"An' the ravens they did feed him, fare ye well,fare ye well."
"An' the ravens they did feed him, fare ye well,fare ye well."
I sprang out of bed and pressed my face against the window. There was no sound in the world. Below, the Valley River lay like a plate of burnished yellow metal. Under the enchanted moon it was the haunted water of the fairy. No mortal went singing down its flood, surely, unless he sailed in the ship that the tailors sewed together, or went a-dreaming in that mystic barge rowed by the fifty daughters of Danaus.
I crept back under the woven coverlid. This was haunted country, and Parson Peppers was doubtless snoring in a bed.
It is an unwritten law of the Hills that all cattle bought by the pound are to be weighed out of their beds, that is, in the early morning before they have begun to graze. This is the hour set by immemorial custom.
We were in the saddle while the sun was yet abed. The cattle were on two great boundaries of a thousand acres, sleeping in the deep blue grass on the flat hill-tops. Jud and two of Marsh's drivers took one line of the ridges, and Marsh and I took the other.
The night was lifting when we came out on the line of level hill-tops, and through the haze the sleeping cattle were a flock of squatting shadows. As we rode in among them the dozing bullocks arose awkwardly from their warm beds and stretched their great backs, not very well pleased to have their morning rest broken.
We rode about, bringing them into a bunch, arousing some morose old fellow who slept by himself in a corner of the hill, or a dozen aristocrats who held a bedchamber in some windless cove, or a straying Ishmaelite hidden in a broom-sedge hollow,—all displeased with the interruption of their forty winks before the sunrise. Was it not enough to begin one's day with the light and close it with the light? What did man mean by his everlasting inroads on the wholesome ways of nature? The Great Mother knew what she was about. All the people of the fields could get up in the morning without this cursed row. Whoever was one of them snoozing in his trundle-bed after the sun had flashed him a good morning?
The home-life of the steer would be healthy reading in any family. He never worries, and his temper has no shoal. Either he is contented and goes about his business, or he is angry and he fights. He is clean, and as regular in his habits as a lieutenant of infantry. To bed on the highlands when the dark comes, and out of it with the sun. A drink of water from the brook, and about to breakfast.
We gathered the cattle into a drove, and started them in a broken line across the hills toward the road, the huge black muleys strolling along, every fellow at his leisure. The sun peeping through his gateway in the east gilded the tops of the brown sedge and turned the grass into a sea of gold. Through this Eldorado the line of black cattle waded in deep grasses to the knee,—curly-coated beasts from some kingdom of the midnight in mighty contrast to this golden country. I might have been the Merchant's Son transported by some wicked fairy to a land of wonders, watching, with terror in his throat, the rebellious jins under some enchantment of King Solomon travelling eastward to the sun.
Now a hungry fellow paused to gather a bunch of the good-tasting grass and was butted out of the path, and now some curly-shouldered belligerent roared his defiant bellow and it went rumbling through the hills. We drove the cattle through the open gate of the pasture and down a long lane to the scales.
Nicholas Marsh seemed another man, and I felt the first touch of triumph come with the crisp morning. Woodford was losing. We had the cattle and there remained only to drive them in. It is a wonderful thing how the frost glistening on a rail, or a redbird chirping in a thicket of purple raspberry briers, can lift the heart into the sun. Marks and his crew were creatures of a nightmare, gone in the daylight, hung up in the dark hollow of some oak tree with the bat.
Marsh and the drivers went ahead of the cattle to the scales, and I followed the drove, stopping to close the gate and fasten it with its wooden pin to the old chestnut gate-post. High up on this gate-post was a worn hole about as big as a walnut, door to the mansion of some speckled woodpecker. As I whistled merrily under his sill, the master of this house stepped up to his threshold and leered down at me.
He looked old and immoral, with a mosaic past, the sort of woodpecker who, if born into a higher estate, would have guzzled rum and gambled with sailors. His head was bare in spots, his neck frowsy, and his eyelids scaly. "Young sir," this debauched old Worldly Wiseman seemed to say, "you think you're a devil of a fellow merely because it happens to be morning. Gad sooks! You must be very young. When you get a trifle further on with the mischief of living, you will realise that a bucketful of sunlight doesn't run the devil out of business. Damme, sirrah! Please to clear out with your accursed whistling."
I left him to cool his head in the morning breezes.
Nicholas Marsh was waiting for me at the scales when I arrived. He wished me to see that they were balanced properly. He adjusted the beam, adding a handful of shot or a nail or an iron washer to the weights. Then we put on the fifty-pound test, and then a horse. When we were satisfied that the scales were in working order, we weighed the cattle four at a time. I took down the weights as Marsh called them, and when we had finished, the drove was turned into the road toward the river.
Marsh grasped my hand when I turned to leave him. "Quiller," he said, "it's hard to guard against a liar, but I do not believe there was ever a time when I would have refused you these cattle. Your brother has done me more than one conspicuous kindness. I would trust him for the cattle if he did not own an acre."
"Mr. Marsh," I said, "what lie did Woodford tell you?"
"I was told," he replied, "that Mr. Ward had transferred all of his land, and as these cattle would lose a great deal of money, he did not intend to pay this loss. I was shown a copy of the court record, or what purported to be one, to prove that statement. I do not think that I ever quite believed, but the proof seemed good, and I saw no reason for the lie."
He stopped a moment and swept the iron-grey locks back from his face. "Now," he continued, "I know the reason for that lie. And I know the paper shown me was spurious. It was high-handed rascality, but I cannot connect it with Woodford. It may have emanated from him, but I do not know that. The man who told me disclaimed any relation with him."
"Twiggs!" I said.
"No," he answered, "it was not Twiggs. The man was a heifer buyer from the north country. I would scarcely know him again."
"Not Twiggs!" I cried, "he was here last night."
"I know it," Marsh answered calmly. "He brought me this letter from Miss Cynthia. Will you carry it back to her, and say that your brother's word is good enough for Nicholas Marsh?"
He put his hand into his coat and handed me Cynthia's letter; and I stuffed it into my pockets without stopping to think. I tried to thank him for this splendid fidelity to Ward, but somehow I choked with the words pushing each other in my throat. He saw it, wished me a safe drive, and rode away to his house.
He was a type which the Hills will do ill to forget in the rearing of their sons, a man whose life was clean, and therefore a man difficult to wrong. I should have been sorry to stand before Nicholas Marsh with a lie in my mouth. He is gone now to the Country of the Silences. He was a just man, and to such, even the gods are accustomed to yield the wall.
I followed slowly after the drove, the broad dimensions of Woodford's plan at last clear in my youthful mind. He had put Ward in his bed, and out of the way. Then he had sent a stranger to these men with a dangerous lie corroborated by a bit of manufactured evidence,—a lie calculated to put any cattleman on his guard, and one that could not be tracked back to its sources.
Then, to make it sure, Twiggs had come riding like the devil's imps with some new warning from Cynthia. How could such planning fail? And failed it had not but for the honour of this gentleman, or perhaps some design of the Unknowable behind the machinery of the world.
Generation of intriguers! Here are the two factors that wreck you. The high captains of France overlooked the one in the prosecution of an obscure subordinate. And Absalom, the first great master of practical politics, somehow overlooked the other.
In my pocket was the evidence of Cynthia's perfidy, with the envelope opened, travelling home, as lies are said to. Ward might doubt the attitude of this woman when she smoothed matters with that dimpled mouth of hers, or crushed me out with her steel-grey eyes; but he would believe what she had written when he saw it. Then a doubt began to arise like the first vapour from the copper pot of the Arabian fisherman. Could I show it to Ward? Marsh had sent it to Cynthia. Could I even look at it? I postponed the contest with that genie.
Suicide is not a more deliberate business than cattle driving. A bullock must never be hurried, not even in the early morning. He must be kept strolling along no faster than he pleases. If he is hurried, one will presently have him panting with his tongue out, or down in a fence corner with the fat melted around his heart. Yet if he is allowed his natural gait, he will walk a horse to death.
Remember, he carries fifteen hundred pounds, and there are casks of tallow under his black hide. Besides that, he is an aristocrat accustomed to his ease. In large droves it is advisable to keep the herd in as long and narrow a line as possible, and to facilitate the driving, a few bullocks are usually separated from the others and kept moving in the van as a sort of pace-setter.
It is surprising how readily the drove falls into the spirit of this strolling march, some battle-scarred old bull leading, and the others following him in the dust.
It is said that neither fools, women, nor children can drive cattle. The explanation of this adage is not here assumed, nor its community of relation. I know the handling of these great droves is considered business for an expert. The cattle owner would no sooner trust a herd to men picked up by the roadway than the trainmaster would trust the limited express to a stranger in the railroad station.
If the cattle are hot they must be rested, in water if possible; if there is no water, then under some shade. Throw down the fence and turn them into the stranger's field. If the stranger is a person of good sense, he will be glad to assist your necessity. If not, he must yield to it.
These are laws of the Hills, always remembered as the lawyer remembers the "statute of frauds." It is impossible to go too slow. Watch the mouth of the bullock. He is in no danger until his tongue lolls out at the corner like a dog's. Then rest him. Let no man go through your drove. He must stop until it passes him. If he refuses, he must be persuaded. If one bullock runs back, let him alone; he will follow. But if two, turn them at once with a swift dash of the cattle-horse. Never run a steer. If the cattle are frightened, sing to them, and ride through the drove. Old-fashioned, swinging, Methodist hymns are best. Make it loud. The cattle are not particular about the tune.
I have heard the profane Ump singing Old Hundred and riding the Bay Eagle up and down in a bunch of frightened cattle, and it was a piece of comedy for the gods. I have heard Jud, with no more tune than a tom-tom, bellowing the doxology to a great audience of Polled-Angus muleys on the verge of a stampede. And I have sung myself, many a time, like a circuit rider with a crowded mourner's bench.
One thing more: know every bullock in your drove. Get his identity in your mind as you get the features of an acquaintance, so that you would recognise him instantly if you met him coming up at the end of the earth. A driver in the Hills would not be worth his salt who did not know every head of his cattle. Suppose his herd breaks into a field where there are others of the same breed, or he collides with another drove, or there is a tremendous mix at a tavern. The facility with which a cattle man learns to recognise every steer in a drove of hundreds is an eighth wonder of the world to a stranger. Anyone of us could ride through a drove of cattle, and when he reached the end know every steer that followed him in the road, and I have seen a line reaching for miles.
Easy with your eyebrows, my masters. When men are trained to a craft from the time they are able to cling to a saddle, they are very apt to exhibit a skill passing for witchcraft with the uninitiated. I have met many a grazier, and I have known but one who was unable to recognise the individual bullock in his drove, and his name was a byword in the Hills.
Jud and the Cardinal followed the drove, and I rode slowly through the cattle, partly to keep the long line thin, but chiefly to learn the identity of each steer. I looked for no mark, nor any especial feature of the bullock, but caught his identity in the total as the head waiter catches the identity of a hat. I looked down at each bullock for an instant, and then turned to the next one. In that instant I had the cast of his individuality forever. The magicians of Pharaoh could not afterwards mislead me about that bullock. This was not esoteric skill. Any man in the Hills could do it. Indeed it was a necessity. There was not a branded bullock in all this cattle land. What need for the barbaric custom when every man knew his cattle as he knew his children?
Later on, when little men came, at mid-life, to herding on the plains, they were compelled to burn a mark on their cattle. But we who had bred the beef steer for three-quarters of a century did no such child's play. How the crowd at Roy's tavern would have roared at such baby business. I have seen at this tavern a great mix of a dozen herds, that looked as like as a potful of peas, separated by an idle loafer sitting on a fence, calling out, "That one's Woodford's, an' that one's Alkire's an' that one's Maxwell's, an' the Polled-Angus muley belongs to Flave Davisson, an' the old-fashioned one is Westfield's. He must have got him in Roane or Nicholas. An' the Durham's Queen's, an' the big Holstein belongs to Mr. Ward, an' the red-faced Hereford is out of a Greenbrier cow an' goes with the Carper's."
By the time I had gotten through the drove we had reached the crossroads, and I found Ump waiting with the two hundred cattle of Westfall. The Bay Eagle was watching the steers, and Ump was sitting sidewise in his saddle with his hands around his knees.
I hailed him. "Did you have a hard job?"
"Easy as rollin' off a log," he answered. "I thought King David would throw his coat, but he was smooth-mouthed an' cross-legged as a peddler."
"Did Twiggs get in?" I asked.
"Beat me by a neck," answered the hunchback. "But I passed him comin' out an' I lit in to him."
"Fist and skull?" said I.
"Jaw," said he. "I damned every Carper into fiddlestrings from old Adam to old Columbus."
"What did he say?"
"He said we was the purtiest bunch of idiots in the kingdom of cowtails."
The autumn in the Hills is but the afternoon of summer. The hour of the new guest is not yet. Still the heat lies on the earth and runs bubbling in the water. The little maid trots barefoot and the urchin goes a-swimming in the elm-hole by the corner of the meadow. Still the tender grass grows at the roots of the dead crop, and the little purple flowers dimple naked in the brown pasture. Still that Pied Piper of Hamelin, the everlasting Pan, flutes in the deep hollows, squatted down in the broom-sedge. And still the world is a land of unending summer, of unfading flowers, of undying youthfulness. Only for an hour or so, far in the deep night does the distant breath of the Frost King come to haunt the land, and then when the sun flings away his white samite coverlid it is summer again, with the earth shining and the water warm.
It was hot mid-morning when the long drove trailed down toward Horton's Ferry. The sweat was beginning to trickle in the hair of the fat cattle. Here and there through the herd a quarrelsome fellow was beginning to show the effect of his fighting and the heat. His eyes were a bit watery in his dusty face, and the tip of his tongue was slipping at his lips. The warm sun was getting into the backs of us all. I had stripped off my coat and carried it thrown across the horn of the saddle. Ump rode a mile away in the far front of the drove, keeping a few steers moving in the lead, while Jud shifted his horse up and down the long line. I followed on El Mahdi, lolling in the big saddle. Far away, I could hear Ump shout at some perverse steer climbing up against the high road bank, or the crack of Jud's driving whip drifted back to me. The lagging bullocks settled to the rear, and El Mahdi held them to the mark like a good sergeant of raw militiamen.
Ump and his leaders had reached the open common by the ferry when the long line stopped, and I saw Jud go to the front in a gallop. I waited for the column to go on, but it did not, and I began to drive the cattle in, bunching them up in the road.
Presently Jud came down into the turnpike and shouted to me. Then he dismounted, tied the reins around the horn of the saddle, and started the Cardinal to the rear. The trained cattle-horse knew very well what he was to do, and picked his way through the steers until he reached me. Then he turned in the road, and I left him to watch the drove while I went to the front to see what the trouble was.
Both the Cardinal and the Bay Eagle were trained to this business and guarded the rear of the drove like dogs. The rider might lounge under a shade-tree, kicking up his heels to the sky. For this work El Mahdi was a trifle too eccentric, and we did not trust him.
Jud was gone when I reached the little bank where the road turned into the common of the ferry. I passed through the van of the cattle as they stood idly on the sodded open swinging their long tails with comfortable indifference. Then I came out where I could see the bank of the river and the blue smoke trailing up from the chimney of the ferrymen.
Facing the north at the front door of this house, Ump sat on the Bay Eagle, the reins down on the mare's neck and the hunchback's long hands crossed and resting on the horn of his saddle.
The attitude of the man struck me with a great fear. About him lurked the atmosphere of overwhelming defeat. The shadow of some mighty disaster loomed over against the almost tragic figure of the motionless hunchback sitting a horse of stone.
In such moments of strain the human mind has a mysterious capacity for trifles. I noticed a wisp of dry sedge bloom clinging to the man's shoulder,—a flimsy detail of the great picture.
The hunchback made no sign when I rode by him. What he had seen was still there beyond him in the sun. I had eyes; I could see.
On a stone by the landing sat one of the ferrymen, Danel, his hands in the pockets of his brown homespun coat. Neither Jud nor the other brother was anywhere in sight. I looked up at the steel cable above the man's head. It ended twenty feet away in the water.
I arose in the stirrups and searched the bank for the boat. It was gone. The Valley River ran full, a quarter of a mile of glistening yellow water, and no way across it but the way of the bass or the way of the heron.
The human mind has caves into which it can crawl, pits where it hides itself when it wishes to escape; dark holes leading back under the crags of the abyss. This explains the dazed appearance of one who is told suddenly of a disaster. The mind has crawled up into these fastnesses. For the time the distance is great between it and the body of the man through which it manifests itself. An enemy has threatened, and the master has gone to hide himself. The mind is a coward, afraid always of the not-mind. Like the frightened child, it must be given time to creep back to its abandoned plaything.
The full magnitude of this disaster to the ferry came slowly, as when one smooths out a crumpled map. In the great stillness I heard a wren twittering in the reeds along the bank, and I noted a green grasshopper, caught in the current, swimming for his life.
Then I saw it all to the very end, and I sickened. I felt as though some painless accident had removed all the portion of my body below the diaphragm. It was physical sickness. I doubled over and linked my fingers across my stomach, my head down almost to the saddle. Marks and his crew had done the work for us. The cable had been cut, and the boat had drifted away or been stolen. We were on the south side of the Valley River twirling our thumbs, while they rode back to their master with the answer, "It is done."
Then, suddenly, I recalled the singing which I had heard in the night. It was no dream, that singing. Peppers had stolen the boat and floated it away with the current. I could see Cynthia laughing with Hawk Rufe. Then I saw Ward, and the sickness left me, and the tears came streaming through my eyes. I put my arms down on the horn of the saddle and sobbed.
Remember, I was only a boy. Men old in the business of life become accustomed to loss; accustomed to fingers snatching away the gain which they have almost reached up to; accustomed to the staggering blow delivered by the Unforeseen. Like gamblers, they learn finally to look with indifference on the mask that may disguise the angel, or the death; on the curtain of to-morrow that may cover an Eldorado or a tomb. They come to see that the eternal forces are unknowable, following laws unknowable, from the seed sprouting in a handful of earth to the answer of a woman, "I do not love you."
But the child does not know the truth. He has been lied to from the cradle; taught a set of catchwords, a set of wise saws, a set of moral rules, logarithms by which the equation of life could be worked out, all arbitrary, and many grossly erroneous. He is led to believe that his father or the schoolmaster has grasped the scheme of human life and can explain it to him.
The nurse says it will come out all right, as though the Unforeseen could be determined by a secret in her possession. He is satisfied that these wise ones know. Then he meets the eternal forces, an event threatens, he marshals his catchwords, his wise saws, his moral rules, and they fail him. He retires, beaten, as the magicians of Egypt retired before God.
His father or the nurse or the schoolmaster explains with some outlandish fairy story, shifts the catchword or the saw or the rule, as a physician shifts the prescription of a consumptive, and returns him to the tremendous Reality. Again he spreads his hands and cries the sacred formula, the eternal forces advance, he stands fast and is flung bleeding to the wall, or he flees. Afraid, hidden in some cranny of the rocks, nursing his hurt, the child begins to see the truth. This passing from the world as it should be to the world as it is nearly kills him. It is like the riving of timber.
Presently I heard Jud speak to me from behind El Mahdi. The full strong voice of the man was like a dash of cold water in the face. I sat up; he bade me join Ump and himself to discuss what should be done, then turned around and went back to the house.
I slipped down from El Mahdi, washed my face in the river, and wiped it dry on my sleeve. Then I climbed into the saddle and rode back to where the little group stood before the door.
There were Ump and Jud, the two ferrymen, and their ancient mother. Danel was describing the catastrophe in a low voice, as one might describe the last illness of a man whose corpse was waiting in his house for burial.
"We set Twiggs over pretty late. Then there wasn't anybody else. So we tied up the boat an' went to bed. Mother sleeps by the fire. Mother has rheumatiz so she don't sleep very sound. About midnight she called me. She was sitting up in the bed with a shawl around her. 'Danel,' she said, 'there's something lumbering around the boat. Hadn't you better slip down an' see about it?' I told mother I reckoned it was a swimmin' tree. Sometimes they hit against the boat when they go down. Then I waked Mart up an' told him mother heard somethin' bumpin' against the boat, an' I reckoned it was a swimmin' tree. Mart was sleepy an' he said he reckoned it was. Then I turned over an' went to sleep again. When we got out this mornin', the cable was broke loose an' the boat swum off. We s'pose," here he paused and looked gravely at his brother, who as gravely nodded his head, "we s'pose the cable pulled loose somehow."
"It was cut in two," said I.
The ferryman screwed his head around on his neck as though he had not heard correctly. "Did you say 'cut in two'?" he repeated.
"Yes," said I, "cut in two. That cable was cut in two."
The man began to rub his chin with his hand. "I reckon not, Quiller," he said. "I reckon there ain't no person ornery enough to do that."
"It might be," piped the old woman, thrusting in. "There's been sich. Oncet, a long time ago, when your pap was a boy, goin' girlin' some, about when he begun a settin' up to me, a feller stole the ferryboat, but he was a terrible gallus feller."
"Granny," said Ump, "the devil ain't dead by a long shot. There is rapscallions lickin' plates over the Valley that's meaner than gar-broth. They could show the Old Scratch tricks that would make his eyes stick out so you could knock 'em off with a clapboard."
Danel protested. He pointed out that neither he nor his brother had ever done any man a wrong, and therefore no man would wrong them. It was one of those rules which children discover are strangely not true. He said the ferry was for the good of all, and therefore all would preserve rather than injure that good. Another wise saw, verbally sound, but going to pieces under the pitiless logic of fact.
This man, who had spent his life as one might spend it grinding at a mill, now, when he came to reckon with the natures of men, did it like a child. Ump cut him short. "Danel," he said, "you talk like a meetin'-house. Old Christian cut that cable with a cold chisel, an' Black Malan or Peppers stole your boat. They have nothing against you. They wanted to stop us from crossin' with these cattle, an' I guess they've done it."
Then he turned to me. The vapourings of the ferryman were of no importance. "Quiller," he said, "we're in the devil's own mess. What do you think about it?"
"I don't know," I answered; "what does Jud think?"
The face of the giant was covered with perspiration standing in beads. He clenched his hands and clamped his wet fists against the legs of his breeches. "God damn 'em!" he said. It was the most terrible oath that I have ever heard. Then he closed his mouth.
Ump looked at the man, then rode his horse over to me.
"Quiller," he said slowly, "we're gone up unless we can swim the drove across, an' it's a hell of a risky job. Do you see that big eddy?" and he pointed his finger to the middle of the Valley River where the yellow water swung around in a great circle. "If the steers bunched up in that hole, they'd drown like rats."
I looked at the wide water and it scared me. "Ump," I said, "how long could they stay in there without giving out?"
"They wouldn't give out," replied the hunchback, "if we could keep 'em above the eddy. A steer can swim as long as a horse if he ain't crowded. If we could keep 'em goin' in a long loop, we could cross 'em. If they bunched up, it would be good-bye, pap."
"Do you think they would grind in there if they happened to bunch?" said I.
"To kindlin'," responded Ump, "if they ever got at it good."
"Ump," I said, looking him squarely in the face, "I'm afraid of it."
The man chewed his thin upper lip. "So am I, Quiller," he answered. "But there ain't much choosin'; we either swim 'em or we go up the spout."
"Well," said I, "do we do it, or not do it?"
The hunchback studied the river. "Quiller," he said finally, "if we knowed about that current——"
I cut him short. "I'll find out about the current," I said. Then I threw away my hat, pitched my coat down on the sod and gathered up my bridle reins.
"Wait!" cried the hunchback. Then he turned to Jud. "Wash your face in the tub by the spout yonder, an' bring up your horse. Take Danel with you. Open Tolbert's fence an' put the cattle in the grove. Then come back here. Quiller's the lightest; he's goin' to try the current."
Then he swung around and clucked to the mare. I spoke to El Mahdi and we rode down toward the river. On the bank Ump stopped and looked out across the water, deep, wide, muddy. Then he turned to me.
"Hadn't you better ride the Bay Eagle?" he said. "She knows more in a minute than any horse that was ever born."
"What's wrong with El Mahdi?" I said, piqued a little.
"He ain't steady," responded the hunchback; "an' he knows more tricks than a meetin'-house rat. Sometimes he swims an' sometimes he don't swim, an' you can't tell till you git in."
"This," said I, "is a case of 'have to.' If he don't like the top, there's ground at the bottom." Then I kicked the false prophet in the flanks with my heels. The horse was standing on the edge of the sodded bank. When my heels struck him, he jumped as far as he could out into the river.
There was a great splash. The horse dropped like a stone, his legs stiff as ramrods, his neck doubled under and his back bowed. It was a bucking jump and meant going to the bottom. I felt the water rush up and close over my head.
I clamped my legs to the horse, held my breath, and went down in the saddle. I thought we should never reach the bottom of that river. The current tugged, trying to pull me loose and whirl me away. The horse under me felt like a millstone. The weight of water pressed like some tremendous thumb. Then we struck the rock bottom and began to come up. The sensation changed. I seemed now to be thrust violently from below against a weight pressing on my head, as though I were being used by some force under me to drive the containing cork out of the bottle in which we were enclosed. I began to be troubled for breath, my head rang. The distance seemed interminable. Then we popped up on the top of the river, and I filled with the blessed air to the very tips of my fingers.
The horse blew the water out of his nostrils and doubled his long legs. I thought he was going down again, and, seizing the top of the saddle horn, I loosed my feet in the stirrups. If El Mahdi returned to the deeps of that river, he would go by himself.
He stretched out his grey neck, sank until the water came running over the saddle, and then began to swim with long, graceful strokes of his iron legs as though it were the easiest thing in the world.
The strength of the current did not seem to be so powerful as I had judged it. However, its determination was difficult. The horse swam with great ease, but he was an extraordinary horse, with a capacity for doing with this apparent ease everything which it pleased him to attempt. I do not know whether this arose from the stirring of larger powers ordinarily latent, or whether the horse's manner somehow concealed the amount of the effort. I think the former is more probable.
Half-way across the river, we were not more than twenty yards down-stream from the ferry landing. Ump shouted to turn down into the eddy, and I swung El Mahdi around. A dozen long strokes brought us into the almost quiet water of the great rim to this circle, a circle that was a hundred yards in diameter, in which the water moved from the circumference to the centre with a velocity increasing with the contracting of its orbit, from almost dead water in its rim to a whirling eddy in its centre.
I pulled El Mahdi up and let him drift with the motion of the water. We swung slowly around the circle, moving inward so gently that our progress was almost imperceptible.
The panic of men carried out in flood water can be easily understood. The activity of any power is very apt to alarm when that power is controlled by no intelligence. It is the unthinking nature of the force that strikes the terror. Death and the dark would lose much if they lost this attribute. The water bubbled over the saddle. The horse drifted like a chip. To my eyes, a few feet above this flood, the water seemed to lift on all sides, not unlike the sloping rim of some enormous yellow dish, in which I was moving gradually to the centre.
If I should strike out toward the shore, we should be swimming up-hill, while the current turning inward was apparently travelling down. This delusion of grade is well known to the swimmer. It is the chiefest terror of great water. Expert swimmers floating easily in flood water have been observed to turn over suddenly, throw up their arms, and go down. This is probably panic caused by believing themselves caught in the vortex of a cone, from which there seems no escape, except by the impossible one of swimming up to its rim, rising on all sides to the sky.
In a few minutes El Mahdi was in the centre of the eddy, carried by a current growing always stronger. In this centre the water boiled, but it was for the most part because of a lashing of surface currents. There seemed to be no heavy twist of the deep water into anything like a dangerous whirlpool. Still there was a pull, a tugging of the current to a centre. Again I was unable to estimate the power of this drag, as it was impossible to estimate how much resistance was being offered by the horse.
In the vortex of the eddy the delusion of the vast cone was more pronounced. It was one of the dangerous elements to be considered. I observed the horse closely to determine, if possible, whether he possessed this delusion. If he did, there was not the slightest evidence of it. He seemed to swim on the wide river with the indifference of floating timber, his head lying flat, and the yellow waves slipping over him to my waist. The sun beat into this mighty dish. Sometimes, when it caught the water at a proper angle, I was blinded and closed my eyes. Neither of these things seemed to give El Mahdi the slightest annoyance. I heard Ump shout and turned the horse toward the south shore. He swam straight out of the eddy with that same mysterious ease that characterised every effort of this eccentric animal, and headed for the bank of the river on the line of a bee. He struck the current beyond the dead water, turned a little up stream and came out on the sod not a hundred paces below the ferry. Both Ump and Jud rode down to meet me.
El Mahdi shook the clinging water from his hide and resumed his attitude of careless indifference.
"Great fathers!" exclaimed Jud, looking the horse over, "you ain't turned a hair on him. He ain't even blowed. It must be easy swimmin'."
"Don't fool yourself," said the hunchback. "You can't depend on that horse. He'd let on it was easy if it busted a girt."
"It was easy for him," I said, rising to the defence.
"Ho, ho," said Ump, "I wouldn't think you'd be throwin' bokays after that duckin'. I saw him. It wasn't so killin' easy."
"It couldn't be so bad," said Jud; "the horse ain't a bit winded."
"Laddiebuck," cried the hunchback, "you'll see before you get through. That current's bad."
I turned around in the saddle. "Then you're not going to put them in?" I said.
"Damn it!" said the hunchback, "we've got to put 'em in."
"Don't you think we'll get them over all right?" said I, bidding for the consolation of hope.
"God knows," answered the hunchback.
"It'll be the toughest sleddin' that we ever went up against." Then he turned his mare and rode back to the house of the ferrymen, and we followed him.
Ump stopped at the door and called to the old woman. "Granny," he said, "set us out a bite." Then he climbed down from the Bay Eagle, one leg at a time, as a spider might have done.
"Quiller," he called to me, "pull off your saddle, an' let Jud feed that long-legged son of a seacook. He'll float better with a full belly."
Jud dismounted from the Cardinal. "When does the dippin' begin?" he said. "Mornin' or afternoon service?"
The hunchback squinted at the sun. "It's eleven o'clock now," he answered. "In an hour we'll lock horns with Hawk Rufe an' hell an' high water, an' the devil keeps what he gits."
Jud took off the saddles and fed the horses shelled corn in the grass before the door, and after the frugal dinner we waited for an hour. The hunchback was a good general. When he went out to the desperate sally he would go with fresh men and fresh horses. I spent that hour on my back.
Across the road under the chestnut trees the black cattle rested in the shade, gathering strength for the long swim. On the sod before the door the horses rolled, turning entirely over with their feet in the air. Jud lay with his legs stretched out, his back to the earth, and his huge arms folded across his face.
Ump sat doubled up on the skirt of his saddle, his elbows in his lap, his long fingers linked together, and the shaggy hair straggling across his face. He was the king of the crooked men, planning his battle with the river while his lieutenants slept with their bellies to the sun.
I was moving in some swift dream when the stamping of the horses waked me and I jumped up. Jud was tightening the girth on El Mahdi. The Cardinal stood beside him bridled and saddled. Ump was sitting on the Bay Eagle, his coat and hat off, giving some order to the ferrymen who were starting to bring up the cattle. The hunchback was saving every breath of his horses. He looked like some dwarfish general of old times.
I climbed up on El Mahdi bareheaded, in my shirt sleeves, as I had ridden him before. Jud took off his coat and hat and threw them away. Then he pulled off his shirt, tied it in a knot to the saddle-ring, tightened the belt of his breeches, and got on his horse naked to the waist. It was the order of the hunchback.
"Throw 'em away," he said; "a breath in your horse will be worth all the duds you can git in a cart."
Danel and Mart laid down the fence and brought the cattle into the common by the ferry. Directed by the hunchback they moved the leaders of the drove around to the ferry landing. The great body of the cattle filled the open behind the house. The six hundred black muleys made the arc of a tremendous circle, swinging from the ferry landing around to the road. It was impossible to get farther up the river on this side because of a dense beech thicket running for a quarter of a mile above the open.
It was our plan to put the cattle in at the highest point, a few at a time, and thereby establish a continuous line across the river. If we could hold this line in a reasonable loop, we might hope to get over. If it broke and the cattle drifted down-stream we would probably never be able to get them out.
When the drove stood as the hunchback wished it, he rode down to the edge of the river, Jud and I following him. I felt the powerful influence exerted by the courage of this man. He leaned over and patted the silk shoulders of the Bay Eagle. "Good girl," he said, "good girl." It was like a last caress, a word spoken in the ear of the loved one on the verge of a struggle sure to be lost, the last whisper carrying all the devotion of a lifetime. Did the man at heart believe we could succeed? If the cattle were lost, did he expect to get out with his life? I think not.
Against this, the Cardinal and his huge naked rider contrasted strangely. They represented brute strength marching out with brute fearlessness into an unthinking struggle. Fellows and mates, these, the bronze giant and his horse. They might go under the yellow water of the Valley River, but it would be the last act of the last struggle.
As for me, I think I failed to realise the magnitude of this desperate move. I saw but hazily what the keen instinct of the hunchback saw so well,—all the possibilities of disaster. I went on that day as an aide goes with his general into a charge. I lacked the sense of understanding existing between the other men and their horses, but I had in its stead an all-powerful faith in the eccentric El Mahdi. No matter what happened, he would come out of it somehow.
Domestic cattle will usually follow a horse. It was the plan that I should go first, to lead fifty steers put in with me. Then Jud should follow to keep the bunch moving, while Ump and the two ferrymen fed the line, a few at a time, keeping it unbroken, and as thin as possible.
This was the only plan offering any shadow of hope. We could not swim the cattle in small bunches because each bunch would require one or two drivers, and the best horse would go down on his third trip. That course was out of the question, and this was the only other.
I think Ump had another object in putting me before the drove. If trouble came, I would not be caught in the tangle of cattle. I rode into the river, and they put the fifty leaders in behind me. This time El Mahdi lowered himself easily into the water and began to swim. I held him in as much as I could, and looked back over my shoulder.
The muleys dropped from the sod bank, went under to their black noses, came up, shook the water from their ears, and struck out, following the tail of the horse. They all swam deep, the water running across the middle of their backs, their long tails, the tips of their shoulders, and their quaint inky faces visible above the yellow water.
One after another they took the river until there were fifty behind me. Then Jud rode in, and the advance of the line was under way. Ump shouted to swing with the current as far as I could without getting into the eddy, and I forced El Mahdi gradually down-stream, holding his bit with both hands to make him swim as slow as he could.
We seemed to creep to the middle of the river. A Polled-Angus bullock with an irregular white streak running across his nose led the drove, following close at the horse's tail. That steer was Destiny. No criminal ever watched the face of his judge with more desperate interest than I watched the dish-face of that muley. I was now at the very middle of the river, and the turn must be made against the current. Would the steer follow me, or would he take the natural line of least resistance into the swinging water of the eddy? It was not a dozen yards below, whirling around to its boiling centre. The steer swam almost up to the horse's tail. I turned El Mahdi slowly against the current, and watched the black bullock over my shoulder. He turned after the horse. The current struck him in the deep forequarters; he swung out below the horse, threw his big chest to the current, and followed El Mahdi's tail like a fish following a bait. I arose in the stirrups and wiped the sweat off my face with my sleeve.
I could have shouted as I looked back. Jud and the fifty were turning the loop as though they were swinging at the end of a pendulum, every steer following his fellow like a sheep. Jud's red horse was the only bit of colour against that long line of black bobbing heads.
Behind him a string of swimming cattle reached in a long curve to the south bank of the Valley River. We moved slowly up the north curve of the long loop to the ferry landing. It was vastly harder swimming against the current, but the three-year-old steer is an animal of great strength. To know this, one has but to look at his deep shoulders and his massive brisket. The yellow water bubbled up over the backs of the cattle. The strong current swung their bodies around until their tails were down-stream, and the little waves danced in fantastic eddies around their puffing muzzles. But they clung to the crupper of El Mahdi with dogged tenacity, and when he climbed the north bank of the Valley River, the blazed face of the Polled-Angus leader came up out of the water at his heels.
I rode out on the good hard ground, and turned the horse's head toward the river. My heart sang and shouted under my shirt. The very joy of what I saw seemed to fill my throat choking full. The black heads dotted across the river might have been strung on a string. There were three hundred cattle in that water.
Jud and the first fifty were creeping up the last arm of the mighty curve, swimming together like brothers, the Cardinal sunk to his red head, and the naked body of his rider glistening in the sun.
When they reached the bank below me, I could restrain my joy no longer. I rose in the stirrups and whooped like the wildest savage that ever scalped a settler. I think the devil's imps sleeping somewhere must have heard that whooping.
Crowds of cattle, like mobs, are strangely subject to some sudden impulse. Any seamy-faced old drover will illustrate this fact with stories till midnight, telling how Alkire's cattle resting one morning on Bald Knob suddenly threw up their heads and went crashing for a mile through the underbrush; and how a line of Queen's steers charged on a summer evening and swept out every fence in the Tygart's valley, without a cause so far as the human eye could see and without a warning.
Three hundred cattle had crossed, swimming the track of the loop as though they were fenced into it, and I judge there were a hundred in the water, when the remainder of the drove on the south shore made a sudden bolt for the river. The move was so swift and uniform, and the distance to the water so short, that Ump and the ferrymen had barely time to escape being swept in with the steers. The whole drove piled up in the river and began to swim in a black mass toward the north shore. I saw the Bay Eagle sweep down the bank and plunge into the river below the cattle. I could hear Ump shouting, and could see the bay mare crowding the lower line of the swimming cattle.
The very light went out of the sky. We forced our horses into the river up to their shoulders, and waited. The cattle half-way across came out all right, but when the mass of more than two hundred reached the loop of the curve, they seemed to waver and crowd up in a bunch. I lost my head and plunged El Mahdi into the river. "Come on," I shouted, and Jud followed me.
If Satan had sent some guardian devil to choose for us an act of folly, he could not have chosen better than I. It is possible that the cattle would have taken the line of the leaders against the current if we had kept out of the river, but when they saw our horses they became bewildered, lost their sense of direction and drifted down into the eddy,—a great tangle of fighting cattle.
We swung down-stream, and taking a long circle came in below the drove as it drifted around in the outer orbit of the eddy. The crowd of cattle swam past, butting each other, and churning the water under their bellies, led by a half-blood Aberdeen-Angus steer with a ring in his nose. Half-way around we met Ump. He was a terrible creature. His shirt was in ribbons, and his hair was matted to his head. He was trying to force the Bay Eagle into the mass of cattle, and he was cursing like a fiend.
I have already said that his mare knew more than any other animal in the Hills. She dodged here and there like a water rat, slipped in among the cattle and shot out when they swung together. On any other horse the hunchback would have been crushed to pulp.
We joined him and tried to drive a wedge through the great tangle to split it in half, Jud and the huge Cardinal for a centre. We got half-way in and were flung off like a plank.
We floated down into the rim of the eddy below the cattle, spread out, and endeavoured to force the drove up stream. We might as well have ridden against a floating log-jam. The mad, bellowing steers swam after their leader, moving in toward the vortex of the eddy. The half-blood Aberdeen-Angus, whom the cattle seemed to follow, was now on the inner border of the drove, the tangle of steers stretched in a circle around him. It was clear that in a very few minutes he would reach the centre, the mass of cattle would crowd down on him, and the whole bunch would go to the bottom. We determined to make another effort to break through this circle, and if possible capture the half-blood and force him out toward the shore. A more dangerous undertaking could not be easily imagined.
The chances of driving this steer out were slight if we should ever reach him. The possibility of forcing a way in was remote, and if we succeeded in penetrating to the centre of the jam and failed to break it, we should certainly be wedged in and crushed. If Ump's head had been cool, I do not think he would ever have permitted me to join in such madness. We were to select a loose place in the circle, the Cardinal and El Mahdi to force an opening, and the Bay Eagle to go through if she could.
We waited while the cattle passed, bellowing and thrashing the water,—an awful mob of steers in panic. Presently in this circle there was a rift where a bull, infuriated by the crowding, swam by, fighting to clear a place around him. He was a tremendous creature, glistening black, active and dangerous as a wild beast. He charged the cattle around him, driving them back like a battering ram. He dived and butted and roared like some sea monster gone mad. Ump shouted, and we swam into the open rift against this bull, Jud leading, and El Mahdi at his shoulder.
The bull fighting the cattle behind him did not see us until the big sorrel was against him. Then he swung half around and tried to butt. This was the danger which we feared most. The ram of a muley steer is one of the most powerful blows delivered by any animal. For this reason, no bull with horns is a match for a muley. The driving power of sixteen hundred pounds of bone and muscle is like the ram of a ship. Striking a horse fair, it would stave him in as one breaks an egg shell. Jud leaned down from his horse and struck the bull on the nose with his fist, beating him in the nostrils. The bull turned and charged the cattle behind him. We crowded against him, using the mad bull for a great driving wedge.
I have never seen anything in the world to approach the strength or the fury of this muley. With him we broke through the circle of steers forcing into the centre of the eddy. We had barely room for the horses by crowding shoulder to shoulder to the bull. The cattle closed in behind us like bees swarming in a hive.
I was accustomed to cattle all my life. I had been among them when they fought each other, bellowing and tearing up the sod; among them when they charged; among them when they stampeded; and I was not afraid. But this caldron of boiling yellow water filled with cattle was a hell-pot. In it every steer, gone mad, seemed to be fighting for dear life.
I caught something of the terror of the cattle, and on the instant the delusion of the cone rising on all sides returned. The cattle seemed to be swarming down upon us from the sides of this yellow pit. I looked around. The Bay Eagle was squeezing against El Mahdi. Jud was pressing close to the nose of the bull, keeping him turned against the cattle by great blows rained on his muzzle, and we were driving slowly in like a glut.
My mouth became suddenly dry to the root of my tongue. I dropped the reins and whirled around in the saddle. Ump, whose knee was against El Mahdi's flank, reached over and caught me by the shoulder. The grip of his hand was firm and steady, and it brought me back to my senses, but his face will not be whiter when they lay him finally in the little chapel at Mount Horeb.
As I turned and gathered up the reins, the water was boiling over the horses. Sometimes we went down to the chin, the horses entirely under; at other times we were flung up almost out of the water by the surging of the cattle. The Cardinal was beginning to grow tired. He had just swam across the river and half-way back, and been then forced into this tremendous struggle without time to gather his breath. He was a horse of gigantic stature and great endurance, but his rider was heavy. He had been long in the water, and the jamming of the cattle was enough to wear out a horse built of ship timber.
His whole body was sunk to the nose and he went entirely under with every surge of the bull. The naked back of Jud reeked with sweat, washed off every minute with a flood of muddy water, and the muscles on his huge shoulders looked like folds of brass.
He held the bridle-rein in his teeth and bent down over the saddle so as to strike the bull when it tried to turn back. At times the man, horse, and bull were carried down out of sight.
Suddenly I realised that we were on the inside. The river was a bedlam of roars and bellows. We had broken through the circle of cattle, and it drifted now in two segments, crowding in to follow the half-blood Aberdeen-Angus. This steer passed a few yards below us, making for the centre of the eddy. As he went by, Ump shot out on the Bay Eagle, dodged through the cattle, and, coming up with the steer, reached down and hooked his finger in the ring which the half-blood wore in his nose. Then, holding the steer's muzzle against the shoulder of the mare, he struck out straight through the vortex of the eddy, making for the widest opening in the broken circle.
I watched the hunchback breathless. It was not difficult to lead the steer. An urchin could have done it with a rope in the nosering, but the two segments of the circle might swing together at any moment, and if they did Ump would be penned in and lost and we would be lost also, locked up in this jam of steers.
For a moment the hunchback and the steer passed out of sight in the boiling eddy, then they reached the open, went through it, and struck up-stream for the ferry landing.
The cattle on the inner side of the circle followed the Aberdeen-Angus, streaming through the opening in a great wedge that split the jam into the two wings of an enormous V. The whole drove swung out and followed in two lines, as one has seen the wild geese following their pilot to the south.
Jud and I, wedged in, were tossed about by the surging of the cattle, as the jam broke. We were protected a little by the bull, whose strength seemed inexhaustible. Every moment I looked to see some black head rise under the fore quarters of El Mahdi, throw him over, and force him down beneath the bellies of the cattle, or some muley charge the fighting bull and crush Jud and his horse. But the very closeness of the jamming saved us from these dangers.
It was almost impossible for a bullock to turn. We were carried forward by the press as a child is carried with a crowd. When the cattle split into the wings of the V, we were flung off and found ourselves swimming in open water between the two great lines.
I felt like a man lifted suddenly from a dungeon into the sunlit world. I was weak. I caught hold of the horn, settled down nerveless in the saddle, and looked around me. The cattle were streaming past in two long lines for the shore, led by Ump and the Aberdeen-Angus, now half-way up the north arm of the loop.
The river was still roaring with the bellowings of the cattle, as though all the devils of the water howled with fury at this losing of their prey.
The steers had now room to swim in, and they would reach the shore. I looked down at El Mahdi. He floated easily, pumping the air far back into his big lungs. He had been roundly jammed, but he was not exhausted, and I knew he would be all right when he got his breath.
Then I looked for Jud. He was a few yards below me, staring at the swimming cattle. The water was rising to his armpits. It poured over the Cardinal, and over the saddle horn. It was plain that the horse was going down. Only his muzzle hung above the water, with the nostrils distended.
I shouted to Jud. He kicked his feet out of the stirrups, dropped into the water and caught his horse by the shank of the bit. He went down until the water bubbled against his chin. But he held the horse's head above the river, treading water and striking out with his free arm.
I turned El Mahdi and swam to the Cardinal. When I reached him I caught the bit on my side, and together Jud and El Mahdi held the exhausted horse until he gathered his breath and began to swim. Presently, when he had gotten the air back in his chest, I took the bridle-rein, and Jud, loosing his hold on the bit, floated down behind the cattle, and struck out for the shore. I saw him climb the bank among the water beeches when El Mahdi and the Cardinal came up out of the river at the ferry landing behind the last bullock.
The human analyst, jotting down in his note-book the motives of men, is often strangely misled. The master of a great financial house, working day and night in an office, is not trading away his life for a system of railroads. Bless you! sir, he would not give a day of those precious hours for all the steel rails in the world. Nor is my lady spending her life like water to reach the vantage-point where she may entertain Sir Henry. That tall, keen-eyed woman with the brains crowded in her head does not care a snap of her finger if the thing called Sir Henry be flying to the devil.
Look you a little further in, good analyst. It is the passion of the chess-player. Each of these is up to the shoulders in the grandest game you ever dreamed of. Other skilful men and other quick-witted women are there across the table with Chance a-meddling. The big plan must be carried out. The iron trumpery and the social folderol are bits of stuff that have to be juggled about in this business. They have no more intrinsic value than a bank of fog. Providence made a trifling miscalculation when it put together the human mind. As the thing works, there is nothing worth while but the thrills of the game. And these thrills! How they do play the devil with the candle! Thus it comes about that when one pulls his life or his string of playthings out of a hole he does not seem to have made a gain by it. I learned this on the north bank of the Valley River, listening to Ump's growls as he ran his hands over the Bay Eagle, and the replies of Jud lying by the Cardinal in the sun.
Gratitude toward the man helper is about as rare as the splinters of the true cross. When one owes the debt to Providence, one depends always upon the statute of limitations to bar it. Here sat these grateful gentlemen, lately returned by a sort of miracle to the carpet of the green sod, swapping gibes like a couple of pirates.
"Old Nick was grabbin' for us this time," said Jud, "an' he mighty nigh got us."
"I reckon," answered Ump, "a feller ought to git down on his marrow-bones."
"I wouldn't try it," said Jud. "You might cork yourself."
"It was like the Red Sea," said I; "all the cattle piled up in there, and going round and round."
"Just like the good book tells about it," added Ump; "only we was them Egyptians, a-flounderin' an' a-spittin' water."
"Boys," said Jud, "that Pharaoh-king ought to a been bored for the holler horn. I've thought of it often."
"Why?" I asked.
"You see," he answered, "after all them miracles, locusts, an' frogs an' sich, he might a knowed the Lord was a-layin' for him. An' when he saw that water piled up, he ought a lit out for home. 'Stead of that, he went asailin' in like the unthinkin' horse."
The hunchback cocked his eye and began to whistle. Then he broke into a ditty: