The Lure of the Dim Trails

  CHAPTER XI. FOLLOWING THE DIM TRAILS!

  Thurston did not go on the horse roundup. He explained to the boys,when they clamored against his staying, that he had a host of things towrite, and it would keep him busy till they were ready to start withthe wagons for the big rendezvous on the Yellowstone, the exact point ofwhich had yet to be decided upon by the Stock Association when it met.The editors were after him, he said, and if he ever expected to getanywhere, in a literary sense, it be-hooved him to keep on the smileyside of the editors.

  That sounded all right as far as it went, but unfortunately it didnot go far. The boys winked at one another gravely behind his back andjerked their thumbs knowingly toward Milk River; by which pantomime theyreminded one another--quite unnecessarily that Mona Stevens had comehome. However, they kept their skepticism from becoming obtrusive, sothat Thurston believed his excuses passed on their face value. The boys,it would seem, realized that it is against human nature for a man todeclare openly to his fellows his intention of laying last, desperatesiege to the heart of a girl who has already refused him three times,and to ask her for the fourth time if she will reconsider her formerdecisions and marry him.

  That is really what kept Thurston at the Lazy Eight. His writing becameonce more a mere incident in his life. During the winter, when he didnot see her, he could bring himself to think occasionally of otherthings; and it is a fact that the stories he wrote with no heroine atall hit the mark the straightest.

  Now, when he was once again under the spell of big, clear, blue grayeyes and crimply brown hair, his stories lost something of theirvirility and verged upon the sentimental in tone. And since he was not afool he realized the falling off and chafed against it and wondered whyit was. Surely a man who is in love should be well qualified to writeconvincingly of the obsession but Thurston did not. He came near goingto the other extreme and refusing to write at all.

  The wagons were out two weeks--which is quite long enough for a crisisto arise in the love affair of any man. By the time the horse roundupwas over, one Philip Thurston was in pessimistic mood and quite readyto follow the wagons, the farther the better. Also, they could not starttoo soon to please him. His thoughts still ran to blue-gray eyes andripply hair, but he made no attempt to put them into a story.

  He packed his trunk carefully with everything he would not need onthe roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himselfbitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with everyother sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic--only hesaid melodramatic--he might possibly force her to think well of him.But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, andgirls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death neednot complain if they are left knightless at the last.

  He wrote to Reeve-Howard, the night before they were to start, andapologized gracefully for having neglected him during the past threeweeks and told him he would certainly be home in another month. He saidthat he was "in danger of being satiated with the Western tone" andwould be glad to shake the hand of civilized man once more. This wasdistinctly unfair, because he had no quarrel with the masculine portionof the West. If he had said civilized woman it would have been more justand more illuminating to Reeve-Howard who wondered what scrape Phil hadgotten himself into with those savages.

  For the first few days of the trip Thurston was in that frame of mindwhich makes a man want to ride by himself, with shoulders hunchedmoodily and eyes staring straight before the nose of his horse.

  But the sky was soft and seemed to smile down at him, and the cloudsloitered in the blue of it and drifted aimlessly with no thought ofreaching harbor on the sky-line. From under his horse's feet the prairiesod sent up sweet, earthy odors into his nostrils and the tinkle of thebells in the saddle-bunch behind him made music in his ears--the sort ofmusic a true cowboy loves. Yellow-throated meadow larks perched swayingin the top of gray sage bushes and sang to him that the world was good.Sober gray curlews circled over his head, their long, funny bills thrustout straight as if to point the way for their bodies to follow andcried, "Kor-r-eck, kor-r-eck!"--which means just what the meadow larkssang. So Thurston, hearing it all about him, seeing it and smelling itand feeling the riot of Spring in his blood, straightened the hunch outof his shoulders and admitted that it was all true: that the world wasgood.

  At Miles City he found himself in the midst of a small army, theregulars of the range---which grew hourly larger as the outfits rolledin. The rattle of mess-wagons, driven by the camp cook and followed bythe bed-wagon, was heard from all directions. Jingling cavvies (herds ofsaddle horses they were, driven and watched over by the horse wrangler)came out of the wilderness in the wake of the wagons. Thurston got outhis camera and took pictures of the scene. In the first, ten differentcamps appeared; he mourned because two others were perforced omitted.Two hours later he snapped the Kodak upon fifteen, and there were fourbeyond range of the lens.

  Park came along, saw what he was doing and laughed. "Yuh better waittill they commence to come," he said. "When yuh can stand on this littlehill and count fifty or sixty outfits camped within two or three milesuh here, yuh might begin taking pictures."

  "I think you're loading me," Thurston retorted calmly, winding up theroll for another exposure.

  "All right--suit yourself about it." Park walked off and left himpeering into the view-finder.

  Still they came. From Swift Current to the Cypress Hills the Canadiancattlemen sent their wagons to join the big meet. From the Sweet GrassHills to the mouth of Milk River not a stock-grower but was represented.From the upper Musselshell they came, and from out the Judith Basin;from Shellanne east to Fort Buford. Truly it was a gathering of theclans such as eastern Montana had never before seen.

  For a day and a night the cowboys made merry in town while their foremenconsulted and the captains appointed by the Association mapped out thedifferent routes. At times like these, foremen such as Park and DeaconSmith were shorn of their accustomed power, and worked under orders asstrict as those they gave their men.

  Their future movements thoroughly understood, the army moved down uponthe range in companies of five and six crews, and the long summer's workbegan; each rider a unit in the war against the chaos which the winterhad wrought; in the fight of the stockmen to wrest back their fortunesfrom the wilderness, and to hold once more their sway over therange-land.

  Their method called for concerted action, although it was simple enough.Two of the Lazy Eight wagons, under Park and Gene Wasson (for Hank thatspring was running four crews and had promoted Gene wagon-boss of one),joined forces with the Circle-Bar, the Flying U, and a Yellowstoneoutfit whose wagon-boss, knowing best the range, was captain of the fivecrews; and drove north, gathering and holding all stock which properlyranged beyond the Missouri.

  That meant day after day of "riding circle"--which is, beinginterpreted, riding out ten or twelve miles from camp, then turning anddriving everything before them to a point near the center of the circlethus formed. When they met the cattle were bunched, and all stock whichbelonged on that range was cut out, leaving only those which had crossedthe river during the storms of winter. These were driven on to thenext camping place and held, which meant constant day-herding andnight-guarding work which cowboys hate more than anything else.

  There would be no calf roundup proper that spring, for all calves werebranded as they were gathered. Many there were among the she-stock thatwould not cross the river again; their carcasses made unsightly blots inthe coulee-bottoms and on the wind-swept levels. Of the calves that hadfollowed their mothers on the long trail, hundreds had dropped out ofthe march and been left behind for the wolves. But not all. Range-bredcattle are blessed with rugged constitutions and can bear much of coldand hunger. The cow that can turn tail to a biting wind the while sheploughs to the eyes in snow and roots out a very satisfactory livingfor herself breeds calves that will in time do likewise and grow fat andstrong in the doing. He is a sturdy, self-reliant little rascal, is th
erange-bred calf.

  When fifteen hundred head of mixed stock, bearing Northern brands, werein the hands of the day-herders, Park and his crew were detailed to takethem on and turn them loose upon their own range north of Milk River.Thurston felt that he had gleaned about all the experience he needed,and more than enough hard riding and short sleeping and hurried eating.He announced that he was ready to bid good-by to the range. He wouldhelp take the herd home, he told Park, and then he intended to hit thetrail for little, old New York.

  He still agreed with the meadow larks that the world was good, but hehad made himself believe that he really thought the civilized portionof it was better, especially when the uncivilized part holds a girl whopersists in saying no when she should undoubtedly say yes, and insiststhat a man must be a hero, else she will have none of him.