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Samuel Butler - "The Iliad of Homer"

Gene Stratton Porter - "The Song of the Cardinal"

Christopher Marlowe - "Dr. Faustus"

Gene Stratton Porter - "At the Foot of the Rainbow"

Cow Country

B >> B. M. Bower >> Cow Country




"What about the name you called me?" Bud was still advancing
slowly, not much appeased by the explanation. "I don't give a
darn about the steer. You said tie him, and he's tied. But
when you call me--"

"My mistake, young feller. When I get riled up I don't pick
my words." He eyed Bud sharply. "You're mighty quick to obey
orders," He added tentatively.

"I was brought up to do as I'm told, "Bud retorted stiffly. "Any
objections to make?"

"Not one in the world. Wish there was more like yuh. You
ain't been in these parts long?"His tone made a question of
the statement.

"Not right here." Bud had no reason save his temper for not
giving more explicit information, but Bart Nelson--as Bud
knew him afterwards--continued to study him as if he
suspected a blotched past.

"Hunh. That your horse?"

"I've got a bill of sale for him."

"You don't happen to be wanting a job, I s'pose?"

"I wouldn't refuse to take one." And then the twinkle came
back to Bud's eyes, because all at once the whole incident
struck him as being rather funny. "I'd want a boss that
expected to have his orders carried out, though. I lack
imagination, and I never did try to read a man's mind. What
he says he'd better mean--when he says it to me."

Bart Nelson gave a short laugh, turned and sent his riders
back to their work with oaths tingling their ears. Bud judged
that cursing was his natural form of speech.

"Go let up that steer, and I'll put you to work," he said to
Bud afterwards. "That's a good rope horse you're riding. If
you want to use him, and if you can hold up to that little
sample of roping yuh gave us, I'll pay yuh sixty a month. And
that's partly for doing what you're told," he added with a
quick look into Bud's eyes. "You didn't say where you're
from----"

"I was born and raised in cow-country, and nobody's looking
for me," Bud informed him over his shoulder while he
remounted, and let it go at that. From southern Wyoming to
Idaho was too far, he reasoned, to make it worth while
stating his exact place of residence. If they had never heard
of the Tomahawk outfit it would do no good to name it. If
they had heard of it, they would wonder why the son of so
rich a cowman as Bob Birnie should be hiring out as a common
cowpuncher so far from home. He had studied the matter on his
way north, and had decided to let people form their own
conclusions. If he could not make good without the name of
Bob Birnie behind him, the sooner he found it out the better.

He untied the steer, drove it back into the herd and rode
over to where the high-nosed man was helping hold the "Cut."

"Can you read brands? We're cuttin' out AJ and AJBar stuff;
left ear-crop on the AJ, and undercut on the AJBar."

Bud nodded and eased into the herd, spied an AJ two-year-old
and urged it toward the outer edge, smiling to himself when
he saw how Stopper kept his nose close to the animal's rump.
Once in the milling fringe of the herd, Stopper nipped it
into the open, rushed it to the cut herd, wheeled and went
back of his own accord. From the corner of his eye, as he
went, Bud saw that Bart Nelson and one or two others were
watching him. They continued to eye him covertly while he
worked the herd with two other men. He was glad that he had
not travelled far that day, and that he had ridden Smoky and
left Stopper fresh and eager for his favorite pastime, which
was making cattle do what they particularly did not want to
do. In that he was adept, and it pleased Bud mightily to see
how much attention Stopper was attracting.

Not once did it occur to him that it might be himself who
occupied the thoughts of his boss. Buddy--afterwards Bud--had
lived his whole life among friends, his only enemies the
Indians who preyed upon the cowmen. White men he had never
learned to distrust, and to be distrusted had never been his
portion. He had always been Bud Birnie, son and heir of Bob
Birnie, as clean-handed a cattle king as ever recorded a
brand. Even at the University his position had been accepted
without question. That the man he mentally called Parrotface
was puzzled and even worried about him was the last thing he
would think of.

But it was true. Bart Nelson watched Bud, that afternoon. A
man might ride up to Bart and assert that he was an old hand
with cattle, and Bart would say nothing, but set him to work,
as he had Bud. Then he would know just how old a "Hand" the
fellow was. Fifteen minutes convinced him that Bud had
"growed up in the saddle", as he would have put it. But that
only mystified him the more. Bart knew the range, and he knew
every man in the country, from Burroback Valley, which was
this great valley's name, to the Black Rim, beyond the
mountain range, and beyond the Black Rim to the Sawtooth
country. He knew their ways and he knew their past records.

He knew that this young fellow came from farther ranges, and
he would have been at a loss to explain just how he knew it.
He would have said that Bud did not have the "earmarks" of
an Idaho rider. Furthermore, the small Tomahawk brand on the
left flank of the horse Bud rode was totally unknown to Bart.
Yet the horse did not bear the marks of long riding. Bud
himself looked as if he had just ridden out from some nearby
ranch--and he had refused to say where he was from.

Bart swore under his breath and beckoned to him a droopy-
mustached, droopy-shouldered rider who was circling the herd
in a droopy, spiritless manner and chewing tobacco with much
industry.

"Dirk, you know brands from the Panhandle to Cypress Hills.
What d' yuh make of that horse? Where does he come from?" Bart
stopped abruptly and rode forward then to receive and drive
farther back a galloping AJBar cow which Bud and Stopper had just
hazed out of the herd. Dirk squinted at Stopper's brand which
showed cleanly in the glossy, new hair of early summer. He spat
carefully with the wind and swung over to meet his boss when the
cow was safely in the cut herd.

"New one on me, Bart. They's a hatchet brand over close to
Jackson's Hole, somewhere. Where'd the kid say he was from?"

"He wouldn't say, but he's a sure-enough cowhand."

"That there horse ain't been rode down on no long journey,"
Dirk volunteered after further scrutiny. And he added with
the unconscious impertinence of an old and trusted employee,
"Yuh goin' to put him on?"

"Already done it--sixty a month," Bart confided. "That'll
bring out what's in him; he's liable to turn out good for the
outfit. Showed he'll do what he's told first, and think it
over afterwards. I like that there trait in a man."

Dirk pulled his droopy mustache away from his lips as if he
wanted to make sure that his smile would show; though it was
not a pretty smile, on account of his tobacco-stained teeth.

"'S your fun'ral, Bart. I'd say he's from Jackson's Hole, on
a rough guess--but I wouldn't presume to guess what he's here
fur. Mebby he come across from Black Rim. I can find out, if
you say so."

Bud was weaving in and out through the herd, scanning the
animals closely. While the two talked he singled out a
yearling heifer, let Stopper nose it out beyond the bunch and
drove it close to the boss.

"Better look that one over," He called out. "One way, it
looks like AJ, and another way I couldn't name it. And the
ear looks as if about half of it had been frozen off. Didn't
want to run it into the cut until you passed on it."

Bart looked first at Bud, and he looked hard. Then he rode
over and inspected the yearling, Dirk close at his heels.

"Throw 'er back with the bunch," He ordered.

"That finishes the cut, then," Bud announced, rubbing his
hand along Stopper's sweaty neck. "I kept passing this
critter up, and I guess the other boys did the same. But it's
the last one, and I thought I'd run her out for you to look
over."

Bart grunted. "Dirk, you take a look and see if they've got
'em all. And you, Kid, can help haze the cut up the Flat--the
boys'll show you what to do."

Bud, remembering Smoky and Sunfish and his camp, hesitated.
"I've got a camp down here by the creek," He said. "If it's
all the same to you, I'll report for work in the morning, if
you'll tell me where to head for. And I'll have to arrange
somehow to pasture my horses; I've got a couple more at
camp."

Bart studied him for a minute, and Bud thought he was going
to change his mind about the job, or the sixty dollars a
month. But Bart merely told him to ride on up the Flat next
morning, and take the first trail that turned to the left. "The
Muleshoe ranch is up there agin that pine mountain," he
explained. "Bring along your outfit. I guess we can take care
of a couple of horses, all right."

That suited Bud very well, and he rode away thinking how
lucky he was to have taken the right fork in the road, that
day. He had ridden straight into a job, and while he was not
very enthusiastic over the boss, the other boys seemed all
right, and the wages were a third more than he had expected
to get just at first. It was the first time, he reminded
himself, that he had been really tempted to locate, and he
certainly had struck it lucky.

He did not know that when he left the roundup his going had
been carefully noted, and that he was no sooner out of sight
than Dirk Tracy was riding cautiously on his trail. While he
fed his horses the last bit of grain he had, and cooked his
supper over what promised to be his last camp-fire, he did
not dream that the man with the droopy mustache was lying
amongst the bushes on the other bank of the creek, watching
every move he made.

He meant to be up before daylight so that he could strike the
ranch of the Muleshoe outfit in time for breakfast, wherefore
he went to bed before the afterglow had left the mountain-
tops around him. And being young and carefree and healthfully
weary, he was asleep and snoring gently within five minutes
of his last wriggle into his blankets. But Dirk Tracy watched
him for fully two hours before he decided that the kid was
not artfully pretending, but was really asleep and likely to
remain so for the night

Dirk was an extremely cautious man, but he was also tired,
and the cold food he had eaten in place of a hot supper had
not been satisfying to his stomach. He crawled carefully out
of the brush, stole up the creek to where he had left his
horse, and rode away.

He was not altogether sure that he had done his full duty to
the Muleshoe, but it was against human nature for a man
nearing forty to lie uncovered in the brush, and let a
numerous family of mosquitoes feed upon him while he listened
to a young man snoring comfortably in a good camp bed a
hundred feet away.

Dirk, because his conscience was not quite clear, slept in
the stable that night and told his boss a lie next morning.


CHAPTER EIGHT: THE MULESHOE

The riders of the Muleshoe outfit were eating breakfast when
Bud rode past the long, low-roofed log cabin to the corral
which stood nearest the clutter of stables and sheds. He
stopped there and waited to see if his new boss was anywhere
in sight and would come to tell him where to unpack his
belongings. A sandy complexioned young man with red eyelids
and no lashes presently emerged from the stable and came
toward him, his mouth sagging loosely open, his eye; vacuous.
He was clad in faded overalls turned up a foot at the bottom
and showing frayed, shoddy trousers beneath and rusty, run-
down shoes that proved he was not a rider. His hat was
peppered with little holes, as if someone had fired a charge
of birdshot at him and had all but bagged him.

The youth's eyes became fixed upon the guitar and mandolin
cases roped on top of Sunfish's pack, and he pointed and
gobbled something which had the sound speech without being
intelligible. Bud cocked an ear toward him inquiringly, made
nothing of the jumble and rode off to the cabin, leading
Sunfish after him. The fellow might or might not be the idiot
he looked, and he might or might not keep his hands off the
pack. Bud was not going to take any chance.

He heard sounds within the cabin, but no one appeared until
he shouted, "Hello!" twice. The door opened then and Bart
Nelson put out his head, his jaws working over a mouthful of
food that seemed tough.

"Oh, it's you. C'm awn in an' eat," he invited, and Bud
dismounted, never guessing that his slightest motion had been
carefully observed from the time he had forded the creek at
the foot of the slope beyond the cabin.

Bart introduced him to the men by the simple method of waving
his hand at the group around the table and saying, "Guess you
know the boys. What'd yuh say we could call yuh?"

"Bud--ah--Birnie," Bud answered, swiftly weighing the
romantic idea of using some makeshift name until he had made
his fortune, and deciding against it. A false name might mean
future embarrassment, and he was so far from home that his
father would never hear of him anyway. But his hesitation
served to convince every man there that Birnie was not his
name, and that he probably had good cause for concealing his
own. Adding that to Dirk Tracy's guess that he was from
Jackson's Hole, the sum spelled outlaw.

The Muleshoe boys were careful not to seem curious about
Bud's past. They even refrained from manifesting too much
interest in the musical instruments until Bud himself took
them out of their cases that evening and began tuning them.
Then the half-baked, tongue-tied fellow came over and gobbled
at him eagerly.

"Hen wants yuh to play something," a man they called Day
interpreted. "Hen's loco on music. If you can sing and play
both, Hen'll set and listen till plumb daylight and never
move an eyewinker."

Bud looked up, smiled a little because Hen had no eyewinkers
to move, and suddenly felt pity because a man could be so
altogether unlikeable as Hen. Also because his mother's face
stood vividly before him for an instant, leaving him with a
queer tightening of the throat and the feeling that he had
been rebuked. He nodded to Hen, laid down the mandolin and
picked up the guitar, turned up the a string a bit, laid a
booted and spurred foot across the other knee, plucked a
minor chord sonorously and began abruptly:

"Yo' kin talk about you coons a-havin' trouble--
Well, Ah think Ah have enough-a of mah oh-own--"

Hen's high-pointed Adam's apple slipped up and down in one
great gulp of ecstasy. He eased slowly down upon the edge of
the bunk beside Bud and gazed at him fascinatedly, his
lashless eyes never winking, his jaw dropped so that his
mouth hung half open. Day nudged Dirk Tracy, who parted his
droopy mustache and smiled his unlovely smile, lowering his
left eyelid unnecessarily at Bud. The dimple in Bud's chin
wrinkled as he bent his head and plunked the interlude with a
swing that set spurred boots tapping the floor rhythmically.

"Bart, he's went and hired a show-actor, looks like." Dirk
confided behind his hand to Shorty McGuire. "That's real
singin', if yuh ask me!"

"Shut up!" grunted Shorty, and prodded Dirk into silence so
that he would miss none of the song.

Since Buddy had left the pink-apron stage of his adventurous
life behind him, singing songs to please other people had
been as much a part of his life as riding and roping and
eating and sleeping. He had always sung or played or danced
when he was asked to do so--accepting without question his
mother's doctrine that it was unkind and ill-bred to refuse
when he really could do those things well, because on the
cattle ranges indoor amusements were few, and those who could
furnish real entertainment were fewer. Even at the
University, coon songs and Irish songs and love songs had
been his portion; wherefore his repertoire seemed endless,
and if folks insisted upon it he could sing from dark to
dawn, providing his voice held out.

Hen sat with his big-jointed hands hanging loosely over his
knees and listened, stared at Bud and grinned vacuously when
one song was done, gulped his Adam's apple and listened again
as raptly to the next one. The others forgot all about having
fun watching Hen, and named old favorites and new ones, heard
them sung inimitably and called for more. At midnight Bud
blew on his blistered fingertips and shook the guitar gently,
bottom-side up.

"I guess that's all the music there is in the darned thing
to-night," he lamented. "She's made to keep time, and she
always strikes, along about midnight."

"Huh-huh!" chortled Hen convulsively, as if he understood the
joke. He closed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has
just wakened from a trance.

After that, Hen followed Bud around like a pet dog, and found
time between stable chores to groom those astonished horses,
Stopper and Smoky and Sunfish, as if they were stall-kept
thoroughbreds. He had them coming up to the pasture gate
every day for the few handfuls of grain he purloined for
them, and their sleekness was a joy to behold.

"Hen, he's adopted yuh, horses and all, looks like," Dirk
observed one day to Bud when they were riding together. And
he tempered the statement by adding that Hen was trusty
enough, even if he didn't have as much sense as the law
allows. "He sure is takin' care of them cayuses of your'n.
D'you tell him to?"

Bud came out of a homesick revery and looked at him
inquiringly. "No, I didn't tell him anything."

"I believe that, all right," Dirk retorted. "You don't go
around tellin' all yuh know. I like that in a feller. A man
never got into trouble yet by keepin' his mouth shut; but
there's plenty that have talked themselves into the pen. Me,
I've got no use for a talker."

Bud sent him a sidelong glance of inquiry, and Dirk caught
him at it and grinned.

"Yuh been here a month, and you ain't said a damn word about
where you come from or anything further back than throwin'
and tyin' that critter. You said cow-country, and that has
had to do some folks that might be curious. Well, she's a
tearin' big place--cow-country. She runs from Canady to
Mexico, and from the corn belt to the Pacific Ocean, mighty
near takes in Jackson's Hole, and a lot uh country I know."
He parted his mustache and spat carefully into the sand.
"I'm willin' to tie to a man, specially a young feller, that
can play the game the way you been playin' it, Bud. Most
always," he complained vaguely, "they carry their brand too
damn main. They either pull their hats down past their
eyebrows and give everybody the bad eye, or else they're too
damn ready to lie about themselves. You throw in with the
boys just fine--but you ain't told a one of 'em where you
come from, ner why, ner nothin'."

"I'm here because I'm here," Bud chanted softly, his eyes
stubborn even while he smiled at Dirk.

"I know--yuh sung that the first night yuh come, and yuh
looked straight at the boss all the while you was singin'
it," Dirk interrupted, and laughed slyly. "The boys, they
took that all in, too. And Bart, he wasn't asleep, neither.
You sure are smooth as they make 'em, Bud. I guess," he
leaned closer to predict confidentially, "you've just about
passed the probation time, young feller. If I know the signs,
the boss is gittin' ready to raise yuh."

He looked at Bud rather sharply. Instantly the training of
Buddy rose within Bud. His memory flashed back unerringly to
the day when he had watched that Indian gallop toward the
river, and had sneered because the Indian evidently expected
him to follow into the undergrowth.

Dirk Tracy did not in the least resemble an Indian, nor did
his rambling flattery bear any likeness to a fleeing enemy;
yet it was plain enough that he was trying in a bungling way
to force Bud's confidence, and for that reason Bud stared
straight ahead and said nothing.

He did not remember having sung that particular ditty during
his first evening at the Muleshoe, nor of staring at the boss
while he sung. He might have done both, he reflected; he had
sung one song after another for about four hours that night,
and unless he sang with his eyes shut he would have to look
somewhere. That it should be taken by the whole outfit as a
broad hint to ask no questions seemed to him rather
farfetched.

Nor did he see why Dirk should compliment him on keeping his
mouth shut, or call him smooth. He did not know that he had
been on probation, except perhaps as that applied to his
ability as a cow-hand. And he could see no valid reason why
the boss should contemplate "raising" him. So far, he had
been doing no more than the rest of the boys, except when
there was roping to be done and he and Stopper were called
upon to distinguish themselves by fast rope-work, with never
a miss. Sixty dollars a month was as good pay as he had any
right to expect.

Dirk, he decided, had given him one good tip which he would
follow at once. Dirk had said that no man ever got into
trouble by keeping his mouth shut. Bud closed his for a good
half hour, and when he opened it again he undid all the good
he had accomplished by his silence.

"Where does that trail go, that climbs up over the mountains
back of that peak?" he asked. "Seems to be a stock trail.
Have you got grazing land beyond the mountains?"

Dirk took time to pry off a fresh chew of tobacco before he
replied. "You mean Thunder Pass? That there crosses over into
the Black Rim country. Yeah--There's a big wide range country
over there, but we don't run any stock on it. Burroback
Valley's big enough for the Muleshoe."

Bud rolled a cigarette. "I didn't mean that main trail;
that's a wagon road, and Thunder Pass cuts through between
Sheepeater peak and this one ahead of us--Gospel, you call
it. What I referred to is that blind trail that takes off up
the canyon behind the corrals, and crosses into the mountains
the other side of Gospel."

Dirk eyed him. "I dunno 's I could say, right offhand, what
trail yuh mean," he parried. "Every canyon 's got a trail
that runs up a ways, and there's canyons all through the
mountains; they all lead up to water, or feed, or something
like that, and then quit, most gen'rally; jest peter out,
like." And he added with heavy sarcasm, "A feller that's
lived on the range oughta know what trails is for, and how
they're made. Cowcritters are curious-same as humans."

To this Bud did not reply. He was smoking and staring at the
brushy lower slopes of the mountain ridge before them. He had
explained quite fully which trail he meant. It was, as he had
said, a "blind" trail; that is, the trail lost itself in the
creek which watered a string of corrals. Moreover, Bud had
very keen eyes, and he had seen how a panel of the corral
directly across the shale-rock bed of a small stream was
really a set of bars. The round pole corral lent itself
easily to hidden gateways, without any deliberate attempt at
disguising their presence.

The string of four corrals running from this upper one--
which, he remembered, was not seen from nearer the stables-
was perhaps a convenient arrangement in the handling of
stock, although it was unusual. The upper corral had been
built to fit snugly into a rocky recess in the base of the
peak called Gospel. It was larger than some of the others,
since it followed the contour of the basin-like recess.
Access to it was had from the fourth corral (which from the
ranch appeared to be the last) and from the creekbed that
filled the narrow mouth of the canyon behind.

Dirk might not have understood him, Bud thought. He certainly
should have recognized at once the trail Bud meant, for there
was no other canyon back of the corrals, and even that one
was not apparent to one looking at the face of the steep
slope. Stock had been over that canyon trail within the last
month or so, however; and Bud's inference that the Muleshoe
must have grazing ground across the mountains was natural;
the obvious explanation of its existence.

"How 'd you come to be explorin' around Gospel, anyway?"
Dirk quizzed finally. "A person'd think, short-handed as the
Muleshoe is this spring, 't you'd git all the ridin' yuh want
without prognosticatin' around aimless."

Now Bud was not a suspicious young man, and he had been no
more than mildly inquisitive about that trail. But neither
was he a fool; he caught the emphasis which Dirk had placed
on the word aimless, and his thoughts paused and took another
look at Dirk's whole conversation. There was something queer
about it, something which made Bud sheer off from his usual
unthinking assurance that things were just what they seemed.

Immediately, however, he laughed--at himself as well as at
Dirk.

"We've been feeding on sour bread and warmed-over coffee ever
since the cook disappeared and Bart put Hen in the kitchen,"
he said. "If I were you, Dirk, I wouldn't blister my hands
shovelling that grub into myself for a while. You're bilious,
old-timer. No man on earth would talk the way you've been
talking to-day unless his whole digestive apparatus were out
of order."

Dirk spat angrily at a dead sage bush. "They shore as hell
wouldn't talk the kinda talk you've been talkie' unless they
was a born fool or else huntin' trouble," he retorted
venomously.

"The doctor said I'd be that way if I lived," Bud grinned,
amiably, although his face had flushed at Dirk's tone. "He
said it wouldn't hurt me for work."

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