“Leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground”
“Leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground”
The buster slapped the quirt down on Corazón’s shoulder, but the broncho did not budge; then harder. With the first oath he had used, he jabbed in the spurs and lay back on the hackamore rope. Instead of bucking, Corazón reared straight up, his feet pawing like the hands of a drowning man. Before Mullins could move to step off, the sorrel flung his head round and toppled backward.
“No, he’s not dead.” The range boss leaned over the buster and his hands fumbled inside the shirt. “The horn got him here, but he ain’t dead. Claude, saddle Streak and hit for Agua Prieta for the doctor.”
When we had carried the injured man to the bunk-house, Reb spoke from troubled meditation:
“Pete, I don’t believe Corazón is as bad as he acts with Mullins. I’ve been watching him. Mullins, he didn’t--”
“You take him, then; he’s yours,” snapped the boss, his conscience pricking because of the reproof he had administered. If the buster had ridden him his own way, this might not have happened.
That is how the sorrel came into Reb’s possession. Only one man of the outfit witnessed the taming, and he would not talk; but when Reb came to dinner from the first saddle on Corazón, his hands were torn and the nail of one finger hung loose.
“I had to take to the horn and hang on some,” he admitted.
Ay, he had clung there desperately while the broncho pitched about the river-bed, whither Reb had retired for safety and to escape spectators. But at the next saddle Corazón was less violent; at the third, recovering from the stunning shocks and bruisings of the first day, he was a fiend; and then, on the following morning, he did not pitch at all. Reb rode him every day to sap the superfluous vigor in Corazón’s iron frame and he taught him as well as he could the first duties of a cowhorse. Finding that his new master never punished him unless he undertook to dispute his authority, the sorrel grew tractable and began to take an interest in his tasks.
“He’s done broke,” announced Reb; “I’ll have him bridle-wise in a week. He’ll make some roping horse. Did you see him this evening? I swan--”
They scoffed good-naturedly; but Reb proceeded on the assumption that Corazón was meant to be a roping horse, and schooled him accordingly. As for the sorrel, he took to the new pastime with delight. Within a month nothing gave him keener joy than to swerve and crouch at the climax of a sprint and see a cow thrown heels over head at the end of the rope that was wrapped about his saddle-horn.
The necessity of contriving to get three meals a day took me elsewhere, and I did not see Corazón again for three years. Then, one Sunday afternoon, Big John drew me from El Paso to Juarez on the pretense of seeing a grand, an extraordinary, a most noble bull-fight, in which the dauntless Favorita would slay three fierce bulls from the renowned El Carmen ranch, in “competency” with the fearless Morenito Chico de San Bernardo; and a youth with a megaphone drew us both to a steer-roping contest instead. We agreed that bull-fighting was brutal on the Sabbath.
“I’ll bet it’s rotten,” remarked Big John pessimistically, as we took our seats. “I could beat ’em myself.”
As he scanned the list, his face brightened. Among the seventeen ropers thereon were two champions and a possible new one in Raphael Fraustro, the redoubtable vaquero from the domain of Terrazas.
“And here’s Reb!” roared John--he is accustomed to converse in the tumult of the branding-pen--“I swan, he’s entered from Monument.”
Shortly afterwards the contestants paraded, wonderfully arrayed in silk shirts and new handkerchiefs.
“Some of them ain’t been clean before in a year,” was John’s caustic comment. “There’s Slim; I KNOW he hasn’t.”
They were a fine-looking body of men, and two of my neighbors complained that I trampled on their feet. The horses caught the infection of excitement from the packed stands and champed on their bits and caracoled and waltzed sideways in a manner highly unbecoming a staid cow-pony.
There was one that did not. So sluggish was his gait and general bearing, in contrast to the others, that the crowd burst into laughter. He plodded at the tail-end of the procession, his hoofs kicking up the dust in listless spurts, his nose on a level with his knees. I rubbed my eyes and John said, “No, it ain’t--it can’t be--”; but it was. Into that arena slouched Corazón, entered against the pick of the horses of the Southwest; and Reb was astride him.
We watched the ropers catch and tie the steers in rapid succession, but the much-heralded ones missed altogether, and to John and me the performance lagged. We were waiting for Reb and Corazón.
They came at last, at the end of the list. When Corazón ambled up the arena to enter behind the barrier, the grandstand roared a facetious welcome; the spectacle of this sad-gaited nag preparing to capture a steer touched its risibilities.
“Listen to me,” bawled a fat gentleman in a wide-brimmed hat, close to my ear. “You listen to me! They’re all fools. That’s a cowhorse. No blasted nonsense. Knows his business, huh? You’re damn whistlin’!”
Assuredly, Corazón knew his business. The instant he stepped behind the line he was a changed horse. The flopping ears pricked forward, his neck arched, and the great muscles of his shoulders and thighs rippled to his dainty prancing. He pulled and fretted on the bit, his eyes roving about in search of the quarry; he whinnied an appeal to be gone. Reb made ready his coil, curbing him with light pressure.
Out from the chute sprang a steer, heading straight down the arena. Corazón was frantic. With the flash of the gun he breasted the barrier-rope and swept down on him in twenty strides. Reb stood high in the stirrups; the loop whirled and sped; and, without waiting to see how it fell, but accepting a catch in blind faith, the sorrel started off at a tangent.
Big John was standing up in his place, clawing insanely at the hats of his neighbors and banging them on the head with his programme.
“Look at him--just look at him!” he shrieked.
The steer was tossed clear of the ground and came down on his left side. Almost before he landed, Reb was out of the saddle and speeding toward him.
“He’s getting up. HE’S GETTING UP. Go to him, Reb!” howled John and I.
The steer managed to lift his head; he was struggling to his knees. I looked away, for Reb must lose. Then a hoarse shout from the multitude turned back my gaze. Corazón had felt the slack on the rope and knew what it meant. He dug his feet into the dirt and began to walk slowly forward--very slowly and carefully, for Reb’s task must not be spoiled. The steer collapsed, falling prone again, but the sorrel did not stop. Once he cocked his eye, and seeing that the animal still squirmed, pulled with all his strength. The stands were rocking; they were a sea of tossing hats and gesticulating arms and flushed faces; the roar of their plaudits echoed back from the hills. And it was all for Corazón, gallant Corazón.
“Dam’ his eyes--dam’ his ol’ eyes!” Big John babbled over and over, absolutely oblivious.
Reb stooped beside the steer, his hands looping and tying with deft darting twists even as he kept pace with his dragged victim.
“I guess it’s--about--a--hour,” he panted.
Then he sprang clear and tossed his hands upward, facing the judges’ stand. After that he walked aimlessly about, mopping his face with a handkerchief; for to him the shoutings and the shifting colors were all a foolish dream, and he was rather sick.
Right on the cry with which his master announced his task done, Corazón eased up on the rope and waited.
“Mr. Pee-ler’s time,” bellowed the man with the megaphone presently, “is twenty-one seconds, ty-ing the world’s re-cord.”
So weak that his knees trembled, Reb walked over to his horse. “Corazón,” he said huskily, and slapped him once on the flank.
Nothing would do the joyous crowd then but that Reb should ride forth to be acclaimed the victor. We sat back and yelled ourselves weak with laughter, for Corazón, having done his work, refused resolutely to squander time in vain parade. The steer captured and tied, he had no further interest in the proceedings. The rascal dog-trotted reluctantly to the center of the arena in obedience to Reb, then faced the audience; but, all the time Reb was bowing his acknowledgments, Corazón sulked and slouched, and he was sulking and shuffling the dust when they went through the gate.
“Now,” said John, who is very human, “we’ll go help Reb spend that money.”
As we jostled amid the outgoing crowd, several cowboys came alongside the grandstand rail, and Big John drew me aside to have speech with them. One rider led a spare horse and when he passed a man on foot, the latter hailed him:
“Say, Ed, give me a lift to the hotel?”
“Sure,” answered Ed, proffering the reins.
The man gathered them up, his hands fluttering as if with palsy, and paused with his foot raised toward the stirrup.
“He won’t pitch nor nothing, Ed?” came the quavered inquiry. “You’re shore he’s gentle?”
“Gentler’n a dog,” returned Ed, greatly surprised.
“You ain’t fooling me, now, are you, Ed?” continued the man on the ground. “He looks kind of mean.”
“Give him to me!” Ed exploded. “You kin walk.”
From where we stood, only the man’s back was visible. “Who is that fellow?” I asked.
“Who? Him?” answered my neighbor. “Oh, his name’s Mullins. They say he used to be able to ride anything with hair on it, and throw off the bridle at that. I expect that’s just talk. Don’t you reckon?”
IVTHE OUTLAW
Steve was recounting an episode of Hell’s Acre.
“And jist as I was fighting my horse to make him go through that scrub-oak, he done stubbed his toe in the sand. Up she come with a whoof--one of them ol’ long-horns. That cow had hid herself there. Yes, sir; but she didn’t quite git her horns covered.”
Reb said he could well believe it. No longer ago than last Tuesday, while chasing some stubborn cattle, he had chanced upon a cow lying flat behind a bush. A jackrabbit was burying her under leaves, for better concealment.
Whereupon the two got to horse and rode away, leaving behind them a thoughtful silence.
There was a water-gap to be repaired and they headed for the Salt Fork of the Brazos.
“Wait a minute,” said Steve. “Look there.”
A cow stood on the crest of a rise--a lean, dun creature, with distended eyes. When they approached, she trotted off to the right, mumbling anxiously. They did not follow. Then she stopped, her head erect and nostrils dilated, to watch them. The two ambled forward and she kept near, very, very anxious.
“She’s got a calf hid out somewheres,” Reb remarked.
He surveyed the immediate country leisurely, confident of what he would discover. Two hundred yards in front was a patch of mesquite, and they made for it. Behind a bush they found the calf--a sturdy, red-and-white baby with a specially black, moist nose. It flattened out when Steve stood over it.
“Git up,” he commanded, “I want to see more of you. I bet them hoofs of yours is soft.”
The calf hugged the ground. He raised the sagging body by the brisket and tail, none too gently. When he let go, the little fellow collapsed, spread out like a jellyfish. He must have marveled as he lay there, rolling his wide, questioning eyes upward, what strange beings these were, for he was just one day old and had never seen a man.
“Come a li’l’ seven,” Steve cried joyously. “Look a-here, Reb. See his face.”
Between the youngster’s eyes was a crimson splash which made a perfect 7. Reb examined the peculiar marking with interest and suggested that Come-a-Seven might bring the little devil luck as a name.
The calf resented all this handling and raised his voice in a plaintive bawl. As they loped away on their errand, the cow crashed through the bushes to her offspring’s side. She nosed him solicitously, rumbling caresses.
Come-a-Seven inherited all the hardiness of his race--indeed, in later years, Reb vowed that he was tougher’n the oldest man in the world. Half an hour after his advent into this vale of tears he could walk. It was not a gait to justify boasting, because his forelegs showed a tendency to give at unexpected places, but he saved himself from a fall by leaning against his mother’s shoulder. He next made the circuit of the cow twice in a clumsy hunt for the fount of his food supply and finally reached it in an extremely awkward position. Nevertheless, she watched him pridefully, her sight blurred with happiness; and braced against her hind leg, he fed like a glutton. Feeling full and reckless therefrom, he humped his back in abandon and tried to cavort, but came down with a jarring thump.
The young mother did her duty by him like a Scotch washerwoman with nine children. He breakfasted at dawn--drank until he could drink no more. Afterwards she went off to graze, leaving the calf behind some screening hush. It was seldom she strayed so far that she was not within sight or call: there is danger to toddling calves that lie out on the range unprotected.
How fast his strength grew! At five days of age he could have butted into a wooden fence at half-speed without any especially ill effects, save to the fence. Yet his mother’s care never abated. She would go over him every night with eager tenderness and was ever aggressively on the alert to defend. For she would have fought anything on four legs for the life of that loose-jointed, red-and-white blatherskite she held to be prince of his race.
The cattle grazed in scattered bunches over some hundred thousand acres of the east range--they are not so companionable as horses and do not herd so closely in their feeding. Nor will the bulls take such responsibilities upon their shoulders as do stallions with the mares and colts. Come-a-Seven, in fact, never saw his father, to his knowledge. That ponderous, morose scion of Hereford stock lived his own life in his own way, spending half the day sleeping in the shade of a cottonwood; and he did not worry about family matters. His scores of children might fare as best they could. In the meantime he had his amusements. Besides, what on earth were their mothers for?
On his eighth day Come-a-Seven started out to see something of the world. No great variety offered within his ken--a rolling expanse, green-gray, gashed by numerous brick-red gullies; hundreds of scraggy mesquite bushes and some prickly-pear; two or three regal cottonwoods on the bank of a creek, whose sandy bed was a third of a mile wide; beyond, a butte lifting from the earth like a monstrous mushroom. That was what he saw--that, and big blue blotches of shadows moving over the country like an army of specters. Piles of tumbled white clouds gave promise of rain at a later date.
Upon this the red-and-white gazed, his head moving from side to side in jerks, ears twitching, tail straight out as when he fed. He was trying to get up nerve to sally farther afield. As a starter and a spur to courage he curveted clumsily, but was brought up short by the sight of another calf of about his own age, standing not a dozen yards away, surveying him with the liveliest interest. Come-a-Seven tried to look hostile, even threatening, but his curiosity got the better of him, because the calf into whose face he glared had the merest stump of a tail.
Advancing a step, he intimated in his own peculiar, gruff calf-manner that the abbreviated member puzzled him. If Come-a-Seven had ever dodged a coyote, he would not have been so ignorant. The other evinced no resentment and they approached in amicable fashion, made a playful butt at each other and became fast friends. After that they would loaf about together in the hot summer days, making trouble for the other calves and stirring up bickerings and feuds.
None of them was of a serious nature. The nearest approach to a tragic ending happened when the red-and-white smashed, full tilt, into a six-months’-old half-brother, of whose relationship he was ignorant--not that this would have made any difference--and knocked him off the steep wall of a tank into the water. He had to run at that, for the other was a husky, ardent calf, and he was angry all through. When he scrambled out, he went hunting for the red-and-white, but by that time the offender was safely under his mother’s eye, which fact he flaunted brazenly.
Who ever saw a braver pair? Who so bold as the tailless one and Come-a-Seven when there was no possibility of danger? Then, at the first hint of trouble, up would go their tails and they would run to their mothers at their very best pace.
They were learning, too, for many things they saw carried lessons to their youthful perceptions. They were witnesses of the finish of a wild-cat, which a puncher roped out of a tree under which they had been taking a nap. They saw a companion die slowly from blackleg, and another practically eaten alive by the fearful screw-worm. For days, too, they avoided an old cow whose head was swelled to twice its natural size. The poor creature was the victim of a snake bite, but she survived.
“Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ow-oo-yah! Ki-yi! Git up, cattle.”
A shrill whistle brought the red-and-white to his feet with a jerk just as the sun tinted the eastern sky to gray and gold and rose. He bellowed an inquiry to his mother, and for a second stood irresolute. A horseman came riding at top speed straight for them, hallooing with all his might and waving his hat. Whereupon the calf waited for no instructions. He let himself out for all he was worth.
The puncher rode at a hand-gallop behind and he did not drive too hard. Instead, he gave them a shove in the direction he desired they should travel, and, with a final shout, swung away to the right, where a bunch of six rose up with a snort and gave him a chase. He calculated that the cow would keep going and she did. Her slow march was marked by protests from her hopeful offspring. Observing that the rider was busy stirring up cattle in many directions, his baby mind could conceive of no good reason for plugging along in a line dead ahead because this individual had furnished the impetus for the start. So he grumbled much, but trotted along obediently, notwithstanding; and presently his own grievances were dissipated by the contemplation of what was happening around him. Every patch of brush in the country appeared to be turning out cows, calves and young steers, as a magician’s bag scatters paper roses. In several bunches he recognized acquaintances, but they were too concerned about the future to do more than give a hurried squall of recognition. An enormous procession was under way and they were marching in it, a part of it. Whither would it lead them?
Apparently this speculation was likewise a source of worry to the cows and steers, though they all had been through much the same before. Yet, for the most part, they went soberly, falling into the semblance of a trail-herd as their ranks were swelled by others which the cowboys roused up; but there were some that did not. Occasionally a heifer would make a break to one side, only to be headed off; and once a cow, driven too impetuously, jerked her head sideways and bowed her tail. She was “on the prod,” and they let her go. Time after time, when the red-and-white would turn about to gaze, a rider would come at him, slapping his boot with his quirt and whistling. This constant surveillance irritated Come-a-Seven.
Their ranks were swelling so fast, too, that his identity, and hence his sense of security, was lost. Another influx of cattle caused him to carom off his mother’s side and in puerile anger he butted at those nearest, until he observed he was making no impression, when, discouraged, he gave it up and moved along. His tiny troubles were submerged in that great army. Two thousand cattle were converging upon a plain, from nine points in an area five miles wide.
Come-a-Seven was almost too interested to be scared.
Clouds of dust welling up; a babel of sound; mighty roarings of irate bulls, petty monarchs now on a common footing they resented; the lowing of cows and the frightened bawling of the calves; and always a bewildering churning and shifting like a maelstrom. Every few minutes a stream of dirt would shoot skyward like a geyser, where a bull was spoiling for a fight and sent his thundering challenge over the ranks. Occasionally there was a clash and some desperate attempts at goring. Holding this host on the round-up ground was a cordon of eight punchers, sitting apathetically on their horses. They had little to do while their companions worked the herd, cutting out the cows and calves to one side, the strays and beef cattle to another. Sometimes an animal would wander to the edge, stand staring uncertainly, then saunter forth to attain the open; but most were driven back without trouble. One persisted and gave a herder a furious dash to head him off; but that was all part of the day’s work.
When the cutters penetrated the dust and came threading their way through the noisy, restless horde, the calf became doubly uneasy. A man on a blazed-face bay was particularly insistent. Come-a-Seven watched him work deviously through the entire herd after a cow and her young, and drive them forth to the open; so he tried to keep out of sight. But it was no use. Soon the horse was close to them, and mother and son felt, rather than saw, that they were the objects of the quiet maneuvering that followed. Wherever they dodged and doubled the blazed-face was sure to be there, close behind, patient, untiring. A wave of resentment against this steady pressure broke them into a run, and, before they knew it, the outer rim of cattle split wide open and they were beyond the herd. In a panic they endeavored to dart back, but the big bay interposed. Seeing this, the cow sped toward a draw where the scrub-cedar appeared to offer chances of escape. With the speed of light the puncher was after them, twisting, wheeling, heading her off toward the cut-bunch. And the calf found the same indefatigable foe between him and freedom when he emulated his mother.
“Git in, you low-lived whelp,” howled the cutter, and he spurred furiously.
They finally gave up the contest as hopeless and trotted meekly to join the bunch of cattle they perceived ahead of them.
There were cows which shot from the herd at a gallop and then would break to a hesitating trot, their heads nodding loosely close to the ground. Their gait had an odd uncertainty about it. The animals would shrink from a weed and draw back. One stopped at perceiving a shadow and went around it fearfully.
“Locoed,” a puncher commented. For these had eaten of the strange loco weed and were afflicted.
By ten o’clock, the herd was worked. Fires were lighted and the branding irons thrust into them.
The roper and flankers got into action, two sets of them, and every minute calves emitted protesting wails as the hot irons seared their sides. He worked like an automaton, that roper. He seemed removed from human passions, remote from the ordinary human impulses. His loop dropped unerringly, and back the horse would go at a trot or a lope, with a panic-stricken, crying calf plunging, bumping along in rear, sometimes turning somersaults--for life is too short to carry calves to the flankers with solicitous care, though possibly the flankers would prefer them that way.
The red-and-white edged away from the field of this gentleman’s labors and ran straight in front of a sorrel horse.
Baw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw! he cried, as something settled about his neck and a resistless force commenced to drag him into the open.
Another roper had snared him. He humped his back and began to buck, his legs rigid. At every leap into the air he blatted and protested. His mother shrank back in confusion at the first outcry and lost sight of him in the dust raised by his unwilling progress. For fully thirty yards he was dragged in a series of hurtling leaps, with the rope cutting into his neck so that he could scarcely breathe; and then, before he had time to recover his faculties, a man seized the rope, ran along it until he reached the red-and-white, and reaching over his body, flopped him in the air. But the calf was not flanked so easily--not Come-a-Seven. Twice he rebounded like a rubber ball, finding his feet before his antagonist could fall on him.
“Stay-ay-ay with him, Steve! Go to him, boy!” shrieked the delighted flankers.
“Durn his hide. He’s stout as a weaner,” Steve snorted; and he gave a tremendous heave. At the same time he made a short spring forward with knees crooked, which carried him under the calf as that strenuous combatant tried to make his hoofs hit the ground first. The red-and-white came down with a bump that sounded like the unloading of a trunk marked, “Handle with care.” It would have broken the ribs of anything aged three months except a calf.
“Holy cats, it’s Come-a-Seven,” Steve panted. He sat back of his head, with a knee on the neck, and twisted one foreleg in a jiu-jitsu grip that paralyzed all effort. Another puncher at his other extremity got a vise-like hold of the left leg and put the other out of commission by thrusting it far forward with his foot.
Oh-oh-oh-uh-uh-uh-ah!
The cry was almost human, and the eyes bulged and rolled with terror until the whites showed. The iron had touched him, biting through his coat into the flesh, while the smoke curled up with smell of burning hair. His fright needed just that pang to get proper vocal expression, and he used all his available breath in a frantic appeal to the mother that bore him. It was not in vain.
“Look out! Here she comes!” yelled a flanker.
The three working over the calf looked up to see the cow trotting toward them. There was no time to dodge. When she was within ten feet of the group an idle flanker kicked a jet of sand into her face and she swerved irresolutely, coming to a walk. The roper drove her back and work was resumed on her son.
“I mind once, when I was with the Spur, a cow jumped clean over us that-a-way,” remarked Bill Kennedy, rising from the ground. As a parting salute he rolled the red-and-white over his hip, as a wrestler throws a man to the mat. “Say, Jake, heel them big fellers.”
The calf was scared, and sore all over. A swallow-fork in the right ear and a crop in the left worried him. He stood glowering in all directions, in an effort to get his bearings; then he executed some shuddering, half-hearted jumps, as though trying to shed the two burning letters on his left flank, and sought his mother. He was sick, and all the fight gone from him.
The herd was driven off and released, and the red-and-white went with them. He tarried in a draw, enduring great pain. A fever burned him, too, and he was low in spirits. Half of his enormous appetite was gone, but only half. Alas, he had lost the source of supply for even the remnant that remained. In the general confusion he had become separated from his mother, and, as it was meal-time, the loss was doubly distressing.
He lifted up his voice in a song of sorrow, but naught availed. Perceiving this, he started to find her. The cow was hunting for him, too, hunting frenziedly. And she was not alone in her grief, for at least a dozen cows had lost their young in the turmoil of branding, and they wandered up and down and across without cessation, lowing pathetically, a world of distress in their tones and in their eyes. From time to time one would sight a stray calf and make a bee line for it, but only to give a moan of disappointment and resume her hunt.
Come-a-Seven tried to establish filial relations with every cow he met. As a result, he got some rebuffs that would have discouraged a less hungry youngster. For hours he searched; for hours cows wandered about crying for their young. Twice the red-and-white essayed to feed where he had no blood-rights and nearly had his ribs stove in for his pains. Finally, made crafty by hunger, he softly shouldered another calf away from her place at the mother’s side and tried to substitute. The old cow properly kicked him for that trick.
But his hunger was short-lived; a familiar voice smote upon his ear, his answering cry came with a glad quiver in it, and mother and son were reunited. How she smelled of him and licked his dusty sides and neck! And the way he went for his meal! She gave a deep rumble of content. Even when Come-a-Seven butted cruelly with his head, in his consuming hunger, and hurt her, she lowed in proud satisfaction.
Pain and trouble cannot last forever. In a week his wounds had healed; he was sound and strong again. Once more began the long, idle days of good feeding and play with his young companions. His life was a full one. Compared with that of the barnyard variety of the genus calf, it was as checkered as a drummer’s appears to a hot-blooded resident of a country town.
In the winter his mother grew gaunt. The cold was intense at times, and the snowfall was greater than the oldest bull could recall. At rare intervals men came riding to inspect and on one visit drove some of the weaker cattle to the home pasture, there to be fed daily. For the others little could be done, and the red-and-white was one of them. There were many good windbreaks on the range and the calf was tough, so he won through somehow, though once when the snow drifted deep and the cow could not find grass in her wanderings, grim death stared them in the face. The calf himself went three days without a meal, yet lived. A cow will not paw down through the snow like a horse, and mother and son saw some of their friends perish.
Spring came at last--suddenly, like a mountain sunrise--and the earth was exceeding glad. Worried and emaciated, they greeted the season of hope with a sudden access of energy. In later months the red-and-white was weaned. He learned to eat grass, of which accomplishment he was at first inordinately proud, and he throve on it; and he had but one worry in the world--heel flies.
It has been said that Come-a-Seven was lusty. He was an amazing big fellow for his age. When round-up time arrived again and he was herded with about fourteen hundred cattle, he grew chesty over the fact that he sized up well with most of the two-year-olds. His strength and restless energy were proportionate.
Indeed, Come-a-Seven bade fair to be a rounder. While the other cattle would be sleeping peacefully on the bed-ground, the young red-and-white would go up and down through the herd, trying to start some excitement. He always chose to walk straight through the center of the recumbent host, and where he passed all got to their feet uneasily. The tired old cows would grumble at him and tell him to go to bed, but he was proof against all reproaches and conscience he had none.
“Damn him,” grumbled a puncher on guard as he watched his wanderings for the twentieth time, and for the twentieth time turned and drove back some who tried to walk out at his prompting. “He’s playing for a stompede.”
“I swan if it ain’t Come-a-Seven!” remarked Steve, when the red-and-white passed very near him. “Git to bed, Come-a-Seven. I reckon you’re a rake.”
When tired of his solitary roaming, the red-and-white would select some young steer weaker than himself, butt him off the bed he had warmed, and compose himself to slumber. Whereat a great sigh of satisfaction would be heard mingled with the blowing of the cattle.
Another year passed. When the cowboys came whooping up the cattle in the following August, the red-and-white heard the loud shoutings and saw, with contemptuous resentment, his fellow-creatures being propelled toward the round-up ground. Their meekness awoke hot rebellion in him. Big he was now and of the strength of two. He decided he would not go.
A rider caught him unawares and the surprise of his first rush started the steer in the right direction, but it failed to keep him there; for as soon as the man departed to drive another bunch, the red-and-white went off at a tangent. Far had he wandered in his day, and he knew some brakes--miles, miles away--where the foot of horse seldom trod. Toward these he headed. Two hundred, three hundred yards, and behind him he heard the familiar scramble of the pursuer. The red-and-white flagged his tail and let out another notch.
“Quit it, you Come-a-Seven!” Steve bawled. “Blast you, git in there.”
The two-year-old only ran the harder, but the pony gained. Then he lost his temper and made up his mind that whether or not the cowboy overtook him he would reach those brakes; if necessary he would turn about and attack. His head swayed from side to side, his gait became uncertain and he seemed worried--symptoms which were not lost on Steve. When the steer stopped and faced about, the horse turned like a flash, and as he did so a loud, querulous voice, raised in helpless anger, broke up Steve’s programme. That voice changed the red-and-white’s destiny. Indirectly it saved him from the stockyards; but, then, he would probably have saved himself.
“Let him go, Steve! You’ll lose that other bunch,” the wagon boss cried. “We’ll get him again.”
Steve waved his hat at the steer with a good-natured grin and shook up his horse, departing like a rocket to his work. The red-and-white continued on toward the brakes.
That is how he became an outlaw.
In the vast Croton brakes were scores such as he. Some of them were grown old and hoary, and they bore many brands. A few had no brands. All had run wild for years, and round-ups were things of the long ago. So shy were they that it was as difficult for a man to approach them as to stalk a herd of antelope. They kept in bands of five and six, and did anything come near which one did not understand, they were off like deer.
The red-and-white took to the life as his birth-right. Somewhere in him ran a strain that drove resistlessly to solitude and the wilds; and he was happy. More than once he had to fight, but he possessed an unbeatable temper and had a world of craft to direct his agility and colossal strength, so that he came from his battles with blood-dripping horns held high and proudly.
Rough and torn and forbidding were the brakes--miles on miles of red-walled cañons, of scrub cedar and sand-rock--but the feeding was good for so few when one knew the best places, and the outlaw waxed ever stronger. His horns spread, too.
Five years sped by and the outlaw fought his way to kingship.
On a December day he was startled by the noise of firing. Such sounds he had never heard. It was not the snappy, sharp report of the six-shooter, but louder and of heavier metal. Suddenly fear took hold of him. There was a hunt on--a hunt of outlaws. The horns of the free steers would bring high prices, and once in a generation a party of punchers came thus with rifles to gather them. Come-a-Seven let out a bellow and tore away at the head of his followers.
It was a terrible day for the outlaws of the Croton brakes. When the bunch that trailed behind the red-and-white split and scattered, the chase developed into mad, individual contests of speed. The outlaw could run; the way Come-a-Seven traveled would have made an ordinary range steer look like a muley cow. Up and down sheer bluffs that appeared too steep to climb, he ran; and cliffs seemed to be highways to him. But, behind, a rider spurred tenaciously, steadily diminishing the distance that separated them, holding his fire until he could be sure of this glorious prize. Up came the rifle--but it never sent forth its leaden messenger.
“Gee whiz, if it ain’t ol’ Come-a-Seven!” cried Steve. “Git a-going, boy, and keep her up! Whoopee!”
With a final spurt and shout the veteran puncher wheeled and came to a standstill, regarding the smashing run of the big steer with a smile of admiration. The red-and-white was already disappearing in the distance, far, far away from all further danger of pursuit, his tail held high, his head swaying. Steve watched him until he topped a rise and disappeared. He had lost a goodly prize; but he was content. He chuckled as he recalled the steer’s past misdeeds on the bed-ground.
The outlaw went back to his remotest fastnesses. He may be there yet, boss of the Croton brakes.
VSHIELA
A panther’s scream split the whine of the wind and Shiela reared herself in front of the fire, her body retched by an answering challenge.
“Shee-la,” her master rebuked. “Lie down, girl.”
The wolfhound sank to the floor with a reluctant flop, but the hairs on her neck and along her spine bristled still. She continued to rumble.
There were four men playing at cards in the bunkhouse. Cold weather had set in and the Tumbling H outfit were eating out their hearts in winter camps. Here at headquarters, the range boss, wagon boss, blacksmith and cook played half the day at seven-up and pitch; and listened to Mit’s varying accounts of high life in the East, as he had plumbed it in Fort Worth; and raved at the climate and cursed petty annoyances with the savage irritability of full-blooded men lacking enough to do.
“Hark to that ol’ wind,” mourned the wagon boss--he was fifty and considered fourteen hours a day in the saddle mere child’s play--“It was sixty-six above this morning, and now it’s zero. No wonder a man cain’t be healthy.”
The others nodded gravely and the cook shuffled the cards.
“It’s a wonder, Steve,” he observed, “that you don’t--my deal?--you don’t try that dog in wolf huntin’. Not by herself, but with a bunch of ’em.”
“Wait till she’s used to the country and has got her growth. Then you’ll see.”
Mit remarked that he referred, of course, to the hunting of coyotes, which prompted a passionate declaration from the wagon boss that the range ought to be cleared of these pests. They killed too many calves in bad years: poison ’em, he urged. Nobody opposed objection and they went on with the game. Then from the mouth of the cañon came to the ears of the players the vibrant cry of the lobo. Right upon it broke Shiela’s roar of defiance, and the beast was at the door in a bound, whimpering frenziedly, her terrible teeth bared. Beside her, his head three inches short of Shiela’s breast, Friday stiffened in sympathetic rage, his stubby tail wagging. He raised a shrill treble bark.
“Down, Shee-la! Down, girl.” Running from the table, O’Donnell led her back to the fire.
“Friday, you come here,” the blacksmith cried. “Lay down under the table, and don’t you go for to move!”
Not to cattle-browsed stretches of prairie land had Shiela been reared, nor to vast sweep of hills and mesquite-flecked valleys, and of torn, brick-red sandstone and tortuous, dry river-beds. She was a stranger in a strange land, and her new kingdom struck to the roots of her nature. Far as she could wander in a frivolous all-day rabbit hunt with Friday was no sign of human habitation; and beyond that, away to the pale-blue line that must surely be the rim of all things,--full sixty miles,--no handiwork of man was visible. Here was an unspoiled empire, and her master was the autocrat. For the first time in her life the wolfhound drew the breath of unrestrained liberty, chafed hotly to the tang of the air, cast about and trailed wild creatures whose taint stirred her to mad longings for the chase and a fight.
How can one tell of Shiela’s beauty? A great animal and a wonderful--light fawn in color, with a shaggy coat. Her eyes were in general gentle and melting. But it must be confessed that her proportions did not fit Shiela to be a comfort about the home, for she weighed a hundred and eighteen pounds and could not go under the tallest table without stooping. As she always forgot to stoop, her progress was fraught with excitement.
On the day following her arrival, the cook scrambled out of bed long before sunup to ascertain what manner of idiot could be knocking on the door in this deserted region. Man alive, why couldn’t they walk in? Shiela leaped on him to be fondled--the wolfhound had been wagging her tail against the door as she lay across the threshold.
“Ef I was you,” Mit suggested civilly, “I’d lay out on the range where you’d have room to move round. Git a nice big butte all to yourself.”
Her heart and her courage were big as her body. Following O’Donnell on a day when he fared to Stinking Water, quite by accident she roused up a loafer in the cañon. Shiela flew in pursuit, deaf to O’Donnell’s frantic commands to come back. And when the wolf turned fiercely at bay to pit her might against this daring hunter, a hundred and eighteen pounds of dauntless pluck launched itself at her neck like a bolt from a storm-cloud.
“She’s a dead one now,” O’Donnell groaned, circling for a shot. “She’s a goner, sure.”
Had the wolfhound been more wary, she would have fared better. She could not have slain her foe; the dog does not breathe that can go to the death-grapple with a loafer wolf in the flush of his strength; and Shiela knew neither the amazing quickness of the wild, nor how to guard against those slashing counter-attacks. The lobo could dodge and rip simultaneously, using her jaws from any direction. Even when bowled over by the hound’s unreckoning rush, she tore Shiela’s throat with a backward thrust of her muzzle and was free in a twinkling. Badly cut in several places, dazed by the speed of the combat, the wolfhound was soon forced to let her go.
Shiela and Friday were fast friends, albeit the diversity of dimensions was productive of intermittent rancor. It was Friday’s wont to rush at her fiercely, to seize one powerful leg in his mouth and worry it, whereat Shiela would hit him a playful pat that sent him reeling ten yards. But Friday came of a staunch breed, and he returned to the sport again and again. Often the wolfhound would stretch herself out on the ground, and thus recumbent, the fox-terrier could almost reach her head. Over Shiela would roll, lying on her back with legs in the air, while Friday snorted and grunted valorously as he shook her by the throat or the ear. But the fun always ended in the same way: a clumsy blow would catch Friday full on the head and he would dash off to his master with cries of pain.
“Steve oughtn’t for to keep her round headquarters,” the blacksmith remonstrated to Dick. “She’s shore too big. Pore li’l Friday! When she gits into my shop, Dick, I swan her ol’ tail is like to send my tools flying which-ways.”
“Where’d he keep her, then? He cain’t turn her out on the range to eat grass,” sneered Dick.
The blacksmith was silenced, but there was born in him a dislike of the hound. It happened that, when next the terrier came yelping from play, O’Donnell had ridden off to a tank. The blacksmith issued from the shop and hurled a bolt at Shiela. She dodged, but did not run, and the bristles on her neck stiffened in warning.
Aside from the manager, who spent much of the year with his family in Denver, the blacksmith was the only married man with the Tumbling H outfit. He had a son three years of age. Oscar was the child’s name,--a sturdy, ruddy-cheeked youngster he was--and from the outset he was the apple of Shiela’s eye. The boy could pull her ears or tail with absolute impunity, and into the yawning cavity she would open to his teasing, he would thrust a chubby fist.
“Oscar! Oscar! My baby, don’t,” his mother would cry. But Shiela was infinitely tender with him, and the two would roll on the ground in a tight embrace, while the child thumped a tattoo on the wolfhound’s ribs.
It befell on a morning that they indulged in this frolic until both were in a state of unbridled excitement. Crowing with delight, the baby staggered to his feet and tried to butt Shiela with his head. Forgetting for a fraction of time how fragile was this cherished morsel of humanity, the wolfhound struck out joyously with her paw, bowling him over like a ninepin. As he went backward, the boy essayed to break his fall on the ground by thrusting out his left arm; it doubled under him and snapped at the elbow.
A single wailing cry brought his father running from the smithy. Oscar lay white-faced, the wolfhound nosing him eagerly in an endeavor to stir the baby to a resumption of play. Flinging a curse at the dog, the blacksmith picked up his son and carried him to his mother. Ten minutes passed, which Shiela spent in vain efforts to ascertain what kept her playmate from her, and Peck emerged from the bunkhouse with a shotgun. The quick-sensing Shiela disappeared without further ado around a corner of the saddle-shed; but, as the blacksmith followed on a run, O’Donnell’s voice stayed him.
“What’re you doing with that gun, Peck?”
“Shiela done broke Oscar’s arm, and I aim to git even--that’s what.”
“Don’t be a fool!” the boss cried sharply.
Peck faced him, his lips twitching.
“I may do more’n shoot a bitch, Steve,” he said, and his voice was calm now.
“You don’t mean that, Peck.” The range boss continued to advance, his eyes on the troubled eyes of the blacksmith. “Shee-la and little Oscar have always been friends. Didn’t she pull him out of the creek only last week? She couldn’t have smashed his arm on purpose. You can’t blame a dog for an accident.”
The blacksmith cursed Shiela to the eightieth generation; but O’Donnell smiled and tapped the barrel of the gun with his forefinger. There would be no shooting of man or dog now, he knew.
“Put it away, Peck. We’ll forget all about it. I’ll ride over to Deadeye and bring the doctor myself.”
The blacksmith wavered and obeyed.
Little Oscar was soon able to toddle about, with his arm in a cast and a sling. But Peck’s dislike for the hound grew to hate. In the short winter days and long winter nights he watched and brooded, waiting for an opportunity to make her suffer. His hostility to the soft-eyed, affectionate Shiela took the form of an intense nervous sensibility to her every movement--one sees precisely the same symptoms in persons who are unhappily cooped up for any length of time. Soon the bigness of the animal grated on his nerves, so that whatever she did excited in him childish spleen. Even when Shiela ate, Peck could not look at her magnificent satisfaction without falling into a paroxysm of loathing.
Once he spread pieces of meat cunningly about the saddle-shed where she was wont to loll while the child slept in the afternoons. Shiela espied and swallowed these tidbits with much relish, and stalked away to get a drink, feeling unaccountably thirsty. There was no water in the trough; and that saved her life. Soon a tremor came upon the wolfhound, so that she swayed uncertainly, her nose close to the ground, froth slathering her muzzle.
At this moment Oscar rocketed from the bunkhouse at his usual ungainly gallop. The boy knew exactly what to do. Had he not endured agony, too? There was only one sure remedy for belly-pains, and it stood on a shelf in the kitchen--he never passed the shelf without a certain creeping of the flesh. How he forced castor oil upon the dog is one of those modern miracles that are wrought for babes and the inebriated. At any rate, with only one arm free, he administered a glorious dose, and, feeling full of pity for the tortures of which she mumbled so weakly, he followed it with generous hunks of greasy bacon purloined from the big brown crockery jar in the pantry. Shiela became violently ill and Oscar feared for her life.
“Dick! Dick! She sick. Hurry, oh hurry!” Oscar ran to summon help.
Shiela survived, and O’Donnell devoted the better part of a day to impassioned dissertations on the folly of leaving strychnine baits for coyotes round the saddle-shed.
One evening in midwinter, the range boss, Dick, the cook, and Peck sat in the bunkhouse, as usual, trifling with a pile of dominos. Shiela lay dozing in front of the fire. The wolfhound had shown considerable restlessness of late and Dick had cautioned O’Donnell to chain her up. It came Mit’s turn to play and, as he was ponderously miring himself, the night silence was rent by the hunting cry of the loafer. So near was it, so savagely compelling, that the men sent the benches back in amaze. The effect on Shiela was extraordinary. She was at the door, scratching for her liberty, whining, turning appealing eyes to O’Donnell that he should open.
Dick gazed at the range boss and waggled his wise bald head. “You better lock her up, Steve, or you’ll shore lose that ol’ dog.”
She was locked in the smithy the next evening, and in the morning the shed was empty. O’Donnell was positive that the staple and chain on the door had been secure when he left her the night before; yet now the staple dangled free, with a splinter attached. Reflecting that the hound’s weight made this feat possible, he ceased to speculate; and in the blacksmith’s soul entered peace. Shiela had fled.
The Wednesday following fell blustery, with a bullying wind, and the range boss sat late at his table, working over a cattle tally by the light of a lantern. A timid scratching on the door-sill disturbed him, and he listened curiously. There it was again, this time accompanied by a plaintive whine. He reached the handle in a stride.
“Shee-la! Shee-la, old girl!” His glad cry brought Mit running. Shiela slunk into the room and crossed to the fire, which she sniffed doubtfully and then lay down in front of it. Down her throat and across her left shoulder burned cherry-colored slashes. She touched her tongue to them and began to clean her soiled coat, while O’Donnell stood watching, lost in wonder. The wolfhound growled as he moved, but he laughed affectionately and stooped to the fearfully lowered head.
“So you’ve come back--like the prodigal,” he whispered. “Poor, poor Shee-la!”
“Mit,” he bawled the next instant, “kill the spotted calf, or the fatted heifer, or whatever else will do. She’s hungry.”
Not being conversant with the tale of the erring son, the cook roared back a request to Steve to have sense--didn’t he know there wasn’t a calf in the pen?
“Bring some beef, then,” laughed the boss.
The animal’s eyes followed her master furtively. He noted that flickering gleam with a pang--the fear and suspicion of the hunted in it. So much had three days with the wild linked up the slack chain of her blood tie. Then presently she licked his hand, and the look that answered his was soft and appealing as of old.
“Here’s enough to choke her,” announced Mit cheerily, entering with a slab of beef.
The hound sprang at him and the cook, taking no chances, hurled the raw meat into the air. She caught it as it touched the floor and tore into it with the desperate zest of the famished.
The days drifted one into another, and the Tumbling H men rose and ate and slept, and rose again, which is the sum of many lives. Of work there could be little until the spring rains fell. Would the good days of the roundup never come? Oh, the sweltering hours in the saddle, and the bellowings of mighty herds, and the choking dust of the corrals in branding!
Shiela was carefully guarded. In the first of the mild weather she contributed to the bustling cheer of the bunkhouse a litter of four lusty pups. It was as much as a man’s life was worth to go nearer than six feet to the tugging little rascals; but the boy Oscar, who did not know this, proceeded calmly to inspect and caress them. The mother flared in a sudden, quaping rage, but instantly sank back and became reconciled to the extent of permitting the baby, quite undaunted by his first reception, to stroke her progeny with his pudgy hands. She watched him jealously.
Summer rushed upon the land, and the Tumbling H outfit got to horse and rode forth. In November O’Donnell shipped seven thousand head of steers to help stay the world’s maw, and in December there were four men playing at cards again in the bunkhouse.
“Steve,”--the cook cleared his throat as he riffled the cards,--“is it my deal? Shore. Say, Steve, one of Shiela’s pups is killing chickens. He’d ’a got a turkey too, only I done seen him.”
“You ought for to have killed ’em all when they were teeny pups, Steve,” broke in the blacksmith. “What was the use of keeping two? Anyone kin see they’re more wolf than dog.”
“It’s your play,” the boss said evenly.
Shiela had the run of quarters, but her broad-jowled, heavy-shouldered pups were chained in the smithy. Just what to do with them was a problem. Shiela had exhibited no special affection since they were weaned, and it needed only the merest glance to detect the bar sinister. Had only the eyes been visible, there was that in their glint which betrayed the wolf. Yet, in the tawny coats and a certain lithe spring in gathering for a stride, the youngsters favored their mother.
A loafer wolf made a foray from the cañon on a Sunday night, when the range boss and Mit played seven-up and the blacksmith poisoned life with a concertina. He killed a milch-pen calf close to headquarters; yet so silent was the raid that the men heard nothing of it, though Shiela cried protests to be gone and growled at intervals. In the smithy the pups bayed deep-voiced greetings. They leaped and snapped their teeth, and gnawed and raved to be free. Forgetting that O’Donnell had unchained them, Dick went to the door to still the brutes. They hurled themselves over him.
“Here’s where the trouble starts, Shee-la,” observed her master dubiously. She wagged her tail and looked up at him in curiosity, for she had practically forgotten the pups.
It was a bitter winter, and the cattle sickened and died in hundreds. The men rode range in all weathers, setting out oil-cake and salt; but what help could be given to thirty thousand head? Carrion waxed fat. And then, one day in Deadeye, whither he had journeyed for supplies at the first hint of spring, the range boss stumbled on a strange tale. The wolves were out, bolder and stronger than they had been in a generation. They were making no stealthy, lone hunts,--a swift leap from the dark upon a helpless thing, and then the gorge,--but waged an almost systematic war of pillage. The leader was a shaggy veteran of speckled gray that ran with a limp; and with him--the men of Deadeye hoped they might perish horribly were this not so--with him there ran two fawn-colored wolves like no lobo of the west country. They were, perhaps, slightly shorter than a cowhorse; that is, of course, a strong roping horse, not a stunted pony.
“Shee-la, you’ve surely done it now,” O’Donnell told her with a sigh. She thrust her moist muzzle into his hand to be petted.
In less than seven days’ time Padden reported from a division camp that he had come on the carcass of a freshly killed heifer near a salt trough. The wolves had hamstrung the poor brute and had fallen to their grim feast before life was extinct, he thought; which is not unusual. O’Donnell vowed a war of extermination.
The mail-carrier came upon the pack casting about beside the trail, at fault in running an antelope. They let him approach within two hundred yards, gazing insolently, then flitted swiftly through a jungle of mesquite trees. His story was that beside the wily gray scoundrel that led, raced two tall creatures, half wolf, half dog, which ran with a long, springy stride foreign to lobo locomotion.
“It’s Shiela’s pups,” the blacksmith exclaimed venomously, when the mail-carrier related this experience at dinner.
“Yes, they’re Shee-la’s pups,” O’Donnell admitted; and, “Poor Shee-la!” he said. Then raising his voice with decision:
“Johnson, you tell them in Deadeye that I’ll give fifty dollars each for those pups, and fifty for the old gray fellow. Put up a notice in the post-office. Or--wait, I’ll write one for you.”
The result of this placard was an egress from Deadeye of eight ambitious hunters, who went their several ways, wishful to earn two months’ pay by a lucky shot. They straggled back empty-handed at the end of a week. While they were thus engaged, the pack ranged wide. They killed at Cedar Creek, but were compelled to abandon their prey, and slew again before daylight on a nester’s place on the outskirts of Deadeye. Here, too, they let the life out of an interfering collie. Long immunity had made them contemptuous--or was it that they gave ear to the counsels of man-raised mates? They raided the Tumbling H headquarters in quest of certain turkeys that were Mit’s solace in dark days, and from ambuscade the cook slew his finest gobbler with buckshot, in a berserker effort to shoot one lissome marauder.
Shiela and Friday led uneventful lives amid all this harrying and turmoil of pursuit. They frisked and wrestled on the baked, cracked ground, or basked in the sun until it grew too hot and the flies became unbearable in attack, when they would slouch to the cool of the long bunk-room. Shiela had forgotten all about her degenerate offspring, and held herself fearlessly and with pride as an honest dog.
More than once she and the terrier took jaunts over the low hills toward the cañon, in spite of the watch on her goings-out. It might be a rabbit they pursued, or the zigzagging trail of a coyote; or it might be that rare scent, the antelope’s. One afternoon they disported themselves, chasing some half-wild hogs that roamed the range.
A long-snouted porker of tender years was rooting about a patch of bear-grass, when suddenly he cocked his impudent nose and appeared to listen intently. Shiela and Friday stopped short in a game of tag, to watch. The pig did not turn his head, but continued to stand at attention, his ears twitching. What could it mean? Shiela crept closer. With a speed that left her dumbfounded, the pig sprang sidewise on to a spot his glance had certainly not been regarding, and simultaneously tore with his jaws at a writhing, earth-colored coil. Shiela drew off respectfully and in trepidation, while he devoured his victim with beautiful hog voracity. It was the dreaded rattler, which he had killed with two lightning strokes of forefeet and jaws.
So the days passed.
In the meantime, O’Donnell had other things than Shiela or wolves to think about. The manager had resigned, and the boss added to the superintendence of the active work of the range, the conduct of the business of the Tumbling H company, the sale and the shipping of Tumbling H cattle. He was an enthusiast on improving the breed of his cattle and horses; and his anger was deep, therefore, when late in the autumn his men found the remains of a young stallion. He was a splendid beast, but newly come from Kentucky, and ignorant of perils and the necessity for perpetual vigilance. Apparently he had been cut out from the band he lorded it over,--sheer foolhardiness, this--and, alone in the battle against heavy odds, had been pulled down. That he died full of fight was sufficiently evident: the battered body of an exceptionally large young wolf lay on the ground beside his own.
Shiela sniffed at the carcass of this creature, then moved away unconcernedly, circling for another scent; but the hide caught O’Donnell’s gaze and held it. The coat was of a peculiar tawny hue, running in spots to red. There was something in the lines of the body and legs that struck a reminiscent chord in his memory. He glanced from it to Shiela, turning the body over with his foot.
“If that isn’t one of your litter, old girl, I’m much mistaken,” he said.
Shiela, then, must atone. With all the dogs of Deadeye to help, she should hunt these bold ravagers. Hers was the crime; hers must be the expiation, even at the cost of life.
“Well, old girl,” he said, as he ambled away from headquarters three days later, with Shiela beside him, “here’s your one chance to wipe out your little slip. A lot of us humans don’t get that, my lady. So go to it and clear your name, Shee-la.”
There were twenty-five dogs on hand at the rendezvous, about thirteen more than were needed, and they ranged from bloodhounds and greyhounds to a wheezy water-spaniel, which thought he knew a scent when he struck it, and whose master fondled the same delusion of him. His presence led to a dispute at the outset, because the spaniel persisted in messing about and mugging a trail, and his owner pig-headedly abetted him. The owner was set in argument, and carried a long, smooth-bore rifle. However, both were persuaded to go home, quite convinced that spiteful jealousy was at the bottom of this attitude.
“So that’s Shiela?” queried a Gourd puncher. “I reckon you ought to kill her, O’Donnell. It’s her pup and his father what’s raising all the hell. She might run away ag’in and--”
“She’s my dog, Joe,” the boss cut in.
Hard upon his words, old Rags gave tongue and went away on a warm scent. Luck was with the hunters. Within two miles the dogs were running free, their noses in the air, making the ridges ring to their eager yelping; and a wolf, a tawny, limber-limbed wolf, smashed through a tangle of weeds and briars at the head of a gulch and streaked across the open country. The pack laid themselves out in pursuit, Shiela and the greyhounds running silently.
The wolfhound was well up with the leaders. A dozen strides would have brought the quarry to bay, when a speckled gray shape burst into view beneath her feet and departed at a tangent to her line of running, heading for a shallow draw. Shiela and one greyhound swerved and dashed after him. The others of the pack kept on behind the flagging fugitive.
Everything was against the gray. He was old, and the combats and the hunts of years had stiffened his muscles. He was full fed and heavy; slumbering, he had blundered into the chase when he could have lain low. The two silent things behind carried in their sinewy bodies the speed and stamina of generations of dogs whose special business in life it had been to run. A wall of earth faced them, the bank of a dried stream, and he must scale it in his flight. Well he knew that the race was over. He must fight, and as well here as elsewhere. When it comes to the last test of courage, the king of wolves is indeed a king.
A rapid glance over his shoulder showed him the greyhound almost at his flank. He reached the bank by a desperate spurt, whirled, and with one rending stroke, cast back the first pursuer, coughing in the throes of death. But the shock of the charge shook him for an instant and in that fraction of time he was unprepared to withstand the crushing velocity of Shiela’s onslaught. On his hind legs, his worn fangs gleaming, he received her. She went straight for his throat, and the grip being an eminently satisfactory one, she did not release it.