Hidden Water Part 9

Since he had left home he had taken a great deal from the world, patiently accepting her arrogance while he learned her ways, but his soul had never been humbled and he rode forth now like a king.

Upon that great mesa where the bronco mustangs from the Peaks still defied the impetuosity of men, the giant _sahuaros_ towered in a mighty forest as far as the eye could see, yet between each stalk there lay a wide s.p.a.ce, studded here and there with n.i.g.g.e.rheads of bristling spines, and fuzzy _chollas_, white as the backs of sheep and th.o.r.n.y beyond reason. Nor was this all: in the immensity of distance there was room for _sahuaros_ and n.i.g.g.e.rheads and _chollas_, and much besides. In every gulch and sandy draw the _palo verdes_, their yellow flowers gleaming in the sun, stood out like lines of fire; the bottoms of the steep ravines which gashed the mesa were illuminated with the gaudy ta.s.sels of mesquite blossoms; gray coffee-berry bushes clumped up against the sides of ridges, and in every sheltered place the long gra.s.s waved its last-year's banners, while the fresh green of tender growth matted the open ground like a lawn. Baby rabbits, feeding along their runways in the gra.s.s, sat up at his approach or hopped innocently into the shadow of the sheltering cat-claws; jack-rabbits with black-tipped ears galloped madly along before him, imagining themselves pursued, and in every warm sandy place where the lizards took the sun there was a scattering like the flight of arrows as the long-legged swift-jacks rose up on their toes and flew. All nature was in a gala mood and Rufus Hardy no less. Yet as he rode along, gazing at the dreamy beauty of this new world, the old far-away look crept back into his eyes, a sad, brooding look such as one often sees in the faces of little children who have been crossed, and the stern lines at the corners of his mouth were deeper when he drew rein above Carrizo Creek.

Below him lay the panorama of a mountain valley--the steep and rocky walls; the silvery stream writhing down the middle; the green and yellow of flowers along the lowlands; and in the middle, to give it life, a great herd of cattle on the _parada_ ground, weaving and milling before the rushes of yelling hors.e.m.e.n, intent on cutting out every steer in the herd. Beyond lay the corrals of peeled cottonwood, and a square house standing out stark and naked in the supreme ugliness of corrugated iron, yet still oddly homelike in a land where shelter was scarce. As he gazed, a mighty voice rose up to him from the midst of the turmoil, the blatting of calves, the mooing of cows and the hoa.r.s.e thunder of mountain bulls:

"Hel-lo, Rufe!"

From his place on the edge of the herd Hardy saw Jefferson Creede, almost herculean on his tall horse, waving a large black hat.

Instantly he put spurs to his sorrel and leaped down the narrow trail, and at the edge of the herd they shook hands warmly, for friends are scarce, wherever you go.

"Jest in time!" said Creede, grinning his welcome, "we're goin' over into h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket to-morrow--the original hole in the ground--to bring out Bill Johnson's beef critters, and I sure wanted you to make the trip. How'd you git along with Jasp?"

"All right," responded Hardy, "he didn't make me any trouble. But I'm glad to get away from that sheep smell, all the same."

The big cowboy fixed his eyes upon him eagerly.

"Did they go around?" he asked incredulously. "Jasp and all?"

"Sure," said Hardy. "Why?"

For a long minute Creede was silent, wrinkling his brows as he pondered upon the miracle.

"Well, that's what _I_ want to know," he answered ambiguously. "But say, you've got a fresh horse; jest take my place here while me and Uncle Bill over there show them ignorant punchers how to cut cattle."

He circled rapidly about the herd and, riding out into the runway where the cattle were sifted, the beef steers being jumped across the open into the hold-up herd and the cows and calves turned back, he held up his hand for the work to stop. Then by signals he sent the galloping hors.e.m.e.n back to the edge of the herd and beckoned for old Bill Johnson.

For a few minutes he sat quietly on his horse, waiting for the hara.s.sed cattle to stop their milling. Then breaking into a song such as cowboys sing at night he rode slowly in among them, threading about at random, while old Bill Johnson on his ancient mare did likewise, his tangled beard swaying idly in the breeze. On the border of the herd they edged in as if by accident upon a fat steer and walked him amiably forth into the open. Another followed out of natural perversity, and when both were nicely started toward the beef cut the two men drifted back once more into the herd. There was no running, no shouting, no gallant show of horsemans.h.i.+p, but somehow the right steers wandered over into the beef cut and stayed there. As if by magic spell the outlaws and "snakes" became good, and with no breaks for the hills the labor of an afternoon was accomplished in the s.p.a.ce of two dull and uneventful hours.

"That's the way to cut cattle!" announced Creede, as they turned the discard toward the hills. "Ain't it, Bill?"

He turned to Johnson who, sitting astride a flea-bitten gray mare that seemed to be in a perpetual doze, looked more like an Apache squaw than a boss cowboy. The old man's clothes were even more ragged than when Hardy had seen him at Bender, his copper-riveted hat was further reinforced by a buckskin thong around the rim, and his knees were short-stirruped almost up to his elbows by the puny little boy's saddle that he rode, but his fiery eyes were as quick and piercing as ever.

"Sh.o.r.e thing," he said, straightening up jauntily in his saddle, "that's my way! Be'n doin' it fer years, while you boys was killin'

horses, but it takes Jeff hyar to see the p'int. Be gentle, boys, be gentle with um--you don't gain nawthin' fer all yer hard ridin'."

He cut off a chew of tobacco and tucked it carefully away in his cheek.

"Jeff hyar," he continued, as the bunch of cowboys began to josh and laugh among themselves, "he comes by his savvy right--his paw was a smart man before him, and mighty clever to his friends, to boot. Many's the time I hev took little Jeffie down the river and learned him tracks and beaver signs when he wasn't knee-high to a gra.s.shopper--hain't I, Jeff? And when I tell him to be gentle with them cows he knows I'm right. I jest want you boys to take notice when you go down into the Pocket to-morrer what kin be done by kindness; and the first man that hollers or puts a rope on my gentle stock, I'll sure make him hard to ketch.

"You hear me, naow," he cried, turning sharply upon Bill Lightfoot, who was getting off something about "Little Jeffie," and then for the first time he saw the face of the new cowboy who had ridden in that afternoon. Not since the day he was drunk at Bender had Bill Johnson set eyes upon the little man to whom he had sworn off, but he recognized him instantly.

"h.e.l.lo thar, pardner!" he exclaimed, reining his mare in abruptly.

"Whar'd you drop down from?"

"Why howdy do, Mr. Johnson!" answered Hardy, shaking hands, "I'm glad to see you again. Jeff told me he was going down to your ranch to-morrow and I looked to see you then."

Bill Johnson allowed this polite speech to pa.s.s over his shoulder without response. Then, drawing Hardy aside, he began to talk confidentially; expounding to the full his system of gentling cattle; launching forth his invective, which was of the pioneer variety, upon the head of all sheepmen; and finally coming around with a jerk to the subject that was uppermost in his mind.

"Say," he said, "I want to ask you a question--are you any relation to the Captain Hardy that I served with over at Fort Apache? Seems's if you look like 'im, only smaller."

His stature was a sore point with Hardy, and especially in connection with his father, but making allowance for Mr. Johnson's ways he modestly admitted his ancestry.

"His son, eh!" echoed the old man. "Waal--now! I tell you, boy, I _knowed_ you--I knowed you the minute you called down that dog-robber of a barkeep--and I was half drunk, too. And so you're the new superintendent down at the Dos S, eh? Waal, all I can say is: G.o.d help them pore sheepmen if you ever git on their trail. I used to chase Apaches with yore paw, boy!"

It was Bill Johnson's turn to talk that evening and like most solitaries who have not "gone into the silence," he availed himself of a listener with enthusiasm.

Stories of lion hunts and "b'ar fights" fell as trippingly from his lips as the words of a professional monologist, and when he had finished his account of the exploits of Captain Samuel Barrows Hardy, even the envious Lightfoot regarded Rufus with a new respect, for there is no higher honor in Arizona than to be the son of an Indian fighter. And when the last man had crawled wearily into his blankets the old hermit still sat by the dying fire poking the charred ends into the flames and holding forth to the young superintendent upon the courage of his sire.

Hardly had the son of his father crept under the edge of Creede's blankets and dropped to sleep before that huge mountain of energy rose up and gave the long yell. The morning was at its blackest, that murky four A. M. darkness which precedes the first glimmer of light; but the day's work had to be done. The s.h.i.+vering horse-wrangler stamped on his boots and struck out down the canon after the _remuda_, two or three cooks got busy about the fire which roared higher and higher as they piled on the ironwood to make coals, and before the sun had more than mounted the southern shoulder of the Four Peaks the long line of hors.e.m.e.n was well on the trail to h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket.

The frontier imagination had in no wise overleaped itself in naming this abyss. Even the tribute which Facilis Descensus Vergil paid to the local Roman h.e.l.l could hardly be said of the Pocket--it is not even easy to get into it. From the top of the divide it looks like a valley submerged in a smoky haze through which the peaks and pinnacles of the lower parks rise up like cathedral spires, pointing solemnly to heaven. As the trail descends through washed-out gulches and "stone-patches," now skating along the backbone of a ridge and now dropping as abruptly into some hollow waterway, the cliffs and pinnacles begin to loom up against the sky; then they seem to close in and block the way, and just as the canon boxes in to nothing the trail slips into a gash in the face of the cliff where the soft sandstone has crumbled away between two harder strata, and climbs precariously along through the sombre gloom of the gorge to the bright light of the fair valley beyond.

It is a kind of fairy land, that hidden pocket in the hills, always covered by a mystic haze, for which the Mexicans give it the name _Humada_. Its steep canon comes down from the breast of the most easterly of the Four Peaks, impa.s.sable except by the one trail; it pa.s.ses through the box and there widens out into a beautiful valley, where the gra.s.s lies along the hillsides like the tawny mane of a lion, and tender flowers stand untrampled in the rich bottoms. For three miles or more it spreads out between striated cliffs where hawks and eagles make their nests; then once more it closes in, the creek plunges down a narrow gorge and disappears, writhing tortuously on its way to the Salagua whose fire-blasted walls rise in huge bulwarks against the south, dwarfing the near-by cliffs into nothingness by their majestic height.

In the presence of this unearthly beauty and grandeur old Bill Johnson--ex-trapper, ex-soldier, ex-prospector, ex-everything--had dwelt for twenty years, dating from the days when his house was his fortress, and his one desire was to stand off the Apaches until he could find the Lost Dutchman.

Where the valley narrowed down for its final plunge into the gorge the old trapper had built his cabin, its walls laid "square with the world" by sighting on the North Star. When the sun entered the threshold of the western door it was noon, and his watch never ran down. The cabin was built of shaly rocks, squared and laid in mud, like bricks; a tremendous stone chimney stood against the north end and a corral for his burros at the south. Three hounds with bleared eyes and flapping ears, their foreheads wrinkled with age and the anxieties of the hunt, bayed forth a welcome as the cavalcade strung in across the valley; and mild-eyed cattle, standing on the ridges to catch the wind, stared down at them in surprise. Never, even at San Carlos, where the Chiricahua cattle fatten on the best feed in Arizona, had Hardy seen such mountains of beef. Old steers with six and seven rings on their horns hung about the salting places, as if there were no such things as beef drives and slaughter houses in this cruel world, and even when the cowboys spread out like a fan and brought them all in to the cutting grounds there was hardly a calf that bawled.

As the three or four hundred head that made up his entire earthly possession drifted obediently in, the old man rode up to Creede and Hardy and waved his hand expansively.

"Thar, boys," he said, "thar's the results of peace and kindness. Nary a critter thar that I heven't scratched between the horns since the day his maw brought him down to the salt lick. I even git Jeff and the boys to brand and earmark 'em fer me, so they won't hev no hard feelin' fer the Old Man. D'ye see that big white-faced steer?" he asked, pointing with pride to the monarch of the herd. "Waal, how much ye think he'll weigh?" he demanded, turning to Creede. "Fifteen hundred?"

"Um, more 'n that," responded Creede, squinting his eyes down judicially. "Them Herefords are awful solid when they git big. I reckon he'll run nigh onto seventeen hundred, Bill." He paused and winked furtively at Hardy. "I kin git fifty dollars fer that old boy, jest the way he stands," he said, "and bein' as he can't carry no more weight nohow, I'll jest cut him into the town herd right now, and--"

"Hyar!" shouted Johnson, grabbing the cowboy's bridle, "who's doin'

this, anyhow?"

"W'y _you_, Bill," answered Creede innocently, "but--"

"That's all right, then," said the old man shortly, "you leave that steer alone. I'll jest cut this herd to suit myself."

Over at the branding pen the irons were on the fire and the marking was progressing rapidly, but out in the open Mr. Bill Johnson was making slow work of his cut.

"He gets stuck on them cows, like an Irishman with his pig," observed Creede, as the old man turned back a prime four-year-old. "He'd rather be barbecued by the Apaches than part with that big white-faced boy.

If I owned 'em I'd send down a lot of them big fat brutes and buy doggies; but Bill spends all the money he gits fer booze anyhow, so I reckon it's all right. He generally sends out about twenty runts and roughs, and lets it go at that. Say! You'll have to git a move on, Bill," he shouted, "we want to send that beef cut on ahead!"

The old man reined in his mare and surveyed the big herd critically.

"Waal," he drawled, "I reckon that'll do fer this trip, then. Take 'em along. And the fust one of you punchers that hits one of them critters over the tail with his hondu," he shouted, as the eager hors.e.m.e.n trotted over to start them, "will hev me to lick!"

He placed an order for provisions with Creede, asked him to keep the supplies at Hidden Water until he came over for them with the burros, and turned away contentedly as the cowboys went upon their way.

Down by the branding pen the mother cows licked the blood from their offsprings' mangled ears and mooed resentfully, but the big white-faced steer stood in brutish content on the salting grounds and gazed after the town herd thoughtfully.

A bunch of burros gathered about the doorway of the cabin, snooping for bacon rinds; the hounds leaned their heavy jowls upon his knees and gazed up wors.h.i.+pfully into their master's face; and as the sun dipped down toward the rim of the mighty cliffs that shut him in, the lord of h.e.l.l's Hip Pocket broke into the chorus of an ancient song:

"Oh, _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains, And _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains, And _o_-ver the prairies, and _o_-ver the mountains, I'll go till I find me a home."