Voice of the Intangible. IV

OICE. ^ ttielNTANGIBLE, " ! LAKH PACiAHKlT, SOUTHERN UT/H Chapter IV — Greeti-water Trail If in all the world there had been no such person as Soorowits, Pagahrit would still have been an offensive place to Ben Rojer. When to this offensiveness was added the rank possibility of meeting the old Pahute on one of those lonely trails, the coming fall round-up became a source of fear and dread to the youthful cowboy. There was no way out of it, however; he must go, and the day for starting arrived all too soon, when the melons and grapes had not yet gone, and the mist of Indian-summer hung lightly on the distant hillsides. He had formed the habit, when leaving home, of looking longingly back, till every roof and tree of town sank behind the hills or faded in the distance. Now he looked back with new heaviness in his youthful heart, and the echo of Soorowits' curses still playing on his nerves. Often in the quiet night, while the outfit camped in the shades of the cedar forest, some shape or trace of the evil face came into Ben's dreams, and he started up in the midnight to descry the peaceful camp, and hear the honest bark of old Bowse defying the noisy coyote of the ominious solitude. Often, too, when he had emerged from the cedars, a tree or bush or stone seemed to take familiar shape and crouch by the trail in cat-like ambush. It was a dry year. Beyond the Ridge the country, parched and desolate, reflected the dazzling light like a bare stone. Bowse looked faithfully out of a thick coat of dust, and his thin red tongue hung limply over one side of his ever-open mouth. The outfit moved into Green-water, late one afternoon, and every man, horse and dog put his parched lips to the water in feverish eagerness. Besides being "dead" tired, and ravenously hungry, they were all half-cooked by the heated sands over which

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 59 they had come. Castle Gulch was bare as your hand — not a snoot-ful of horse-feed in its whole length. Excepting the mourning doves, mourning on the bald shelves of the cliffs, and the gold-collared lizards, looking wisely from some narrow strip of shade, no animal tried to live in the place. The packs held food for the men and the dog, and grain for the horses, but the latter must have provender to go with the grain. What should be done? The nearest likely place of grass ahead was Castle Hill, seven miles away. To Castle Hill Fred Rojer and Jud decided they ought to go, but Josh objected. For some incomprehensible reason, alleged to be clear to his own glutinous brain, he blamed the outfit for his hunger and weariness, and insisted that they camp where they stood. Jud positively refused to let his horses starve there all night, and the fat man raised his eyes to the cliff and discovered dry bunch grass on the brow high above them. "What's the matter of taking the horses up there?" he demanded in his overbearing tone. They told him there was no safe trail, and he plunged off over the sand-hills to see. Jud followed. The father and son and horses waited under the huge cottonwood, and fought flies half an hour, before the two returned from prospecting the cliff below that miserably dry bunch grass. "There's big feed on top," Josh began, "and I believe that by leading 'em, we kin git the whole works up there." "The feed's good, all right enough," added he of the buckskin shirt, "but I doubt the wisdom of trying to git the horses to it." It was risky business — at least Ben thought so, from the look on his father's face, but Widder insisted and blamed and protested in his swaggering, thick-nosed way, till all objections were overruled, or overridden, or gagged, and the process of unpacking began. Ben could see no trail up the shattered face of the cliff ; and, weary of looking for one, he turned to the dapper feet of his yellow pony — feet hard and tough, but without shoes. Fresh from the hills of the tall timber, the whole mount was fat and slick, despite the dry dust and lather of the last few days ; yet no horse in the outfit had a more shapely, arched neck, nor sweeter disposition along with the speed and action of the little buckskin. Young Rojer heard a melancholy note in the swing of Widder's lariat, as that victorious abnormity helped Jud shove the horses out of camp and off towards the cliff. That melancholy note, audible to none but Ben, came exactly like scores of others had come since the affair with Soorowits at the funeral cave ; for since then everything boded evil — a thousand disasters had come

60 IMPROVEMENT ERA in all respects but the reality. This constant dread and apprehension was becoming an old and tiresome story, and, closing his mind to it, young Rojer set his tired self to work. He carried wood and water, and began instinctively to rejoice over the welcome smell of a little flame that crackled and shot straight upward through a pile of dry sticks, when Jud's voice rang out from the cliff. Father and son started up at once, and Bowse, who had been waiting for his supper, followed them out of camp. The cliff stood up, neither perpendicular nor smooth, with its surface in seams and cracks and shelves, from top to bottom ; that much could be seen from the first hill near camp. The two approached somewhat nearer, however, before they discovered a wide path of dust and hair, running straight from the cliff's brow into a sandwash at its base. "That means a dead horse," said Fred Rojer, and each quickened his steps. Bowse bounded ahead and leaped from the bank with such violence as almost to frighten Josh and Jud from the lift" they were making. The dog sniffed at the horse's nose and the pool of blood in the sand, and began to whine and hurry around. It was Stripes. They succeeded in raising him on his front feet, so that he saw and neighed to Ben as he slipped down the bank. He even reached his expressive little nose for Ben's extending hands, as if to plead for relief from pain which brought out the glistening beads of sweat below his kind and grief-winking eye. Whether our thick-nosed friend felt any sympathy or any shame, as those loving boyish arms went around the shapely buckskin neck, he yet had the sense to keep still. "It's no use, son," concluded Fred Rojer, after taking account of the situation, "you better take the dog and go to camp." The dog put up a stout objection to going, and went only when he was commanded, looking whiningly and regretfully back at the sufferer in the wash. Ben coaxed and coerced his shaggy friend, till they passed camp and hurried on up the gulch. When "THE CLIFF STOOD UP, NEITHER PERPENDICULAR NOR SMOOTH"

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 61 the murderous boom of Widder's lumbering revolver told them what befel the buckskin pony. Bowse began his whining afresh, as if he understood all about it, and probably would have run back if two grimy hands had not held him by the hairy coat. Those two hands clasped around his neck while the big, clear drops ran down their owner's brown face. When young Rojer came to camp and tied his dog to a tree, the three men sat by the fire discussing the fall of the unfortunate pony. Josh declared loudly that it was no fault of his — that if Jud had done thus and so, there would have been no trouble. Jud simply assured Fred Rojer and his son that he was not to blame, and then he held his tongue a half-hour while our thick-nosed friend saddled all responsibility on anyone and everyone but his own dear, bloated self. He roundly censured Ben and his father for not having the horse shod, and he knew no one else on earth would have acted so stupidly as Jud. He even declared the pony "a absolute fool over that dog," and affirmed that the desire to stay with Bowse had prompted the little buckskin to let go all holds and come tumbling back down the cliff. He ended his tirade by swearing he would assume no blame whatever. During this down-pour of bilious philosophy, Ben sat like a smoking bomb-shell, which surely would have exploded but for the warning frown of Fred Rojer. Josh may have run down like a clock, or it may be that from somewhere in his congested anatomy, a sentiment akin to shame put its disgusted hands on the cords of his voice box. At all events, when he had been the sole speaker a long time, he drew his rancid remarks to a fitful, muttering close, and the place became remarkably still. They made their beds and retired in silence. For three long hours the camp gave no sonorous evidence of sleep. There may have been one or two light cases under that cottonwood, but not a wink of it came to Ben. He saw his buckskin pet in a bloody, lifeless heap at the foot of the cliff, — he heard again the brainless tirade to which they had listened, and he shifted himself in sorrow and anger on his pillow. "Don't worry about the pony, son," whispered his father, soothingly ; "we will get along all right. You may have Flossy." Young Rojer whispered his hearty thanks for the pacing mare, and then added, "I sure hate to lose Stripes, but I hate worse still to be around Josh." With the outfit ready to start next morning, Bowse was loosed from the tree. Instead of following, however, he bounded away over the sand-hills, and in ten seconds, a long, mournful howl pierced the silence of Castle Gulch. Ben found him on his haunches by the mangled mustang's head, his nose straight up, and giving vent to his affliction in the drawn-out, mournful wail

62 IMPROVEMENT ERA of a lost dog. That wail found ready response in the boyish heart of young "Rojer, and while he stooped to tie a rope around the shaggy neck, his glance fell on the sunken, sightless eyes of the pony, and tears chased each other down his nose. He led Bowse up out of the wash, nor ventured to remove the rope till they had passed Castle Hill. The old dog trotted dejectedly along without a protest, though sometimes he tried to look back, and Ben stopped to afford him that privilege. Josh rode ahead, or behind, or off to one side, after the manner of his bilious habit, and for a week he sulked and growled as if all the vile sediment at the bottom of his disposition had been terribly roiled. When he spoke, it was with an injured or an abusive air, though he told Pancho a great deal which he wished the outfit to hear and they heard it. He hated the dog, and naturally enough his hate begat hate, though he seemed to think it should beget love. But gradually he condescended to ride within speaking distance again, and when the round-up was half finished, he had thawed out enough to sing about the meat and corn-dodgers, and to "blow" about his deeds of daring with rope and gun. He also resumed his old habit of making an indiscriminate roast of individuals not present to defend themselves. With the first opportunity, after making camp at Pagahrit, Ben repaired to his cave ; he looked at the date on the wall, made a notch below it, and pondered over all that had happened since the previous spring. He thought of Stripes and Soorowits and Josh, — of Peavine Flats and the pine-hens and squirrels. Bowse thought, too, while his devoted dog-eyes searched his master's face ; and he cocked one ear in that peculiarly reflective mood, characteristic of something half human in the dog family. A strange, sweet peace seemed to inhabit this dry cavern, and a strange sanctity hovered over the stones where Ben had prayed, as if they were altars in a house of worship. Also it was secluded and still, and at times the soft murmur of the wind half framed itself into words ; those words spoke of comfort, and cheer, and hope, of a fanciful world too blissful to be a reality. They pleaded the cause of Josh Widder, they exalted Ben's father on high, and sanctified the hunger and thirst and misery of this weary land. When the heat dances, spirit-like, on the sandhills of Pagahrit, a man with even small imagination might think himself looking at a legion of spectral beings peculiar to the bald rock-knolls and thirsty stretches of that wilderness. Then when those heatlegions conpsire with a rock, or tree, or bush, to represent a man, and that man moves back and forth and up and down — when he peeps, again and again, from behind some ledge, the deception is almost complete. To young Rojer's mind of fear and fancy, these spectral men sometimes became wonderfully real — so real, in fact, that Sooro-

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 63 wits' black braids of hair hung from under their slouch Pahute hats, and they wore the same greasy remnants of shirt and overalls which had figured so conspicuously at Toorah's funeral cave. But while the slip of a boy, on Flossy, was seeing Soorowits in every maze of heat that made the trees and rocks to rise up and shake themselves, Fred Rojer read the traces of alarm in the youthful countenance, and knew what a rousing jolt the childish nerves had suffered. He saw the distressing lines of dread in the little brown face, he saw the sore and sunburnt lips, he saw the marks of thirst and fatigue in the pinched features, and resolved that Ben should not be left alone. When blistered hills of sand and rock hemmed these two about, in a hot, dry solitude by themselves — when they followed the zig-zag course of tracks indefinitely old, when they pursued a fleeing bunch, full tilt, across the country, or toiled wearily along behind the sleepy herd, the chief care of the bearded man was the safety and welfare of the slender boy. Ben saw this kind solicitude in his father's eye, he heard it in his father's voice, and in his homesick and fear-burdened soul, a warm love sprang up and hallowed the loneliness of the rock-ribbed waste. To the great arms of his compassionate attention, Fred Rojer took the apprehensive boy ; he spoke the tender emotions of endearment which form the strongest tie between soul and soul. The flame-like ardor of his fatherly love, was not left a flickering prey to the hardships of their poverty, but he told it to Ben ; and in telling it he gave it all the warmth of feeling its goodness inspired. To the sore-lipped, sun-burnt being of young Rojer, these words and feelings became a clear spring in a dry wilderness. The assurance that his growth and achievement of vigorous manhood ranked high among the objects of all this toil and torment, inspired him with energy and courage, not only to a life more manly, in general, but to a special effort to lighten his father's dull burden of debts and poverty. Besides the gracious agency of Fred Rojer's speech, he seemed unconsciously to live in the spirit of a certain hymn, whose tune and words flowed over his lips, as from the abundance of that sentiment within. And all unconsciously, too, Ben heard it, and drank copiously of its influence — and unconsciously he sang it, or as much as he could remember : "Earth with her ten thousand flowers, Air, with all its beams and showers, Heaven's infinite expanse, Sea's resplendent countenance: All around and all above, Bear this record, God is love." "Don't feel hard towards Josh," the father would say, when

64 IMPROVEMENT ERA their conversation drifted in that direction. "When you are older you'll see why I don't get angry and quarrel with him. Men blame me for being so mild, but I want you to be wiser than they, and see why he's more an object of pity than of hatred." It is impracticable to portray every phase of cowboy life at Pagahrit ; and to relate the whole story of Ben's adventures, in that land, would take as long as it took him to live them. We may glance at a few incidents relating to this story, but the haste and hurry, the excitement and perspiration, the toil, the thirst, the long-drawn days, and extended nights, may never be known but to those who pass through them for themselves. That round-up, like others of its kind, came slowly and laboriously to a finish, with the forest of the Cedar Ridge, and the alkali flats of Comb Wash, along in the ragged and bitter end thereof. On this round-up, as on many another, Jud was "up an' a-comin'," to the last day. He waded straight into every ugly situation, never losing the wide-mouthed smile, nor that heavyjaw-bone persistency which always made a point or "busted" something. He had a way of doing things to a liberal finish in the minimum of time, and then straightening himself over them in an attitude of "trot-out-the-next." Whether riding a ripsnorting broncho, or stirring pulverized "jerky" into the "slickum" for breakfast, it was ever the same : he mixed in the "tuck" (took) and "put," and "sich," of his rough-and-ready grammar, and the waving fringe of his buckskin shirt left no doubt that he was "there with the goods." That buckskin shirt, and those heavy denims overalls formed an up-and-at-it combination which went at a brisk clip to the last panting finality of every hard task they found to do. Whether he swung the ax with an echoing whack in a cottonwood grove, or struggled with some lusty calf in the dust and manure of a branding corral ; whether he "looped the loop" on one of his cantankerous bays or buckskins, or hung to a bull's tail to keep from being gored, he was still the same good-natured, commonsensed, heavy-jaw-boned Jud Hiles, who had the mildness to make friends, and the firmness and fidelity to keep them forever. (to be continued)