt's in his blankets. If the sheep were to be turned now it could never be by arms. The sheepmen had stolen a march, Creede and his cowboys were far away, and his only hope was the olive branch of peace. Yet as he spurred up the Carrizo trail he felt helpless and abused, like a tried soldier who is sent out unarmed by a humanitarian commander. Only one weapon was left to him--the one which even Jim Swope had noticed--his head; and as he worked along up the hogback which led down from the shoulder of the Four Peaks he schooled himself to a Spartan patience and fort.i.tude.

At last from a high cliff which overshadowed the broad canon of the middle fork, he looked down and saw the sheep, like a huge, dirty-brown blot, pouring in a hundred diverging lines down the valley and feeding as they came. Higher and higher up the sides the old ewes fought their way, plucking at the long spears of gra.s.s which grew among the rocks; and the advance guard, hurrying forward, nipped eagerly at the browse and foliage as they pa.s.sed, until, at last, some tempting bush detained them too long and they were swallowed up in the ruck. Little paths appeared in the leaders' wake, winding in and out among the bowlders; and like soldiers the sheep fell into line, moving forward with the orderly precision of an army. A herder with his dogs trailed nonchalantly along the flank, the sun glinting from his carbine as he clambered over rocks, and in the rear another silent shepherd followed up the drag. So far it was a peaceful pastoral scene, but behind the herd where the camp rustler and his burros should have been there was a posse of men, and each man carried a gun.

Hardly had Chapuli mounted the ridge before every head was raised; the swarthy Mexicans unslung their guns with a flourish, and held them at a ready. Yet for half an hour the lone horseman sat there like a statue, and if he resented their coming or saw the dust of other bands behind, he made no sign. Even when the guard of men pa.s.sed beneath him, craning their necks uneasily, he still remained silent and immobile, like a man who has councils of his own or leads a force behind.

The leader of the vanguard of the sheep was a white man, and not unversed in the principles of war, for after trailing safely through the box of the canon--where a single rock displaced would kill a score of sheep, and where the lone horseman had he so willed could have potted half of the invaders from the heights--he turned his herd up a side canon to the west and hastily pitched his camp on a ridge. As the heat of the day came on, the other bands up the canon stopped also, and when the faint smoke showed Hardy that the camp rustlers were cooking dinner, he turned and rode for the leader's camp.

Dinner was already served--beans, fried mutton, and bread, spread upon a greasy canvas--and the hungry herders were shovelling it down with knives in their own primitive way when Hardy rode up the slope. As he came into camp the Chihuahuanos dropped their plates, reached for their guns, and stood in awkward postures of defence, some wagging their big heads in a braggartly defiance, others, their courage waning, grinning in the natural shame of the peasant. In Hardy they recognized a gentleman of _categoria_--and he never so much as glanced at them as he reined in his spirited horse. His eyes were fixed upon the lone white man, their commander, who stood by the fire regarding him with cold suspicion, and to whom he bowed distantly.

"Good-morning," he said, by way of introduction, and the sheepman blinked his eyes in reply.

"Whose sheep are those?" continued Hardy, coming to the point with masterful directness, and once more the boss sheepman surveyed him with suspicion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Put up them guns, you gawky fools! This man ain't going to eat ye!"]

"Mine," he said, and Hardy returned his stare with a glance which, while decorously veiled, indicated that he knew he lied. The man was a stranger to him, rather tall and slender, with drawn lips and an eye that never wavered. His voice was tense with excitement and he kept his right thumb hooked carelessly into the corner of his pocket, not far from the grip of a revolver. As soon as he spoke Hardy knew him.

"You are Mr. Thomas, aren't you?" he inquired, as if he had no thought of trouble. "I believe I met you once, down in Moroni."

"Ump!" grunted Mr. Thomas unsociably, and at that moment one of the Mexicans, out of awkwardness, dropped his gun. As he stooped to pick it up a slow smile crept over the cowman's lips, a smile which expressed polite amus.e.m.e.nt along with a measured contempt--and the boss herder was stung with a nameless shame at the false play.

"Put up them guns, you dam' gawky fools!" he yelled in a frenzy of rage. "Put 'em up, I say. This man ain't goin' to eat ye!" And though the poor browbeaten Chihuahuanos understood not a word of English they felt somehow that they had been overzealous and shuffled back to their blankets, like watchdogs that had been rebuked.

"Now," said the sheepman, taking his hand from his gun, "what can I do for you, Mr. Hardy?"

"Well," responded Hardy, "of course there are several things you _might_ do to accommodate me, but maybe you wouldn't mind telling me how you got in here, just for instance?"

"Always glad to 'commodate--where I can, of course," returned the sheepman grimly. "I came in over the top of them Four Peaks yonder."

"Um," said Hardy, glancing up at the rocky walls. "Then you must've had hooks on your eyebrows, for sure. I suppose the rest of the family is coming, too! And, by the way, how is my friend, Mr. Swope?"

He appended this last with an artless smile, quite lacking in bitterness, but somehow the boss herder felt himself discredited by the inquiry, as if he were consorting with thieves. It was the old shame of the sheepman, the shame which comes to the social outcast, and burns upon the cheek of the dishonored b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but which is seared deepest into the heart of the friendless herder, the Ishmaelite of the cow-country, whose hand is against every man and every man's against him. Hunger and thirst he can endure, and the weariness of life, but to have all men turn away from him, to answer him grudgingly, to feed him at their table, but refuse themselves to eat, this it is which turns his heart to bitterness and makes him a man to be feared. As Thomas had looked at this trim young cowboy, smooth-shaven and erect, sitting astride a blooded horse which snorted and pawed the ground delicately, and then had glanced at the low and brutal Mexicans with whom his lot was cast, a blind fury had swept over him, wreaking its force upon his own retainers; and now, when by implication he was cla.s.sed with Jim Swope, he resented it still more bitterly.

"Dam'fino," he answered sullenly. "Haven't seen 'im for a month."

"Oh, isn't he with you this trip?" asked Hardy, in surprise. "I had hoped that I might find him up here." There was a suggestion of irony in his words which was not lost upon the _mayordomo_, but Thomas let the remark pa.s.s in silence.

"Perhaps his brother Jasper is along," ventured Hardy. "No? Well, that's Jim's earmark on those sheep, and I know it. What's the matter?"

"Matter with what?" growled Thomas morosely.

"Why, with Jim, of course. I thought after the pleasant times we had together last Spring he'd be sure to come around. In fact," he added meaningly, "I've been looking for him."

At this naive statement, the sheepman could not restrain a smile.

"You don't know Jim as well as I do," he said, and there was a suggestion of bitterness in his voice which Hardy was not slow to note.

"Well, perhaps not," he allowed; "but you know, and I know, that this is no pleasure trip you're on--in fact, it's dangerous, and I never thought that Jim Swope would send a man where he was afraid to go himself. Now I've got nothing against you, Mr. Thomas, and of course you're working for him; but I ask you, as a man, don't you think, after what I've done for him, that Jim Swope ought to come along himself if he wants to sheep me out?

"I've fed him, and I've fed all his herders and all his friends; I've grained his horses when they were ga'nted down to a shadow because his own sheep had cleaned up the feed; I've made him welcome to my house and done everything I could for him; and all I asked in return was that he would respect this upper range. He knows very well that if his sheep go through here this Fall our cattle will die in the Winter, and he knows that there is plenty of feed out on The Rolls where our cows can't go, and yet he sends you in where he's scared to go himself, just to hog our last piece of good feed and to put us out of business.

I asked him down in Moroni if he thought a cowman had a right to live, and he dodged the question as if he was afraid he'd say something."

He stopped abruptly and looked out over the country toward Hidden Water, while the Mexicans watched him furtively from beneath their slouched hats.

"Expecting some friends?" inquired Thomas, with a saturnine grin.

Hardy shook his head. "No. I came out here alone, and I left my gun in camp. I haven't got a friend within forty miles, if that's what you mean. I suppose you've got your orders, Mr. Thomas, but I just want to talk this matter over with you."

"All right," said the sheepman, suddenly thawing out at the good news.

"I don't have so much company as to make me refuse, even if it is a warm subject. But mebby you'd like a bite to eat before we git down to business?" He waved a deprecating hand at the greasy canvas, and Hardy swung quickly down from his saddle.

"Thanks. But don't let me keep you from your dinner. Here's where I break even with Jim Swope for all that grub I cooked last Spring," he remarked, as he filled his plate. "But if it was him that asked me,"

he added, "I'd starve to death before I'd eat it."

He sat on his heels by the canvas, with the boss sheepman on the other side, and the Mexicans who had been so c.o.c.ky took their plates and retired like Apaches to the edge of the brush, where they would not obtrude upon their betters.

"They say it's bad for the digestion," observed Hardy, after the first silence, "to talk about things that make you mad; so if you don't mind, Mr. Thomas, we'll forget about Jim Swope. What kind of a country is it up there in Apache County, where you keep your sheep all Summer?"

"A fine country," rejoined Thomas, "and I wish to G.o.d I was back to it," he added.

"Why, what's the matter with this country? It looks pretty good to me."

"Ye-es," admitted the sheepman grudgingly, "it looks good enough, but--well, I lived up there a long time and I got to like it. I had one of the nicest little ranches in the White Mountains; there was good huntin' and fis.h.i.+n' and--well, I felt like a white man up there--never had no trouble, you understand--and I was makin' good money, too."

His voice, which before had been harsh and strident, softened down as he dwelt upon the natural beauty of the mountains which had been his home, but there was a tone of sadness in his talk which told Hardy that ultimately he had suffered some great misfortune there. His occupation alone suggested that--for there are few white men working as sheep-herders who lack a hard luck story, if any one will listen to it. But this Shep Thomas was still young and unbroken, with none of the black marks of dissipation upon his face, and his eyes were as keen and steady as any hunter's. He was indeed the very type of fighter that Swope had sought, hardy and fearless, and at the same time careful. As they sat together Hardy looked him over and was glad that he had come out unarmed, yet though his host seemed a man of just and reasonable mind there was a set, dogged look in his eyes which warned the cowman not to interfere, but let him talk his fill. And the boss herder, poor lonely man, was carried away in spite of himself by the temptation of a listener; after many days of strife and turmoil, cutting trails, standing off cowmen, cursing Mexicans, at last to meet a white man who would just sit silent and let him talk! His stories were of hunting and fis.h.i.+ng, of prospecting, and restless adventures among the Indians, and every time the conversation worked around towards sheep he led it resolutely away. And for his part, never for a moment did Hardy try to crowd him, but let the talk lead where it would, until of his own volition the sheepman told his story.

"I suppose you wonder what I'm doing down here," he said at last, "if I was so stuck on the Concho country? Well, I bet you wouldn't guess in a thousand years--and you ought to be a pretty good guesser, too,"

he added, with a gruff laugh. "Now, what do you think it was that put me on the b.u.m?"

"Poker game?" queried Hardy politely.

"Nope," replied the sheepman, showing his teeth, "I'm winners on poker."

"You don't look like a drinking man."

"Naw--nor it wasn't women, either. It's something unusual, I tell you.

I stood and looked at it for ten years, and never turned a hair. But here, I've been holdin' out on you a little--I never told you what it was I raised on my ranch. Well, it was sheep."

"Sheep?" echoed Hardy, "did you keep 'em there all Winter?"

"W'y sure, man. There's lots of sheep in Apache County that was never ten miles from home."

"Then why does Jim Swope bring his bands south every Fall? I hear he loses five per cent of them, at the least, coming and going."