Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 1326
“Have you picked out a place where we’ll be away — out of sight?” queried Pan quickly.
“Wal, pard, I’m no wild hoss wrangler like you say you are, but I’ve got hoss sense,” drawled Blinky, as he urged his animal back into the yellow trail.
Pan dismounted to walk, a habit he had always conformed to on steep trails, when his horse needed freeing of a burden, and his own legs were the better for action. At times he got a glimpse of the valley through a hole in the trees, but for the most part he could not see downward at all. Then he gazed across the open gulf to the mountains. These were not like the Rockies he knew so well by sight, the great white-crowned sky-piercing peaks of Montana. These belonged more to the desert, were wilder, with more color, not so lofty, and as ragged as jagged rock and fringed timber could make them. Gradually, as he descended the trail, this range dropped back out of his sight.
At near the sunset hour, when the journey was ended, Pan had to compliment Blinky on the beautiful place to which he had guided them. It was isolated, and singularly fitted to their requirements. The slope they had descended ran out into an immense buttress jutting far into the valley. A low brushy arm of the incline extended out a half mile to turn toward the main slope and to break off short, leaving a narrow opening out into the valley. The place was not only ideal for a hidden camp site, with plenty of water, grass, wood, but also for such a wild-horse trap as Pan had in mind. What astonished Pan was that manifestly Blinky had not seen the possibilities of this peculiar formation of slope as a trap into which wild horses could be chased.
“How wide is that gap?” asked Pan.
“Reckon it cain’t be more’n the length of two lassoes,” replied Blinky.
“Rope it off high, boys, and turn the stock loose. This corral was made for us,” said Pan, enthusiastically.
They set to work, each with self-assumed tasks that soon accomplished the whole business of pitching camp. Suppertime found them a cheerful, hungry, hopeful little band. Pan’s optimism dominated them. He believed in his luck, and they believed in him.
Dusk settled down into this neck of the great valley. Coyotes barked out in the open. From the heights pealed down the mournful blood-curdling, yet beautiful, bay of a wolf. The rosy afterglow of sunset lingered a long time. The place was shut in, closed about by brushy steeps, redolent of sage. A tiny stream of swift water sang faintly down over rocks. And before darkness had time to enfold hollow and slope and horizon, the moon slid up to defeat the encroaching night and blanch the hills with silvery light.
Interrogation by Pan brought out the fact that Blinky had never been down this trail at all. It was only a wild horse trail anyway. Blinky had viewed the country from the heights above, and this marvelously secluded arm of the valley had been as unknown to him as to Pan.
“Luck!” burst out Pan when the circumstance became clear. “Say, Blink, if your horse would jump you off a cliff you’d come up with Queen Victoria on your arm!”
Lying Juan sometimes broke into the conversation, very often by reason of his defective hearing and his appalling habit of falsehood, bringing his companions to the verge of hysterics.
“Yes, yes, I was over to her place two, tree times,” began Juan, brightening with each word. “I drive en to many horse to her ranch. You bet I sell some damn good horse to Queen Victorie. I can tell you myself Queen Victorie is a fine little woman I ever seen on my life. She make big a dance for me when I never seen so much supper on my life. I dance with her myself an’ she ata me an’ say, ‘Juanie, I never dance lika this en my life till I dance with you,’ yes, that’s sure what she tell me to my own face an’ eyes.”
Pan was the only one of Juan’s listeners who had power of speech left, and he asked: “Juan, did you play any monte or poker with the queen?”
“You bet. She playa best game of poker I ever seen on my life an’ she won tree hunred dollars from me.”
Whereupon Pan succumbed to the riotous mirth. This laughter tickled Lying Juan’s supreme vanity. He was a veritable child in mentality, though he spoke English better than most Mexican laborers. Blinky was the only one who ever tried to match wits with Lying Juan.
“Juan, thet shore reminds me of somethin’,” began Blinky impressively. “Yea, hit shore does. Onct I almost got hitched up with Victorie. I was sort of figgerin’ on marryin’ her, but she got leary o’ my little desert farm back in Missourie. She got sorter skeered o’ coyotes an’ Injins. Now, I ain’t got no use fer a woman like her an’ thet’s why me an’ Queen Victorie ain’t no longer friends.”
Most of the talk, however, invariably switched back to the burning question of the hour — wild horses. Pan had to attempt to answer a hundred queries, many of which were not explicit to his companions or satisfactory to himself. Finally he lost patience.
“Say, you long-eared jackasses,” he exploded. “I tell you it all depends on the lay of the land. I mean the success of a big drive. If round the corner here there’s good running ground — well, it’ll be great for us. We’ll look the ground over and size up the valley for horses. Find where they water and graze. If we decide to use this place as a trap to drive into we’ll throw up two blind corrals just inside that gateway out there. Then we’ll throw a fence of cedars as far across the valley as we can drag cedars. The farther the better. It’ll have to be a fence too thick and high for horses to break through or jump over. That means work, my buckaroos, work! When that’s done we’ll go up the valley, get behind the wild horses and drive them down.”
Loud indeed were the commendations showered upon Pan’s plan.
Blinky, who alone had not voiced his approval, cast an admiring eye upon Pan.
“Shore I’ve got dobe mud in my haid fer brains,” he said, with disgust. “Simple as apple pie, an’ I never onct thought of ketchin’ wild hosses thet a way.”
“Blink, that’s because you never figured on a wholesale catch,” replied Pan. “Moonshining wild horses, as you called it, and roping, and creasing with a rifle bullet, never answered for numbers. It wouldn’t pay us to try those methods. We want at least a thousand head in one drive.”
“Aw! Aw! Pan, don’t work my hopes to believin’ thet,” implored Blinky, throwing up his hands.
“Son, I’m cryin’ for mercy too,” added Pan’s father. “An’ I’m goin’ to turn in on that one.”
Lying Juan, either from design or accident, found this an admirable opening.
“My father was big Don in Mexico. He hada tree tousand vacqueros on our rancho. We chase wild horse many days, more horse than I ever see on my life. I helpa lass more horse than I ever see on my life. I make tree tousand peso by my father’s rancho.”
“Juan, I pass,” declared Pan. “You’ve got my hand beat. Boys, let’s unroll the tarps. It has been a sure enough riding day.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
PAN’S FATHER WAS an early riser, and next morning he routed everybody out before the clear white morning star had gone down in the velvet blue sky.
Before breakfast, while the others were wrangling horses, packing wood and water, he climbed the steep end of the bluff between camp and the valley. Upon his return he was so excited over the number of wild horses which he claimed to have seen that Pan feared he had fallen victim to Lying Juan’s malady.
“I hope Dad’s not loco,” said Pan. “But our luck is running heavy. Let’s play it for all we’re worth. I’ll climb that bluff, too, and see for myself. Then we’ll ride out into the valley, get the lay of the land, and find the best place for our trap.”
Blinky accompanied Pan to the ridge which they climbed at a point opposite camp. Probably it was four or five hundred feet high, and provided a splendid prospect of the valley. Pan could scarcely believe his eyes. He saw wild horses — so many that for the time being he forgot the other important details. He counted thirty bands in a section of the valley no more than fifteen miles long and less than half as wide. These were individual bands, keeping to themselves, each undoubtedly having a leader.
Blinky swore lustily in his enthusiasm, evidently thinking of the money thus represented. “ —— —— —— who’d ever think of these heah broomies turnin’ into a gold mine?” he ended his tribute to the scene.
But to Pan it meant much more than fortune; indeed at first he had no mercenary thought whatsoever. Horses had been the passion of his life. Cattle had been only beef, hoofs, horns to him. Horses he loved. Naturally then wild horses would appeal to him with more thrill and transport than those that acknowledged the mastery of man.
Cowboys were of an infinite variety of types, yet they all fell under two classes: Those who were brutal with horses and those who were gentle. The bronco, the outlaw, the wild horse had to be broken to be ridden. Many of them hated the saddle, the bit, the rider, and would not tolerate them except when mastered. These horses had to be hurt to be subdued. Then there were cowboys, great horsemen, who never wanted any kind of a horse save one that would kick, bite, pitch. It was a kind of cowboy vanity. Panhandle Smith did not have it. He had broken bad horses and he had ridden outlaws, but because of his humanity he was not so great a horseman as he might have been. In almost every outfit where Pan had worked there had always been one cowboy, sometimes more, who could beat him riding.
Because of this genuine love for horses, the beautiful wild-horse panorama beneath Pan swelled his heart. He gazed and gazed. From near to far the bands dotted the green-gray valley. Far away this valley floor shaded into blue. Near at hand the colors were easily distinguishable. Blacks and bays, whites and chestnuts, pintos that resembled zebras dotted this wild pasture land. The closest band to where Pan and Blinky stood could not have been more than a mile distant, in a straight line. A shiny black stallion was the leader of this herd. He was acting strangely, too, trotting forward and halting, tossing his head and long black mane.
“Stallion!” exclaimed Pan, pointing. “What a jim-dandy horse! Blink, he has spotted us, sure as you’re born. Talk about eyesight!”
“Wal, the broomtailed son-of-a-bronc!” drawled Blinky, tapping a cigarette against his palm. “Reckon, by gosh, you’re correct.”
“Blink, that’s a wild stallion — a wonderful horse. I’ll bet he’s game and fast,” protested Pan.
“Wal, you’re safe to gamble on his bein’ fast, anyways.”
“Didn’t you ever really care for a horse?” queried Pan.
“Me? Hell no! I’ve been kicked in the stummick — bit on the ear — piled onto the mud — drug in the dust too darn often.”
“You’ll admit, though, that there are some fine horses among these?” asked Pan earnestly.
“Wal, Pan, to stop kiddin’ you, now an’ then a fellar sees a real hoss among them broomies. But shore them boys are the hard ones to ketch.”
The last of Blinky’s remark forced Pan’s observation upon the cardinally important point — the lay of the land. A million wild horses in sight would be of no marketable value if they could not be trapped. So he bent his keen gaze here and there, up and down the valley, across to the far side, and upon the steep wall near by.
“Blink, see that deep wash running down the valley? It looks a good deal closer to the far side. That’s a break in the valley floor all right. It may be a wonderful help to us, and it may ruin our chances.”
“Reckon we cain’t tell much from heah. Thet’s where the water runs, when there is any. Bet it’s plumb dry now.”
“We’ll ride out presently and see. But I’m almost sure it’s a deep wide wash, with steep walls. Impassable! And by golly, if that’s so — you’re a rich cowboy.”
“Haw! Haw! Gosh, the way you sling words around.”
“Now let’s work along this ridge, down to the point where Dad went. Wasn’t he funny?”
“He’s shore full of ginger. Wal, I reckon he’s perked up since you come.”
Brush and cactus, jumbles of sharp rocks, thickets of scrub oak and dumps of dwarf cedars, all matted along the narrow hog-back, as Blinky called it, made progress slow and tedious. No cowboy ever climbed and walked so well as he rode. At length, however, Pan and Blinky arrived at the extreme end of the capelike bluff. It stood higher than their first lookout.
Pan, who arrived at a vantage point ahead of Blinky, let out a stentorian yell. Whereupon his companion came running.
“Hey, what’s eatin’ you?” he panted. “Rattlesnakes or wild hosses?”
“Look!” exclaimed Pan, waving his hand impressively.
The steep yellow slope opposite them, very close at the point where the bluff curved in, stretched away almost to the other side of the valley. Indeed it constituted the southern wall of the valley, and was broken only by the narrow pass below where the cowboys stood, and another wider break at the far end. From this point the wash that had puzzled Pan proved to be almost a canyon in dimensions. It kept to the lowest part of the valley floor and turned to run parallel with the slope.
“Blink, suppose we run a fence of cedars from the slope straight out to the wash. Reckon that’s two miles and more. Then close up any gaps along this side of the valley. What would happen?” suggested Pan, with bright eyes on his comrade.
Blinky spat out his cigarette, a sign of unusual emotion for him.
“You doggone wild-hoss wrangler!” he ejaculated, with starting eyes and healthy grin. “Shore I begin to get your hunch. Honest, I never till this heah minnit thought so damn much of your idee. You shore gotta excuse me. A blind man could figger this deal heah...Big corrals hid behind the gate under us — long fence out there to the wash — close up any holes on this side of valley — then make a humdinger of a drive...Cowboy, shore’s you’re born I’m seein’ my Arizona ranch right this minnit!”
“Reckon I’m seeing things too,” agreed Pan in suppressed excitement. “I said once before it’s too good to be true. Dad wasn’t loco. No wonder he raved...Blink, is there any mistake?”
“What about?”
“The market for wild horses.”
“Absolutely, no,” declared Blinky vehemently. “It’s new. Only started last summer. Wiggate made money. He said so. Thet’s what fetched the Hardmans nosin’ into the game. Mebbe this summer will kill the bizness, but right now we’re safe. We can sell all the hosses we can ketch, right heah on the hoof, without breakin’ or drivin’. It’s only a day’s ride from Marco, less than thet over the hills the way we come. We can sell at Marco or we can drive to the railroad. I’d say sell at ten dollars a haid right heah an’ whoop.”
“I should smile,” replied Pan. “It’ll take us ten days or more, working like beavers to cut and drag the cedars to build that fence. More time if there are gaps to close along this side. Then all we’ve got to do is drive the valley. One day will do it. Why, I never saw or heard of such a trap. You can bet it will be driven only once. The wild horses we don’t catch will steer clear of this valley. But breaking a big drove, or driving them to Marco — that’d be a job I’d rather dodge. It’d take a month, even with a small herd.”
“Hardman an’ Wiggate have several outfits working, mebbe fifty riders all told. They’ve been handlin’ hosses. Reckon Wiggate would jump at buyin’ up a thousand haid, all he could get. He’s from St. Louis an’ what he knows aboot wild hosses ain’t a hell of a lot. I’ve talked with him.”
“Blinky, old-timer, we’ve got the broomies sold. Now let’s figure on catching them,” replied Pan joyfully. “And we’ll cut out a few of the best for ourselves.”
“An’ a couple fer our lady friends, hey, pard!” added Blinky, with violence of gesture and speech.
Down the steep slope, through brush and thickets, they slid like a couple of youngsters on a lark. Pan found the gateway between bluff and slope even more adaptable to his purposes than it had appeared from a distance. The whole lay of the land was miraculously advantageous to the drive and the proposed trap.
“Oh, it’s too darn good,” cried Pan, incredulously. “It’ll be too easy. It makes me afraid.”
“Thet somethin’ unforeseen will happen, huh?” queried Blink, shrewdly. “I had the same idee.”
“But what could happen?” asked Pan, darkly speculative.
“Wal, to figger the way things run fer me an’ Gus out heah I’d say this,” replied Blinky, with profound seriousness. “We’ll do all the cuttin’ an’ draggin’ an’ buildin’. We close up any gaps. We’ll work our selves till we’re daid in our boots. Then we’ll drive — drive them wild hosses as hosses was never drove before.”
“Well, what then?” queried Pan sharply.
“Drive ’em right in heah where Hardman’s outfit will be waitin’!”
“My God, man,” flashed Pan hotly. “Such a thing couldn’t happen.”
“Wal, it just could,” drawled Blinky, “an’ we couldn’t do a damn thing but fight.”
“Fight?” repeated Pan passionately. The very thought of a contingency such as Blinky had suggested made the hot red blood film his eyes.
“Thet’s what I said, pard,” replied his comrade coolly. “An’ it would be one hell of a fight, with all the best of numbers an’ guns on Hardman’s side. We’ve got only three rifles besides our guns, an’ not much ammunition. I fetched all we had an’ sent Gus for more. But Black didn’t send thet over an’ I forgot to go after it.”
“We can send somebody back to Marco,” said Pan broodingly. “Say, you’ve given me a shock. I never thought of such a possibility. I see now it could happen, but the chances are a thousand to one against it.”
“Shore. It’s hardly worth guessin’ aboot. But there’s thet one chance. An’ we’re both afeared of somethin’ strange. All we can do, Pan, is gamble.”
On the way back to camp, Pan, pondering very gravely over the question, at last decided that such a bold raid was a remote possibility, and that his and Blinky’s subtle reaction to the thought came from their highly excited imaginations. The days of rustling cattle and stealing horses on a grand scale were gone into the past. Hardman’s machinations back there in Marco were those of a crooked man who played safe. There was nothing big or bold about him, none of the earmarks of the old frontier rustler. Matthews was still less of a character to fear. Dick Hardman was a dissolute and depraved youth, scarcely to be considered. Purcell, perhaps, or others of like ilk, might have to be drawn upon sooner or later, but that being a personal encounter caused Pan no anxiety. Thus he allayed the doubts and misgivings that had been roused over Blinky’s supposition.
