Voice of the Intangible. I

Voice of the Intangible BY ALBERT R. LYMAx<J INTRODUCTION If it were not for cherished friendships, built up during an intense ten years on the Pagahrit cattle-range — friendships, too, which still exist — I would leave this story to pass for truth or fancy, according to the inclination or acquaintance with facts of those who read it. For the sake of those friendships, I wish to say that the most offensive habits in certain old acquaintances, men otherwise honorable and generous, have here been concentrated in the cow-puncher known as Josh Widder. The other characters are as true to life as I am able to give them; and where they are represented as doing things they did not actually do, it is only what I know they would have done under the same circumstances. I have aimed to tell nothing but actual truth about The Great Intangible. I affirm that it is a reality, and I feel a great emotion for it as I write these things; I hear it still from the cliffs, canyons, deserts, forests, and the rocky mountain-sides of my dearly beloved San Juan county. This story is written with very tender bias for all concerned — Widder, Spy, Soorowits and Buhhre not excepted. It is with especially kind attachment for Jud, Juan Rido and Jimmy Baneehlizhen; and with hallowed memories of a father who seemed to stand by me again as I wrote, reminding me of words almost forgotten. The story, in the main, is fact rather than fiction, and its situations, as they come again to mind, revive smiles and tears for interests once sternly real. Albert R. Lyman. GRAYSON, UTAH, JAN. 1, 1912. Chapter I — Into the Wilds Ben Rojer had passed the eleventh annual notch of grimyhanded boyhood. He knew vaguely that his "pa was kind o' poor," but the real extent of their financial distress was quite beyond the grasp of his childish mind. He happened never to awaken in the night when "pa" bent over his trundle-bed ; he was not disturbed by the loving hand on his brown hair, nor the voice that whispered, "Sonny, I hate like sin to take you away out

970 IMPROVEMENT ERA. there, but we're right to the bedrock — I don't see any other way out of it." Thus it happened on the first of May that Fred Rojer and his little son Ben started with their packs and cow-horses over the sandhills, and away into the cliff-and-desert country of western San Juan county. Young Rojer rode Stripes, his yellow pony, and Bowse followed them both ; for, since the days of his puppyhood, the dog had regarded the boy and horse as his master — not two masters, but one master who sometimes acted in two parts. When these two parts were not together, it made little difference to Bowse which one he followed. He would rest in the grass near the pony's feet, and their horse and dog eyes would meet with peaceful understanding. Stripes was a buckskin of choice Navajo breed. He had a black streak along his back, and black stripes just above all four knees — hence the name. Ben understood his horse and dog as well as they understood each other, and they regarded him as a primary part of all creation. Often at night when the tanned hands removed the bridle and started for the pasture gate, it seemed that the two who stayed together in the darkness were the truest part of the league, and young Rojer wished he might spend the night with them. They must have felt somewhat the same, for Stripes looked longingly after the little figure, and Bowse whined a kind of submissive regret. Though Bowse would consent to leave part of his master all the time, he would not think for one minute of leaving all of his master part of the time, nor would he suffer his master to leave him, if he could prevent it. Thus it happened that Ben's father allowed the dog to go along, in spite of several reasons he had against it. Young Rojer bubbled over with joy at thoughts of going on the round-up. He carried a clothes-line lariat, a carpet-rag "hogstring," and wore one gallant spur, with huge rowel, which had, no doubt, in its time, been on many a heated ride. The range was the region of Pagahrit — that peculiarly baldheaded, rock-ribbed, sand-sprinkled territory, fitting down into

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 971 the junction of the San Juan and the Colorado, and dammed off from the outside world by breastworks more formidable than anything of their kind in the west. The trail to this region was a plump hundred miles long, and every foot of it led farther away from a white man's dwelling. The hills of Pagahrit abound in thirst, disappointment and danger galore, but the tender little dog-and-horse-loving Rojer had never seen them, and he imagined up unto himself a place vastly different from that he was destined to find. Pushing on and on to the west, camping each night in a more wild and shaggy wilderness, the home-raised boy felt dazed by the wild and shaggy wilderness, the unrelenting silence, the slow and unchanging growth, and the sure and unfailing decay of nature, and all of man or beast that fell wounded in her midst. For often by the wild trail there lay scattered, bleaching bones — bones of animals and of men — men whose ruined dwellings were all but razed to earth by this unrelenting decay of nature. And, too, the wilderness was so wide, so quiet, so dead ; it was more than grand ; it was all but terrible. The light of their fires fell on the forest, the long, black stretch of forest of the Cedar Ridge. Out in it were the sounds of night: the owl, the whip-poor-will, the coyote: but above and greater than all of them was the ominous silence of solitude, or the moaning of a wind that had crossed buttes and canyons miles and miles away, without even passing one human dwelling. The aged pines and cedars had dropped their leaves upon their own roots for time without measure, and in their crumbling age had fallen against and across each other in a tangled mass. Only one trail led through them. The shady regions to the right and the left bore no scar of the ax ; the sound of the woodman had never echoed among their interlocked branches. "Against and across each other in a tangled mass."

972 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Beyond the border of the flickering firelight there was something intangible and still, yet a something awful in the night as in the day — awful because of its vastness and wideness, — awful because of the deep silence, or the moans of wind and animal proceeding from its depth. Ben had a vague fear of this indefinite something ; half instinctively, he sent his gaze hunting for it in the bottom of every wooded gulch, and up and down the side of every treegrown hill. He half feared and half expected it all the time, — A VIEW OF CLAY HILL, LOOKING WESTWARD FROM THE DESERT AT ITS FOOT this intangible essence of the wilderness. He plied his father with questions about the trail and the cliffs and the forest of the Cedar Ridge, in whose shade they traveled more than two days. He asked about Soldier Crossing, Mossback Mesa, and Clay Hill, but more particularly about the great solitude all around them, and the ruined houses, old and cedar-grown, where the white fragments of men's bones might still be seen.

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 973 The two passed on alone over Step Gulch, Dripping Spring, Cow Tank, and out into the blistered, treeless desert to the southwest. During all this time Bowse trotted contentedly along at Stripes' heels, his two eyes noticeable for being entirely surrounded by dust, and his great mouth stretched in apparently a hearty dog-laugh at everything in general. Of course, Bowse found a water-hole or tank, once in a great while, and though he always waded promptly into it, he had no more than shaken the water out in every direction, like a distracted hose-nozzle, when he was dusty and laughing again as before. When the treeless desert had grown desperately thirsty, an open pass came in sight four miles up to the right, at the head of a rough canyon breaking into the cliff, along the base of which they had been traveling. "Do you see that pass 'way up yonder, son?" asked Fred Rojer, "that's Clay Hill. We climb up over all these clay banks, and come out in that open space." After hanging to their horse's tails, and climbing the steep, norrow trail into the hot breeze of the pass, Ben could almost spit dust, and the sweat ran in streams down his face. From the summit they followed down a canyon to Castle Gulch, and drew up at a spring emptying into a small pond. "This is Green Water," said the father, trying to head off a question, "we'll camp here tonight, and at the lake tomorrow night." Next day, as Fred Rojer had said, they crossed Castle Hill, a ridge of solid rock with accumulations of sand at various places on its top and sides, where scattering cedars had found place to grow ; and driving their heavy packs down the west side, they continued on through alternating patches of soft sand and solid rock for fifteen miles. This brought them by two o'clock in the afternoon to the Pagahrit, a strange clear lake in the middle part of the Pagahrit region. "And this is really the lake you've told me so much about?" asked Ben as they drove along its shore. "Yes, son, this is where I've tended cattle seven years." In the evening, when the dry willow fire threw its flickering light up among the limbs, and sent its crackling sounds to echo in the cavernous walls of the gulch, another sound mingled echoes with the first, and two horsemen merged out of the darkness,

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 975 and drove their pack-horses up into the lighted space of the camp. Young Rojer made cautious inquiry at once, and ascertained that the first one of them, that is, the one who made the most noise and did the most swearing, was Josh Widder. The other less noisy and more active, was Jud Hiles. They had come according to previous arrangement to take part in the round-up. Ben had seen neither of them before, and he promptly blossomed out into a pair of big eyes and ears, and a mouth like a full moon. His attention was centered for the most part on Josh Widder. Josh said such brave things, and wore such a ponderous black mustache. He also wore a six-shooter which sparkled in the fire-light, and he wore boots, with high heels and high tops. He appeared to be about thirty-seven years old, and his overalls fit him tight, though they measured forty-one inches in the girth. Jud was perhaps twenty-one years of age. He had a prominent nose, almost a hook, and a good-natured crow-foot at the corner of each big brown eye. He stood erect and firm, with a thick, stocky build, and he wore a buckskin shirt bearing fringe on the shoulders and on the cuffs. He had a wide mouth, along which a smile could materialize on short notice. His movements were swooping. He took off his saddle and both packs, while Josh removed one saddle. And then, while Josh, with many a grunt, got his avourdupois comfortably seated cross-legged by the fire, and began to tell of some brave dash he had made on his horse, Pancho, Jud dived into the mouth of a flour sack, and patting it down, stirred up a cake. He attended to the baking of that cake in a dutch-oven, fried three or four collops of bacon and a generous mess of veal steak, and at the same time prepared Widder's coffee. When Hiles pronounced the supper "done enough to eat raw," the big man pulled his wide hat from his bald head and fell to eating, or, more properly speaking, he fell upon the supper without grace or mercy and devoured it. At first he tried to keep on with his account of himself and Pancho, but the story was bitten off and munched and discontinued in a sound similar to that you may hear at a pig-trough. And yet Ben stared with wrapt interest. He watched the

976 IMPROVEMENT ERA. wavy horns of that mustache, as it closed over bread and grease and veal chops galore. Josh was not unconscious of the beauty of this horn-like appendage, for ever so often he raised his upper lip and looked proudly down upon it. But his nose was thick and short, and his black eyes on the sides thereof, were suggestive of two bull-terriers snarling over a bone. When that supper was no more, the black mustache came in for tender, loving strokes and careful, downward glances, and A TYPICAL KNOLL OF BALD, SMOOTH SANDSTONE when it was freed, of various clots of grease, Josh Widder looked studiously among the red coals, and broke forth into song: "For their bread it was corn-dodgers, and Their meat I couldn't chaw, — I'm a goin' to the Indian nation An' marry me a squaw." He gave it all the quavers and semiquavers, and all the brawl and agony ever known to the range, and young Rojer thought it truly a wonderful song, and tried to muster courage to ask for it again or for the next verse, but his nerve failed. The song was no doubt the inspiration of the red coals, and Ben searched them, not knowing then as he afterwards discovered, that they speak one thing to one man and another to another, though both men

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 977 may sit by the same fire, peering out of the same mist and gloom of night. Chapter II— A Dreadful Something With the first doubtful signs of approaching day, Jud relieved himself of a lusty yell, brought a doubled rope down kerwhack on the tarpaulin covering Josh Widder, pulled on his boots and went after the horses. Before the horses came, it was decided to build a fence across the gulch, thus forming a pasture in which to hold the steers. It took him of the buckskin shirt two full seconds to get this fence proposition through his mind, and when he had taken a mild dose of breakfast, he started with an ax for the trees. Ben followed. He would have chased an intermittent fire-cracker with no more curiosity than he pursued the buckskin fringe to where the pithy black-willow chips flew as from a catapult. Jud knew no such thing as hesitation or ceremony; the brush and thorns scratched his deer-hide and his denims in vain. He found a way, or chopped or kicked one through, wherever he wanted to go. "I was taught to work when I was a kid," he said, at last, probably from his annoyance at seeing Ben do nothing but look. The fat man saddled his Pancho, and with his rope around the saddle-horn, snaked the few sticks to place, which were not already in line of the fence, always taking care to avoid any labor too servile for the dignity of his glossy mustache and foxy boots. When the fence became the finished article, by the sweat of brows less bald and shiny than his own, he rode along it like a knighted warrior, and declared, "We done a good job." After supper had been "slicked up," and Josh had betrayed his inordinate ambition to keep his rhinoceros-hide always stretched over enough hash to founder a regiment, — he lapsed again into a study of the red coals, and broke forth into that delightful song about the bread and the corndodgers. But somehow, Ben found it less refreshing than the night before. Jud slept, of course; he slept in long drawn accents of perfect rest, but when his vigorous being snorted itself back to consciousness, his accumulated energy found vent in an echoing whoop, and all hands knew the fringe of buckskin waved through camp, and that they had better crawl out.

978 IMPROVEMENT ERA. This early-morning business became a troublesome interruption to Widder's wholesale digestion, especially when the doubled rope entered into the performance, and he came out of his blankets by slow degrees, punctuating each degree by a double-barrel volley of "cuss" words. The first ride of the round-up took in the country towards Slick Rock. Stripes and his light master stood up to the chase with ease, taking the soft sand, the solid rock, and whatever came in the way. Bowse stayed laughingly at the yellow pony's heels, and young Rojer enjoyed it all immensely, in spite of thirst and fatigue. The four riders "held up" a wild bunch on the sand below what appeared to be two men on a high hill. Ben's father explained that they were only monuments, built by the Pahutes when they came through from Soldier Crossing; that for some strange reason, those Pahutes built monuments on many of the high hills at that time. Young Rojer declared they looked like a picture he had seen of Egyptian idols, and from that time the place was known as "The Idols." They drove the bunch over a long, irregular half-circle, and when it had been added upon to the amount of forty or fifty head, turned towards camp. Ben noticed that the big man came no more up to the herd, preferring to ride ahead or off to one side, as if looking for other cattle, though plainly he looked for nothing. "He's angry about your dog," said Fred Rojer, in answer to his son's questions, "and that's his way of showing it. I think we better leave the dog in camp after this." "Does he have to have his own way? Aren't you the boss here ?" asked Ben, in disappointment. "Yes, son, I'm boss in this part of the range, but if we can have peace by any compromise, let's have it; I do like peace." Josh took his customary gorge that evening without a word ; he made no mention of his valorous deeds, usually the only thing in the air at meal-time, and without one look for the inspiration of his little song, he rolled into bed. Next morning he arose from his blankets like some other man than himself, or, by virtue of a better acquaintance with him than Ben had that morning, let

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 979 me say, he arose exactly like himself: as sullen, and sour and distasteful as an old swill-barrel. When they started off for the day's ride, Ben and his father ordered Bowse to stay in camp, but the old fellow was so much cut up about it, and so determined not to do it, that Ben agreed to someone's proposition that he ride Buck, and leave Stripes for the sake of the dog. This change brought peace to camp, and the outfit, again in favor with Joshua Widder, started for Little Mountain. "That dog'd be all right," declared the fat one, finding his speech like a spoiled child when everybody gives in, "if he wasn't such a confounded curiosity," and Ben remembered how the whole herd had turned around to look. Buck was a rusty old Saducee, too stiff and slow for anything but a pack-horse, for the snap and action had gone out of him, like the sap goes from a cotton-wood when it is cut down and barked. "Don't spur kidney-sores on 'im," laughed the fat one again, looking back at Ben, for Ben's short legs were trying by many and furious kicks, to bring Buck up with the others. He did keep fairly near all forenoon, but when the three made a dash to round up the first bunch, this combination of boy and packhorse had plenty of trouble in keeping distantly in sight. When the men waited and he caught up, it had been decided he should watch the bunch while they continued the hunt. Now, whether or not another course could have been followed with propriety made small difference to Ben. He felt sure that Josh Widder had proposed this plan, and he watched the three men ride over the hill and out of sight, while mingled anger and fear arose within him. They disappeared about mid-day. and the world became quiet and still. Oh ! so still. The cattle hugged the shade of a scraggy juniper, and showed no disposition to run away. They chewed their cuds half dozing, and old Buck, with his eyes shut, had no more feeling in his heart, and no more expression in his face, than a block of wood. His churn-like head, and mud-wall eye — how different to Stripes! The world grew stiller and stiller. At first a cow had mooed to her calf— now she had gone to sleep. A fly had buzzed

980 IMPROVEMENT ERA. by, but he buzzed right on and out of hearing, and no sound or motion broke the painful monotony. Young Rojer searched the horizon in all directions. He saw the heat dance on the sandhills like legions of spirits ; he saw the desert haze of the distance — the lifeless, voiceless distance. He sat alone in a vast, wide solitude. No man or beast might come over the hill to do him injury; he feared only the deep, responseless expanse from which his voice called forth no reply — in which no soul would answer to soul. A dozen times he began to tremble and was ready to cry out with terror, and a dozen times he refrained, hoping they would soon appear on the heated horizon. But when the day wore on and on, and the sun sank low towards the hills, he could restrain his feelings no longer, and broke forth into a wild, frightened cry, "Oh ! Oh ! Oh !" and the terror of his own voice threw him into a panic of dismay. He saw the cattle no more. Whether they stayed or whether they went, he did not know nor care. He lashed old Buck up to a lumbering lope, and rode straight to the top of the nearest hill. From its summit he saw nothing — nothing besides the lifeless haze of the desert made thicker with closing day. He went on to the next hill, and to the next, till he forgot which way he had come, and the country was all strange — strange and wild and terrible to his bleared and wide-open eyes. Still he panted sobbingly onward, he knew not where. What wonder, now, if in his heart he cursed Josh Widder and all his ancestors to the remotest generation, what wonder now if he whipped old Buck for being such a slow, stupid creature ; what wonder if he called his father and his mother and old Bowse, and threw himself on the sand to bury his hot face in his hands and cry the cry of despair ! The sun had disappeared below the red horizon, when Fred Rojer, pale and excited, rode up on Ben's track, and stooping over the little figure, "Oh, son, I'm awfully sorry we left you so long," he said, in a husky voice, taking both grimy little hands in his own. "Did you get awfully frightened?" Ben felt the tell-tale tears dried in the dust all over his cheeks, and he tried to hide his face, but seeing the big drops in

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE. 981 his father's great, anxious eyes, he cried the cry of joy, and his father took him in his strong arms. "It's too bad. I didn't intend for a minute to leave you so long," he said. "We were led on and on, and the time slipped by before I knew it. It frightened me to find you gone, and I have been tracking you a long way." The experience was such that Ben made no effort to explain it, especially since his father appeared to comprehend the ordeal through which he had gone — an ordeal giving color to his character, and at the same time leaving a breach in his nervous ramparts. The delay threw the outfit late in reaching camp, and weary and thirsty, in the moonlight Ben toiled on behind the herd. He had nothing to say to Josh or Jud, and they said nothing to him. It is doubtful whether they dreamed of his misery — his sunburned face and lips, his aching limbs, his aching soul that longed to be at home or asleep. Nor is it probable they imagined the rancor with which he would have answered any word from Josh. He felt so utterly exhausted from hunger, thirst, anxiety, and the unending, unyielding jolt of Buck's hard gait, it is probable he would have climbed down and sprawled sullenly on the sand, if it had not been for his father's kind words of encouragement. Sometime in the late hours of night, the herd found its way into the corral, and a veal-chop supper went on the fire, but young Rojer answered the rejoicing of old Bowse with a few pats and caresses, and sank wearily down on a bed. He forgot about supper, his whole soul called for sleep. Widder probably sneered to himself when Fred Rojer removed Ben's shoes and covered him carefully with a blanket, but while he sneered, a wiser man might have seen a father whose son would bless his memory as long as that son should dwell on earth. When Jud snorted himself and the whole camp awake early the next morning, Ben pulled his weary self together, and, slipping on his shoes, climbed the cliff on the opposite side of the canyon. He had been taught to pray, and now he sought a secluded place for that purpose. Bowse walked by his side in such a position as to receive his grimy, but heartfelt caresses. They turned a

982 IMPROVEMENT ERA. point of the cliff, crept along the steep hillside behind some cotton-woods, and entered a great, dry, echoing cave. It being still early dawn, the back of this hole was hid in darkness, but half leaning on Bowse, the young adventurer went till his feet struck some big stones, and by them he kneeled in the sand. Whatever the words he whispered, inspired by real or imaginary necessity, a part of the song which followed instinctively, runs, "Leave, oh, leave me not alone." A maze of green leaves reflected the increasing light of day, till all the shady recesses of the cavern were in full view. "What a funny place," thought young Rojer, as he took a nail from his pocket and began to cut something in the sandstone wall. "There, 18 — , if ever I come to this country again — but I hope I never do — I'll come to this cave and see this date and remember something." Bowse sat with turned head, and one ear cocked up over his sharp eye, watching the performance, when the call for breakfast reached them, and they hurried back to camp. Josh smiled exultingly when he saw Bowse tied to a -tree, whining and crying as Ben rode Stripes away for the day. As to Ben, he watched the sneering face with a strong and growing dislike, and he took pains to forestall any proposition which would leave him entirely alone for an indefinite length of time. With this latter business, Fred Rojer was in full sympathy. It is not our purpose to follow this round-up through the hundred tight places which made it a matter of intense interest to young Rojer. Suffice it to say, he became hardened to a beverage of wriglers and pollywogs, inured to the dry desert air and the smell of the herd. He developed an appetite like that of a doggie calf. His little brown face met the wind and the rain and the sun ; he sweltered in the dust and filth and smoke of many a "branding." I say he sweltered, because a Pagahrit spring-time is as warm as a Navajo sweat-house. He had the gravity of many a boy who joins bravely in the fray and the chase when all is peaceful and prosperous, but who, when his fingers are numb with cold rain, and his muscles are trembling with weakness of hunger, is liable to shed childish tears, or indulge a few manly "cuss" words. He enjoyed the whiz of Jud's rope as it shot out over a