Cow Country

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After father rode away, Buddy crept up and put his two short
arms around mother. "Don't cry. I don't have to drink any
water," he soothed her. He waited a minute and added
optimistically, "Dere's a BI--IG wiver comin' pitty soon.
Oxes smells water a hunerd miles. Ezra says so. An' las'
night Crumpy was snuffin' an' snuffin'. I saw 'im do it. He
smelt a BIG wiver. THAT bi-ig!" He spread his short arms as
wide apart as they would reach, and smiled tremulously.

Mother squeezed Buddy so hard that he grunted.

"Dear little man, of course there is. WE don't mind, do we?
I-was feeling sorry for the poor cattle."

"De're firsty," Buddy stated solemnly, his eyes big. "De're
bawlin' fer a drink of water. I guess de're AWFUL firsty.
Dere's a big wiver comin' now Crumpy smelt a big wiver."

Buddy's mother stared across the arid plain parched into
greater barrenness by the heat that had been unremitting for
the past week. Buddy's faith in the big river she could not
share. Somehow they had drifted off the trail marked on the
map drawn by George Williams.

Williams had warned them to carry as much water as possible
in barrels, as a precaution against suffering if they failed
to strike water each night. He had told them that water was
scarce, but that his cowboy scouts and the deep-worn buffalo
trails had been able to bring him through with water at every
camp save two or three. The Staked Plains, he said, would be
the hardest drive. And this was the Staked Plains--and it was
hard driving!

Buddy did not know all that until afterwards, when he heard
father talk of the drive north. But he would have remembered
that day and the night that followed, even though he had
never heard a word about it. The bawling of the herd became a
doleful chant of misery. Even the phlegmatic oxen that drew
the wagons bawled and slavered while they strained forward,
twisting their heads under the heavy yokes. They stopped
oftener than usual to rest, and when Buddy was permitted to
walk with the perspiring Ezra by the leaders, he wondered why
the oxen's eyes were red, like Dulcie's when she had one of
her crying spells.

At night the cowboys did not tie their horses and sit down
while they ate, but stood by their mounts and bolted food
hurriedly, one eye always on the restless cattle, that walked
around and around, and would neither eat nor lie down, but
lowed incessantly. Once a few animals came close enough to
smell the water in a bucket where Frank Davis was watering
his sweat-streaked horse, and Step-and-a-Half's wagon was
almost upset before the maddened cattle could be driven back
to the main herd.

"No use camping," Bob Birnie told the boys gathered around
Step-and-a-Half's Dutch ovens. "The cattle won't stand. We'll
wear ourselves and them out trying to hold 'em-they may as
well be hunting water as running in circles. Step-and-a-Half,
keep your cooked grub handy for the boys, and yo' all pack up
and pull out. We'll turn the cattle loose and follow. If
there's any water in this damned country they'll find it."

Years afterwards, Buddy learned that his father had sent men
out to hunt water, and that they had not found any. He was
ten when this was discussed around a spring roundup fire, and
he had studied the matter for a few minutes and then had
spoken boldly his mind.

"You oughta kept your horses as thirsty as the cattle was,
and I bet they'd a' found that water," he criticized, and
was sent to bed for his tactlessness. Bob Birnie himself had
thought of that afterwards, and had excused the oversight by
saying that he had depended on the map, and had not foreseen
a three-day dry drive.

However that may be, that night was a night of panicky
desperation. Ezra walked beside the oxen and shouted and
swung his lash, and the oxen strained forward bellowing so
that not even Dulcie could sleep, but whimpered fretfully in
her mother's arms. Buddy sat up wide-eyed and watched for the
big river, and tried not to be a 'fraid-cat and cry like
Dulcie.

It was long past starry midnight when a little wind puffed
out of the darkness and the oxen threw up their heads and
sniffed, and put a new note into their "M-baw-aw-aw-mm!"
They swung sharply so that the wind blew straight into the
front of the wagon, which lurched forward with a new impetus.

"Glo-ory t' Gawd, Missy! dey smells watah, sho 's yo' bawn!"
sobbed Ezra as he broke into a trot beside the wheelers "
'Tain't fur--lookit dat-ah huhd a-goin' it! No 'm, Missy, DEY
ain't woah out--dey smellin' watah an' dey'm gittin' TO it!
'Tain't fur, Missy."

Buddy clung to the back of the seat and stared round-eyed
into the gloom. He never forgot that lumpy shadow which was
the herd, traveling fast in dust that obscured the nearest
stars. The shadow humped here and there as the cattle crowded
forward at a shuffling half trot, the click--awash of their
shambling feet treading close on one another. The rapping
tattoo of wide-spread horns clashing against wide-spread
horns filled him with a formless terror, so that he let go
the seat to clutch at mother's dress. He was not afraid of
cattle-they were as much a part of his world as were Ezra and
the wagon and the camp-fires-but he trembled with the dread
which no man could name for him.

These were not the normal, everyday sounds of the herd. The
herd had somehow changed from plodding animals to one
overwhelming purpose that would sweep away anything that came
in its path. Two thousand parched throats and dust-dry
tongues-and suddenly the smell of water that would go
gurgling down two thousand eager gullets, and every
intervening second a cursed delay against which the cattle
surged blindly. It was the mob spirit, when the mob was
fighting for its very existence.

Over the bellowing of the cattle a yelling cowboy now and
then made himself heard. The four oxen straining under their
yokes broke into a lumbering gallop lest they be outdistanced
by the herd, and Dulcie screamed when the wagon lurched
across a dry wash and almost upset, while Ezra plied the ox-
whip and yelled frantically at first one ox and then another,
inventing names for the new ones. Buddy drew in his breath
and held it until the wagon rolled on four wheels instead of
two,but he did not scream.

Still the big river did not come. It seemed to Buddy that the
cattle would never stop running. Tangled in the terror was
Ezra's shouting as he ran alongside the wagon and called to
Missy that it was "Dat ole Crumpy actin' the fool", and that
the wagon wouldn't upset. "No'm, dey's jest in a hurry to git
dere fool haids sunk to de eyes in dat watah. Dey ain't
aimin' to run away--no'm, dish yer ain't no stampede!"

Perhaps Buddy dozed. The next thing he remembered, day was
breaking, with the sun all red, seen through the dust. The
herd was still going, but now it was running and somehow the
yoked oxen were keeping close behind, lumbering along with
heads held low and the sweat reeking from their spent bodies.
Buddy heard dimly his mother's sharp command to Ezra:

"Stand back, Ezra! We're not going to be caught in that
terrible trap. They're piling over the bank ahead of us. Get
away from the leaders. I am going to shoot."

Buddy crawled up a little higher on the blankets behind the
seat, and saw mother steady herself and aim the rifle
straight at Crumpy. There was the familiar, deafening roar,
the acrid smell of black powder smoke, and Crumpy went down
loosely, his nose rooting the trampled ground for a space
before the gun belched black smoke again and Crumpy's yoke-
mate pitched forward. The wagon stopped so abruptly that
Buddy sprawled helplessly on his back like an overturned
beetle.

He saw mother stand looking down at the wheelers, that backed
and twisted their necks under their yokes. Her lips were set
firmly together, and her eyes were bright with purple hollows
beneath. She held the rifle for a moment, then set the butt
of it on the "jockey box" just in front of the dashboard.
The wheelers, helpless between the weight of the wagon behind
and the dead oxen in front, might twist their necks off but
they could do no damage.

"Unyoke the wheelers, Ezra, and let the poor creatures have
their chance at the water," she cried sharply, and Ezra,
dodging the horns of the frantic brutes, made shift to obey.

Fairly on the bank of the sluggish stream with its flood-worn
channel and its treacherous patches of quicksand, the wagon
thus halted by the sheer nerve and quick-thinking of mother
became a very small island in a troubled sea of weltering
backs and tossing horns and staring eyeballs. Riders shouted
and lashed unavailingly with their quirts, trying to hold
back the full bulk of the herd until the foremost had slaked
their thirst and gone on. But the herd was crazy for the
water, and the foremost were plunged headlong into the soft
mud where they mired, trampled under the hoofs of those who
came crowding from behind.

Someone shouted, close to the wagon yet down the bank at the
edge of the water. The words were indistinguishable, but a
warning was in the voice. On the echo of that cry, a man
screamed twice.

"Ezra!" cried mother fiercely. "It's Frank Davis--they've got him
down, somehow. Climb over the backs of the cattle--There's no
other way--and GET HIM!"

"Yas'm, Missy!" Ezra called back, and then Buddy saw him go
over the herd, scrambling, jumping from back to back.

Buddy remembered that always, and the funeral they had later
in the day, when the herd was again just trail-weary cattle
feeding hungrily on the scanty grass. Down at the edge of the
creek the carcasses of many dead animals lay half-buried in
the mud. Up on a little knoll where a few stunted trees grew,
the negroes dug a long, deep hole. Mother's eyes were often
filled with tears that day, and the cowboys scarcely talked
at all when they gathered at the chuckwagon.

After a while they all went to the hole which the negroes had
dug, and there was a long Something wrapped up in canvas.
Mother wore her best dress which was black, and father and
all the boys had shaved their faces and looked very sober.
The negroes stood back in a group by themselves, and every
few minutes Buddy saw them draw their tattered shirtsleeves
across their faces. And father--Buddy looked once and saw two
tears running down father's cheeks. Buddy was shocked into a
stony calm. He had never dreamed that fathers ever cried.

Mother read out of her Bible, and all the boys held their
hats in front of them, with their hands clasped, and looked
at the ground while she read. Then mother sang. She sang,
"We shall meet beyond the river", which Buddy thought was a
very queer song, because they were all there but Frank Davis;
then she sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee." Buddy sang too,
piping the notes accurately, with a vague pronunciation of
the words and a feeling that somehow he was helping mother.

After that they put the long, canvas-wrapped Something down
in the hole, and mother said "Our Father Who Art in Heaven ",
with Buddy repeating it uncertainly after her and pausing to
say "TRETHpatheth" very carefully. Then mother picked up
Dulcie in her arms, took Buddy by the hand and walked slowly
back to the wagon, and would not let him turn to see what the
boys were doing.

It was from that day that Buddy missed Frank Davis, who had
mysteriously gone to Heaven, according to mother. Buddy's
interest in Heaven was extremely keen for a time, and he
asked questions which not even mother could answer. Then his
memory of Frank Davis blurred. But never his memory of that
terrible time when the Tomahawk outfit lost five hundred
cattle in the dry drive and the stampede for water.

CHAPTER THREE: SOME INDIAN LORE

Buddy knew Indians as he knew cattle, horses, rattlesnakes
and storms--by having them mixed in with his everyday life.
He couldn't tell you where or when he had learned that
Indians are tricky. Perhaps his first ideas on that subject
were gleaned from the friendly tribes who lived along the
Chisolm Trail and used to visit the chuck-wagon, their
blankets held close around them and their eyes glancing
everywhere while they grinned and talked and pointed--and
ate. Buddy used to sit in the chuck-wagon, out of harm's way,
and watch them eat.

Step-and-a-Half had a way of entertaining Indians which never
failed to interest Buddy, however often he witnessed it. When
Step-and-a-Half glimpsed Indians coming afar off, he would
take his dishpan and dump into it whatever scraps of food
were left over from the preceding meal. He used to say that
Indians could smell grub as far as a buzzard can smell a dead
carcase, and Buddy believed it, for they always arrived at
meal time or shortly afterwards. Step-and-a-Half would make a
stew, if there were scraps enough. If the gleanings were
small, he would use the dishwater--he was a frugal man--and
with that for the start-off he would make soup, which the
Indians gulped down with great relish and many gurgly sounds.

Buddy watched them eat what he called pig-dinner. When Step-
and-a-Half was not looking he saw them steal whatever their
dirty brown hands could readily snatch and hide under their
blankets. So he knew from very early experience that Indians
were not to be trusted.

Once, when he had again strayed too far from camp, some
Indians riding that way saw him, and one leaned and lifted
him from the ground and rode off with him. Buddy did not
struggle much. He saved his breath for the long, shrill yell
of cow-country. Twice he yodled before the Indian clapped a
hand over his mouth.

Father and some of the cowboys heard and came after, riding
hard and shooting as they came. Buddy's pink apron fluttered
a signal flag in the arms of his captor, and so it happened
that the bullets whistled close to that particular Indian. He
gathered a handful of calico between Buddy's shoulders, held
him aloft like a puppy, leaned far over and deposited him on
the ground.

Buddy rolled over twice and got up, a little dizzy and very
indignant, and shouted to father, "Shoot a sunsyguns!"

From that time Buddy added hatred to his distrust of Indians.

From the time when he was four until he was thirteen Buddy's
life contained enough thrills to keep a movie-mad boy of to-
day sitting on the edge of his seat gasping enviously through
many a reel, but to Buddy it was all rather humdrum and
monotonous.

What he wanted to do was to get out and hunt buffalo. Just
herding horses, and watching out for Indians, and killing
rattlesnakes was what any boy in the country would be doing.
Still, Buddy himself achieved now and then a thrill.

There was one day, when he stood heedlessly on a ridge
looking for a dozen head of lost horses in the draws below.
It was all very well to explain missing horses by the
conjecture that the Injuns must have got them, but Buddy
happened to miss old Rattler with the others. Rattler had
come north with the trail herd, and he was wise beyond the
wisdom of most horses. He would drive cattle out of the brush
without a rider to guide him, if only you put a saddle on
him. He had helped Buddy to mount his back--when Buddy was
much smaller than now--by lowering his head until Buddy
straddled it, and then lifting it so that Buddy slid down his
neck and over his withers to his back. Even now Buddy
sometimes mounted that way when no one was looking. Many
other lovable traits had Rattler, and to lose him would be a
tragedy to the family.

So Buddy was on the ridge, scanning all the deep little
washes and draws, when a bullet PING-G-GED over his head.
Buddy caught the bridle reins and pulled his horse into the
shelter of rocks, untied his rifle from the saddle and crept
back to reconnoitre. It was the first time he had ever been
shot at--except in the army posts, when the Indians had
"broken out",--and the aim then was generally directed toward
his vicinity rather than his person.

An Indian on a horse presently appeared cautiously from
cover, and Buddy, trembling with excitement, shot wild; but
not so wild that the Indian could afford to scoff and ride
closer. After another ineffectual shot at Buddy, he whipped
his horse down the ridge, and made for Bannock creek.

Buddy at thirteen knew more of the wiles of Indians than does
the hardiest Indian fighter on the screen to-day. Father had
warned him never to chase an Indian into cover, where others
would probably be waiting for him. So he stayed where he was,
pretty well hidden in the rocks, and let the bullets he
himself had "run" in father's bullet-mold follow the enemy
to the fringe of bushes. His last shot knocked the Indian off
his horse--or so it looked to Buddy. He waited for a long
time, watching the brush and thinking what a fool that Indian
was to imagine Buddy would follow him down there. After a
while he saw the Indian's horse climbing the slope across the
creek. There was no rider.

Buddy rode home without the missing horses, and did not tell
anyone about the Indian, though his thoughts would not leave
the subject.

He wondered what mother would think of it. Mother's interests
seemed mostly confined to teaching Buddy and Dulcie what they
were deprived of learning in schools, and to play the piano--
a wonderful old square piano that had come all the way from
Scotland to the Tomahawk ranch, the very frontier of the
West.

Mother was a wonderful woman, with a soft voice and a slight
Scotch accent, and wit; and a knowledge of things which were
little known in the wilderness. Buddy never dreamed then how
strangely culture was mixed with pure savagery in his life.
To him the secret regret that he had not dared ride into the
bushes to scalp the Indian he believed he had shot, and the
fact that his hands were straining at the full chords of the
ANVIL CHORUS on that very evening, was not even to be
considered unusual. Still, certain strains of that classic
were always afterward associated in his mind with the
shooting of the Indian--if he had really shot him.

While he counted the time with a conscientious regard for the
rests, he debated the wisdom of telling mother, and decided
that perhaps he had better keep that matter to himself, like
a man.

CHAPTER FOUR: BUDDY GIVES WARNING

Buddy swung down from his horse, unsaddled it and went
staggering to the stable wall with the burden of a stock-
saddle much too big for him. He had to stand on his boot-toes
to reach and pull the bridle down over the ears of Whitefoot,
which turned with an air of immense relief into the corral
gate and the hay piled at the further end. Buddy gave him one
preoccupied glance and started for the cabin, walking with
the cowpuncher's peculiar, bowlegged gait which comes of
wearing chaps and throwing out the knees to overcome the
stiffness of the leather. At thirteen Buddy was a cowboy from
hat-crown to spurs-and at thirteen Buddy gloried in the fact.
To-day, however, his mind was weighted with matters of more
importance than himself.

"The Utes are having a war-dance, mother," he announced when
he had closed the stout door of the kitchen behind him. "They
mean it this time. I lay in the brush and watched them last
night." He stood looking at his mother speculatively, a
little grin on his face. "I told you, you can't change an
Injun by learning him to eat with a knife and fork," he
added. "Colorou ain't any whiter than he was before you set
out to learn him manners. He was hoppin' higher than any of
'em."

"Teach, Buddy, not learn. You know better than to say 'learn
him manners.'"

"Teach him manners," Buddy corrected himself obediently. "I
was thinking more about what I saw than about grammar.
Where's father? I guess I'd better tell him. He'll want to
get the stock out of the mountains, I should think."

"Colorou will send me word before they take the warpath,"
mother observed reassuringly. "He always has. I gave him a
whole pound of tea and a blue ribbon the last time he was
here,"

"Yes, and the last time they broke out they got away with
more 'n a hundred head of cattle. You got to Laramie, all
right, but he didn't tell father in time to make a roundup
back in the foothills. They're DANCING, mother!"

"Well, I suppose We're due for an outbreak," sighed mother.
"Colorou says he can't hold his young men off when some of
the tribe have been killed. He himself doesn't countenance
the stealing and the occasional killing of white men. There
are bad Indians and good ones."

"I know a couple of good ones," Buddy murmured as he made for
the wash basin. "It's the bad ones that were doing the
dancing, mother," he flung over his shoulder. "And if I was
you I'd take Dulcie and the cats and hit for Laramie. Colorou
might get busy and forget to send word!"

"If I WAS you?" Mother came up and nipped his ear between
thumb and finger. "Robert, I am discouraged over you. All
that I teach you in the winter seems to evaporate from your
mind during the summer when you go out riding with the boys."

Buddy wiped his face with an up-and-down motion on the roller
towel and clanked across to the cupboard which he opened
investigatively. "Any pie?" he questioned as he peered into
the corners. "Say, if I had the handling of those Utes,
mother, I'd fix 'em so they wouldn't be breaking out every
few months and making folks leave their homes to be pawed
over and burnt, maybe." He found a jar of fresh doughnuts and
took three.

"They'll tromp around on your flower-beds--it just makes me
SICK when I think how they'll muss things up around here! I
wish now," He blurted unthinkingly, "that I hadn't killed the
Injun that stole Rattler."

"Buddy! Not YOU." His mother made a swift little run across
the kitchen and caught him on his lean, hard-muscled young
shoulders. "You--you baby! What did you do? You didn't harm
an Indian, did you, laddie?"

Buddy tilted his head downward so that she could not look
into his eyes. "I dunno as I harmed him--much," he said,
wiping doughnut crumbs from his mouth with one hasty sweep of
his forearm. "But his horse came outa the brush, and he
never. I guess I killed him, all right. Anyway, mother, I had
to. He took a shot at me first. It was the day we lost
Rattler and the bronks," He added accurately.

Mother did not say anything for a minute, and Buddy hung his
head lower, dreading to see the hurt look which he felt was
in her eyes.

"I have to pack a gun when I ride anywhere," he reminded her
defensively. "It ain't to balance me on the horse, either. If
Injuns take in after me, the gun's so I can shoot. And a
feller don't shoot up in the air--and if an Injun is hunting
trouble he oughta expect that maybe he might get shot
sometime. You--you wouldn't want me to just run and let them
catch me, would you?"

Mother's hand slipped up to his head and pressed it against
her breast so that Buddy heard her heart beating steady and
sweet and true. Mother wasn't afraid--never, never!

"I know--it's the dreadful necessity of defending our lives.
But you're so young--just mother's baby man!

Buddy looked up at her then, a laugh twinkling in his eyes.
After all, mother understood.

"I'm going to be your baby man always if you want me to,
mother," He whispered, closing his arms around her neck in a
sturdy hug. "But I'm father's horse-wrangler, too. And a
horse-wrangler has got to hold up his end. I--I didn't want
to kill anybody, honest. But Injuns are different. You kill
rattlers, and they ain't as mean as Injuns. That one I shot
at was shooting at me before I even so much as knew there was
one around. I just shot back. Father would, or anybody else."

"I know--I know," she conceded, the tender womanliness of her
sighing over the need. In the next moment she was all mother,
ready to fight for her young. "Buddy, never, never ride
ANYWHERE without your rifle! And a revolver, too--be sure
that it is in perfect condition. And--have you a knife?
You're so LITTLE!" she wailed. "But father will need you, and
he'll take care of you--and Colorou would not let you be hurt
if he knew. But--Buddy, you must be careful, and always
watching--never let them catch you off your guard. I shall be
in Laramie before you and father and the boys, I suppose, if
the Indians really do break out. And you must promise me--"

"I'll promise, mother. And don't you go and trust old Colorou
an inch. He was jumping higher than any of 'em, and shaking
his tomahawk and yelling--he'd have scalped me right there if
he'd seen me watching 'em. Mother, I'm going to find father
and tell him. And you may as well be packing up, and--don't
leave my guitar for them to smash, will you, mother?"

His mother laughed then and pushed him toward the door. She
had an idea of her own and she did not want to be hindered
now in putting it into action. Up the creek, in the bank
behind a clump of willows, was a small cave--or a large
niche, one might call it--where many household treasures
might be safely hidden, if one went carefully, wading in the
creek to hide the tracks. She followed Buddy out, and called
to Ezra who was chopping wood with a grunt for every fall of
the axe and many rest--periods in the shade of the cottonwood
tree.

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