Cow Country

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COW-COUNTRY

by B. M. BOWER

CHAPTERS:

1. AN AMBITIOUS MAN-CHILD WAS BUDDY
2. THE TRAIL HERD
3. SOME INDIAN LORE
4. BUDDY GIVES WARNING
5. BUDDY RUNS TRUE TO TYPE
6. THE YOUNG EAGLE MUST FLY
7. BUD FLIPS A COIN WITH FATE
8. THE MULESHOE
9. LITTLE LOST
10. BUD MEETS THE WOMAN
11. GUILE AGAINST THE WILY
12. SPORT O' KINGS
13. THE SINKS
14. EVEN MUSHROOMS HELP
15. WHY BUD MISSED A DANCE
16. WHILE THE GOING'S GOOD
17. GUARDIAN ANGELS ARE RIDING "POINT"
18. THE CATROCK GANG
19. BUD RIDES THROUGH CATROCK AND LOSES MARIAN
20. "PICK YOUR FOOTING!"
21. TRAILS END

COW-COUNTRY

CHAPTER ONE: AN AMBITIOUS MAN-CHILD WAS BUDDY

In hot mid afternoon when the acrid, gray dust cloud kicked
up by the listless plodding of eight thousand cloven hoofs
formed the only blot on the hard blue above the Staked
Plains, an ox stumbled and fell awkwardly under his yoke, and
refused to scramble up when his negro driver shouted and
prodded him with the end of a willow gad.

"Call your master, Ezra," directed a quiet woman voice gone
weary and toneless with the heat and two restless children.
"Don't beat the poor brute. He can't go any farther and carry
the yoke, much less pull the wagon."

Ezra dropped the gad and stepped upon the wagon tongue where
he might squint into the dust cloud and decide which gray,
plodding horseman alongside the herd was Robert Birnie. Far
across the sluggish river of grimy backs, a horse threw up
its head with a peculiar sidelong motion, and Ezra's eyes
lightened with recognition. That was the colt, Rattler,
chafing against the slow pace he must keep. Hands cupped
around big, chocolate-colored lips and big, yellow-white
teeth, Ezra whoo-ee-ed the signal that called the nearest
riders to the wagon that held the boss's family.

Bob Birnie and another man turned and came trotting back, and
at the call a scrambling youngster peered over his mother's
shoulder in the forward opening of the prairie schooner.

"O-oh, Dulcie! We gonna git a wile cow agin!"

Dulcie was asleep and did not answer, and the woman in the
slat sun-bonnet pushed back with her elbow the eager,
squirming body of her eldest. "Stay in the wagon, Buddy.
Mustn't get down amongst the oxen. One might kick you. Lie
down and take a nap with sister. When you waken it will be
nice and cool again."

"Not s'eepy!" objected Buddy for the twentieth time in the
past two hours. But he crawled back, and his mother, relieved
of his restless presence, leaned forward to watch the
approach of her husband and the cowboy. This was the second
time in the past two days that an ox had fallen exhausted,
and her eyes showed a trace of anxiety. With the feed so poor
and the water so scarce, it seemed as though the heavy wagon,
loaded with a few household idols too dear to leave behind, a
camp outfit and the necessary clothing and bedding for a
woman and two children, was going to be a real handicap on
the drive.

"Robert, if we had another wagon, I could drive it and make
the load less for these four oxen," she suggested when her
husband came up. "A lighter wagon, perhaps with one team of
strong horses, or even with a yoke of oxen, I could drive
well enough, and relieve these poor brutes." She pushed back
her sun-bonnet and with it a mass of red-brown hair that
curled damply on her forehead, and smiled disarmingly. "Buddy
would be the happiest baby boy alive if I could let him drive
now and then!" she added humorously.

"Can't make a wagon and an extra yoke of oxen out of this
cactus patch," Bob Birnie grinned good humoredly. "Not even
to tickle Buddy. I'll see what I can do when we reach Olathe.
But you won't have to take a man's place and drive, Lassie."
He took the cup of water she drew from a keg and proffered-
water was precious on the Staked Plains, that season-and his
eyes dwelt on her fondly while he drank. Then, giving her
hand a squeeze when he returned the cup, he rode back to scan
the herd for an animal big enough and well-conditioned enough
to supplant the worn-out ox.

"Aren't you thirsty, Frank Davis? I think a cup of water will
do you good," she called out to the cowboy, who had
dismounted to tighten his forward cinch in expectation of
having to use his rope.

The cowboy dropped stirrup from saddle horn and came forward
stiff-leggedly, leading his horse. His sun-baked face,
grimed with the dust of the herd, was aglow with heat, and
his eyes showed gratitude. A cup of water from the hand of
the boss's wife was worth a gallon from the barrel slip-
slopping along in the lurching chuck-wagon.

"How's the kids makin' out, Mis' Birnie?" Frank inquired
politely when he had swallowed the last drop and had wiped
his mouth with the back of his hand. "It's right warm and
dusty t'day."

"They're asleep at last, thank goodness," she answered,
glancing back at a huddle of pink calico that showed just
over the crest of a pile of crumpled quilts. "Buddy has a
hard time of it. He's all man in his disposition, and all
baby in size. He's been teasing to walk with the niggers and
help drive the drag. Is my husband calling?"

Her husband was, and Frank rode away at a leisurely trot.
Haste had little to do with trailing a herd, where eight
miles was called a good day's journey and six an average
achievement. The fallen ox was unyoked by the mellow-voiced
but exasperated Ezra, and since he would not rise, the three
remaining oxen, urged by the gad and Ezra's upbraiding, swung
the wagon to one side and moved it a little farther after the
slow-moving herd, so that the exhausted animal could rest,
and the raw recruit be yoked in where he could do the least
harm and would the speediest learn a new lesson in
discomfort. Mrs. Birnie glanced again at the huddle of pink
in the nest of quilts behind a beloved chest of drawers in
the wagon, and sighed with relief because Buddy slept.

An ambitious man-child already was Buddy, accustomed to
certain phrases that, since he could toddle, had formed
inevitable accompaniment to his investigative footsteps.
"L'k-out-dah!" he had for a long time believed to be his
name among the black folk of his world. White folk had varied
it slightly. He knew that "Run-to-mother-now" meant that
something he would delight in but must not watch was going to
take place. Spankings more or less official and not often
painful signified that big folks did not understand him and
his activities, or were cross about something. Now, mother
did not want him to watch the wild cow run and jump at the
end of a rope until finally forced to submit to the ox-yoke
and help pull the wagon. Buddy loved to watch them, but he
understood that mother was afraid the wild cow might step on
him. Why she should want him to sleep when he was not sleepy
he had not yet discovered, and so disdained to give it
serious consideration.

"Not s'eepy," Buddy stated again emphatically as a sort of
mental dismissal of the command, and crawled carefully past
Sister and lifted a flap of the canvas cover. A button--the
last button--popped off his pink apron and the sleeves rumpled
down over his hands. It felt all loose and useless, so Buddy
stopped long enough to pull the apron off and throw it beside
Sister before he crawled under the canvas flap and walked
down the spokes of a rear wheel. He did not mean to get in
the way of the wild cow, but he did want action for his
restless legs. He thought that if he went away from the wagon
and the herd and played while they were catching the wild
cow, it would be just the same as if he took a nap. Mother
hadn't thought of it, or she might have suggested it.

So Buddy went away from the wagon and down into a shallow dry
wash where the wild cow would not come, and played. The first
thing he saw was a scorpion-nasty old bug that will bite
hard-and he threw rocks at it until it scuttled under a ledge
out of sight. The next thing he saw that interested him at
all was a horned toad; a hawn-toe, he called it, after Ezra's
manner of speaking. Ezra had caught a hawntoe for him a few
days ago, but it had mysteriously disappeared out of the
wagon. Buddy did not connect his mother's lack of enthusiasm
with the disappearance. Her sympathy with his loss had seemed
to him real, and he wanted another, fully believing that in
this also mother would be pleased. So he took after this
particular HAWN-toe, that crawled into various hiding places
only to be spied and routed out with small rocks and a sharp
stick.

The dry wash remained shallow, and after a while Buddy, still
in hot pursuit of the horned toad, emerged upon the level
where the herd had passed. The wagon was nowhere in sight,
but this did not disturb Buddy. He was not lost. He knew
perfectly that the brown cloud on his narrowed horizon was
the dust over the herd, and that the wagon was just behind,
because the wind that day was blowing from the southwest, and
also because the oxen did not walk as fast as the herd. In
the distance he saw the "Drag" moving lazily along after the
dust-cloud, with barefooted niggers driving the laggard
cattle and singing dolefully as they walked. Emphatically
Buddy was not lost.

He wanted that particular horned toad, however, and he kept
after it until he had it safe in his two hands.

It happened that when he pounced at last upon the toad he
disturbed with his presence a colony of red ants on moving
day. The close ranks of them, coming and going in a straight
line, caught and held Buddy's attention to the exclusion of
everything else--save the horned toad he had been at such
pains to acquire. He tucked the toad inside his underwaist
and ignored its wriggling against his flesh while he squatted
in the hot sunshine and watched the ants, his mind one great
question. Where were they going, and what were they carrying,
and why were they all in such a hurry?

Buddy had to know. To himself he called trailherd--but
father's cattle did not carry white lumps of stuff on their
heads, and furthermore, they all walked together in the same
direction; whereas the ant herd traveled both ways. Buddy
made sure of this, and then started off, following what he
had decided was the real trail of the ants. Most children
would have stirred them up with a stick; Buddy let them alone
so that he could see what they were doing all by themselves.

The ants led him to a tiny hole with a finely pulverized rim
just at the edge of a sprawly cactus. This last Buddy
carefully avoided, for even at four years old he had long ago
learned the sting of cactus thorns. A rattlesnake buzzed
warning when he backed away and the shock to Buddy's nerves
roused within him the fighting spirit. Rattlesnakes he knew
also, as the common enemy of men and cattle. Once a steer had
been bitten on the nose and his head had swollen up so he
couldn't eat. Buddy did not want that to happen to HIM.

He made sure that the horned toad was safe, chose a rock as
large as he could lift and heave from him, and threw it at
the buzzing, gray coil. He did not wait to see what happened,
but picked up another rock, a terrific buzzing sounding
stridently from the coil. He threw another and another with
all the force of his healthy little muscles. For a four-year-
old he aimed well; several of the rocks landed on the coil.

The snake wriggled feebly from under the rocks and tried to
crawl away and hide, its rattles clicking listlessly. Buddy
had another rock in his hands and in his eyes the blue fire
of righteous conquest. He went close-close enough to have
brought a protesting cry from a grownup-lifted the rock high
as he could and brought it down fair on the battered head of
the rattler. The loathsome length of it winced and thrashed
ineffectively, and after a few minutes lay slack, the tail
wriggling aimlessly.

Buddy stood with his feet far apart and his hands on his
hips, as he had seen the cowboy do whom he had unconsciously
imitated in the killing.

"Snakes like Injuns. Dead'ns is good 'ens," He observed
sententiously, still playing the part of the cowboy. Then,
quite sure that the snake was dead, he took it by the tail,
felt again of the horned toad on his chest and went back to
see what the ants were doing.

When so responsible a person as a grownup stops
to watch the orderly activities of an army of ants,
minutes and hours slip away unnoticed. Buddy was
absolutely fascinated, lost to everything else. When
some instinct born in the very blood of him warned Buddy that
time was passing, he stood up and saw that the sun hung just
above the edge of the world, and that the sky was a glorious
jumble of red and purple and soft rose.

The first thing Buddy did was to stoop and study attentively
the dead snake, to see if the tail still wiggled. It did not,
though he watched it for a full minute. He looked at the sun--
it had not set but glowed big and yellow as far from the
earth as his father was tall. Ezra had lied to him. Dead
snakes did not wiggle their tails until sundown.

Buddy looked for the dust cloud of the herd, and was
surprised to find it smaller than he had ever seen it, and
farther away. Indeed, he could only guess that the faint
smudge on the horizon was the dust he had followed for more
days than he could count. He was not afraid, but he was
hungry and he thought his mother would maybe wonder where he
was, and he knew that the point-riders had already stopped
pushing the herd ahead, and that the cattle were feeding now
so that they would bed down at dusk. The chuckwagon was
camped somewhere close by, and old Step-and-a-Half, the lame
cook, was stirring things in his Dutch ovens over the camp-
fire. Buddy could almost smell the beans and the meat stew,
he was so hungry. He turned and took one last, long look at
the endless stream of ants still crawling along, picked up
the dead snake by the tail, cupped the other hand over the
horned toad inside his waist, and started for camp.

After a while he heard someone shouting, but beyond faint
relief that he was after all near his "Outfit", Buddy paid no
attention. The boys were always shouting to one another, or
yelling at their horses or at the herd or at the niggers. It
did not occur to him that they might be shouting for him,
until from another direction he heard Ezra's unmistakable,
booming voice. Ezra sang a thunderous baritone when the
niggers lifted up their voices in song around their camp-
fire, and he could be heard for half a mile when he called in
real earnest. He was calling now, and Buddy, stopping to
listen, fancied that he heard his name. A little farther on,
he was sure of it.

"OOO-EE! Whah y'all, Buddy? OOO-EEE!"

"I'm a-comin'," Buddy shrilled impatiently. "What y' all
want?"

His piping voice did not carry to Ezra, who kept on shouting.
The radiant purple and red and gold above him deepened,
darkened. The whole wild expanse of half-barren land became
suddenly a place of unearthly beauty that dulled to the
shadows of dusk. Buddy trudged on, keeping to the deep-worn
buffalo trails which the herd had followed and scored afresh
with their hoofs. He could not miss his way-not Buddy, son of
Bob Birnie, owner of the Tomahawk outfit-but his legs were
growing pretty tired, and he was so hungry that he could have
sat down on the ground and cried with the gnawing food-call
of his empty little stomach.

He could hear other voices shouting at intervals now, but
Ezra's voice was the loudest and the closest, and it seemed
to Buddy that Ezra never once stopped calling. Twice Buddy
called back that he was a-comin', but Ezra shouted just the
same: "OOO-EE! WHAH Y' ALL, BUDDY? OOO-EE!"

Imperceptibly dusk deepened to darkness. A gust of anger
swept Buddy's soul because he was tired, because he was
hungry and he was yet a long way from the camp, but chiefly
because Ezra persisted in calling after Buddy had several
times answered. He heard someone whom he recognized as Frank
Davis, but by this time he was so angry that he would not say
a word, though he was tempted to ask Frank to take him up on
his horse and let him ride to camp. He heard others-and once
the beat of hoofs came quite close. But there was a wide
streak of Scotch stubbornness in Buddy--along with several
other Scotch streaks--and he continued his stumbling progress,
dragging the snake by the tail, his other hand holding fast
the horned toad.

His heart jumped up and almost choked him when first saw the
three twinkles on the ground which knew were not stars but
camp-fires.

Quite unexpectedly he trudged into the firelight where Step-
and-a-Half was stirring delectable things in the iron pots
and stopping every minute or so to stare anxiously into the
gloom. Buddy stood blinking and sniffing, his eyes fixed upon
the Dutch ovens.

"I'm HUNGRY!" he announced accusingly, gripping the toad that
had begun to squirm at the heat and light. I kilt a snake an'
I'm HUNGRY!"

"Good gorry!" swore Step-and-a-Half, and whipped out his
six-shooter and fired three shots into the air.

Footsteps came scurrying. Buddy's mother swept him into her
arms, laughing with a little whimpering sound of tears in the
laughter. Buddy wriggled protestingly in her arms.

"L'kout! Y' all SKUCSH 'im! I got a HAWN-toe; wight here."
He patted his chest gloatingly. "An' I got a snake. I kilt
'im. An' I'm HUNGRY."

Mother of Buddy though she was, Lassie set him down hurriedly
and surveyed her man-child from a little distance.

"Buddy! Drop that snake instantly'"

Buddy obeyed, but he planted a foot close to his kill and
pouted his lips. "'S my snake. I kilt 'im," He said firmly.
He pulled the horned toad from his waist-front and held it
tightly in his two hands. "An's my hawn-toe. I ketche'd'm.
'Way ova dere," he added, tilting his tow head toward the
darkness behind him.

Bob Birnie rode up at a gallop, pulled up his horse in the
edge of the fire glow and dismounted hastily.

Bob Birnie never needed more than one glance to furnish him
the details of a scene. He saw the very small boy confronting
his mother with a dead snake, a horned toad and a stubborn
set to his lips. He saw that the mother looked rather
helpless before the combination--and his brown mustache hid a
smile. He walked up and looked his first-born over.

"Buddy," He demanded sternly, "where have you been?"

"Out dere. Kilt a snake. Ants was trailing a herd. I got a
HAWN-toe. An' I'm hungry!"

"You know better than to leave the wagon, young man. Didn't
you know we had to get out and hunt you, and mother was
scared the wolves might eat you? Didn't you hear us calling
you? Why didn't you answer?"

Buddy looked up from under his baby eyebrows at his father,
who seemed very tall and very terrible. But his bare foot
touched the dead snake and he took comfort. "I was comin',"
he said. "I WASN'T los'. I bringed my snake and my hawn-toe.
An' dey--WASN'T--any--woluffs!" The last word came muffled,
buried in his mother's skirts.

CHAPTER TWO: THE TRAIL HERD

Day after day the trail herd plodded slowly to the north,
following the buffalo trails that would lead to water, and
the crude map of one who had taken a herd north and had
returned with a tale of vast plains and no rivals. Always
through the day the dust cloud hung over the backs of the
cattle, settled into the clothes of those who followed,
grimed the pink aprons of Buddy and his small sister Dulcie
so that they were no longer pink. Whenever a stream was
reached, mother searched patiently for clear water and an
untrampled bit of bank where she might do the family washing,
leaving Ezra to mind the children. But even so the crust and
the wear and tear of travel remained to harass her fastidious
soul.

Buddy remembered that drive as he could not remember the
comfortable ranch house of his earlier babyhood. To him
afterward it seemed that life began with the great herd of
cattle. He came to know just how low the sun must slide from
the top of the sky before the "point" would spread out with
noses to the ground, pausing wherever a mouthful of grass was
to be found. When these leaders of the herd stopped, the
cattle would scatter and begin feeding. If there was water
they would crowd the banks of the stream or pool, pushing and
prodding one another with their great, sharp horns. Later,
when the sun was gone and dusk crept out of nowhere, the
cowboys would ride slowly around the herd, pushing it quietly
into a smaller compass. Then, if Buddy were not too sleepy,
he would watch the cattle lie down to chew their cuds in
deep, sighing content until they slept. It reminded Buddy
vaguely of when mother popped corn in a wire popper, a long
time ago-before they all lived in a wagon and went with the
herd. First one and two-then there would be three, four,
five, as many as Buddy could count-then the whole herd would
be lying down.

Buddy loved the camp-fires. The cowboys would sit around the
one where his father and mother sat--mother with Dulcie in
her arms--and they would smoke and tell stories, until mother
told him it was time little boys were in bed. Buddy always
wanted to know what they said after he had climbed into the
big wagon where mother had made a bed, but he never found
out. He could remember lying there listening sometimes to the
niggers singing at their own campfire within call, Ezra
always singing the loudest,--just as a bull always could be
heard above the bellowing of the herd.

All his life, Ezra's singing and the monotonous bellowing of
a herd reminded Buddy of one mysteriously terrible time when
there weren't any rivers or any ponds or anything along the
trail, and they had to be careful of the water and save it,
and he and Dulcie were not asked to wash their faces. I think
that miracle helped to fix the incident indelibly in Buddy's
mind; that, and the bellowing of the cattle. It seemed a
month to Buddy, but as he grew older he learned that it was
three days they went without water.

The first day he did not remember especially, except that
mother had talked about clean aprons that night, and failed
to produce any. The second he recalled quite clearly. Father
came to the wagons sometime in the night to see if mother was
asleep. Their murmured talk wakened Buddy and he heard father
say:

"We'll hold 'em, all right, Lassie. And there's water ahead.
It's marked on the trail map. Don't you worry--I'll stay up
and help the boys. The cattle are uneasy--but we'll hold
'em."

The third day Buddy never forgot. That was the day when
mother forgot that Q stands for Quagga, and permitted Buddy
to call it P, just for fun, because it looked so much like P.
And when he said " W is water ", mother made a funny sound
and said right out loud,"0h God, please!" and told Buddy to
creep back and play with Sister--when Sister was asleep, and
there were still x, y and z to say, let alone that mysterious
And-so-forth which seemed to mean so much and so little and
never was called upon to help spell a word. Never since he
began to have lessons had mother omitted a single letter or
cut the study hour down the teeniest little bit.

Buddy was afraid of something, but he could not think what it
was that frightened him. He began to think seriously about
water, and to listen uneasily to the constant lowing of the
herd. The increased shouting of the niggers driving the
lagging ones held a sudden significance. It occurred to him
that the niggers had their hands full, and that they had
never driven so big a "Drag." It was hotter than ever, too,
and they had twice stopped to yoke in fresh oxen. Ezra had
boasted all along that ole Bawley would keep his end up till
they got clah to Wyoming. But ole Bawley had stopped, and
stopped, and at last had to be taken out of the yoke. Buddy
began to wish they would hurry up and find a river.

None of the cowboys would take him on the saddle and let him
ride, that day. They looked harassed--Buddy called it cross--
when they rode up to the wagon to give their horses a few
mouthfuls of water from the barrel. Step-and-a-Half couldn't
spare any more, they told mother. He had declared at noon
that he needed every drop he had for the cooking, and there
would be no washing of dishes whatever. Later, mother had
studied a map and afterwards had sat for a long while staring
out over the backs of the cattle, her face white. Buddy
thought perhaps mother was sick.

That day lasted hours and hours longer than any other day
that Buddy could remember. His father looked cross, too, when
he rode back to them. Once it was to look at the map which
mother had studied. They talked together afterwards, and
Buddy heard his father say that she must not worry; the
cattle had good bottom, and could stand thirst better than a
poor herd, and another dry camp would not really hurt anyone.

He had uncovered the water barrel and looked in, and had
ridden straight over to the chuck-wagon, his horse walking
alongside the high seat where Step-and-a-Half sat perched
listlessly with a long-lashed oxwhip in his hand. Father had
talked for a few minutes, and had ridden back scowling.

"That old scoundrel has got two ten-gallon kegs that haven't
been touched!" he told mother. "Yo' all mustn't water any
more horses out of your barrel Send the boys to Step-and-a-
Half. Yo' all keep what you've got. The horses have got to
have water- to-night it's going to be hell to hold the herd,
and if anybody goes thirsty it'll be the men, not the horses
But yo' all send them to the other wagon, Lassie Mind, now!
Not a drop to anyone."

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