“What you mean by running off this a-way?”
“What you mean by running off this a-way?”
It was the twenty-fourth day. All around them stretched a desert of alkali broken by patches of tree-cactus and clumps of bear-grass, and through the white, chalky dust Sam toiled dispiritedly a dozen yards in front of the stallion. Behind the faltering buckskin limped five skeletons of horses, and ten yards behind the hindermost walked Dave. There was no need that Charlie remain far in rear. The mustangs did not notice him, and he followed close with the burro.
The rovers had drunk deep that morning at a spring on the edge of the desert--this being as Dave would have it--and now all vigor of body and spirit had departed. Sam’s head swung low to the ground, his knees were shaking and he saw nothing of what he passed. To his bloodshot eyes these scorched wastes were a wavering mist, and he knew only that he must go on.
Suddenly, as though by telepathic agreement, the weird procession halted. Sam turned. He faced the cook as he came up without hesitation, rope in hand. Dave slipped the noose about his neck and rubbed the dusty muzzle sunk against his hip.
“You ol’ fool, you!” he mouthed at him. “What you mean by running off this a-way? Didn’t you know that team weren’t no good without you? What did you reckon I was going to do, you pore ol’ son-of-a-gun?”
He ran his eye over the emaciated body; then his glance fell to his own shrunken outline.
“I reckon we’re both some thinner, Sam. And my feet’s awful sore. What you need is corn. Here, Charlie, gimme that ‘morale’!”
Staked out with the nosebag over his head, the mule munched dully on the life-giving grain, while Dave prepared dinner and Charlie moved from point to point on the plain with a rifle, earning half a month’s pay every time he got near a horse. Charlie began to figure he would be a rich cowman some day.
Two hours later the men were smoking in the peace and content of hard work well done, when Sam walked stiffly to the end of his rope. By straining on it he could just reach the edge of the campfire. Dave rose up on his elbow.
“Hi, there! Git your nose out’n that pan, you rascal! I swan, he’s hunting for bread.”
IITHE MARAUDER
Six frowsy buzzards sat on a tree and made mock of his hunger. With his bushy tail drooping dismally between his legs, he zigzagged his way up the wide, dry bed of Red River, flitting from cover to cover like an uneasy ghost. Up one steep bank he sidled, to squat on his haunches, whence he surveyed the camp hungrily.
“There’s a big ol’ ki-yote,” said the hoodlum driver. “Git your gun, Dave.”
The cook abandoned the washpan with alacrity and ransacked the chuck-wagon for his weapon. When he rejoined Mac the coyote was still in view, but he seemed farther away.
“He done moved. I cain’t hit him from here,” said the cook.
“I been watching him and he ain’t budged. Yes, he has, too. I’ll swan, I never seen him do it.”
The prairie wolf now sat a good three hundred yards away, his back to the camp, as though indifferent and contemptuous of it. Dave knelt on one heel, took slow, careful aim, and fired. A spurt of sand five yards short of the coyote was the result. The animal half turned his head, the sensitive upper lip quivered and curled over the wicked fangs, for all the world like a sneer, and then he resumed his placid scrutiny of nothing. Mac forcibly removed the rifle from Dave’s grasp, deaf to his picturesque explanation of the miss, adjusted the sight and lay down.
“You had it sighted for a hunderd yards,” he rebuked. “I put her up a few notches.”
“Whee-ee-ee,” whined a snub-nosed leaden pellet. A spurt of sand five yards beyond the coyote was the result. It aroused the animal to instant activity. If he was not beyond range, then the wagon had a better gun than he had ever met with, so he glided away like a shadow.
“There goes two dollars bounty,” sighed the cook regretfully. “That’s just what I done lost to Jack, shootin’ craps last night.”
“Where’s that nester’s ol’ dog that was smelling round the pots this morning?” Mac demanded. “There he goes now. Hi-yi, ol’ feller! Go git him, boy! Go to him!”
A yellow mongrel, half shepherd and a mixture of other breeds, abandoned his slinking tour of the camp and became at once a respectable, alert dog, with a job. He sighted the fleeing coyote, and, giving tongue, followed after.
“He won’t never catch him. Those lil’ ol’ ki-yotes kin outrun a streak of lightning, and stop to sleep a-doing it,” said Mac.
It was evident that the pursuit did not worry the fugitive greatly. He loped along easily, with the dog gaining at every frantic leap until a scant yard separated them, when, still maintaining his careless gait, the coyote veered to the south; and yet the distance between them did not diminish. The dog was blowing and puffing throaty threats, while the wolf watched him out of the corner of one eye. With a mad burst of speed the cur gained a yard, whereupon something happened. Without appearing to strain himself at all, the coyote simply disappeared from view over the next rise. The dog had seen a pepper-and-salt, gray streak flash over the crest, but that was all. He stopped in a dazed sort of way to figure the matter out.
While he was figuring, a foxlike head poked itself over a clump of bear-grass and the coyote yawned in his face. Once more the chase was on, with redoubled fury.
This was an old game to Scartoe. He had raced all sorts of dogs, from collie to fox terrier, and only once, when a greyhound ran him, had he stood in danger. Greatly to his chagrin and alarm on that occasion, he had been forced to switch the lithe pursuer unexpectedly into a barb-wire division-fence, to save his hide. As he ran now he was studying this loud-voiced antagonist of the yellow hair. Whatever he saw, the result was wholly surprising. He increased his lead by ten yards, then whirled about and sat down, at which the dog plowed up the ground for five feet in a panic-stricken effort to put on the brakes, and promptly changed his course. Still growling, he trotted away toward a cactus far to the left, as though suddenly made aware of something extremely interesting to be found there.
The coyote’s lip flickered, and he walked to the sandy sides of a ravine. With a final look back from its top, he descended leisurely; then, once in the creek bed, glided at top speed in an opposite direction. He was bound homeward.
All of which goes to show the delicacy of coyote judgment and the depths of his knowledge of human and canine nature. For there are dogs which will close on a coyote and kill him at the first opportunity and with no hesitation. Pluck does not run exclusively in breeds, and individual dogs of all kinds have been known to go for the prairie thief at sight, and even for the redoubtable lobo; but others there are which will shirk a tussle with this scorned of the wolf tribe, this scavenger and outcast of the wild. And a coyote, being lowest in the ranks of those obsessed of fear, is the readiest to detect cowardice in others; moreover, he has the cunning to profit by it.
Enjoyable as this little breather had been, it had not provided the meal for which he was searching. Rather it had whetted the gnawing demand for it and the prospect of obtaining anything seemed more remote than ever, because he had builded some hopes on scraps from the camp. Scartoe eased to a walk--not the brisk, firm patter of the dog, but a sneaking, apologetic, tortuous gait, that was yet swift and wonderfully noiseless.
Prairie dogs there were none, though he scour the length and breadth of six hundred square miles. Poison had done its work thoroughly and only the empty holes remained, half grown over with grass and weeds, a constant menace to horsemen. Of ground squirrel there were a few, and at certain seasons the sage grouse furnished him succulent meals; but these were trifles, after all, and it took infinite patience and stealth to secure them.
Scartoe crept slantwise up a ridge and took a look around. The sun beat down on a land it had desolated. Where creeks had been were now gorges of baked clay; a long stretch of sage-grass was white with dust and crackling; large fissures dumbly voiced the parched ground’s protests; the bear-grass and cactus showed scrawny and dried; and above this scorched land rose a canopy of jumbled white clouds, magnificent, matchless. A score or two of lean cattle were browsing on the slopes, nibbling the long, yellow bean pods from mesquite trees, but of other signs of life there were none, save the scurrying green and blue and golden-brown lizards, which darted from stone to stone at amazing speed.
And this had been the style of his hunting for weeks, so that he was gaunt and desperate. Nothing in all the world in the shape of meat, except creatures so large and strong he dare not attack. Nothing--his restless eyes became riveted on a bush not fifty yards to his right. Surely something had stirred there. His nose was thrust forward to give his extraordinarily strong sense of smell a chance, and it told him what his eyes were unable wholly to define. There was a calf behind that bush.
His famished stomach drove him forward, while his natural cowardice whispered caution. It was plain to him that the calf was very young. Otherwise he would have wanted the assistance of a brother marauder. Even now, however, those cattle grazing on the slopes haunted him, but a fleeting glance over the immediate vicinity assured him the prey was unguarded. So he stole forward. His advance was a miracle of furtive effort, and such was the beast’s inherited cunning that, quite unconsciously, he took advantage of spots where his color blended so harmoniously with the rough ground that wolf and rock and shrub were indistinguishable.
The gods of little calves must have been wide-awake that day; else what could have prompted the youngster to stir and lift his head? He had heard no sound; no scent had reached his nostrils. The coyote was too old a hand at stalking for that. A pair of round, fear-distended eyes were turned toward the terrible thing that shot through space straight for his neck, and a plaintive bawl was cut short in the middle. That was because the calf got into action--action quicker than any in his life of three weeks. He lurched upward and departed, minus the left ear. The beast snarled and turned to pursue, but a noise diverted him. Like a man waking from a dream, the coyote caught, too late, the rush of hoofs. He shrank aside, but not far enough. The mother’s horns caught him above the shoulder and ripped him to the flank, tossing him five feet into the air. When he came down he tarried not, but, bloody, torn and mad with fear, sought the safety of his cañon retreat.
His wife and five babies were awaiting him. He had been out all night on his prowl for food, and it was now three hours after sunup, the hour when, ordinarily, he would be stretched out on a sunny knoll, taking a nap in the content of a full stomach. A score of yards from the den his nose told him that the family had fed, so he came trotting down the rocky creek-bed, stiffly expectant. The tiny, furry, broad-headed pups were snarling and tugging at the remnants of a meal and, hungry though he was, he paused to watch them with a certain fatherly pride. Then, at a growl from his mate, he slunk forth again on his quest. His wound smarted, but did not cripple him, and hunger was a spur.
“The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely”
“The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely”
He found what his wife had said he would find, the remains of the offal of a heifer which the outfit had killed the previous day for food. Luckier in her search, the mother coyote had come upon the abandoned camp late the previous night, though it was ten miles from home and she disliked such distant hunting; and, having fed, she had carried a huge strip of the entrails to her babies. The wolf drove away a couple of buzzards and fell upon this savagely; and, having gorged, sat down to lick his cut. In a few minutes he moved painfully on the back trail, for his hurts were stiffening.
The family home was a simple affair, such as the original families of human kind might have begun life with. Anything provided with an olfactor could ascertain its propinquity at a distance of forty yards, for it gave off the stinging, musty odor of the wolf tribe. There were also numerous faint trails hard by, some of them blind trails, contrived cunningly to draw the stupid hunter astray. The genuine paths led into a broader, clearly-defined one which ended in a hole about two feet square in the wall of an arroyo, and this entrance was concealed from the casual observer by a scrub-cedar that clung to a precarious foothold and subsisted on nothing. No water had come down this channel in generations and they felt safe on that score.
The hallway of the home was little more than a yard long. It led into a den whereto no light penetrated--a hollowed space perhaps two and a half feet high, and large enough for the head of the house to turn around in. There were also some ramifications to it, four smaller cells dug out in the same fashion, and out of one of these another passage led upward. It came out on top of the embankment, twenty feet away; for Scartoe was a cautious rascal and had no intention of letting his domicile become a trap. He desired it to be a haven and, therefore, he had selected a residence with a back door, though most of his tribe contented themselves with an entrance.
This caution was habitual with him and was the child of experience. Experience had taught him some bitter lessons and had given him his name. For, in the spring of the year when he reached his full height and was filled with conceit of his strength, a famine threatened. The wolf ranged far and got nothing. Hitherto suspicious of the haunts of men, he overcame his fears at last and raided the ranch headquarters and came away with a lusty young rooster. Next night he attempted to repeat this feat, and while nosing the skeleton of a cow lying close to the home pasture fence, something snapped over his foot. A numbing pain shot through him. When he bounded high and backward to clear, he was jerked to the ground.
Clasped like a vise about his toes was a steel trap, a mercilessly powerful contraption of chains, weighted with two hundred pounds. It had him, but fortunately his leg was not caught. In his frenzy of terror, freedom was worth any sacrifice or pain. He sank his teeth into his own flesh and gnawed his toes off, and holding the bleeding stump up in front of him, fled on three legs. Not a sound did he make during his agony. It was not pluck, but a stoicism begot of fear. Had he whined, a charge of buckshot would have ended his days; for the cook dozed fitfully behind a woodpile fifty yards away.
When the foot grew well he was a trifle short in the left foreleg; but it made scarcely any difference in his gait. The only difference was in the trail he made, and from that he was known as Scartoe.
The hurt the cow gave him healed with astonishing rapidity, for sunlight and dry air are Nature’s magicians. While taking a siesta in front of his den next afternoon and tenderly licking the ragged wound, he was witness of a strange encounter. His pups were frisking about, tumbling and growling and snapping in youthful enjoyment of life, while the mother lay beside him, encouraging these evidences of prospective adult ferocity.
At the foot of the knoll whereon they reposed, something rose, wavering, with a fear-thrilling rattle, and the pups scattered. At the same moment a sharp hiss answered this first challenge. With eyes glowing and ears cocked, husband and wife waited for the battle between these enemies.
A dark green reptile with cream-colored bands, about forty inches in length, was circling a rattler. The latter lay coiled, ready to strike, his folds curling and uncurling in long ripples as his head turned to follow the movements of his enemy. Fully six feet in length he was and of a prodigious thickness; but fear had already entered the heart of him. The king-snake sped around him with the speed of light; once, twice, thrice the rattler launched a blow, but there was no foe there. Then the malignant killer was on him.
A king-snake is immune from the rattler’s poison and wages constant warfare on all reptiles. Such is the steel-wire strength of his coils that the size of an adversary never daunts him for an instant. He will tackle a snake twice his size and weight, and he will kill him, too. It was all over in a few minutes. Round and round his victim he folded himself; each second the pressure increased. There was some desperate flaying of the ground as the combatants struggled, for the enemy of all brute creation was fighting for his life. When he lay dead, the king-snake let go and tried to swallow him. He did, in fact, get him half down, but the practical difficulty in the way of surrounding an object larger than one’s self triumphed over his appetite. So he gave up the attempt and the reptile.
“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow.”
Scartoe stood on a butte, with his nose pointing to the moon, his tail between his legs, and weirdly gave vent to his feelings in song. It began with two short barks and trailed into a succession of piercing, reverberating yelps, that melted into one another and rolled and echoed, as by the ventriloquist’s art, until the night grew hideous with the clamor. One would have sworn that a hundred coyotes held the hill, and were indulging in some funereal close-harmony.
This was his evensong. It came welling from his throat in a flood, in spite of him, and the coyote could no more control the impulse, the inheritance of ages, than a man can choke back the hiccoughs. His stomach would retch and his neck muscles work in the throes of it until the song was released. Once again, in the course of twenty-four hours, did the impulse seize him. Just before the sun crept over the edge of the world his nose would be tilted toward the gray vault of heaven.
“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow!”
He desisted at last and, considerably uplifted, departed on his hunt for food. A score of his fellows he met in his prowling, some hunting in couples; but Scartoe was a family man and a lone marauder, and would have none of them. In the half million acres composing the ranch were fully four hundred of his brethren. This in spite of a once vigorous warfare, in which poison and trap and gun and dog had been the weapons. In the last three years the campaign against the coyotes had waned, though each head would bring the taker a bounty at the county-seat and another at headquarters.
It is not to be wondered at that the thieves became arrogant and venturesome. They reveled in their depredations and pitted their keen wits against man’s intelligence with increasing boldness. What if twenty thousand of their brethren had been killed in the previous twelvemonth, in the national forest preserves alone? Many times twenty thousand survived in the cattle country; and official estimate gives it that each coyote does damage to stock to the amount of one hundred dollars annually. Scartoe must have passed, on the silent trails in his night hunt, the destroyers of ten thousand dollars’ worth of stock in a year.
Once he paused in a patch of broomweed to send his doleful cry to the stars. It gurgled from his throat like water from a bottle. He gave tongue no more that night. From the mouth of a cañon, far to his right, sounded a long-drawn howl, plaintive, threatening. Hardly had it ceased than a piercing scream broke from a hackberry tree within a hundred yards of where Scartoe crouched. Truly the lords of the wilds were abroad to-night; but it was not the panther’s cry which drove Scartoe from the trail. What he was giving right-of-way to was the lobo.
The coyote drew off a short distance and sank humbly to earth as a loafer wolf came running out of the shadows. He was a huge fellow, almost red along the back, gray as to his underbody, and he loped purposefully, bent on slaughter. Scartoe sank lower and groveled. In imagination he was fawning upon this mighty creature that inspired him with dread and respect; for, though of the same race, they were far apart as the poles. He knew the magnificent courage of the loafer and, when the King hunted, to him belonged the trail.
He watched him go by, and once more wended his devious way across country. A nice little scheme had hatched in his brain as he lay there, born of a long-time feud. Forty turkeys, eighty chickens and nineteen cocks were now to his credit; to the credit of the ranch-house cook stood the toes of his left foreleg. One turkey-gobbler remained--that he knew with accuracy, and Scartoe speculated pleasurably thereon.
Had he been a human being, he would have laughed as he slid under the outer barb-wire fence at headquarters. Ten paces away he had scented the handiwork of man. Sprinkle and smooth the sand as he might, set bait and lay trap ever so cunningly, the cook could not foil that marvelous instinct. There were but two holes by which Scartoe could enter the pen; before he started he was well aware that a trap lay in each. Approaching one, three feet from it, he scratched loose stones and earth behind him in a shower on a spot which looked too smooth and inviting to his eye and where his nose told him a man had fussed with his hands.
At last he was rewarded. A stick he rolled over touched the spring, and the steel jaws leaped together with a clash. He proceeded to dig all around the trap until it was wholly exposed, after which he gave a disdainful sniff and jumped over it. Thirty seconds later he emerged from the pen bearing a fine, fat gobbler, and away he went, careless of the trail of feathers his dragging prey made.
“You-all kin see for yourself what he done,” cried the cook, gloriously profane, next morning. “He knowed that was there all the time and simply sprung it. Got that lil’ ol’ gobbler, too; last one I had.”
“Ki-yotes is shore smart,” the straw boss agreed. “Smart as humans, I reckon.”
“Smart as humans?” the cook retorted contemptuously. “Why, ol’ Dick is a human.”
“That’s so,” said the straw boss thoughtfully. “Well, they’s smarter, then; smart as a good hoss.”
“That ol’ ki-yote and me’s been fighting for three years. I near had him once; but he done chawed his foot off--they’s that treacherous. Only last week I done set a rooster in that mesquite tree there, and put traps all around. He had to step in one to git that bird. Know what he done?” The cook’s voice rose to a howl. “I’ll eat my shirt if he didn’t go off and git a friend, who sprung the trap and got caught. Yes, sir. Then ol’ Scartoe, he done jump in and got the rooster.”
“Ever try poison?”
“Won’t touch it. He kin smell strych-nine farther’n he kin see. Ate some once and near died, I reckon, for I seen the place where he was took sick. Every trap I set, he just scratches stones or sticks on to it until he springs the thing.”
The straw boss, riding to a division camp the next day, came upon Scartoe trying to imitate a rock as he slept on the brow of a hill. The rider had no gun, but got down his rope and rode toward the sleeper carelessly, so as not to alarm him. The coyote let him approach within thirty yards, then awoke to yawn; but he was wrong in his estimate of the straw boss, because that worthy gentleman, hot with the memory of the recent indignity, let out a whoop and gave chase. Before he could warm up into anything like his usual form, a rope sped through the air and encircled Scartoe’s neck.
Now, there are three rules to observe in roping coyotes. The first is not to rope them, and the other two do not matter. A noose was nothing new to Scartoe and he knew the parry. Before it could tighten and jerk him into eternity, he took one slashing bite at it and the rope parted, cut clean. Next moment the coyote had mingled with the scenery.
He was a serious-minded animal, yet he permitted himself some diversions. When his wife found the remains of the beef, Scartoe realized that there was a round-up in progress, which meant food in plenty, and he took to following the outfit from camp to camp, singing to them about nine o’clock every night and again before the dawn. They showed their appreciation by taking pot shots at him with a .30-30; but he bore a charmed life. He managed to pick up much good meat by this association, too, for the outfit killed a heifer every other day and left enough to feed half a dozen coyotes. Sometimes he had to scare away foolish cows or steers, which, attracted by the smell of blood, would be holding moaning wakes over the remains; and always he had to be on the watch for the buzzards or they would forestall him.
Lightly footing it about camp one night, he startled a work-horse, himself a night prowler, bent on stealing buns from the chuck-wagon which he helped to haul during the day. A coyote would never attack a horse, placing too much value on his life, but this beast was a young, inexperienced creature and did not know that. With a snort of dismay, he dashed off. Pleased with himself, Scartoe gave chase in pure sport, precisely as a playful dog might have done. Twice around the camp they ran, then through it, stampeding eleven staked horses and smashing the guy-ropes of the fly, which fell on the cook, who never claimed to be a Christian and had no fears of an after-life.
The punchers awoke, cursing volubly, and one of them, sleeping remote from the others on the edge of camp, shied a boot at the wolf. He stopped in his run, smelled of it, then bore it homeward. It would make a fine plaything for the babies. The puncher rode twenty-seven miles to headquarters next day, in his socks, to get a new pair of boots.
Four months passed thus pleasurably. Sometimes the family nearly starved, at others the puppies sagged in the middle from overeating. Always there were bones and odds and ends of hides old Scartoe had hidden away to gnaw on in moments of leisure, but they made poor stays to hunger.
When winter shut down on the land Scartoe got rid of wife and children. He simply wandered off when the puppies grew big enough to care for themselves; and he found another home in an isolated ravine. In the cold nights that followed he took to consorting with other bachelors, roving spirits all. Very often they hunted in bands. They were few in number, because it is not coyote nature to run in packs, but this union gave them strength and made them infinitely more dangerous. Two score times they stalked and killed lonely, unprotected calves.
Later, they were so hard put to it for food that courage was born in them. One night four surrounded an eight-months’-old steer one of them would never have tackled singly, and slew him. It was Scartoe who devised the plan that the three should run him by a bush, behind which he crouched. It was Scartoe who leapt swiftly, unerringly, for the nose and brought him down. And it was he who got the lion’s share of the spoils.
Yet they were cowards for all that. A coyote is always a coward, even when driven frantic by hunger.
With the storm kings holding sway, their foraging became less and less fruitful. Several of his race departed for new hunting grounds, but Scartoe stayed in his own domain and weathered the gales.
Twice had he to eat of his own kind. Toward break of a wintry day he and one companion slunk homeward from an unsuccessful scout, their empty stomachs crying aloud for flesh. They watched each other in suspicion, for in each one the same desire was uppermost. Ahead of them, crossing their trail, a wounded coyote dragged himself--spent, done almost to death in a grapple with a nester’s dog. They fell upon and slew and ate him. Later, a full month, or perhaps two, when the same companion grew wasted and weak from hunger, and in all the forsaken country they could not kill, when not even a field mouse rewarded long hours of hunting, Scartoe ran at him and, with one shrewd stroke upward, slit his throat and let out the life blood. He ate his fill and came once more into his strength.
Only once during that time of stress did he pit his cunning against man’s guile. That was when the snow was off the ground and a party of visitors at the ranch-house hunted him with imported dogs. Scartoe made the most glorious mess of his trail. He went back on it, crossed, recrossed, waded up-stream, returned to the starting point, and employed all the tricks his long years had taught him. Then he lay down behind a dead prickly pear and watched the hunt; watched the chagrin of the men; watched every movement of the dogs, nosing and worrying. Tiring of this in half an hour, he went to his den and slept. They never untangled the web of his weaving.
When spring came Scartoe was looking shabby. He was morose, too, and had a longing for companionship. A week of fine weather improved him so that he was almost the Scartoe of old; but the longing for companionship was tenfold greater.
On a February morn he lifted up his voice to herald the dawn.
“Bow-wow! Ki-yi, yeow-eow-eow-eow-eow.”
A joyous bark answered. It was not the call of his kind, yet it thrilled him, for in it there was a note he knew. He stiffened and trembled with expectation. A young collie came bounding toward him. She paused doubtfully a dozen yards away and growled. Scartoe threw up his head, thrust out his tail from its usual abject droop and went toward her blithely. Then his hair bristled, his muscles tightened and he was ready for combat.
Behind her came another coyote. He was big. Even the veteran, large as he was, appeared small in comparison. Where the newcomer had picked up the living that had given him such weight was a puzzle; but certain it was he had ten pounds the better of it. Not a thought gave Scartoe to that handicap.
The big wolf wasted no time in preliminaries. His strength and skill had been tried in mêlées innumerable, and foes had been swept before him like chaff. But Scartoe was a general. Like lightning he dodged the swift rush; like lightning he ripped even as he swerved, tearing a piece from his enemy’s neck. Coyotes will not grapple and cling with locked jaws, as do the brave among dogs; they depend on the swift cutting powers of their dexterous jaws. Three times they came together; three times old Scartoe gashed his antagonist so that the blood spurted. Still he could not quite reach the throat for the death stroke.
And then the end came. Too eager in his desire to finish the battle, he left himself open for the merest flick of time, as he wheeled for a fourth onslaught. With one hurtling, upward dive, the big brute gained the jugular, and Scartoe was thrown back, his throat torn, the life ebbing from him.
The collie frisked about the victor, playfully showing her teeth, and they trotted away together.
An hour after sunup, the ranch-house cook, on a quest for his infant son’s collie pet, came upon the torn, lifeless body.
“Jumping Jupiter!” he exclaimed, prayerfully. “It’s ol’ Scartoe.”
IIICORAZÓN
A man is as good as his nerves--Cowboy maxim.
A man is as good as his nerves--Cowboy maxim.
A man is as good as his nerves
--Cowboy maxim.
With manes streaming in the wind, a band of bronchos fled across the grama flats, splashed through the San Pedro, and whirled sharply to the right, heading for sanctuary in the Dragoons. In the lead raced a big sorrel, his coat shimmering like polished gold where the sun touched it.
“That’s Corazón,” exclaimed Reb. “Head him or we’ll lose the bunch.”
The pursuers spread out and swept round in a wide semicircle. Corazón held to his course, a dozen yards in advance of the others, his head high. The chase slackened, died away. With a blaring neigh, the sorrel eased his furious pace and the entire band came to a trot. Before them were the mountains, and Corazón knew their fastnesses as the street urchin knows the alleys that give him refuge; in the cañons the bronchos would be safe from man. Behind was no sign of the enemy. His nose in the wind, he sniffed long, but it bore him no taint. Instead, he nickered with delight, for he smelled water. They swung to the south, and in less than five minutes their hot muzzles were washed by the bubbling waters of Eternity Spring.
Corazón drew in a long breath, expanding his well-ribbed sides, and looked up from drinking. There in front of him, fifty paces away, was a horseman. He snorted the alarm and they plunged into a tangle of sagebrush. Another rider bore down and turned them back. To right and left they darted, then wheeled and sought desperately to break through the cordon at a weak spot, and failed. Wherever they turned, a cowboy appeared as by magic. At last Corazón detected an unguarded area and flew through it with the speed of light.
“Now we’ve got ’em,” howled Reb. “Don’t drive too close, but keep ’em headed for the corral.”
Within a hundred yards of the gate, the sorrel halted, his ears cocked in doubt. The cowboys closed in to force the band through. Three times the bronchos broke and scattered, for to their wild instincts the fences and that narrow aperture cried treachery and danger. They were gathered, with whoops and many imprecations, and once more approached the entrance.
“Drive the saddle bunch out,” commanded the range boss.
Forth came the remuda of a hundred horses. The bronchos shrilled greeting and mingled with them, and when the cow-ponies trotted meekly into the corral, Corazón and his band went too, though they shook and were afraid.
For five years Corazón had roamed the range--ever since he had discovered that grass was good to eat, and so had left the care of his tender-eyed mother. Because he dreaded the master of created things and fled him afar, only once during that time had he seen man at close quarters. That was when, as a youngster, he was caught and branded on the left hip. He had quickly forgotten that; until now it had ceased to be even a memory.
But now he and his companion rovers were prisoners, cooped in a corral by a contemptible trick. They crowded around and around the stout enclosure, sometimes dropping to their knees in efforts to discover an exit beneath the boards. And not twenty feet away, the dreaded axis of their circlings, sat a man on a horse, and he studied them calmly. Other men, astride the fence, were uncoiling ropes, and their manner was placid and businesslike. One opined dispassionately that “the sorrel is shore some horse.”
“You’re damn whistlin’,” cried the buster over his shoulder, in hearty affirmation.
Corazón was the most distracted of all the band. He was in a frenzy of nervous fear, his glossy coat wet and foam-flecked. He would not stand still for a second, but prowled about the wooden barrier like a jungle creature newly prisoned in a cage. Twice he nosed the ground and crooked his forelegs in an endeavor to slide through the six inches of clear space beneath the gate, and the outfit laughed derisively.
“Here goes,” announced the buster in his expressionless tones. “You-all watch out, now. Hell’ll be poppin’.”
At that moment Corazón took it into his head to dash at top speed through his friends, huddled in a bunch in a corner. A rope whined and coiled, and, when he burst out of the jam, the noose was around his neck, tightening so as to strangle him. Madly he ran against it, superb in the sureness of his might. Then he squalled with rage and pain and an awful terror. His legs flew from under him, and poor Corazón was jerked three feet into the air, coming down on his side with smashing force. The fall shook a grunt out of him, and he was stunned and breathless, but unhurt. He staggered to his feet, his breath straining like a bellows, for the noose cut into his neck and he would not yield to its pressure.
Facing him was the man on the bay. His mount stood with feet braced, sitting back on the rope, and he and his rider were quite collected and cool and prepared. The sorrel’s eyes were starting from his head; his nostrils flared wide, gaping for the air that was denied him, and the breath sucked in his throat. It seemed as if he must drop. Suddenly the buster touched his horse lightly with the spur and slackened the rope. With a long sob, Corazón drew in a life-giving draught, his gaze fixed in frightened appeal on his captor.
“Open the gate,” said Mullins, without raising his voice.
He flicked the rope over Corazón’s hind quarters, and essayed to drive him into the next corral, to cut him off from his fellows. The sorrel gave a gasp of dismay and lunged forward. Again he was lifted from the ground, and came down with a thud that left him shivering.
“His laig’s done bust!” exclaimed the boss.
“No; he’s shook up, that’s all. Wait awhile.”
A moment later Corazón raised his head painfully; then, life and courage coming back with a rush, he lurched to his feet. Mullins waited with unabated patience. The sorrel was beginning to respect that which encircled his neck and made naught of his strength, and when the buster flipped the rope again, he ran through the small gate, and brought up before he had reached the end of his tether.
Two of the cowboys stepped down languidly from the fence, and took position in the center of the corral.
“Hi, Corazón! Go it, boy!” they yelled, and spurred by their cries, the horse started off at a trot. Reb tossed his loop,--flung it carelessly, with a sinuous movement of the wrist,--and when Corazón had gone a few yards, he found his forefeet ensnared. Enraged at being thus cramped, he bucked and bawled; but, before Reb could settle on the rope, he came to a standstill and sank his teeth into the strands. Once, twice, thrice he tugged, but could make no impression. Then he pitched high in air, and--
“NOW!” shrieked Reb.
They heaved with might and main, and Corazón flopped in the dust. Quick as a cat, he sprang upright and bolted; but again they downed him, and, while Reb held the head by straddling the neck, his confederate twined dexterously with a stake-rope. There lay Corazón, helpless and almost spent, trussed up like a sheep for market: they had hog-tied him.
It was the buster who put the hackamore on his head. Very deliberately he moved. Corazón sensed confidence in the touch of his fingers; they spoke a language to him, and he was soothed by the sureness of superiority they conveyed. He lay quiet. Then Reb incautiously shifted his position, and the horse heaved and raised his head, banging Mullins across the ear. The buster’s senses swam, but instead of flying into a rage, he became quieter, more deliberate; in his cold eyes was a vengeful gleam, and dangerous stealth lurked in his delicate manipulation of the strands. An excruciating pain shot through the sorrel’s eye: Mullins had gouged him.
“Let him up.” It was the buster again, atop the bay, making the rope fast with a double half-hitch over the horn of the saddle.
Corazón arose, dazed and very sick. But his spirit was unbreakable. Again and again he strove to tear loose, rearing, falling back, plunging to the end of the rope until he was hurled off his legs to the ground. When he began to weary, Mullins encouraged him to fight, that he might toss him.
“I’ll learn you what this rope means,” he remarked, as the broncho scattered the dust for the ninth time, and remained there, completely done up.
In deadly fear of his slender tether, yet alert to match his strength against it once more, should opportunity offer, Corazón followed the buster quietly enough when he rode out into the open. Beside a sturdy mesquite bush that grew apart from its brethren, Mullins dismounted and tied the sorrel. As a farewell he waved his arms and whooped. Of course Corazón gathered himself and leaped--leaped to the utmost that was in him, so that the bush vibrated to its farthest root; and of course he hit the earth with a jarring thump that temporarily paralyzed him. Mullins departed to put the thrall of human will on others.
Throughout the afternoon, and time after time during the interminable night, the sorrel tried to break away, but with each sickening failure he grew more cautious. When he ran against the rope now, he did not run blindly to its limit, but half wheeled, so that when it jerked him back he invariably landed on his feet. Corazón was learning hard, but he was learning. And what agonies of pain and suspense he went through!--for years a free rover, and now to be bound thus, by what looked to be a mere thread, for he knew not what further tortures! He sweated and shivered, seeing peril in every shadow. When a coyote slunk by with tongue lapping hungrily over his teeth, the prisoner almost broke his neck in a despairing struggle to win freedom.
In the chill of the dawn they led him into a circular corral. His sleekness had departed; the barrel-like body did not look so well nourished, and there was red in the blazing eyes.
“I reckon he’ll be mean,” observed the buster, as though it concerned him but little.
“No-o-o. Go easy with him, Carl, and I think he’ll make a good hoss,” the boss cautioned.
While two men held the rope, Mullins advanced along it foot by foot, inch by inch, one hand outstretched, and talked to Corazón in a low, careless tone of affectionate banter. “So you’d like for to kill me, would you?” he inquired, grinning. All the while he held the sorrel’s gaze.
Corazón stood still, legs planted wide apart, and permitted him to approach. He trembled when the fingers touched his nose; but they were firm, confident digits, the voice was reassuring, and the gentle rubbing up, up between the eyes and ears lulled his forebodings.
“Hand me the blanket,” said Mullins.
He drew it softly over Corazón’s back, and the broncho swerved, pawed, and kicked with beautiful precision. Whereupon they placed a rope around his neck, dropped it behind his right hind leg, then pulled that member up close to his belly; there it was held fast. On three legs now, the sorrel was impotent for harm. Mullins once more took up the blanket but this time the gentleness had flown. He slapped it over Corazón’s backbone from side to side a dozen times. At each impact the horse humped awkwardly, but, finding that he came to no hurt, he suffered it in resignation.
That much of the second lesson learned, they saddled him. Strangely enough, Corazón submitted to the operation without fuss, the only untoward symptoms being a decided upward slant to the back of the saddle and the tucking of his tail. Reb waggled his head over this exhibition.
“I don’t like his standing quiet that away; it ain’t natural,” he vouchsafed. “Look at the crick in his back. Jim-in-ee! he’ll shore pitch.”
Which he did. The cinches were tightened until Corazón’s eyes almost popped from his head; then they released the bound leg and turned him loose. What was that galling his spine? Corazón took a startled peep at it, lowered his head between his knees, and began to bawl. Into the air he rocketed, his head and forelegs swinging to the left, his hind quarters weaving to the right. The jar of his contact with the ground was appalling. Into the air again, his head and forelegs to the right, his rump twisted to the left. Round and round the corral he went, blatting like an angry calf; but the thing on his back stayed where it was, gripping his body cruelly. At last he was fain to stop for breath.
“Now,” said Mullins, “I reckon I’ll take it out of him.”
There has always been for me an overwhelming fascination in watching busters at work. They have underlying traits in common when it comes to handling the horses--the garrulous one becomes coldly watchful, the Stoic moves with stern patience, the boaster soothes with soft-crooned words and confident caress. Mullins left Corazón standing in the middle of the corral, the hackamore rope strung loose on the ground, while he saw to it that his spurs were fast. We mounted the fence, not wishing to be mixed in the glorious turmoil to follow.
“I wouldn’t top ol’ Corazón for fifty,” confessed the man on the adjoining post.
“Mullins has certainly got nerve,” I conceded.
“A buster has got to have nerve.” The range boss delivered himself laconically. “All nerve and no brains makes the best. But they get stove up and then--”
“And then? What then?”
“Why, don’t you know?” he asked in surprise. “Every buster loses his nerve at last, and then they can’t ride a pack-hoss. It must be because it’s one fool man with one set of nerves up ag’in a new hoss with a new devil in him every time. They wear him down. Don’t you reckon?”
The explanation sounded plausible. Mullins was listening with a faintly amused smile to Reb’s account of what a lady mule had done to him; he rolled a cigarette and lighted it painstakingly. The hands that held the match were steady as eternal rock. It was maddening to see him stand there so coolly while the big sorrel, a dozen feet distant, was a-quake with dread, blowing harshly through his crimson nostrils whenever a cowboy stirred--and each of us knowing that the man was taking his life in his hands. An unlooked-for twist, a trifling disturbance of poise, and, with a horse like Corazón, it meant maiming or death. At last he threw the cigarette from him and walked slowly to the rope.
“So you’re calling for me?” he inquired, gathering it up.
Corazón was snorting. By patient craft Reb acquired a grip on the sorrel’s ears, and, while he hung there, bringing the head down so that the horse could not move, Mullins tested the stirrups and raised himself cautiously into the saddle.
“Let him go.”
While one could count ten, Corazón stood expectant, his back bowed, his tail between his legs. The ears were laid flat on the head and the forefeet well advanced. The buster waited, the quirt hanging from two fingers of his right hand. Suddenly the sorrel ducked his head and emitted a harsh scream, leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground. He came down with the massive hips at an angle to the shoulders, thereby imparting a double shock; bounded high again, turned back with bewildering speed as he touched the earth; and then, in a circle perhaps twenty feet in diameter, sprang time after time, his heels lashing the air. Never had such pitching been seen on the Anvil Range.
“I swan, he just misses his tail a’ inch when he turns back!” roared a puncher.
Mullins sat composedly in the saddle, but he was riding as never before. He whipped the sorrel at every jump and raked him down the body from shoulder to loins with the ripping spurs. The brute gave no signs of letting up. Through Mullins’ tan of copper hue showed a slight pallor. He was exhausted. If Corazón did not give in soon, the man would be beaten. Just then the horse stopped, feet a-sprawl.
“Mullins,”--the range boss got down from the fence,--“you’ll kill that hoss. Between the cinches belongs to you; the head and hind quarters is the company’s.”
For a long minute Mullins stared at the beast’s ears without replying.
“I reckon that’s the rule,” he acquiesced heavily. “Do you want that somebody else should ride him?”
“No-o-o. Go ahead. But, remember, between the cinches you go at him as you like--nowhere else.”