The Big-Town Round-Up.
by William MacLeod Raine.
FOREWORD
The driver of the big car throttled down. Since he had swung away from the dusty road to follow a wagon track across the desert, the speedometer had registered many miles. His eyes searched the ground in front to see whether the track led up the brow of the hill or dipped into the sandy wash.
On the breeze there floated to him the faint, insistent bawl of thirsty cattle. The car leaped forward again, climbed the hill, and closed in upon a _remuda_ of horses watched by two wranglers.
The chauffeur stopped the machine and shouted a question at the nearest rider, who swung his mount and cantered up. He was a lean, tanned youth in overalls, jumper, wide sombrero, high-heeled boots, and shiny leather chaps. A girl in the tonneau appraised with quick, eager eyes this horseman of the plains. Perhaps she found him less picturesque than she had hoped. He was not there for moving-picture purposes.
Nothing on horse or man held its place for any reason except utility.
The leathers protected the legs of the boy from the spines of the cactus and the thorns of the mesquite, the wide flap of the hat his face from the slash of catclaws when he drove headlong through the brush after flying cattle. The steel horn of the saddle was built to check a half-ton of bolting hill steer and fling it instantly. The rope, the Spanish bit, the _tapaderas_, all could justify their place in his equipment.
"Where"s the round-up?" asked the driver.
The coffee-brown youth gave a little lift of his head to the right. He was apparently a man of few words. But his answer sufficed. The bawling of anxious cattle was now loud and persistent.
The car moved forward to the edge of the mesa and dropped into the valley. The girl in the back seat gave a little scream of delight.
Here at last was the West she had read about in books and seen on the screen.
This was Cattleland"s hour of hours. The _parada_ grounds were occupied by two circles of cattle, each fenced by eight or ten hors.e.m.e.n. The nearer one was the beef herd, beyond this--and closer to the mouth of the canon from which they had all recently been driven--was a ma.s.s of closely packed cows and calves.
The automobile swept around the beef herd and drew to a halt between it and the noisier one beyond. In a fire of mesquite wood branding-irons were heating. Several men were busy branding and marking the calves dragged to them from the herd by the hors.e.m.e.n who were roping the frightened little blatters.
It was a day beautiful even for Arizona. The winey air called potently to the youth in the girl. Such a sky, such atmosphere, so much life and color! She could not sit still any longer. With a movement of her wrist she opened the door and stepped down from the car.
A man sitting beside the chauffeur turned in his seat. "You"d better stay where you are, honey." He had an idea that this was not exactly the scene a girl of seventeen ought to see at close range.
"I want to get the kinks out of my muscles, Dad," the girl called back.
"I"ll not go far."
She walked along a ridge that ran from the mesa into the valley like an outstretched tongue. Her hands were in the pockets of her fawn-colored coat. There was a touch of unstudied jauntiness in the way the tips of her golden curls escaped from beneath the little brown toque she wore.
A young man guarding the beef herd watched her curiously. She moved with the untamed, joyous freedom of a sun-worshiper just emerging from the morning of the world. Something in the poise of the light, boyish figure struck a spark from his imagination.
A _vaquero_ was cantering toward the fire with a calf in his wake.
Another cowpuncher dropped the loop of his lariat on the ground, gave it a little upward twist as the calf pa.s.sed over it, jerked taut the _riata_, and caught the animal by the hind leg. In a moment the victim lay stretched on the ground. In the gathering gloom the girl could not quite make out what the men were doing. To her sensitive nostrils drifted an acrid odor of burnt hair and flesh, the wail of an animal in pain. One of the men was using his knife on the ears of the helpless creature. She heard another say something about a crop and an underbit. Then she turned away, faint and indignant. Three big men torturing a month-old calf--was this the brave outdoor West she had read about and remembered from her childhood days? Tears of pity and resentment blurred her sight.
As she stood on the spit of the ridge, a slim, light figure silhouetted against the skyline, the young man guarding the beef herd called something to her that was lost in the bawling of the cattle. From the motion of his hand she knew that he was telling her to get back to the car. But the girl saw no reason for obeying the orders of a range-rider she had never seen before and never expected to see again.
n.o.body had ever told her that a rider is fairly safe among the wildest hill cattle, but a man on foot is liable to attack at any time when a herd is excited.
She turned her shoulder a little more definitely to the man who had warned her and looked across the _parada_ grounds to the hills swimming in a haze of violet velvet. Her heart throbbed to a keen delight in them, as it might have done at the touch of a dear friend"s hand long absent. For she had been born in the Rockies. They belonged to her and she to them. Long years in New York had left her still an alien.
A shout of warning startled her. Above the bellowing of the herd she heard another yell.
"Hi-yi-ya-a!"
A red-eyed steer, tail up, was crashing through the small brush toward the branders. There was a wild scurry for safety. The men dropped iron and ropes and fled to their saddles. Deflected by pursuers, the animal turned. By chance it thundered straight for the girl on the sand spit.
She stood paralyzed for a moment.
Out of the gathering darkness a voice came to her sharp and clear.
"Don"t move!" It rang so vibrant with crisp command that the girl, poised for flight, stood still and waited in white terror while the huge steer lumbered toward her.
A cowpony, wheeled as on a dollar, jumped to an instant gallop. The man riding it was the one who had warned her back to the car. Horse and _ladino_ pounded over the ground toward her. Each stride brought them closer to each other as they converged toward the sand spit. It came to her with a gust of panicky despair that they would collide on the very spot where she stood. Yet she did not run.
The rider, lifting his bronco forward at full speed, won by a fraction of a second. He guided in such a way as to bring his horse between her and the steer. The girl noticed that he dropped his bridle rein and crouched in the saddle, his eyes steadily upon her. Without slackening his pace in the least as he swept past, the man stooped low, caught the girl beneath the armpits, and swung her in front of him to the back of the horse. The steer pounded past so close behind that one of its horns grazed the tail of the cowpony.
It was a superb piece of horsemanship, perfectly timed, as perfectly executed.
The girl lay breathless in the arms of the man, her heart beating against his, her face buried in his shoulder. She was dazed, half fainting from the reaction of her fear. The next she remembered clearly was being lowered into the arms of her father.
He held her tight, his face tortured with emotion. She was the very light of his soul, and she had shaved death by a hair"s breadth. A miracle had saved her, but he would never forget the terror that had gripped him. Naturally, shaken, as he was, his relief found vent in scolding.
"I told you to stay by the car, honey. But you"re so willful. You"ve got to have your own way. Thank G.o.d you"re safe. If . . . if . . ."
His voice broke as he thought of what had so nearly been.
The girl snuggled closer to him, her arms round his neck. His anxiety touched her nearly, and tears flooded her eyes.
"I know, Dad. I . . . I"ll be good."
A young man descended from the car, handsome, trim, and well got up.
He had been tailored by the best man"s outfitter in New York. n.o.body on Broadway could order a dinner better than he. The latest dances he could do perfectly. He had the reputation of knowing exactly the best thing to say on every occasion. Now he proceeded to say it.
"Corking bit of riding--never saw better. I"ll give you my hand on that, my man."
The cowpuncher found a bunch of manicured fingers in his rough brown paw. He found something else, for after the pink hand had gone there remained a fifty-dollar bill. He looked at it helplessly for a moment; then, beneath the brown outdoor tan, a flush of anger beat into his face. Without a word he leaned forward and pressed the note into the mouth of the bronco.
The buckskin knew its master for a very good friend. If he gave it something to eat--well, there was no harm in trying it once. The buckskin chewed placidly for a few seconds, decided that this was a practical joke, and ejected from its mouth a slimy green pulp that had recently been a treasury note.
The father stammered his thanks to the rescuer of the girl. "I don"t know what I can ever do to let you know . . . I don"t know how I can ever pay you for saving . . ."
"Forget it!" snapped the brown man curtly. He was an even-tempered youth, as genial and friendly as a half-grown pup, but just now the word "pay" irritated him as a red rag does a sulky bull.
"If there"s anything at all I can do for you--"
"Not a thing."
The New Yorker felt that he was not expressing himself at all happily.
What he wanted was to show this young fellow that he had put him under a lifelong obligation he could never hope to wipe out.
"If you ever come to New York--"
"I"m not liable to go there. I don"t belong there any more than you do here. Better drift back to Tucson, stranger. The _parada_ is no place for a tenderfoot. You"re in luck you"re not shy one li"l" girl tromped to death. Take a fool"s advice and hit the trail for town _p.r.o.nto_ before you b.u.mp into more trouble."
The rider swung round his pony and cantered back to the beef herd.
He left behind him a much-annoyed clubman, a perplexed and distressed father, and a girl both hurt and indignant at his brusque rejection of her father"s friendly advances. The episode of the fifty-dollar bill had taken place entirely under cover. The man who had given the note and the one who had refused to accept it were the only ones who knew of it. The girl saw only that this splendid horseman who had s.n.a.t.c.hed her from under the very feet of the _ladino_ had shown a boorish discourtesy. The savor had gone out of her adventure. Her heart was sick with disappointment and indignation.