CHAPTER 5. At Home at Cross L.
In two days Rowdy was quite at home with the Cross L. In a month hefound himself transplanted from the smoke-laden air of the bunk-house,and set off from the world in a line camp, with nothing to do but patrolthe boggy banks of Milk River, where it was still unfenced and unclaimedby small farmers. The only mitigation of his exile, so far as he couldsee, lay in the fact that he had Pink and the Silent One for companions.
It developed that when he would speak to the Silent One, he must sayJim, or wait long for a reply. Also, the Silent One was not alwayssilent, and he was quick to observe the weak points in those around him,and keen at repartee. When it pleased him so to do, he could handle theEnglish language in a way that was perfectly amazing--and not alwaysintelligible to the unschooled. At such times Pink frankly made noattempt to understand him; Rowdy, having been hustled through grammarschool and two-thirds through high school before he ran away from abrand new stepmother, rather enjoyed the outbreaks and Pink's consequentdisgust.
Not one of them loved particularly the line camp, and Rowdy least ofall, since it put an extra ten miles between Miss Conroy and himself.Rowdy had got to that point where his mind dwelt much upon mattersdomestic, and he made many secret calculations on the cost ofhousekeeping for two. More than that, he put himself upon a rigidallowance for pocket-money--an allowance barely sufficient to keephim in tobacco and papers. All this without consulting Miss Conroy'swishes--which only goes to show that Rowdy Vaughan was a born optimist.
The Silent One complained that he could not keep supplied withreading-matter, and Pink bewailed the monotony of inaction. For, beyondwatching the river to keep the cattle from miring in the mud latelyreleased from frost grip, there was nothing to do.
According to the calendar, spring was well upon them, and the prairieswould soon be flaunting new dresses of green. The calendar, however, hadneglected to record the rainless heat of the summer gone before, orthe searing winds that burned the grass brown as it grew, or the winterwhich forgot its part and permitted prairie-dogs to chip-chip-chip aboveground in January, when they should be sleeping decently in their cellarhomes.
Apart from the brief storm which Rowdy had brought with him, there hadbeen no snow worth considering. Always the chill winds shaved the barrenland from the north, or veered unexpectedly, and blew dry warmth fromthe southwest; but never the snow for which the land yearned. Wind, andbright sunlight, and more wind, and hypocritical, drifting clouds, andmore sun; lean cattle walking, walking, up-hill and down coulee, nose tothe dry ground, snipping the stray tufts where should be a woolly carpetof sweet, ripened grasses, eating wildrose bushes level with the sod,and wishing there was only an abundance even of them; drifting uneasilyfrom hilltop to farther hilltop, hunger-driven and gaunt, where shouldbe sleek content. When they sought to continue their quest beyond theriver, and the weaker bogged at its muddy edge, Rowdy and Pink andthe Silent One would ride out, and with their ropes drag them backignominiously to solid ground and the very doubtful joy of living.
May Day found the grass-land brown and lifeless, with a chill windblowing over it. The cattle wandered as before except that knock-kneedlittle calves trailed beside their lean mothers and clamored for fullstomachs.
The Cross L cattle bore the brunt of the range famine, because EagleCreek Smith was a stockman of the old school. His cattle must live onthe open range, because they always had done so. Other men bought orleased large tracts of grass-land, and fenced them for just such anemergency, but not he. It is true that he had two or three large fields,as Miss Conroy had told Rowdy, but it was his boast that all the hay heraised was eaten by his saddlehorses, and that all the fields he ownedwere used solely for horse pastures. The open range was the place forcattle and no Cross L critter ever fed inside a wire fence.
Through the dry summer before, when other men read the ominous signsand hurriedly leased pasture-land and cut down their herds to what thefields would feed, Eagle Creek went calmly on as he had done always.He shipped what beef was fit--and that, of a truth, was not much!--andsettled down for the winter, trusting to winter snows and spring rainsto refill the long-dry lakes and waterholes, and coat the levels anewwith grass.
But the winter snows had failed to appear, and with the spring cameno rain. "April showers" became a hideously ironical joke at nature'sexpense. Always the wind blew, and sometimes great flocks of cloudswould drift superciliously up from the far sky-line, play with men'shopes, and sail disdainfully on to some more favored land.
It is all very well for a man to cling stubbornly to precedent, but ifhe clings long enough, there comes a time when to cling becomes akin tocrime. Eagle Creek Smith still stubbornly held that rangecattle shouldbe kept to the range. He waited until May was fast merging to June,watching, from sheer habit, for the spring transformation of brownprairies into green. When it did not come, and only the coulee sides andbottoms showed green among the brown, he accepted ruefully the unusualconditions which nature had thrust upon him, and started "Wooden Shoes"out with the wagons on the horse round-up, which is a preliminary to theroundup proper, as every one knows.