The Settling of the Sage Part 6

The throng before the bar was a riot of color; Angora chaps ranging from orange and lavender to black and silky white; smooth leather chaps, and stamped, silver-ornamented and plain, with here and there an individual design, showing that the owner had selected some queerly spotted steer and tanned the pelt with the hair on to be fas.h.i.+oned into gaudy vest and pants. 'Twas an improvident, carefree lot who lived to-day with scarce a thought for to-morrow. The clatter of sardine and salmon cans mingled with the clink of gla.s.sware at the bar as the men who had missed the noon meal lunched out of cans between drinks.

Some few detached themselves from the group and occupied themselves with writing. Several started a game of stud poker at one of the many tables. Harris wrote a few letters before joining in the play, and as he looked up from time to time he caught many curious glances leveled upon him. Morrow had been busily spreading the tidings that a would-be squatter was among them and they were curious to see the man who had deliberately defied the unwritten law of the Coldriver Range. When he had finished his writing he crossed over to the group, tossed a bill on the bar and waved all hands to a drink.

Waddles had instructed Evans to start the men back before the spree had progressed to a point where they would refuse to leave Brill's and so leave the Three Bar short-handed. At the end of two hours he looked at his watch and snapped it shut.

"Turn out!" he shouted. "On your horses!"

"That goes for my men, too," the Halfmoon D foreman seconded.

"Outside!"

Morrow had not neglected to inform the men from the Halfmoon D that Harris gentled his horses.

"Handle the little roan horse gentle," he advised as they moved toward the door. "Better hobble your stirrups before you crawl him." Several men turned and grinned. In riding contests women were allowed to hobble their stirrups while the same precaution disqualified a man.

Most of the men were young, scarcely more than boys, full of rough play and youthful pride of accomplishment along with a desire to make a presumably careless display of it. A Halfmoon D youth mounted a blocky bay and as he threw his leg across it he loosed a shrill yip and reached forward to rake the horse's shoulder. The bay dropped his head and performed. A half-dozen others followed his example and their horses pitched off in as many directions. All eyes were turned on Harris as he neared the big roan.

"Oh, I might as well act up a little," he said to Evans. "They seem to be looking for it."

"He's a hard citizen, that roan," Evans remarked. "I'll wrangle for you, Cal."

Harris stepped over to the horse.

"I wonder what old Blue can do," he said. He hooked the roan in the shoulder as he mounted and the horse plunged his head between his knees and rose in the air. The big roan bawled and expelled a long-drawn "wa-a-augh" each time he struck the ground, then savagely shook his whole frame as he rose again. The first four jumps Harris swung both feet forward and hooked his shoulders and the next two bounds reached back and raked his flanks, in accordance with the regulation rules prescribed for contest riding.

"He's riding for the judges," a megaphone voice announced. "Boy, you've rode your horse!"

Blue varied his leaps, draping himself in fantastic curves, lighting on a slant with his side arched out, sunfis.h.i.+ng and swapping ends, then threw himself over and smashed down on his back. Harris slipped sidewise and cleared himself.

"Fourteen long jumps," one man testified. "One h.e.l.l of a long time on an eel like that!"

As Blue regained his feet Harris stepped into the saddle and rose with him, the hackamore rope trailing loose under the horse's feet. A chorus of approving yelps broke out.

"Rake him from ears to tail roots!" "Ri-ide 'im, rider!" "Hang 'em up into that horse!" "Claw him!" "Scra-a-atch him!"

This wave of questionable advice ceased as Blue, after three short jumps, somersaulted forward and his rider made a headlong side-dive for safety.

Evans had flanked the roan's course and he now leaned from the saddle and seized the hackamore rope; as Blue scrambled to his feet he took two quick turns of the rope and snubbed his head short to the saddle horn. The roan struggled and threw himself, his head still suspended by the rope, rose and reared to strike savagely at the man who held him, but Evans left his saddle and leaned far out, his right foot on the ground, left still in the stirrup, and eased himself back into the saddle as the fighting horse slid down. He had never once lost his hold which snubbed Blue to the horn, a pretty bit of wrangling.

"He's on the fight now," Evans said. "I'll hold him solid till he cools down--which won't be long, for Cal didn't cut him any; he was swinging his feet free and never hooked him once." He jerked his thumb at the roan's shoulder and flanks where not a drop of blood appeared; his hide would have been tattered indeed if Harris had driven home his rowels each time he swung his feet. "Nice ride."

Harris walked back to a small group that had not yet mounted, Morrow among them. His left side was quartering toward Morrow and apparently he was addressing the group as a whole instead of any one man.

"The next time some one frames me to put on a show like that," he said, "why, he'd better make certain beforehand about what part he's willing to play in the performance himself--for next time I won't take it out of the horse."

IV

It is said that there comes a day in the life of every handler of bad horses when he will mount one and ride him out, master him and dismount,--and forever after decline to ride another. Riley Foster was evidence of this. For three years Rile and Bangs had been inseparable, riding together on every job, and the s.h.a.ggy youth topped off the animals in Foster's string before the older man would mount them. As Bangs went about his work his faded blue eyes were ever turned toward the Three Bar boss who stood in the door of the blacksmith shop.

The girl was vaguely troubled as she noted this. Bangs and Foster had returned for their second season at the Three Bar. All through the previous summer the boy had evidenced his silent adoration, his eyes following her every move.

The scene round Billie was one of strenuous activity, every effort bent toward whipping the remuda into shape for the calf round-up in the least possible s.p.a.ce of time.

Every rider must have nine horses in his string. His five circle horses needed but little training, the only necessary qualifications being endurance and a sufficient amount of breaking to make it possible to saddle them; the two night mounts must be partially broken to work the herd, then switched to night guarding and thereafter used exclusively for that. But the two cow horses required long and skilful training. Every man gave one of his circle string the preliminary training of the cow horse each season, the work resumed by the man to whose string the horse was allotted the following year; thus new ones were coming on to replace the older horses as fast as they were condemned.

Four pairs of men worked within a hundred yards of the girl, taking equal turns at riding and wrangling. The one who wrangled put his rope on a horse and led him out, snubbed him to the saddle horn and frequently eared him as well, while the one who was to ride him out cinched on his saddle and mounted.

Green horses were led out, one after another, to be saddled for the first time, and those previously broken required a few work-outs to knock the wire edge off their unwillingness to carry a rider after a winter of freedom on the range.

Three men were shoeing horses tied to snubbing posts at ten-yard intervals before the shop. One animal that had fought viciously against this treatment had been thrown and stretched, his four feet roped to convenient posts, and while he struggled and heaved on the ground Rile Foster calmly fitted and nailed the shoes on him. Cal Harris finished shoeing the colt he was working.

"That's the last touch," he said. "My string is all set to go."

"You have five colts gentled for your circle bunch," she said. "But you didn't pick a single cow horse. The boys have sorted out the best ones and the few that are left won't answer for a man that insists on a gentled string."

"Creamer and Calico will do for me," he said. "I broke them myself and maybe I can worry along."

"Did you break them like that?" she asked. Bangs was topping a horse that strenuously refused to be conquered and as they looked on the animal threw himself.

"Like that? Well, no--not precisely," Harris said. "They're not breaking horses. They're proving that they're bronc-peelers that can ride 'em before they're broke. A horse started out that way will be a bronc till the day he dies. The first thing he knows some straddler swarms him and hangs the spurs in him. He bogs his head and starts out to slip his pack--and from right then on he thinks the first thing to do whenever a man steps up on him is to try his best to shake him off."

Three men were las.h.i.+ng their bed rolls and war bags on three pack horses and when this task was completed they rode down the lane, each one leading his pack animal. Harris knew this as evidence that they would start after the calves on the following day. The custom was to exchange representatives to ride with each wagon within a reasonable distance, the reps to look after the interest of the brand for which they rode.

"How many reps do you trade?" he asked.

"Three," she said. "Halfmoon D, V L and with Slade."

The Halfmoon D lay some fifteen miles eastward along the foot of the hills; the V L the same distance to the west, but cached away in a pocket that led well back into the base of the range, a comparatively small outfit owned by the Brandons, father and four sons, who made every effort to keep the bulk of their cows ranging in their own home basin and exchanged reps only with the Three Bar.

Slade's home place lay forty miles south and a little west and his cows grazed for over a hundred miles, requiring three wagons to cover his range.

During the afternoon the three reps came in to replace the men who had left. The surplus horses had been cut out and thrown back on the range, only those required for the remuda remaining in the pasture lot.

The chuck wagon was wheeled before the cookhouse door and packed for an early start. Before the first streaks of dawn the men had saddled and breakfasted. It was turning gray in the east when four horses, necessitating the attentions of four men, were hooked to the wagon. A man hung on the bit of each wheel horse while another grasped the bits of the lead team as Waddles made one last hasty trip inside.

"This will be a rocky ride for a mile or two," he prophesied, as he mounted the seat and braced himself. "These willow-tails haven't had on a strap of harness for many a month. All set. Turn loose!"

The men stepped back and the four horses. .h.i.t the collars raggedly. One wheel horse reared and jumped forward. The off leader dropped his head and pitched, shaking himself as if struggling to unseat a rider, then the four settled into a jerky run and the heavy wagon clattered and lurched down the lane.

"Fine way to break work stock," Harris remarked to Evans. "That layout would bring maybe a dollar a head."

The men swung to their saddles and followed the wagon at a shuffling trot. From where she rode between Evans and Harris, the girl turned in her saddle and watched two men throw open the gates of the big corral where the remuda was held. The wrangler, whose duty it was to tend the horse herd by day, and the nighthawk who would guard it at night sat on their horses at the far end of the corral and urged the herd out as the gates swung back. The remuda streamed down the valley, the two first riders swinging wide to either flank while the nighthawk and wrangler brought up the rear.

The four that pulled the wagon had settled to a steady gait and when some three miles below the Three Bar Waddles wheeled to the right and angled up the bench that flanked the bottoms, the wagon tilting perilously in the ascent, then struck out westward across a rolling country that showed not even a wagon track. The big cook unerringly picked the route of least resistance to the point from which the first circle would be launched, striking every wash and coulee at a place where a crossing was possible.

Shortly before noon the wagon was halted in a broad bottom threaded by a tiny spring-fed stream. The teams were unhitched; mounts were unsaddled and thrown into the horse herd, which was then headed into the mouth of a branching draw and allowed to graze. Waddles dumped off the bed rolls that were piled from the broad lowered tail-gate to the wagon top and each man sorted out his own and spread it upon some spot which struck him as a likely bed ground.