Hidden Water Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  HIDDEN WATER

  The trail to Hidden Water leads up the Salagua, alternately climbingthe hard mesa and losing itself in the shifting sand of the riverbottom until, a mile or two below the mouth of the box canyon, itswings in to the edge of the water. But the Salagua is no purlingbrook, dignified by a bigger name; it is not even a succession of millponds like the dammed-up streams of the East: in its own name theSalagua is a _Rio_, broad and swift, with a current that clutchestreacherously at a horse's legs and roars over the brink of stonyreefs in a long, fretful line of rapids. At the head of a broad millrace, where the yellow flood waters boiled sullenly before they tooktheir plunge, Creede pulled up and surveyed the river doubtfully.

  "Swim?" he inquired, and when Hardy nodded he shrugged his shouldersand turned his horse into the water. "Keep your head upstream, then,"he said, "we'll try it a whirl, anyhow."

  Head to tail the two horses plodded heavily across the ford, feelingtheir way among the submerged bowlders, while twenty feet below themthe irresistible onrush of the current slipped smoothly over the rim,sending up a roar like the thunder of breakers. As they struggled upthe opposite bank after a final slump into a narrow ditch Creedelooked back and laughed merrily at his bedraggled companion.

  "How's that for high?" he inquired, slapping his wet legs. "I tellyou, the old Salagua is a hell-roarer when she gits started. Iwouldn't cross there this afternoon for a hundred dollars. She's awayup since we took the wagon over last night, but about to-morrow you'llhear her talk--snow's meltin' on the mountains. I wish to God she'd_stay_ up!" he added fervently, as he poured the water out of hisboots.

  "Why?" asked Hardy innocently. "Won't it interfere with your bringingin supplies?"

  "Sure thing," said Creede, and then he laughed maliciously. "But whenyou've been up here a while," he observed, "you'll savvy a lot ofthings that look kinder curious. If the old river would git up on itshind legs and walk, forty feet high, and stay there f'r a month, wecowmen would simply laugh ourselves to death. We don't give a dam' forsupplies as long as it keeps the sheep out.

  "Begin to see light, eh?" he queried, as he pushed on up the river."Well, that's the only thing in God's world that wasn't made to orderfor these sheepmen; the old Salagua cuts right square across thecountry east and west without consultin' nobody, not even Jim Swope,and the sheep move north and south.

  "How'd you like to have the job of crossing a hundred thousand_borregos_ and half of 'em with lambs, when the _rio_ was on a bender?I've seen some of these sheepmen wadin' around up to their chins fortwo weeks, tryin' to float twenty-five hundred head across theriver--and there wasn't turkey buzzards enough in the country whenthey got through.

  "Last year they had the sand bars up around Hidden Water lined withcarcasses two deep where they'd jest naturally crowded 'em into theriver and let 'em sink or swim. Them Chihuahua Mexicans, you savvy.After they'd wore out their shoes and froze their marrow-bones wadin'they got tired and shoved 'em in, regardless. Well, if this warmweather holds we'll be able to git our _roder_ good and started beforethe sheep come in. That's one reason why I never was able to do muchwith these sheepmen," he added. "They hit me right square in themiddle of the round-up, Spring and Fall, when I'm too busy gatherin'cattle to pay much attention to 'em. I did plan a little surpriseparty last year--but that was somethin' special. But now you're on thejob, Rufe," he continued reassuringly, "I'm goin' to leave all sheepand sheepmen strictly alone--you can bank on that. Bein' as we aregoin' to try the expeeriment I want to see it done right. I never madea cent fightin' 'em, that's a cinch, and if you can appeal to theirbetter natures, w'y, go to it! I'd help you if I could, but bein' as Ican't I'll git out of the road and give you a chanst.

  "Now I'll tell you how it'll be," he continued, turning in his saddleand hooking one leg over the horn, "the boys'll come in for the_roder_ to-morrow or next day; we begin to gather on the first, and ittakes us about a month. Well, we look for the sheep to come in on usat about the same time--first of April--and we ain't been fooled yet.They'll begin to stack up on the other side any time now, and as soonas the water goes down they'll come across with a rush. And if they'refeelin' good-natured they'll spread out over The Rolls and driftnorth, but if they're feelin' bad they'll sneak up onto Bronco Mesaand scatter the cattle forty ways for Sunday, and bust up my _roder_and raise hell generally. We had a little trouble over that lastyear," he added parenthetically.

  "Well, I'll turn over the house and the grub and the whole business toyou this year and camp out with the boys under the mesquite--and thenyou can entertain them sheepmen and jolly 'em up no end. They won'thave a dam' thing--horse feed, grub, tobacco, matches, nothin'! Neverdo have anythin'. I'd rather have a bunch of Apaches camped next tome--but if you want to be good to 'em there's your chanst. Meanwhile,I'm only a cow-punch pullin' off a round-up, and your name isMr.--you're the superintendent of the Dos S. Your job is to protectthe upper range, and I begin to think you can do it."

  There was a tone of half-hearted enthusiasm about this talk whichmarked it for a prepared "spiel," laboriously devised to speed the newsuperintendent upon his way; but, not being schooled in social deceit,Creede failed utterly in making it convincing.

  "That's good," said Hardy, "but tell me--what has been your custom inthe past? Haven't you been in the habit of feeding them when they camein?"

  "Feed 'em?" cried Creede, flaring up suddenly. "Did I feed 'em? Well,I should guess yes--I never turned one away hungry in my life. W'y,hell, man," he exclaimed, his anger growing on him, "I slep' in thesame blanket with 'em--until I become lousy," he added grimly.

  "What!" exclaimed Hardy, aghast. "You don't mean to say--"

  "No," interrupted Creede ironically, "I don't mean to say anythin'--notfrom now on. But while we're on the subject and to avoid any futuremisunderstandin' I might just as well tell you right now that Ican't see nothin' good in a sheepman--_nothin'!_ I'm like my cat Tomwhen he sees a rattlesnake, my hair bushes up clean over my ears andI see hell, damnation, and sudden death!"

  He rose up, frowning, on his mighty horse and gazed at Hardy with eyesthat burned deep with passion. "If every sheep and sheepman in Arizonashould drop dead at this minute," he said, "it would simply give me alaughin' sensation. God damn 'em!" he added passionately, and itsounded like a prayer.

  Half an hour later as they passed through the gloomy silence of thebox canyon, picking their way over rocks and bowlders and driftwoodcast forty feet above the river level in some terrific glut of waters,he began to talk again, evenly and quietly, pointing out indifferentthings along the trail, and when at last they mounted the hill andlooked down upon Hidden Water his anger was forgotten.

  "Well," he remarked, throwing out a hand, "there's home--how do youlike it?"

  Hardy paused and looked it over critically--a broad V-shaped valleyhalf a mile in length, beginning at the mouth of a great dry wash andspreading out through trees and hummocks down to the river. A brokenrow of cottonwoods and sycamores stretched along the farther side,following the broad, twisting bed of the sand wash where the lastflood had ripped its way to the Salagua; and on the opposite side,close up against the base of the cliff, a flash of white walls and theshadow of a _ramada_ showed where man had built his puny dwelling highin order to escape its fury. At their feet lay the ranch pasture, abroad elbow of the valley rich with grass and mesquite trees andfenced in with barbed wire that ran from cliff to cliff. Beyond theeastern wall the ground was rough and broken, cut up by innumerablegulches and waterways, and above its ridges there rose the forbiddingcrags of a black butte whose shoulders ran down to and confined thesilvery river. Across the river and to the south the land was evenrougher, rising in sheer precipices, above the crests of which towereda mighty needle of rock, standing out against the sky like a cathedralspire, yet of a greater dignity and magnificence--purple with theregal robes of distance.

  "That's Weaver's Needle," volunteered Creede, following hiscompanion's eyes. "Every lost mine for a hundr
ed miles around here islocated by sightin' at that peak. The feller it's named after waspicked up by the Apaches while he was out lookin' for the LostDutchman and there's been a Jonah on the hidden-treasure business eversince, judgin' by the results.

  "D'ye see that big butte straight ahead? That's Black Butte. She's sorough that even the mountain sheep git sore-footed, so they say--wehave to go up there on foot and drive our cattle down with rocks. OldBill Johnson's place is over the other side of that far butte; he'sgot a fine rich valley over there--the sheep haven't got in on himyet. You remember that old feller that was drunk down at Bender--well,that's Bill. Calls his place Hell's Hip Pocket; you wait till you tryto git in there some day and you'll know why."

  He paused and turned to the north.

  "Might as well give you the lay of the land," he said. "I'll be toobusy to talk for the next month. There's the Four Peaks, northeast ofus, and our cows run clean to the rocks. They's more different brandsin that forty miles than you saw in the whole Cherrycow country, I betye. I've got five myself on a couple hundred head that the old manleft me--and everybody else the same way. You see, when the sheep comein down on the desert and around Moreno's we kept pushin' what wasleft of our cattle east and east until we struck the Peaks--and herewe are, in a corner. The old judge has got nigh onto two thousandhead, but they's about twenty of us poor devils livin' up here in therocks that has got enough irons and ear marks to fill a brand book,and not a thousand head among us.

  "Well, I started out to show you the country, didn't I? You see thatbluff back of the house down there? That runs from here clean to theFour Peaks without a break, and then it swings west in a kind of an oxbow and makes that long ridge up there to the north that we called theJuate. All that high country between our house here and thePeaks--everythin' east of that long bluff--is Bronco Mesa. That's theupper range the judge asked me to point out to you. Everythin' west ofBronco Mesa is The Rolls--all them rollin' hills out there--and they'sfeed enough out there to keep all the sheep in the country, twiceover--but no water. Now what makes us cowmen hot is, after we've give'em that country and welcome, the sheepmen're all the time tryin' tosneak in on our upper range. Our cows can't hardly make a livin'walkin' ten or fifteen miles out on The Rolls every day, and then backagain to water; but them dam' sheep can go a week without drinkin',and as much as a month in the winter-time.

  "Why can't they give us a chanst, then? We _give_ 'em all the goodlevel land and simply ask 'em as a favor to please keep off of thebench up there and leave our cows what little cactus and browse theyis. But no--seems like as soon as you give one of them ChihuahuaMexicans a gun he wants to git a fight out of somebody, and so theycome crowdin' in across our dead line, just to see if they can't gitsome of us goin'."

  Once more his eyes were burning, his breath came hard, and his voicebecame high and sustained. "Well, I give one of 'em all he wanted," hesaid, "and more. I took his dam' pistol away and beat him over thehead with it--and I _moved_ him, too. He was Jasper Swope's pet, and Ireckon he had his orders, but I noticed the rest went round."

  He stopped abruptly and sat silent, twisting his horse's maneuneasily. Then he looked up, smiling curiously.

  "If you hadn't come up this year I would've killed some of themfellers," he said quietly. "I'm gittin' as crazy as old BillJohnson--and he hears voices. But now lookee here, Rufe, you don'twant to believe a word I say about this trouble. Don't you pay anyattention to me; I'm bughouse, and I know it. Jest don't mention sheepto me and I'll be as happy as an Injun on a mescal jag. Come on, I'llrun you to the house!"

  Throwing his weight forward he jumped his big horse down the rockytrail and went thundering across the flat, whooping and laughing andswinging under mesquite trees as if his whole heart was in the race.Catching the contagion Hardy's sorrel dashed madly after him, and themoment they struck the open he went by like a shot, over-running thegoal and dancing around the low adobe house like a circus horse.

  "By Joe," exclaimed Creede as he came up, "that _caballo_ of yours canrun some. I'm goin' to make a little easy money off of Bill Lightfootwhen he comes in. He's been blowin' about that gray of his for twoyears now and I'll match you ag'inst him for a yearlin'. And don't youforgit, boy, we're going after that black stallion up on Bronco Mesajust as soon as the _roder_ is over."

  His face was all aglow with friendliness and enthusiasm now, but asthey started toward the house, after turning their horses into thecorral, he suddenly stopped short in the trail.

  "Gee," he said, "I wonder what's keepin' Tom? Here Tom! Heere Tom!Pussy, pussy, pussy!" He listened, and called again. "I hope thecoyotes ain't caught him while I was gone," he said at length. "Theytreed him a few times last year, but he just stayed up there andyelled until I came--spoiled his voice callin' so long, but you bet hecan purr, all right."

  He listened once more, long and anxiously, then his face lit upsuddenly.

  "Hear that?" he asked, motioning toward the bluff, and while Hardy wasstraining his ears a stunted black cat with a crook in his tail cameinto view, racing in wildly from the great pile of fallen bowldersthat lay at the base of the cliff, and yowling in a hoarse, despairingvoice, like a condemned kitten in a sack.

  "Hello, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!" cried Creede, and as the cat stoppedabruptly, blinking warily at Hardy, he strode forward and gathered itgently into his arms. "Well, you poor little devil," he exclaimed,stroking its rough coat tenderly, "you're all chawed up again! Didthem dam' coyotes try to git you while I was gone?" And with manyprofane words of endearment he hugged it against his breast,unashamed.

  "There's the gamiest cat in Arizona," he said, bringing him over toHardy with conscious pride. "Whoa, kitten, he won't hurt you. Doggedif he won't tackle a rattlesnake, and kill 'im, too. I used to beafraid to git out of bed at night without puttin' on my boots, but ifany old rattler crawls under my cot now it's good-bye, Mr. Snake.Tommy is right there with the goods--and he ain't been bit yet,neither. He killed three side-winders last Summer--didn't you, Tom,Old Socks?--and if any sheep-herder's dog comes snoopin' around theback door he'll mount him in a minute. If a man was as brave as he is,now, he'd--well, that's the trouble--he wouldn't last very long inthis country. I used to wonder sometimes which'd go first--me or Tom.The sheepmen was after me, and their dogs was after Tom. But I'mafraid poor Tommy is elected; this is a dam' bad country for cats."

  He set him down with a glance of admiring solicitude, such as aSpartan mother might have bestowed upon her fighting offspring, andkicked open the unlocked door.

  The Dos S ranch house was a long, low structure of adobe bricks,divided in the middle by the open passageway which the Mexicans alwaysaffect to encourage any vagrant breeze. On one side of the _corredor_was a single large room, half storehouse, half bunk room, with alitter of pack saddles, rawhide kyacks and leather in one corner, aheap of baled hay, grain, and provisions in the other, and the reststrewn with the general wreckage of a camp--cooking utensils, Dutchovens, canvas pack covers, worn-out saddles, and ropes. On the otherside the rooms were more pretentious, one of them even having a boardfloor. First came the large living-room with a stone chimney and araised hearth before the fireplace; whereon, each on its separatepile of ashes, reposed two Dutch ovens, a bean kettle, and afrying-pan, with a sawed-off shovel in the corner for scooping upcoals. Opening into the living-room were two bedrooms, which, uponexploration, turned out to be marvellously fitted up, with high-headedbeds, bureaus and whatnots, besides a solid oak desk.

  To these explorations of Hardy's Creede paid but slight attention, hebeing engaged in cooking a hurried meal and watching Tommy, who had abad habit of leaping up on the table and stealing; but as Hardy pausedby the desk in the front bedroom he looked up from mixing his breadand said:

  "That's your room, Rufe, so you can clean it up and move in. Igenerally sleep outdoors myself--and I ain't got nothin', nohow. Jestput them guns and traps into the other room, so I can find 'em. Aw, goahead, you'll need that desk to keep your papers in. You've got towrite all the le
tters and keep the accounts, anyhow. It always didmake my back ache to lean over that old desk, and I'm glad to gitshent of it.

  "Pretty swell rooms, ain't they? Notice them lace curtains? Thekangaroo rats have chawed the ends a little, but I tell you, whenSusie and Sallie Winship was here this was the finest house for fortymiles. That used to be Sallie's room, where you are now. Many's thetime in the old days that I've rid up here to make eyes at Sallie, butthe old lady wouldn't stand for no sich foolishness. Old Winshipmarried her back in St. Louie and brought her out here to slave aroundcookin' for _roder_ hands, and she wanted her daughters to livedifferent. Nope, she didn't want no bow-legged cow-punch for ason-in-law, and I don't blame her none, because this ain't no placefor a woman; but Sal was a mighty fine girl, all the same."

  He shook a little flour over his dough, brushed the cat off the tableabsently, and began pinching biscuits into the sizzling fat of theDutch oven, which smoked over its bed of coals on the hearth. Then,hooking the red-hot cover off the fire, he slapped it on and piled alittle row of coals along the upturned rim.

  "Didn't you never hear about the Winship girls?" he asked, strokingthe cat with his floury hands. "No? Well, it was on account of themthat the judge took over this ranch. Old man Winship was one of theseold-time Indian-fightin', poker-playin' sports that come pretty nighhavin' their own way about everythin'. He had a fine ranch uphere--the old Dos S used to brand a thousand calves and more, everyround-up; but when he got old he kinder speculated in mines and loanedmoney, and got in the hole generally, and about the time the sheepdrifted in on him he hauled off and died. I pulled off a big _roder_for 'em and they sold a lot of cattle tryin' to patch things up thebest they could, but jest as everythin' was lovely the drouth struck'em all in a heap, and when the Widde' Winship got the estate settledup she didn't have nothin' much left but cows and good will. Shecouldn't sell the cows--you never can, right after these dryspells--and as I said, she wouldn't let the girls marry any of uscowmen to kinder be man for the outfit; so what does she do but runthe ranch herself!

  "Yes, sir--Susie and Sallie, that was as nice and eddicated girls asyou ever see, they jest put on overalls and climbed their horses andworked them cattle themselves. Course they had _roder_ hands to do thedirty work in the corrals--brandin' and ear-markin' and the like--butfor ridin' the range and drivin' they was as good as the best. Well,sir, you'd think every man in Arizona, when he heard what they wasdoin', would do everythin' in his power to help 'em along, even torunnin' a Dos S on an _orehanna_ once in a while instead of hoggin' ithimself; but they's fellers in this world, I'm convinced, that wouldsteal milk from a sick baby!"

  The brawny foreman of the Dos S dropped the cat and threw out hishands impressively, and once more the wild glow crept back into hiseyes.

  "You remember that Jim Swope that I introduced you to down on thedesert? Well, he's a good sheepman, but he's on the grab for moneylike a wolf. He's got it, too--that's the hell of it."

  Creede sighed, and threw a scrap of bacon to Tommy.

  "He keeps a big store down at Moroni," he continued, "and the widde',not wantin' to shove her cows onto a fallin' market, runs up anaccount with him--somethin' like a thousand dollars--givin' her notefor it, of course. It's about four years ago, now, that she happenedto be down in Moroni when court was in session, when she finds out byaccident that this same Jim Swope, seein' that cattle was about to goup, is goin' to close her out. He'd 'a' done it, too, like fallin' offa log, if the old judge hadn't happened to be in town lookin' up somelawsuit. When he heard about it he was so durned mad he wrote out acheck for a thousand dollars and give it to her; and then, when shetold him all her troubles, he up and bought the whole ranch at her ownprice--it wasn't much--and shipped her and the girls back to St.Louie."

  Creede brushed the dirt and flour off the table with a greasy rag anddumped the biscuits out of the oven.

  "Well," he said, "there's where I lost my last chanst to git a girl.Come on and eat."