CHAPTER IX. THE DRIFT OF THE HERDS
Weeks slipped by, and to Thurston they seemed but days. Hisworld-weariness and cynicism disappeared the first time he met Monaafter he had left there so unceremoniously; for Mona, not being aware ofhis cynicism, received him on the old, friendly footing, and seemed tohave quite forgotten that she had ever called him a coward, or refusedto marry him. So Thurston forgot it also--so long as he was with her.
How he filled in the hours he could scarcely have told; certain itis that he accomplished nothing at all so far as Western stories wereconcerned. Reeve-Howard wrote in slightly shocked phrases to ask whatwas keeping him so long; and assured him that he was missing much bystaying away. Thurston mentally agreed with him long enough to beginpacking his trunk; it was idiotic to keep staying on when he was clearlyreceiving no benefit thereby. When, however, he picked up a book whichhe had told Mona he would take over to her the next time he went, hestopped and considered:
There was the Wagner trial coming off in a month or so; he couldn't getout of attending it, for he had been subpoenaed as a witness for theprosecution. And there was the beef roundup going to start beforelong--he really ought to stay and take that in; there would be some finechances for pictures. And really he didn't care so much for the BarryWilson bunch and the long list of festivities which trailed ever inits wake; at any rate, they weren't worth rushing two-thirds across thecontinent for.
He sat down and wrote at length to Reeve-Howard, explaining verycarefully--and not altogether convincingly--just why he could notpossibly go home at present. After that he saddled and rode over to theStevens place with the book, leaving his trunk yawning emptily in themiddle of his badly jumbled belongings.
After that he spent three weeks on the beef roundup. At first he wasfull of enthusiasm, and worked quite as if he had need of the wages, butafter two or three big drives the novelty wore off quite suddenly, andnothing then remained but a lot of hard work. For instance, standingguard on long, rainy nights when the cattle walked and walked might atfirst seem picturesque and all that, but must at length, cease to beamusing.
Likewise the long hours which he spent on day-herd, when the windwas raw and penetrating and like to blow him out of the saddle; alsostanding at the stockyard chutes and forcing an unwilling stream ofrollicky, wild-eyed steers up into the cars that would carry them toChicago.
After three weeks of it he awoke one particularly nasty morning andthanked the Lord he was not obliged to earn his bread at all, to saynothing of earning it in so distressful a fashion. There was a lullin the shipping because cars were not then available. He promptly tookadvantage of it and rode by the very shortest trail to the ranch--andMona. But Mona was visiting friends in Chinook, and there was no tellingwhen she would return. Thurston, in the next few days, owned to himselfthat there was no good reason for his tarrying longer in the big,un-peopled West, and that the proper thing for him to do was go backhome to New York.
He had come to stay a month, and he had stayed five. He could ride andrope like an old-timer, and he was well qualified to put up a stiffgun-fight had the necessity ever arisen--which it had not.
He had three hundred and seventy-one pictures of different phases ofrange life, not counting as many that were over-exposed or under-exposedor out of focus. He had six unfinished stories, in each of which theheroine had big, blue-gray eyes and crimply hair, and the title and bareskeleton of a seventh, in which the same sort of eyes and hair wouldprobably develop later. He had proposed to Mona three times, and hadbeen three times rebuffed--though not, it must be owned, with that toneof finality which precludes hope.
He was tanned a fine brown, which became him well. His eyes had lost thedreamy, introspective look of the student and author, and had grown keenwith the habit of studying objects at long range. He walked with thatpeculiar, stiff-legged gait which betrays long hours spent in thesaddle, and he wore a silk handkerchief around his neck habitually andhad forgotten the feel of a dress-suit.
He answered to the name "Bud" more readily than to his own, and he madepractical use of the slang and colloquialisms of the plains without anymental quotation marks.
By all these signs and tokens he had learned his West, and should havetaken himself back to civilization when came the frost. He had come toget into touch with his chosen field of fiction, that he might writeas one knowing whereof he spoke. So far as he had gone, he was in touchwith it; he was steeped to the eyes in local color--and there was therub The lure of it was strong upon him, and he might not loosen itshold. He was the son of his father; he had found himself, and knew that,like him, he loved best to travel the dim trails.
Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after him."She's sure coming," he complained, while he pulled the icicles fromhis mustache and cast them into the fire. "She's going to be a real, oldhowler by the signs. What yuh doing, Bud? Writing poetry?"
Thurston nodded assent with certain mental reservations; so far theeditors couldn't seem to make up their minds that it was poetry.
"Well, say, I wish you'd slap in a lot uh things about hazy, lazy, daisydays in the spring--that jingles fine!--and green grass and thesun shining and making the hills all goldy yellow, and prairie dogschip-chip-chipping on the 'dobe flats. (Prairie dogs would go all rightin poetry, wouldn't they? They're sassy little cusses, and I don't knowof anything that would rhyme with 'em, but maybe you do.) And read itall out to me after supper. Maybe it'll make me kinda forget there's ablizzard on."
"Another one?" Thurston got up to scratch a trench in the half-inchlayer of frost on the cabin window. "Why, it only cleared up thismorning after three days of it."
"Can't help that. This is just another chapter uh that same story. Whenthese here Klondike Chinooks gets to lapping over each other they neverknow when to quit. Every darn one has got to be continued tacked ontothe tail of it the winter. All the difference is, you can't read thewriting; but I can."
"I've got some mail for yuh, Bud. And old Hank wanted me to ask yuh ifyou'd like to go to Glasgow next Thursday and watch old Lauman start theWagner boys for wherever's hot enough. He can get yuh in, you being inthe writing business. He says to tell yuh it's a good chance to takenotes, so yuh can write a real stylish story, with lots uh murder andsudden death in it. We don't hang folks out here very often, and yuhmight have to go back East after pointers, if yuh pass this up."
"Oh, go easy. It turns me sick when I think about it; how they lookedwhen they got their sentence, and all that. I certainly don't care tosee them hanged, though they do deserve it. Where are the letters?"Thurston sprawled across the table for them. One was from Reeve-Howard;he put it by. Another had a printed address in the corner--an addressthat started his pulse a beat or two faster; for he had not yet reachedthat blase stage where he could receive a personal letter from one ofthe "Eight Leading" without the flicker of an eye-lash. He still gloatedover his successes, and was cast into the deeps by his failures.
He held the envelope to the light, shook it tentatively, like any woman,guessed hastily and hopefully at the contents, and tore off an endimpatiently. From the great fireplace Gene watched him curiously andhalf enviously. He wished he could get important-looking letters fromNew York every few days. It must make a fellow feel that he amounted tosomething.
"Gene, you remember that story I read to you one night--that yarn aboutthe fellow that lived alone in the hills, and how the wolves used tocome and sit on the ridge and howl o' nights--you know, the one yousaid was 'out uh sight'? They took it, all right, and--here, what do youthink of that?" He tossed the letter over to Gene, who caught it just asit was about to be swept into the flame with the draught in Thurston, inthe days which he spent one of the half-dozen Lazy Eight line-camps withGene, down by the river, had been writing of the West--writing infear and trembling, for now he knew how great was his subject and hisignorance of it. In the long evenings, while the fire crackled and theflames played a game they had invented, a game where they tried whichcould leap highest up
the great chimney; while the north wind whoo-ooedaround the eaves and fine, frozen snow meal swished against the onelittle window; while shivering, drifting range cattle tramped restlesslythrough the sparse willow-growth seeking comfort where was naught butcold and snow and bitter, driving wind; while the gray wolves hunted inpacks and had not long to wait for their supper, Thurston had writtenbetter than he knew. He had sent the cold of the blizzards and the howlof the wolves; he had sent bits of the wind-swept plains back to NewYork in long, white envelopes. And the editors were beginning to watchfor his white envelopes and to seize them eagerly when they came, greedyfor what was within. Not every day can they look upon a few typewrittenpages and see the range-land spread, now frowning, now smiling, beforethem.
"Gee! they say here they want a lot the same brand, and at any old priceyuh might name. I wouldn't mind writing stories myself." Gene kickeda log back into the flame where it would do the most good. His big,square-shouldered figure stood out sharply against the glow.
Thurston, watching him meditatively, wanted to tell him that he wasthe sort of whom good stories are made. But for men like Gene--strong,purposeful, brave, the West would lose half its charm. He was like Bobin many ways, and for that Thurston liked him and, stayed with him inthe line-camp when he might have been taking his ease at the home ranch.
It was wild and lonely down there between the bare hills and the frozenriver, but the wildness and the loneliness appealed to him. It wasprimitive and at times uncomfortable. He slept in a bunk built againstthe wall, with hard boards under him and a sod roof over his head. Therewere times when the wind blew its fiercest and rattled dirt down intohis face unless he covered it with a blanket. And every other day hehad to wash the dishes and cook, and when it was Gene's turn to cook,Thurston chopped great armloads of wood for the fireplace to eat o'nights. Also he must fare forth, wrapped to the eyes, and help Genedrive back the cattle which drifted into the river bottom, lest theycross the river on the ice and range where they should not.
But in the evenings he could sit in the fire-glow and listen to the windand to the coyotes and the gray wolves, and weave stories that even themost hyper-critical of editors could not fail to find convincing. Byday he could push the coffee-box that held his typewriter over by thefrosted window--when he had an hour or two to spare--and whang away ata rate which filled Gene with wonder. Sometimes he rode over to the homeranch for a day or two, but Mona was away studying music, so he found noinducement to remain, and drifted back to the little, sod-roofed cabinby the river, and to Gene.
The winter settled down with bared teeth like a bull-dog, and nevera chinook came to temper the cold and give respite to man or beast.Blizzards that held them, in fear of their lives, close to shelter fordays, came down from the north; and with them came the drifting herds.By hundreds they came, hurrying miserably before the storms. When thewind lashed them without mercy even in the bottom-land, they pushedreluctantly out upon the snow-covered ice of the Missouri. Then Gene andThurston watching from their cabin window would ride out and turn thempitilessly back into the teeth of the storm.
They came by hundreds--thin, gaunt from cold and hunger. They came bythousands, lowing their misery as they wandered aimlessly, seeking thatwhich none might find: food and shelter and warmth for their chilledbodies. When the Canada herds pushed down upon them the boys gave overtrying to keep them north of the river; while they turned one bunch adozen others were straggling out from shore, the timid followingsingle file behind a leader more venturesome or more desperate than hisfellows.
So the march went on and on: big, Southern-bred steer grappling theproblem of his first Northern winter; thin-flanked cow with shivering,rough-coated calf trailing at her heels; humpbacked yearling with littlenubs of horns telling that he was lately in his calfhood; red cattle,spotted cattle, white cattle, black cattle; white-faced Herefords,Short-horns, scrubs; Texas longhorns--of the sort invariably picturedin stampedes--still they came drifting out of the cold wilderness and oninto wilderness as cold.
Through the shifting wall of the worst blizzard that season Thurstonwatched the weary, fruitless, endless march of the range. "Where do theyall come from?" he exclaimed once when the snow-veil lifted and showedthe river black with cattle.
"Lord! I dunno," Gene answered, shrugging his shoulders against thepity of it. "I seen some brands yesterday that I know belongs up in theCypress Hills country. If things don't loosen up pretty soon, the wholedarned range will be swept clean uh stock as far north as cattle run.I'm looking for reindeer next."
"Something ought to be done," Thurston declared uneasily, turning awayfrom the sight. "I've had the bellowing of starving cattle in my earsday and night for nearly a month. The thing's getting on my nerves."
"It's getting on the nerves uh them that own 'em a heap worse," Genetold him grimly, and piled more wood on the fire; for the cold bitthrough even the thick walls of the cabin when the flames in thefireplace died, and the door hinges were crusted deep with ice. "There'sgoing to be the biggest loss this range has ever known."
"It's the owners' fault," snapped Thurston, whose nerves were inthat irritable state which calls loudly for a vent of some sort. Evenargument with Gene, fruitless though it perforce must be, would be arelief. "It's their own fault. I don't pity them any--why don't theytake care of their stock? If I owned cattle, do you think I'd sit in thehouse and watch them starve through the winter?"
"What if yuh owned more than yuh could feed? It'd be a case uh have-tothen. There's fifty thousand Lazy Eight cattle walking the rangesomewhere today. How the dickens is old Hank going to feed them fiftythousand? or five thousand? It takes every spear uh hay he's got to feedhis calves."
"He could buy hay," Thurston persisted.
"Buy hay for fifty thousand cattle? Where would he get it? Say, Bud, Iguess yuh don't realize that's some cattle. All ails you is, yuh don'tsavvy the size uh the thing. I'll bet yuh there won't be less than threehundred thousand head cross this river before spring."
"Some of them belong in Canada--you said so yourself."
"I know it, but look at all the country south of us: all the other cowStates. Why, Bud, when yuh talk about feeding every critter that runsthe range, you're plumb foolish."
"Anyway, it's a damnable pity!" Thurston asserted petulantly.
"Sure it is. The grass is there, but it's under fourteen inches uh snowright now, and more coming; they say it's twelve feet deep up in themountains. You'll see some great old times in the spring, Bud, if yuhstay. You will, won't yuh?"
Thurston laughed shortly. "I suppose it's safe to say I will," heanswered. "I ought to have gone last fall, but I didn't. It willprobably be the same thing over again; I ought to go in the spring, butI won't."
"You bet you won't. Talk about big roundups! what yuh seen last springwasn't a commencement. Every hoof that crosses this river and lives tillspring will have to be rounded up and brought back again. They'll bescattered clean down to the Yellowstone, and every Northern outfit hasgot to go down and help work the range from there back. I tell yuh, Bud,yuh want to lay in a car-load uh films and throw away all them little,jerk-water snap-shots yuh got. There's going to be roundups like theseold Panhandle rannies tell about, when the green grass comes." Gene,thinking blissfully of the tented life, sprawled his long legs towardthe snapping blaze and crooned dreamily, while without the blizzardraged more fiercely, a verse from an old camp song:
"Out on the roundup, boys, I tell yuh what yuh get Little chunk uh bread and a little chunk uh meat; Little black coffee, boys, chuck full uh alkali, Dust in your throat, boys, and gravel in your eye! So polish up your saddles, oil your slickers and your guns, For we're bound for Lonesome Prairie when the green grass comes."