Voice of the Intangible: Communion with the Intangible

The Colorado River, H'estei Eoundaty^ San Juan Co.

Chapter XIII — Communion with the Intangible.

The fall round-up was a new departure in several ways : Widder was gone, mavericks, blue mule, Pancho and all ; and Juan Rido, a Roman-nosed, black-eyed young Mexican, took the part of fourth man. Ben, instead of being the timid, sore-lipped, snip of a boy, who got lost and whipped old Buck for his churn- headed stupidity, was seventeen years old, and no one in the out- fit rode better horses, or had a better saddle, rope, or bridle than he.

The music of the hills had toned his nerve to a glad ad- venturous bearing, amounting almost to chivalry. He thought it not vain pride to take special interest in Alec and Flossy — to make sure their backs were sound, their feet well shod, and their flesh and tempers smoothed by grain and kind treatment. He saw no undue self-exaltation in his resolve to ride with first-class ac- coutrements, for with them he should ride in the hills — the wild, majestic, musical hills, where the whisperings of forest and cliff filled life with sweetness and romance. If, through respect to the old meetinghouse, he wore linen, then through respect to the hills he would be equipped as well as any who rode among them.

Every horse in the outfit had a shining coat over plump mus- cles, and, judging from the waving sand-grass on the hills, their flesh ought to hold up nicely to the end of the trip.

Juan had two horses of his own : a pinto, with dapper legs and a white eye, a genuine double-action, center-fire, smokeless type of mustang; and a long-bodied buckskin, with rubber lungs, and heart of hickory. They were not beauties, though in perfect blend with Juan's easy, greaser-like bearing in the saddle, a place he could fill while they carried him unweariedly to the ends of the earth.

All hands intended the round-up to be a clean sweep, espe- cially did they intend to nail every one of a certain half-dozen

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steers that had grown old and massive in their successful fight against any form of captivity. "We must make sure of that old brindle," said Fred Rojer, "the one that whipped us out last spring," and Jud and Ben looked at each other in mild rivalry,

for the former had a reputa- tion to maintain, and the latter had a bay, snip-nosed colt, w hich he wanted to prove the best horse in the outfit.

Among the six ferocious mossbacks, the brindle had no rival. He ranged always near Little Mountain, and that point hung as a coveted plumb above the two competitors for the championship of the Paga- hrit range. For various rea- sons, however, it was left for t!:e last day's ride, and that last day must follow a four- days' trip to North Gulch.

Since the sand-slide, down over which the trail to North Gulch loses itself in the jun- gle, is twelve miles from the entire, twisting, willow-grown Lngth of that box canyon, it is necessary to make camp about half-way between the head and the river. It requires always three nights and four days_ from the lake, a length of time altogether too long to leave a bunch of steers alone above an old-willow fence.

Someone had to stay and help the rickety old fence keep the uneasy steers from coming down out of Upper Lake Gulch the Pagahnt pasture Ben took account of the whole situation 'sev- eral days before the North Gulch trip, and felt no surprise when his father said, You had better guard the fence, son, while we go over yonder.

If they had known Juan's judgment and fidelity, it is likely he would have waited by the fence; but being a stranger at that toe, he rode away with the two men, leaving Ben alone in a great sohtude with not even old Bowse to cock up an ear at his words, or meet his glance with devoted doer-eyes

To be sure, Alec and Flossy were hobbled on the wire-rass

"// here whisperings of forest and cliff fill life with sweet- ness and romance."

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below camp, and they never had so much petting and so many- kind words before. Sometimes young Rojer studied their won- derful eyes a whole hour at a stretch. He decided the mare's crisp look said something rather sarcastic about such a lavishing of at- tention, but the loving horse-soul of the bay colt looked out through those windows of his brain as much as to say, "I like it — I wish I could speak — I am yours truly."

Then there was the mocking-bird in the grove above camp : he could talk for sure, that is, in his own language ; and he had a responsive little soul, for besides all the sweet things he said of his own accord, he repeated Ben's whistled song as if to declare by the emphatic wagging and trembling of his whole musical little soul, "Them's my sentiments tue."

In the evening, when the herd came bawling down the gulch and collected above the fence, their varied faces became the ab- sorbing study of the solitary watcher. It was a practice he formed in the lonely hours of day-herd, when he longed with all the emo- tion of his lonesome soul to see a human face ; and looking and longing he seized, at length, upon the spark of intelligence gleam- ing in those horned faces. In this, his world of fancy, the heaven he had made of an otherwise desolate hell, the herd became a motley throng of human creatures — the rude and gentle, the wise and the foolish, the bold and the timorous. So now, sitting alone on the black-willow fence, he read the distinct nature in the shape of each face, before making a quick jump to the ground and stam- peding them back up the gulch.

Besides the living, tangible things that moved, and broke the silence in that far-away place — besides the bittern that cried at midnight, and the coots that called from the dark surface of the lake — besides the coyotes that howled, the calves that bawled, and the doleful owls that hooted from the trees— a great intangible Something spoke in loud silence by day and by night. Its voice was louder still to ears that could hear no human word— ears that listened intently for any intelligent sound.

In the heated noon-day and the still midnight, it spoke through the whole diapason of earth and sky. While Ben hunted faces in the evening fire, or knelt reverently still in his cave, he in- wardly heard and felt the response which he had no words to ex- press. In the dark, stilly hours, when he awoke in his bed and looked at the deep shades of cliffs and trees around, and the bright stars above— he heard it still, and sank peacefully back to sleep by its lullaby ; for this great Something could calm or excite, speak love or fire, as the occasion demanded.

This great Intangible had other tongues than those in the bottom of the gulch— voices that led young Rojer away over the hot rocks and among the weeds of the hills. He listened there

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For tin- wild-bird perched on the solitary bush; he looked for the green and yellow lizard to scamper over the sand.

The high, bald knoll of solid rock had an especial charm, for on it he seated himself to look at the spirit legions of heat that danced on the distant hills ; or to watch the desert haze in the dis- tance, or the murky mountains far beyond it. He climbed here, too, to sing a song, whose words and tune had sprung from the emotion of his own boyish heart, while he looked from the tops of rocks like these in various parts of the Pagahrit region.

Little he eared, if really he knew, that his song was not clas- sical; his supreme judges of excellence in all things were his father, the Intangible and himself. The first judge had never heard the song, the other two liked it immensely, and for their pleasure he mounted the rock, and sang it with all the freedom their approval inspired:

"In the hazy distance, hidden from view, A voice is calling, 'I'm waiting for you, — Watching and waiting and hoping with fear, Listening in silence your voice to hear; E'en far beyond the lone shepherd I stay, Waiting in hope for you'."

Now, whether it were a girl, somewhere in those distant mountains of Utah, a girl who looked his way and cherished his own vague longings, he could not tell. It may have been a soul half visible among the heat-legions, or possibly a face or shape that took form in the dark haze of the horizon, or the clouds above it. He felt sure, however, that he liked to look at the en- chanted distance, and sing that home-made song ; for having been born, words and tune, of a strong but undefined emotion, it came more nearly expressing that emotion than anything he could say or sing. It was his best answer to one particular call that had reached his youthful mind.

Besides all these, Ben had other friends of solitude, each one bearing on its tongue a message of comfort from the great Intan- gible. When he turned from Alec and the mocking-bird and the rock-knoll, he found a grassy seat where the little waves chased each other with liquid rattle against the sodded shore. The blue surface, the ducks, the rushes, and the bank where the plovers ran or waded in the water, all these had a mighty charm, yet they failed to hold his eyes from these little waves, marching continually up and dissolving on the shore. Those waves kept time to the summer wind, they held young Rojer to the spot like a man in a trance.

"What do they say?" he asked.

Now to whom, in that isolation, did he direct his question, if not to the Intangible Something? He may not have intended It so ; but we have second selves who pursue our wonted course

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without our notice ; so did he. And further, who, if not this same Intangible, ransacked that spell-bound mind, found there an old song and dragged it half-way over Ben's tongue before it found connection with the dear little waves? At all events, when his question had drifted away on the summer wind, the notes of an old familiar song began to follow it :

"What are the wild waves saying, Sister, the whole day long?"

He sang it through to the end, and after a pause repeated to

himself :

"Oh, yes! it is something greater That speaks to the heart alone: The voice of the great Creator Dwells in that mighty tone." ■

He repeated it again while he sat on the bank, and still again as he went back to Alec and Flossy.

Of course, there were times when he simply sat still in the shade, a prey to the fancies and emotions that passed over him like a calm wind. Sometimes a sickening sense of loneliness be- gan to rise within him. That was the lingering little Ben Rojer who had not understood the great Intangible, and he was prompt- ly quieted by the tall, seventeen-year-old Ben Rojer, who com- muned with the hazy distance by day, and the stilly voices by night.

Once, as he sat against the trunk of a cottonwood, he felt sure his horses were gone — that they had left no track nor clue by which he might find them. This sentiment came so strongly to his mind that he went straight to where the old ponies nibbled and told them of his foolish fears.

On the afternoon of the fourth day, he found himself on a bald knoll, wishing the outfit would come in sight, but the hours wore on, and the sun sank low beyond the desert. Suddenly a strange spell came over him ; he seemed to hear that his father had gone far away, never to return to Pagahrit; that he was verily forsaken and alone ; that Soorowits would materialize in the dis- tant haze, and come straight towards him.

It lasted only a minute— a terrible minute, the dread and foreboding remained through the dusk and darkness that fol- lowed. Besides, they had plenty of time to come before sunset, and young Rojer thought of the terrible feeling, while helistened in the evening stillness and heard no sound. The Intangible said nothing ; it left him to ponder on its ominous message.

"Oh, pshaw!" mused Ben, "I may have misunderstood, ^in- terpreted the other whispering to say the horses were gone, and they're here yet. Maybe I've made another mistake." He hoped so, and he continued' to hope till late in the evening, when the

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sound of a herd drifted up from the lake, and then he forgot the whole affair.

Old Charley Spy came with the outfit. He had been the cause of their delay; for, finding- a solitary horse-track crossing the sand below Red Tank, they supposed some prospector had lost his way, and they followed the lone track to old Charley. The old man claimed to be on the way to Hall's Ferry, but he jumped at the offer of a square meal, and helped them drive to the lake.

He rode the same sorrowful sorrel, hip-shot and limpy, and carried the same dreadful artillery that had figured in the edge of the timber with the J-B day-herd. He "chawed tubacker" in the same flap-lipped, hose-nozzle fashion, and held his pipe be- tween two lonesome teeth while he talked. He ate a square meal, in fact he ate two of them, but he slept in his saddle-blankets somewhere down among the willows.

There was no alteration in his dirt, or his whiskers, or his rickety jaw-bone; but he had a crisp, sharp-nosed dog that took Ben's eve at once. "Naw!" he growled, when asked about the canine, "I won't sell Mike," and young Rojer looked at the artil- lery, and gave up all hopes of owning "the dog.

Chapter XIV— A Bundle Steer.

About the time old Spy disappeared among the rock-knolls and sand-hills, on his pretended way to Hall's Ferry, the four rid- ers of the Pagahrit outfit started for Little Mountain. Ben rode Alec, of course, and whispered in that shapely horse-ear as he mounted, "Come it, old coltie, we'll snare the wild ones today."

Starting a bunch of wild cattle, cattle such as the Rojer out- fit used to tend on the Pagahrit range, is always exciting busi- ness, and sometimes it is dangerous as well. For be it known these cattle saw their owners only two or three times a year, while they were often frightened to desperation by plundering In- dians and prospectors who liked fresh beef. In some parts of the range, having been hunted like wild game, they refused to be rounded up, and cornering them too closely was never a safe enter- prise. Little Mountain stood in one of those thief-infested sec- tions.

The Pagahrit range has many far-away nooks and corners where cattle may hide, and sometimes the calves born in those places reach th°ir growth before seeing a white man. Such ani- mals, after the first year, are mavericks, having neither marks nor brands, and, by the by, the private appropriation of these mav- ericks has been a demoralizing practice with many a man of the saddle.

But to return to Pagahrit. it was no uncommon thing there, for a calf to keep out of sight from the time the red iron sank

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into its hair, till the four-year-old wrinkle developed on its horns. Frequently the powerful steer had but one recollection of man and horse: the time when the man and horse caught him, tied his calf-feet solid, and tortured him with a hot iron and a hot knife. Such animals put all their wild ferocity into their hatred of horsemen, and they were dangerous fellows to meet.

The brindle steer "that whipped them out last spring" was one of this latter class. After failing in his furious effort to escape, he would make a doubly furious charge on all opposition. Woe to the man or horse he brought to bay when his wild blood was up, unless, indeed, it were a combination like Montana and old Deut.

Ben knew the situation ; he knew the danger ; the danger gave sweet flavor to the enterprise, and for that hazardous enter- prise he had a whetted appetite. He felt vigorous manhood bud- ding in his arm ; he felt a proud and generous confidence in the dashing bay he had trained from colthood.

The four horsemen rode on the sand. Their steel-shod hoofs would clatter too loudly on the rock. They also preferred the windward side of each valley or bench, for the cow family have a keen sense of smell.

When a furore comes up suddenly, it is often difficult to tell just how or when it began. When young Rojer found himself racing over the hills, he didn't care how it began ; he cared only to circle the startled bunch, and be ready to take his choice from among the refractory spirits that might bolt from it. "Brin" was not among them, but a white steer refused to be "milled" with the others, and bolting for the rocks, he had to pass within rope- range of young Rojer's arm. Old Whitey ran squarely into that loop, and Alec leaped to one side, and landed him with his four white feet in the air, and held him there, bellowing and kicking, till the wild bunch had time to calm their excitement.

When that snowy ox stumbled, winking and blinking among his less violent companions, and Juan stopped to watch them, Ben readjusted his saddle, and gave the bay colt a complimentary hug. "Ah, you're a dandy," he whispered, and ran his fingers around the ears to make sure the black mane hung free of tangles under the head-band.

But Ben Rojer had a dangerous touch of arrogance, the dis- tasteful symptoms of which, his father must surely have seen and lamented. Ben fancied himself and the bay colt, the most in- vincible, unfailing combination ever west of Clay Hill. He couldn't understand how Jud could help being a little bit jealous ; jealous or not, young Rojer and Alec must do all the dashing business from now on.

The Little-Mountain country is peppered with scrub-cedars, and under one of these, the gamey brindle steer lay peacefully chewing his cud, when the three horsemen came in sight. His

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stnrt brought him into immediate action. Jud and Ben rode hip and hip for fifty yards, and Alec came gradually out in the lead, just as his rider's rope began to swing clear of all tangles. The massive brute ploughed through the sand two jumps ahead, and the hay horse gained with every leap. A little more crowding and the horns would begin to turn ; then the loop could be placed with ease.

The fiery eyes took one straight look at Alec's snipped nose, before the rope whizzed through the air, and tightened around the base of those cork-screw horns.

The day of wrapping the rope around the saddle-horn, had passed. Ben, like all swift cow-punchers, simply tied it "hard and fast" beforehand, and let the consequence follow. So now. when Brin found himself glued to one end of the rope, behold Alec glued to the other end. It meant victory for one or the other or cut the rope, and young Rojer had always scorned the idea of disgracing himself and his horse by any such white-feather performance.

The steer took but a whiff of the rope's restraint, before reaching a fixed resolve to run to it instead of from it. Nothing alarmed by the symptoms of this resolution, Ben turned sharply to one side. He knew his horse could move quicker than any steer on the range, and over his shoulder he watched the dragging rope, and Brin's powerful feet coming determinedly towards him. Let those cloven hoofs once get mixed in the dragging fold of 1 iriat, and Alec would bolt ahead and flip them wrong side up.

Little did Ben think, as he kept so flippantly out of the way of those reaching horns, of the muse that had told him his horses were gone; little did he think himself unduly swelled with the "pride that goeth before a fall." No more did he think of those things, than of a yawning badger-hole concealed in the mountain- brush, straight ahead.

Oh that cursed badger-hole ! The bay colt's front feet went mashing into it. and the gallant horse-form sank ignominiously to the sand, rider and all. Ben landed on his hands and knees some distance ahead, and scrambled into a scrub-cedar ; but when Alec got his feet on the surface again, one cork-screw horn had made good its thrust through the hind cinch. The bay colt sprang out of reach again in a second, but oh what a sight! Ben turned his head with a sickening shudder.

Jud had been close upon them, and he roped Brin's hind feet while he stopped at the badger-hole, all in less time than it takes to tell it. When Jud jerked the brindle bulk to the ground with a heavy bump, Ben jumped on him with a hog-string, and tied his feet together.

Then they turned to the bay horse; yes, and they turned away.

•"Ah, that's too bad, too bad," said Fred Rojer, as he rode up.

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J ud could have felt no worse if the horse had been his own, but he looked at his little saddle-gun, and knew he had an im- portant part to take.

One course lay open before them, and they soon agreed upon it : the three horses should take turns carrying the saddle and blanktts towards camp, and Ben should walk. He could do noth- ing a-foot with the herd, and the walk being a long one, he should begin at once.

"Wait till I get over that hill," he half begged in a husky voice, and giving the kind, snipped nose a farewell caress, he made good time without looking back, and took a short cut through the roughest parts to camp.

While he trudged on and on, over those lonely rock-knolls and the little stretches of soft sand in between, a picture rose con- tinually before his eyes, — a picture which years have not effaced,

"In the center of the skull above the eyes, a peculiar round hole."

of the bleaching bones of a horse on a scorching hill-side, and in the center of the skull above the eyes, a peculiar round hole.

"Oh Alec!" he groaned to himself, and looked around — no human eye might see — no one would know it ; and throwing him- self on the sand, he sobbed with all the wounded love the bay colt's gallant horse-soul had inspired since the old days at Peavine. The tender heart of the lingering little Ben Rojer poured forth his t?ars on his wrist, for he too must soon sink into the past, and live along with the memory of the friends whose bones lay scat- tered,— while the tall Ben Rojer became a man and "put away childish things."

Ben reached camp late in the afternoon, about ten minutes before the day's drive came up from the lake in a cloud of dust.

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The brindle steer came with them, his head tied to his foot, and his left horn still smeared with Alec's blood.

The branding lasted till sun-set, and supper till dark. While the ( ther three stretched on their beds to rest and breathe the cool evening air, young Rojer went to his cave to report and muse in the darkness.

Silence reigned in the old retreat, but "silence speaks louder than words." It spoke to the sorrowing youth. For while he sat there on a stone with his face in his hands, the great Intangible Something, that reaches into all the dens and caverns of earth, put into his mind a thought, — a great manly thought which I cannot serve up on paper to you, any more than I can appease your hun- g r by tilling of the roast beef he ate for supper. But here is the conventional account of that thought, — the word-shadows it might possibly leave on another person's mind :

"It is the sterling experience of life; experience makes men; after all. the main thing is to become a man, not a thing."

Misfortunes seldom come alone, at least Ben thought so, next morning, when he went sorrowfully after the horses, and found that the pacing mare was not with them. She had disappeared as if from the very earth, leaving no track leading out from the lake, nor over the bank into the water. Whether she went in the night, or the day before, no one could tell. It was just the kind of a mystery to tangle, as you look at it, and grow more perplexing, as it refuses to solve.

"You see, son," suggested Fred Rojer, "we might get rid of Josh, but never rid of our man-making experience. You'll find out some time, that things like this, and others much more serious, are arranged especially for our development."

Something startled Ben, like a man is startled by remember- ing an important task neglected. "Things are arranged," he mus°d. "and I was told of this verv thing, and couldn't under- stand."

Then his recollection, like a boy's grimy thumb on the soiled leaves of an old history, turned to the vision on the rock-knoll and stopped short : "This means then, that Pa will go, too, and Soor- owits will come. 'Much more serious?' Oh heavens!"

The last recollection crowded the first out of mind. The first seemed no longer a loss ; but could he profit by the first, and avoid the second? He would have thrown his arms around his father's neck and cried, but that unseen barrier of fatherly dignity held him for the present away, and bade him refrain.

Ben had no faith whatever in finding the lost mare, and all hands failed to discover so much as her track, though they spent the whole day hunting.

(to be continued)