"You don"t mean just exactly that," he said, with his eyes on the dim outline of a b.u.t.te that rose high in the distance. Alice noticed that the bantering tone was gone from his voice, and that his words fell with a peculiar softness. "I reckon, though, I know what you do mean.
An" I reckon that barrin" some little difference in viewpoint, we think about alike. . . . Yonder"s Antelope b.u.t.te. We"ll be safe to camp there till we find out which way the wind blows before we strike across."
Deeper and deeper they pushed into the bad lands, the huge bulk of Antelope b.u.t.te looming always before them, its outline showing distinctly in the light of the sinking moon. As far as the eye could see on every side the moonlight revealed only black lava-rock, deep black shadows that marked the courses of dry coulees, and enormous mud-cracks--and Antelope b.u.t.te.
As the girl rode beside the cowboy she noticed that the cynical smile was gone from the clean-cut profile. For miles he did not speak.
Antelope b.u.t.te was near, now.
"I am thirsty," she said. A gauntleted hand fumbled for a moment with the slicker behind the cantle, and extended a flask.
"It"s water. I figured someone would get thirsty."
The girl drank from the flask and returned it: "If there are posses out won"t they watch the water-holes? You said there are only a few in the bad lands."
"Yes, they"ll watch the water-holes. That"s why we"re goin" to camp on Antelope b.u.t.te--right up on top of it."
"But, how will we get water?"
"It"s there."
"Have you been up there?" The girl glanced upward. They were already ascending the first slope, and the huge ma.s.s of the detached mountain towered above them in a series of unscaleable precipices.
"No. But the water"s there. The top of the b.u.t.te hollows out like a saucer, an" in the bowl there"s a little sunk spring. No one much ever goes up there. There"s a little scragglin" timber, an" the trail--it"s an old game trail--is hard to find if you don"t know where to look for it. A horse-thief told me about it."
"A horse-thief! Surely, you are not risking all our lives on the word of a horse-thief!"
"Yes. He was a pretty good fellow. They killed him, afterwards, over near the Mission. He was runnin" off a bunch of Flourey horses."
"But a man who would steal would lie!"
"He didn"t lie to me. He judged I done him a good turn once. Over on the Marias, it was--an" he said: "If you"re ever on the run, hit for Antelope b.u.t.te." Then he told me about the trail, an" the spring that you"ve got to dig for among the rocks. He"s got a grub _cache_ there, too. He won"t be needin" it, now." The cowboy glanced toward the west. "The moon ought to just about hold "til we get to the top. He said you could ride all the way up." Without an instant"s hesitation he headed his horse for a huge ma.s.s of rock fragments that lay at the base of an almost perpendicular wall. The others followed in single file. Bat bringing up the rear driving the pack-horse before him.
Alice kept her horse close behind the Texan"s which wormed and twisted in and out among the rock fragments that skirted the wall. For a quarter of a mile they proceeded with scarcely a perceptible rise and then the cowboy turned his horse into a deep fissure that slanted upward at a most precarious angle seemingly straight into the heart of the mountain. Just when it seemed that the trail must end in a blind pocket, the Texan swung into a cross fissure so narrow that the stirrups brushed either side. So dark was it between the towering rock walls that Alice could scarcely make out the cowboy"s horse, although at no time was he more than ten or fifteen feet in advance. After innumerable windings the fissure led once more to the face of the mountain and Tex headed his horse out upon a ledge that had not been discernible from below. Alice gasped, and for a moment it seemed as though she could not go on. Spread out before her like a huge relief map were the ridges and black coulees of the bad lands, and directly below--hundreds of feet below--the gigantic rock fragments lay strewn along the base of the cliff like the abandoned blocks of a child. She closed her eyes and shuddered. A loose piece of rock on the narrow trail, a stumble, and--she could feel herself whirling down, down, down. It was the voice of the Texan--confident, firm, rea.s.suring--that brought her once more to her senses.
"It"s all right. Just follow right along. Shut your eyes, or keep "em to the wall. We"re half-way up. It ain"t so steep from here on, an"
she widens toward the top. I"m dizzy-headed, too, in high places an" I shut mine. Just give the horse a loose rein an" he"ll keep the trail.
There ain"t nowhere else for him to go."
With a deadly fear in her heart, the girl fastened her eyes upon the cowboy"s back and gave her horse his head. And as she rode she wondered at this man who unhesitatingly risked his life upon the word of a horse-thief.
Almost before she realized it the ordeal was over and her horse was following its leader through a spa.r.s.e grove of bull pine. The ascent was still rather sharp, and the way strewn with boulders, and fallen trees, but the awful precipice, with its sheer drop of many hundreds of feet to the black rocks below, no longer yawned at her stirrup"s edge, and it was with a deep-drawn breath of relief that she allowed her eyes once again to travel out over the vast sweep of waste toward the west where the moon hung low and red above the distant rim of the bad lands.
The summit of Antelope b.u.t.te was, as the horse-thief had said, an ideal camping place for any one who was "on the run." The edges of the little plateau, which was roughly circular in form, rose on every side to a height of thirty or forty feet, at some points in an easy slope, and at others in a sheer rise of rock wall. The surface of the little plane showed no trace of the black of the lava rock of the lower levels but was of the character of the open bench and covered with buffalo gra.s.s and bunch gra.s.s with here and there a sprinkling of p.r.i.c.kly pears. The four dismounted and, in the last light of the moon, surveyed their surroundings.
"You make camp, Bat," ordered the Texan, "while me an" Win hunt up the spring. He said it was on the east side where there was a lot of loose rock along the edge of the bull pine. We"ll make the camp there, too, where the wood an" water will be handy."
Skirting the plateau, Tex led the way toward a point where a few straggling pines showed gaunt and lean in the rapidly waning moonlight.
"It ought to be somewheres around here," he said, as he stopped to examine the ground more closely. "He said you had to pile off the rocks "til you come to the water an" then mud up a catch-basin." As he talked, the cowboy groped among the loose rocks on his hands and knees, pausing frequently to lay his ear to the ground. "Here she is!" he exclaimed at length. "I can hear her drip! Come on, Win, we"ll build our well."
Alice stood close beside her horse watching every move with intense interest.
"Who would have thought to look for water there?" she exclaimed.
"I knew we"d find it just as he said," answered the Texan gravely. "He was a good man, in his way--never run off no horses except from outfits that could afford to lose "em. Why, they say, he could have got plumb away if he"d shot the posse man that run onto him over by the Mission.
But he knew the man was a nester with a wife an" two kids, so he took a chance--an" the nester got him."
"How could he?" cried the girl, "after----"
The Texan regarded her gravely. "It was tough. An" he probably hated to do it. But he was a sworn-in posse man, an" the other was a horse-thief. It was just one of those things a man"s got to do. Like Jim Larkin, when he was sheriff, havin" to shoot his own brother, an"
him hardly more"n a kid that Jim had raised. But he"d gone plumb bad an" swore never to be taken alive, so Jim killed him--an" then he resigned. There ain"t a man that knows Jim, that don"t know he"d rather a thousan" times over had the killin" happen the other way "round. But he was a man. He had it to do--an" he done it."
Alice shuddered: "And then--what became of him, then?"
"Why, then, he went back to ranchin". He owns the Bar X horse outfit over on the White Mud. This here, Owen--that was his brother"s name--was just like a son to him. Jim tried to steer him straight, but the kid was just naturally a bad egg. Feelin" it the way he does, a lesser man might of squinted down the muzzle of his own gun, or gone the whiskey route. But not him. To all appearances he"s the same as he always was. But some of us that know him best--we can see that he ain"t _quite_ the same as before--an" he never will be."
There were tears in the girl"s eyes as the man finished.
"Oh, it"s all wrong! It"s cruel, and hard, and brutal, and wrong!"
"No. It ain"t wrong. It"s hard, an" it"s cruel, maybe, an" brutal.
But it"s right. It ain"t a country for weaklings--the cow country ain"t. It"s a country where, every now an" then, a man comes square up against something that he"s got to do. An" that something is apt as not to be just what he don"t want to do. If he does it, he"s a man, an" the cow country needs him. If he don"t do it, he pa.s.ses on to where there"s room for his kind--an" the cow country don"t miss him. A man earns his place here, it ain"t made for him--often he earns the name by which he"s called. I reckon it"s the same all over--only this is rawer."
"Here"s the water! And it is cold and sweet," called Endicott who had been busily removing the loose rock fragments beneath which the spring lay concealed.
The Texan"s interest centred on matters at hand: "You Bat, you make a fire when you"ve finished with the horses." He turned again to the girl: "If you"ll be the cook, Win an" I"ll mud up a catch-basin an"
rustle some firewood while Bat makes camp. We got to do all our cookin" at night up here. A fire won"t show above the rim yonder, but in the daytime someone might see the smoke from ten mile off."
"Of course, I"ll do the cooking!" a.s.sented the girl, and began to carry the camp utensils from the pack that the half-breed had thrown upon the ground. "The dough-G.o.ds are all gone!" she exclaimed in dismay, peering into a canvas bag.
"Mix up some bakin"-powder ones. There"s flour an" stuff in that brown sack."
"But--I don"t know how!"
"All right. Wait "til I get Win strung out on this job, an" I"ll make up a batch."
He watched Endicott arrange some stones: "Hey, you got to fit those rocks in better"n that. Mud ain"t goin" to hold without a good backin"."
The cowboy washed his hands in the overflow trickle and wiped them upon his handkerchief. "I don"t know what folks does all their lives back East," he grinned; "Win, there, ain"t barbered none to speak of, an"
the Lord knows he ain"t no stone-mason."
Alice did not return the smile, and the Texan noticed that her face was grave in the pale starlight. For the first time in her life the girl felt ashamed of her own incompetence.
"And I can"t cook, and----"
"Well, that"s so," drawled Tex, "but it won"t be so tomorrow. No one but a fool would blame any one for not doin" a thing they"ve never learnt to do. They might wonder a little how-come they never learnt, but they wouldn"t hold it against "em--not "til they"ve had the chance." Bat was still busy with the horses and the cowboy collected sticks and lighted a small fire, talking, as he worked with swift movements that accomplished much without the least show of haste. "It generally don"t take long in the cow country for folks to get their chance. Take Win, there. Day before yesterday he was about the greenest pilgrim that ever straddled a horse. Not only he didn"t know anything worth while knowin", but he was prejudiced. The first time I looked at him I sized him up--almost. "There"s a specimen," I says to myself--while you an" Purdy was gossipin" about the handkerchief, an"
the dance, an" what a beautiful rider he was--"that"s gone on gatherin"
refinement "til it"s crusted onto him so thick it"s probably struck through." But just as I was losin" interest in him, he slanted a glance at Purdy that made me look him over again. There he stood, just the same as before--only different." The Texan poured some flour into a pan and threw in a couple of liberal pinches of baking-powder.
Alice"s eyes followed his every movement, and she glanced toward the spring that Endicott had churned into a mud hole. The cowboy noted her glance. "It would be riled too much even if we strained it," he smiled, "so we"ll just use what"s left in that flask. It don"t take much water an" the spring will clear in time for the coffee."