Voice of the Intangible, XXV

Voice of the Intangible BY ALBERT R. LYMAN Chapter XXV — To Nail a Purpose When Ben Rojer stalked down from his cave at Pagahrit, even before the echoes of his dream grew faint in his mind, he formed a resolution : he would sell out and leave Pagahrit. His outfit had scarcely merged into the snowy cedars of the Ridge on the journey homeward, before he framed a plan and a price, and decided on a possible buyer. It is not our purpose here to follow the ups and downs of the offers and counter-offers which resulted in an agreement between Ben Rojer, party of the first part, to sell ; and West & Co., parties of the second part, to buy. Suffice it to say that Ben had barely reached home from the reservation with his Snip horse, when he began arrangements for the final round-up. Those arrangements brought him on the first of May with Deut, and the others of his magnificent mount, and Mike at their heels, — and also with Juan and his two invincibles, to join West & Co., at Grand Flat, on their way for the Clay Hill trail. The glad voices of spring echoed among the cedars of the Ridge, flowers bloomed on every hand, and soft winds carried their perfume up among the green limbs of the forest. Fairies seemed to hide among the leaves and blossoms, and laugh in every streamlet trickling down over the rocks. It was in every way a second edition of that spring-season when little Ben Rojer rode his yellow pony, and feared the great wild something, so new and strange to his childish mind. "That was the beginning," mused the tall Ben Rojer, with a tinge of regret, "and this is the ending." But the term ending, sank uncomfortably among his thoughts, and he saw again a track in the sand — a moccasin track — a pony track, from which arose an odor of dread suspense. Neither West & Co. nor Juan Rido, knew anything of Young Rojer's emotions, as the two outfits jogged on together towards Cow Tank. Sometimes the conversation turned to Deut, or Pinto, or the cattle two days ahead, — and sometimes all hands were regaled by the swing of the "Chili con carne." Passing Dripping Spring, they camped at Steer Gulch, and hauled up the next evening under a cloudy sky at Green-water. Ever since leaving home, but more so since passing Grand Flat, Ben had felt a troublesome sense of something pending, —

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 519 something so big and forbidding that he saw nothing beyond it. He heard it in the sound and in the silence of the hills, and it seemed to come out plainly when he slept, only to baffle his recollection when he awakened. Whether it were good or bad, or merely the natural awakening of his old anxiety, he could not determine. As the outfit neared Green-water, he rode ahead and examined the muddy bank of the pond : he found the tracks of at least two ponies, and what appeared on the wire-grass to be the print of a moccasin. From the dark clouds above, and the rising wind, and the little green waves chasing each other upon the mossy shore, he heard the perplexing sentiment like the jargon of a foreign language. When the thirsty outfits crowded down around him to the water, and a great drop of rain splattered against his hand, he joined the hurried movement to unpack and improvise a tent. It was only a bluster, and it passed over leaving the night dark and still ; and out through that darkness Ben groped his way over the sand-hills to a heap of dry bones by the cliff. He sank wearily to the ground among them, absently neaping them up, and trying in the darkness to find the last scattered ribs and knuckles. And while Mike crouched lovingly by and watched that boneheap grow, Young Rojer reviewed the whole story from Soorowits at Peavine to Soorowits in Clay Hill pass, and himself toiling like an exile through the rocks of Bull Valley. He thought of the cross-sections of that story, of the "way of the transgressor," the vision on the rock-knoll, and of the Heaven-made program with one slated exercise still to be given. That one exercise towered in dark uncertainty, like a shrouded figure which might at any time drop its mantle and disclose a naked skeleton. "And only one guide on earth," he whispered, "I must keep in tune and follow my strongest impressions. But what the dickens are my impressions?" and he looked off into the dark void which he knew to be the lower part of Castle Gulch : all was still, no voice, no impression. Then he turned his face to the other void from which they came : it was blacker yet. "I must go on," he whispered, as if to old Mike, who followed him back to camp, and slept devotedly by his blanket bed. That round-up was the most absolute and far-reaching ever made in the region of Pagahrit. It is doubtful whether the Rojer outfit or any other outfit ever worked more relentlessly than those six men, who trailed every track, and visited all corners of the range. They started with the gray dawn every morning, and came dragging into camp all hours between sunset and midnight. A dozen times when Ben ached from head to foot with weariness, he crept away into the night and asked the Intangible if it were safe to sleep, and a dozen times he came back heavy-eyed to

520 IMPROVEMENT ERA his blankets because they seemed to be the safest place. Sometimes in his rides he saw tracks, and sometimes he was all but ready to leave the business with Juan and bolt for Clay Hill ; but every time he decided, by the breadth of a hair, to stay one day longer. He found time only twice to visit his cave. Once in the late evening after the others had gone to sleep, he stole into the black cavern and groped his way to the old altar-stones. He kneeled wearily by the date on the wall, and thrust his tried finger-tips into the notches, to which he added one more. He sat again where he had dreamed in the winter, but no distinct influence reached his fatigued nerves ; his strongest impression was to go to bed and to sleep. During the round-up Ben discovered that one of West's men came from Snicksville, the town in which Josh Widder had made his new home. "Do you know 'im?" queried young Rojer. "As well as I want to," answered the Snicksvillite, "Why? Where did you meet 'im?" "I rode with 'im six years. What's he doing there? How's 'e getting along?" "Things've been goin' agin' 'im perty much, last few years. When 'e came 'e had a few cows an' good prospects, but 'e made enemies of the boys on the range, till they wouldn't ride with 'im, an^ wouldn't trust 'im, an' jist natcherly boycotted 'im till 'e had tu sell out, an' 'e made a poor sell." "Yip, out o' the cow-business an' into the horse-business, but 'e lost some of 'is best colts first thing. An' then' 'e got into trouble an' that went agin' 'im : there wus a colt found with his brand on it, an' the colt wasn't his. It made a big stink an' 'e sold agin at a loss." "Well." "Yip, 'e'd gone tu the jug if it hadn't been fer a thing er two," and plainly the Snicksvillite felt that the "thing er two" should have been overruled. "An' then 'e traded fer a farm," he went on, "but 'e wus a cow-puncher, he couldn't farm if 'e did think so. An' besides that, bad luck ambushed 'im ever' turn in the road. The rain caught 'is hay when it wus down, an' the frost an' rabbits fixed 'is grain. He never did know how er when tu plow er when tu plant er nothin' else. The old farmers tried tu tell 'im where 'e_ missed it, but they soon found thit 'e wasn't a man tu hear advice, so they let 'im go along in 'is own blunderin' way." "Yes, in his own blundering, thick-nosed way," thought Ben, though he said nothing, preferring to confer with the Intangible on the perils of his own situation, and let the plethoric Josh Widder pass by as an actor no more on the Rojer program. Whatever murderous reason may have actuated Soorowits,

VOICE OF THE INTANGIBLE 521 coyoteing it up and down gulches by day, and skulking in the darker shadows by night, he kept himself carefully from the sight of all hands while they camped at the lake. He hid somewhere in the hills like an evil spirit, for his presence and his murderous intentions, were plain to Ben, like the presence of an offended polecat in a barn-yard. Why a shot did not ring out from some well chosen ambush, young Rojer could not tell. He knew only that he had followed his strongest impressions thus far, and that knowledge became his peace and assurance by day, and his permission to sleep when his weary head rested on the pillow. The stress of his anxiety at Pagahrit moved one notch higher in the scale of suspense, when, on the twenty-seventh of May, the whole bawling herd, packs, loose horses and all, moved out of the gulch and off towards Castle Hill. The contract provided that the herd should be counted and received in Castle Gulch, when the round-up was finished ; but a wandering bunch hid in Horse Canyon, and became one of a half-dozen causes for a dragging delay at Green-water. While matters thus hung fire, young Rojer endured a torturing eagerness to be gone, for he found no reason to doubt that Soorowits still cherished hope of revenge. Riding up and down between the shattered walls of Castle Gulch, seemed a defying of reason and Providence. In the darkness of the second night's delay, Ben found himself starting on Deut for Clay Hill, having entrusted the remainder of the business to Juan. The night was not dark, though the dim light of the moon failed to reveal the objects cowering in the shadows of rocks and trees. Deut moved onward with his wonted vigor of horsehood, and Mike trotted dutifully at his heels. Young Rojer had supposed his prowling enemy to be keeping watch on the camp, awaiting opportunity to pick him off when he rode alone, and for that reason he had not suffered himself to be without company on the trip. Now, as he moved away in the darkness, Mike and Deut were his only companions, for he reasoned that since he left the danger sneaking around the camp, he had only to put spurs to Deut in order to defy its pursuit. Quietly he moved up the sandy trail from Green-water, ventnrning, as the distance seemed to justify it, into a brisk trot. Now he mounted the bank of the wash and crossed a sand-hill — now he descended to the wash again, and Deut's shoe struck a casual stone, and sent a sharp report echoing in the cliffs. Now he paused to listen to a sound real or imaginary, — it may have been either, for the five echoes of Castle Gulch carry the voice of a cow to an incredible distance. At the mouth of East Fork, where Clay Hill Canyon turns sharply off to the right, a genuine echo played back and forth between those rugged walls, — an echo of something besides a

522 IMPROVEMENT ERA cow or an owl or a coyote. Deut came to a full stop, and Mike, trotting up alongside, cocked one ear attentively towards the pass ; the brown horse-ears listened in that direction, too, and Ben turned his own eyes and feelings towards the opening where the trail begins its narrow, serpentine course down Clay Hill. Since his experience as Prosecuting Attorney, young Rojer had developed a keen perception, — a sense which grew from being pressed into service. Now, as he listened in the moonlight by the mouth of Clay Hill Canyon, he exerted that sixth sense till the shades around the pass came repellent, and the wind, coming through that mysterious opening, whispered in his ear as it passed: "Go back! Go back!" Far up to the right, from a rocky shelf, a column of smoke seemed to stand out against the sky, that is, it appeared in the shades of night to be a smoke, though of doubtful, nebulous shape. Neither the echo, the smoke, the whisperings of the wind, nor the shades in the pass, would bear mentioning to the boys in camp, but to Ben's susceptible mind they were "confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ." His active soul-feelings grasped the fragmentary evidence, and filled in the blank spaces like magic : the pass would be an ideal ambush at any time, but when a few men were mixed in with a herd of slow cattle, shoving those cattle in little bunches along a narrow trail, they would be as defenseless as cows in a branding chute, — more so than in any other place on the range. Soorowits and Buhhre, being cowards, would want a dead-sure thing, and if there were anything more sure or more deadly than the rocks overhanging the trail, Ben could not call it to mind. He did go back. When some of the boys started from sleep at sound of his approach, he told them he had decided to stay and see the herd delivered. If Clay Hill were an ambush, and Ben had no doubt of it, it meant danger to no one but himself; for Soorowits had just enough of civilization to discriminate against any but the particular blood for which he thirsted. The outfits might pass the hill in peace, so long as young Rojer was not with them, and crawling quietly into bed, he began to study out a way of foiling this past embargo. ("When the Idols Moved," is the title of the next chapter, which is the last but one of this great story.)