Voice of the Intangible: Chapter XI, Three Days’ Rain

EDWIN NATURAL BRIDGE Span, 174 ieet: hei-rht, 104 feet Chapter XI — Three Days' Rain The starvation trip, as it came to be called, had been four weeks a thing of the past, when Ben and his father went to the Elk Mountain to ride with the J B pool, where they hoped to gather most of the steers lost in the head of Cane Gulch. The pool had been riding there more than a week when they arrived, and Foreman Dick put Ben on day-herd, and, incidentally, on night-herd, for the bunch was big and every man had to take his turn in the still hours of the night, at diverting their attention from a stampede. Young Rojer took Flossy for night-horse, or more properly speaking, night-mare, though a pleasant one ; but Alec fell heir to the easy work of the day-herd, where plenty of leisure time was spent in searching again the kind coltish eyes, and enlarging the old friendship begun at Peavine. When the J B horsewrangler brought the band thundering down the hill to camp every morning, and each J B cow-puncher snatched his lariat preparatory' to roping some reluctant creature for the day's ride, "Hold on a minute," Ben would say, "let me get a horse out of there," and when he had put his arms caressingly around the bay neck and led Alec over the bars, he would add, "Now lasso your wolverines." The day-herders usually came To camp at dark, and, there being no cook at that time, the preparation of supper devolved on the most willing among a lot of tired men. On the evening of Ben's first day with the herd, the whole force, herders and riders together, rode in at late dusk, tired out and hungry as wolves. From the last meal there remained only, a few beans in the bottom of a stew-pan ; no bread nor beef nor any cooked morsel with which to stay their gnawing hunger till supper should be prepared. But if Josh Widder had not kept

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 783 careful account of those beans being left, then he knew by instinct they were there, for without waiting to unsaddle old Pancho, nc dropped the reins, and seizing a spoon, plunged into that bean-pot with a greed that would put a starving boar to the blush. It was an action fittingly natural to his iron-clad gall — a trick which had often won him a supper the advantage in the land of Pagahrit. When some of the public spirits kindled a fire, the fat man drew near with his pot and his spoon, intending by the fire-light to locate and gobble the remaining quart in time to unsaddle and send Pancho away with the horses. When the light fell into the stew-pan, Widder took one look, put on the lid, and staggered spasmodically away into the night. The boys by the fire had seen it all : the stew-pan lid must have been tilted all day, for the big blow-flies of the mountain CATCHING THE HORSES had made that bean-pot the scene of a mighty convention; and their offspring, hatched and unhatched, hung in clusters and festoons over the defunct carcasses of multitudes of their ancestors. Just how much of this unhol/ mixture Widder took into his stomach is a matter of. wild conjecture ; but while the J B outfit fell over backward and laughed till it cried, the fat man could be heard in the convulsive process of doing with the beans what the big fish did with Jonah. Montana and another fellow had charge of the day-herd. Old Charley Spy had been hired to help them, and he did help them most of the time ; but Spy never cared to get very far from the thick timber. He loitered always near it like an old mossback steer You might see him looming up, a ghastly apparition among the oak-brush, and the next minute you might not be able

784 IMPROVEMENT ERA to find so much as his track. The forest was to him what water is to a frog: if anything happened, or any new man came in sight, Spy plunged over the hank and disappeared. "The okman died fo'teen yea's ago," declared Montana, soberly, "an' it's nothin' hut 'is ghost a hauntin' that ole haws." They said they found Spy lurking ahove the brakes, and since they hired him for the day-herd, he had been induced to go to camp only twice in ten days. What he ate or where he slept no one knew. He came out of the woods in the morning, and plunged back into them at night. No one followed nor sniffed his tracks, for he carried a veritable cannon of a Winchester under his leg, and a wicked old Colt's .45 on his hip. He rode a sorrowful old sorrel, hip-shot and limpy, but no one ventured to test the old sorrel's speed or endurance, or play any manner of joke, practical, or impractical. Montana smiled his approval of the arrangement, when young Rojer joined the day-herd — in fact it is not unlikely that the Southerner had asked for this same arrangement. He left the other fellow and old Spy to guard an end and side of the herd, and monopolizing Ben's company, took up a position on the opposite side and proceeded to renew old acquaintance and tell about certain conditions in cam]). "Ye see, kid," for kid seemed to be with him an endearing term, "it's all on account a that friend a yourn," meaning Josh Widder. "lie didn't have no call to interfere with me — he ain't the kind of a man I'd look at no way ; but it seems that some of the fellers saw muh picture on a post-office door in Durango, an' he can't git over laughin' about it ever' time we're all in camp. He sorto intimates he'll take me in an' git the reward, soon as the round-up's over. He talks lots where they kin hear 'im, an' 'e says things that 'e ought not to say. I told 'im just last evenin' that 'e better not say no more, but 'e acted like a fool an' said Vd talk all 'e pleased in this free country. But I tell ye, kid, 'e better not say no more." Ben understood in a minute how Widder in his overbearing, thick-nosed way, had thought to win the notoriety of driving a desperate man out of the country ; and how, in his stupidity, he was propagating elements of war more dangerous to his own destardly self than he imagined. Montana was not the man to be crowded ; any sensible person would know that. "Ye see I've come away out yere," continued the Southerner, "away f'm all muh friends an' all muh enemies, an' wanted to begin life over again, an' do tilings on the square. I don't want to hurt nobody no more. It's 'cause I'm sorto cast down like that I've endured yer friend as long as I have. He thinks I'm scart, that I dasn't do anything, an' c's goin' to make game of me fer the crowd."

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 785 Montana stroked the muscular neck of old Dent, and looked more forlorn than Ben had ever seen him look in the day-time. "I tell ye, kid, it's bad enough to have to hide around yere like a wolf, without bein' deviled by that ," he said, and talked on without reserve for a long time, apparently relieved by unburdening his heart, though to no other than callow little Ben Rojer. No one else had heard it. Ben's guileless, open-mouthed attention had called forth thoughts reserved from every man in San Juan county. Of course it was all in strict confidence — they both understood that without saying so. As the day drew to a close young Rojer became feverishly eager to see Josh Widder. Not that he loved that gentleman more than usual, but as he traced the lines of sadness and desperation in the Southerner's face, he believed it his duty to turn a tide which might have a deadly ending. He felt under his own finger the trigger of a situation understood by no one so well as himself. When the fellows came to camp that evening, Josh came not with them ; he had gone with Foreman Dick and Ben's father to camp in Hell's Half-Acre, and the three would be back next day. At least that is what young Rojer understood them to say, and he rested easy. The mere mention that Widder would be awav recalled the case of the beans, and all hands exploded as if it had just happened, but the Southerner said nothing. "Do you remember when he swiped all our soap and sugar?" asked one. "Well, I should smile," answered another. "But that ain't as bad as he done with Al Holt's winter-cache of honey. When he found it, accidental, he just stopped an' et all 'e could, an' poured the rest out an' stomped the can." "I was with him onct," put in a third, "carryin' salt from North Elk, an' 'e borrowed a Mexican's panniers, an' promised to send 'em back next day ; but when 'e got done with 'em, 'e threw 'em down the hill an' said, T wonder if that - - greaser really thought I was fool enough to send 'em back'." Then from another quarter : "But 'e sure got crool when e drew down on ole Dick," and a big laugh went over the camp. Even Montana put off his reserve and joined in with the heartiness of a school-boy. . ,...,, Someone explained for young Rojer s benefit that Widder drew his six-shooter on the foreman, who opened his pocket-knife and drove the thick-nose, gun and all, out of camp. _ When that T P> outfit had roasted the fat man to a crisp brown on onside they turned him over and continued the roast, but the Southerner' remained quiet. These souls so free to talk behind a man's back might be the first to fawn upon him and turn state s

MHHft t REACHING CAMP. WORN OUT, IX THE EVEXIXG evidence when he should again appear. With all their loud talk, Montana knew they might use his own words to make a bad matter worse, so he merely listened. When the herd strung out of the corral next morning, a black bank of clouds rested on the distant buttes of Mossback Mesa, and a damp, cool breeze whispered uneasily among the quakingasps. Before noon two wood-pigeons shot furiously by and sank into the rugged depths of Hammond canyon, just as a hollow explosion in the dark cover above sent the cold drops slanting to earth. The patter of those drops on the earth became lost in the roar of drops that followed. All afternoon the oak leaves dripped, and the trails became pools and mud. By night every ravine howled with its torrent, the sky hung black and the tall pines stood deathly still, but the men from Hell's HalfAcre did not appear. Montana induced old Spy to go with the outfit to the cabin, and take his turn riding around the corral, for a round-up of steers are never more likely to stampede, than when the night is dark and wet. and crashes of thunder break into the silence. The cabin, never famous for its comfort in dry weather, was an ideal den of discomfort when the rain dripped through the old mud roof, and the smoke from the fire in the rude fire-place went "every way but up the chimney. On this first night of the storm, Ben came muddy and bedraggled to his supper, and besides the dread of his miserable hour in the rain and the dark, and besides his rain-soaked bed and general discomfort, he felt a strange anxietv for the three men not yet returned from the lower countty. Then his eves rested on the wild man from the forest, old Spy. Soy, to quote his own words, "chawed tubacker." His teeth were few and scattering, and when his jaws closed on that pre-

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 787 cious tubacker," an extra fold of lips fell sometimes in and sometimes out while he "chawed," but they turned out proboscis-like, when an accumulation of juice was ready to spout into the fire. His white whiskers hung wavy and thin on each side, and under his wrinkly skin, the lean muscles revealed the shape of the hinge and socket of his jaw. His laugh was a weather-beaten cackle, which the boys took occasion to provoke by way of diversion ; and his blood-shot, storm-battered eyes, pulled sorrowfully down 'with the "chawing," were suggestive of twin kidney-sores on a cayuse. Once he referred to Kentucky and the turf, but seeming quickly to regret it, changed the subject abruptly. Still he delighted to talk of horses, though it were no other than the sorrel skeleton that bore him on day-herd, and in and out of the wood. AT ONE END OF THE HERD Ben had heard the boys say that the old man never washed, nor removed an article of clothing after having once put it on, and while he watched in the flickering light of that fire, and took stock of the villainous raiment, discolored by various time-worn stratas of gravy and dust, he decided that the J B outfit had been too respectful of age to tell the whole truth. Outside of the cabin the rain kept up a continual purr, and inside, the drip, drip, spatter, spatter, would have been sufficiently demoralizing, without old Charley's cadaverous face looming up in the dim light, to cast distorted shadows on the log wall, and lay the foundation of bad dreams. The night-horses stood patiently and long-sufferingly under a tree to which they had been fastened five steps from the door, and the corral full of rolicky steers was three rods in the darkness beyond them. Ben's was the last guard. It began at three o'clock, and the

788 IMPROVEMENT ERA rain still fell with monotonous regularity. No glimmer of light shone From any quarter and, the position of the horses having been changed by the former guards, young Rojer soon discovered he had mounted the wrong horse. Bui he dared not change at that particular moment, for some influence, deep and dangerous, seemed to hover over the division of blackness which he knew to be the corral of dripping, miserable steers. Not a noise — it was not sound that arrested his attention, but silence thicker than the night itself, into which his water-soaked song would not penetrate. Suddenly, as from a cannon on the hill-side, came a deafening crash of thunder and a brilliant Hash of light. The massive pines stood plain as day, the wet quakingasps glittered over the pools of water in the trail ; and while the light of that flash yet lingered on the earth. Ben saw one side of the corral disappear beneath a raging sea of fat steers. The thunder and the stampede were simultaneous. With one stiff yell to let the outfit know he was in pursuit, he put spurs to whatever horse he had mounted, and flew on after the pounding hoofs and jostling horns. While the herd stayed together young Rojer stayed with it, through forests and over rocks, in brush and mud and the wreckage of all they could mash. To bring them back would be like rounding up chaos and driving it through space to some invisible solar system, but he knew that a shirt-tail brigade would follow quick in the wake of this mighty roar, and when the roar died down he would guide the searching party by his own voice. Just how many of those steers got away, and where they went, nobody knows. In the gray and drizzling dawn, the half-dressed, soaked and spattered J B outfit drove up to the ruined corral with most of the steers that took part in the stampede. When Ren began to look for Flossy, behold she carried the cackling old Soy, who, as he felt her animating gait, grinned and laughed, as tickled as a puppy just able to walk. That mare was worth two of his sorrowful sorrel, with the cannon-Winchester and Colt's .45 thrown in ; and as he climbed down and gave Ren the reins, he cackled to his old dried-up self in such a menacing, treacherous way, that young Rojer turned to nail the threat on the old man's lips. Rut old Charley looked innocent enough — ■ his face was calm, with old tobacco juice on his countenance in general, and every feature in particular. Tt rained all day. Late in the afternoon Ren saw Josh coming alone through the trees, and was alarmed to hear that the latter knew nothing of Fred Rojer and the foreman ; that he had been to the Wooden-shoes, and not to Hell's Half Acre at all. Then recollecting himself. Ben determined to suggest a change in what seemed a dangerous situation. There was nothing pleasant in the task, for he knew Montana exoected him to be quiet, and he feared the thick-nose would laugh him to scorn besides making

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 789 trouble later on. But the Southerner leaned on his saddle-horn a quarter of a mile away, and Ben resolved to speak. "I wouldn't like you to say that I mentioned it," he began, "but you better not tease Mont any more." A sneer came from under the black mustache. "Huh! He's been blowing to you, has 'e ? Well, you watch an' see what I do with him," and turning old Pancho away through the mud, Widder cut the conference short. With a peculiar sense of discomfort, young Rojer watched the slickered horseman disappear towards camp. He didn't exactly regret having spoken, but he felt that his effort had stirred no relish of appreciation, and it might hasten the trouble and draw him into it. The rain continued to fall. The night closed in black and wet, but Fred Rojer and Foreman Dick failed to come forth out of the gloom, and a growing weight of dread and apprehension settled itself on Ben's mind. When the first guard rode out to the corral, and the boys gathered around the smoky fire in the cabin, some mysterious element of trouble began to pervade the atmosphere : everything hung at a lull — everything but the drip, drip, from the mud roof, and that grew loud in defiance. Young Rojer, thinking only of the two missing men, went to the door and held his ear to the storm. No definite sound from without disturbed the steady roar Then Widder's menacing voice broke the spell. A slight change of position among the men followed, and Montana straightened himself in a cool, easy way, a wealth of steady nerve looking out through his gray eyes — but Josh didn't see it. Both men carried their six-shooters, as usual, and Josh carried, besides, hi? full array of braggadocio and insolence. All eyes sparkled with interest, ten per cent of which was to see fair play, and all the rest to see a rousing racket, the ragged edge of which had already merged on the scene. "So you've been making yer brags to that kid," sneered Widder. "Why, Ben, what've ye been saying'?" asked the Southerner, in surprise. 'T simply suggested that he better be quiet, explained the boy, meekly. "But I don't act on the suggestion of babies, blustered the thick-nose. "When a full-grown man goes sniveling around to the kids — " 1111 \t that moment Montana landed a heavy back-hander 11, Widder's left eye, and sent him staggering to the wall. The tall blonde followed close up without offering to strike again, and the T B outfit held its breath. A burning question debated itself 11, the fat man's mind. He had been humiliated before the whole

790 IMPROVEMENT ERA force. I [e would be the laughing stock for years if he let it pass, but be feared he could not use his six-shooter quick enough. The decision, characteristic of the mind that made it, was a foolish one, and the big revolver came lumbering out with about the same skill that an old maid would use in handling a boot-jack. Montana had made his kill long ago, and found it bad business indeed. With a gun he had the speed and facility of a beligerent tom-cat, yet he left his own shooting-iron in the scabbard, and followed Josh to the wall with the ease and care of a man who knows his business well. When the lumbering weapon came out, he whisked it in a flash from the hand that held it, and brought it clown with a crashing thud on the nasal zone of Widder's countenance, leaving a level open way from cheek to cheek. Josh bellowed like a bull-calf, and went mushing to the floor with all the limpness and abandon of a wet shirt blown from a clothes line. The J B outfit didn't say "Good!" but a serves-you right sentiment filled the cabin, and two of the boys looked their eagerness *o shake the Southerner's hand and congratulate him, if only they ;.ared to do it. As to him, he pushed the lumbering gun in the ^and of his trousers, and took a seat in silence. The Josh Widder who turned deathly sick, and lay white and •rtill on the muddy floor, was hardly the man to drown an innocent clog, or steal long-eared calves from his best friend. Ben thought of that, and when he saw that no one in the cabin had a trace of sympathy for the prostrate man, he took an empty salt sack and a can of water, and after washing the clotted blood from around the demolished nose, he got two of the boys to help move their corpulent fellow-laborer on to a quilt and a pillow. When Josh revived a little, he looked up at Ben with much the expression of a cow just pulled out of the mud, and though he said nothing, young Rojer fancied he saw shades of gratitude and shame chase each other across the crippled features. It may have been all fancy, but while the boy looked down through the flickering fire-light at the face he had hated, he sincerely hoped he had guessed aright about the emotion behind that ghastly wound. When Widder had recovered sufficiently from the shock to breathe through his mouth with comparative ease, Ben went out in the rain. He looked at the black void above, and listened to the dull, unvaried sound all around. "Oh! where are they?" he whispered to himself. The question brought a sickening sense of apprehension. The fellows in the cabin explained it to their satisfaction by saying the two missing men. were "hung up" by a flood. That seemed very likely, but somehow it failed to pacify young Rojer. He was alarmed ; he felt in his very bones that something had gone wrong ; and after praying under a quaking-asp tree, a firm conviction settled upon him

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 791 that he must go to Hell's Half Acre as soon as he could see the way. The J B fellows laughed when they heard his intention. Josh, of course, didn't laugh — he held his pale face perfectly straight. "No difference," affirmed the boy, "I'm going. I'll stand my guard tonight, but you must put someone in my place in the morning." Young Rojer slept never a wink during that long, dismal night, and rejoiced to hear it when the time of his watch arrived. At daylight the rain fell even heavier, and as Ben filled his saddle-pockets with biscuits and rode away, he saw Widder mount old Pancho and start for town, where, as subsequent events proved, he declared he had run into a limb on the night of the stampede. The country was soaked ; the ground, mud. Every dead tree had water at its very heart, and every trail presented a slippery footing even for a shod horse. And still it rained — rained as if it were angry that it couldn't rain harder. The boy guided old Flossie through the gloom of early morning, straight for Bear'sears Pass, from which summit he half slid down the hill to the south, and wended his way among the wet oak brush to the head of Joshua's Trail. The Cedar Ridge stood out black and dreary under the mists of the storm, as if each individual tree were being drowned, and Hell's HalfAcre presented only a motionless stretch of watersoaked sage-brush. "No difference — I've made no mistake," said the rider who urged Flossy down the steep, stony, greasy trail. "They're down there somewhere, and I'll find 'em." THE THICK TIMBER BEYOND THE HERD

792 [MPRI >\T VIENT ER \ But when he reached the fool of the mountain, he left the water-soaked Half-acre to the right, and wound off anionthe dripping cedars and soft clay hanks towards Cane Gulch. Up to the present he had Followed an impression more or less vague; now a definite idea began to take its plan'. From the first brakes of the gulch, the crashing roar of water raised above the stead- noise of the storm, and Ben had thoughts which caused a shudder, but he held Flossy to the upper brow of the hill, and headed for a certain place far below. Hell's Half-Acre is simply an opening in the thick cedars, with a rude, tumble-down corral in its center, a place where cowpunchers often camp when they have business in the adjacent country. Foreman Dick and Fred Rojer camped there, but when the storm began they decided to take a living look at Long Flat, and return to cam]) without attempting any round-up. The first part of their plan carried all right, and they started back up Cane Gulch in time to have joined the outfit in the afternoon, but in the narrows they met a flood, which gave them barely time to climb a little side-hill before it swept by with its boulders and drift, making on the lower side of the two men. a barrier as impassable as the smooth cliff on the upper side. Where the torrent turned out from the cliff at the up-stream point of the hill, and where it boiled against the smooth wall below, there was no ghost of a show to pass without being hurled into the foaming caves and water-holes. At first they felt no alarm. A flood in San Juan county is the next thing after a dry spell, but it seldom lasts many hours at a time. They had room to dismount and seat themselves on a stone in the rain, and drawing their slickers around them, they waited hopefully for the water to subside. But the water did not subside. That miserable day gave place to a wretched night, through the long wet hours of which they stood chilled and aching, and held to their bridle reins and the pack-horse's rope, to keep the three weary beasts from blundering off into the angry stream. Morning revealed the restless water-line startlingly nearer than it had been the night before, yet the two prisoners assured themselves it could not possibly climb much higher — the clouds would surely break before noon. But all that day the muddy surface crept up. and up, and up; and in the darkness that followed, they felt it taking their footing inch by inch. The horses, standing in the edge of the stream, in the darkness and rain, grew frantic and almost beyond control, from knocks and thrusts of the more and more savage pieces of drift which shot by. Morning again found the two men against the smooth cliff, ankle-deep in a current which was cutting their little hill from under their feet at a desperate rate. Weak with hunger and thirst.

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 793 and fatigue, and chilled and aching and numb with the cold rain, they hoped as against fate, like the two brave men everyone knew them to be. Besides whittling away their footing, the stream began to rise now faster than before, for the rain fell heavier, and the earth, soaked full, shed the storm like a shingle roof. "Matters are coming to focus," declared the foreman. "That's so," answered the other ; "about an hour at the present rate will settle it." "What's that?" they asked, together; for being accustomed to the roar of the flood, they detected all the more readily any sound foreign to that roar. Hearing it strong and clear again, they looked up and saw the head and shoulders of Ben Rojer, peering down over the cliff-brow above them. If joy were not the very best stimulant of all medicines bearing that name, it is doubtful whether Ben's trip could have saved the two men, even after he found them. For, weak with hunger, DEAR S KAi.S PASS and numb with damp and cold, they had scarcely power to take their part of the saving performance. When the lusty yells of joy changed to ,shouted questions and answers (for Ben could hardly distinguish their words above the flood), the boy felt like a giant, and the men below experienced a new birth of strength and hope. Then young Rojer dropped the end of his water-soaked lariat down the smooth wall, and after pulling up the two saddles and the pack, in mild installments, he lengthened out his rope with theirs, carried the end of it back to the first good footing, cinched the saddle tight on the pacing mare, and when all was ready, mounted, wrapped the rope around the saddle-horn and hoisted Foreman Dick up and out of impending doom. In two minutes he lifted his father in the same way. though with another rope, since the first was cut and stranded by dragging it over the rock.

794 IMPROVEMENT ERA When Ben had grasped the rough hand of the foreman, and heard husky words of thanks and praise, he met his father's embrace with tears of love and joy unknown to all their confidence of the past. They kindled a fire with cedar-bark from a rat's nest in a cave, and while the men warmed their chilled limbs, Ben went again to the cliff and looked down at the three horses, huddled in the edge of the violent stream. Then he began to consider the dizzy wall with its terrible torrent below, and his nerve, till now blind to danger, caused him to shudder and withdraw from the edge. The saddle-pockets of biscuits dove-tailed happily into the situation, and though the rain descended unabatingly, the world looked brighter than ever before, for the great passion of love between father and son had more nearly expressed its sacred feelings than on any previous occasion. "I'm proud of you, son," affirmed Fred Rojer, when the story of Ben's coming had been told, but the boy left his answer to communion of soul with soul, for he knew no word sufficient to declare his pleasure with such a union, and such a father. By noon the three horses were swept from their footing. One of them crawled out more dead than alive on a bank below, but not so much as the bones of the other two ever came to light again. They may have found rest in the Gulf of California, and they may have been buried in the heaps of drift, or ground to pieces by the wrath of the water. With Flossy and the one survivor of the three to carry the pack and the saddles to camp, the two men and the boy led the horses, and traveled a-foot up Joshua's Trail and back along the course young Rojer had followed in the morning. Late that evening, when the storm had cleared away, the J B outfit thrust its head out of the cabin door in wide-mouthed astonishment ; and after listening ten minutes it took back the laugh it had inflicted on Ben twenty-four hours earlier. In the fair days which followed, the round-up came to a wellrounded finish, containing a goodly number of the herd that had been lost in the head of Cane Gulch the previous spring. With at least the thick nasal region of his head put again in good order, Josh Widder came back to the round-up before its close, but he carried no gun — Montana carried it for him. (to be continued)