Part 40 (1/2)
But he went to sleep unsatisfied.
Out at Cathedral Tank that night the cattle stood snuffing rather wonderingly. Two days before there had been water which reached their knees at the deepest place; today there was none. It had trickled through the scars the blast had torn in the basin. The bellies of some were a bit shrunken from lack of it and bodies of the steers that had been killed were bloated. One, even, had already furnished food to a coyote and a pair of vultures.
Three or four licked the last of the damp silt and then turned eastward and began the slow trek back toward Devil's Hole, where at this season they had gone since they had been calves.
The Reverend saw this scattered stringing of cattle and reported it to Beck. Tom looked up from the wheel of the chuck wagon which he was repairing and considered.
”They're early,” he muttered. ”I hadn't figured they'd leave before the end of the week.... That's bad....”
The next morning he and Two-Bits, the latter riding his beloved n.i.g.g.e.r, with an extra horse carrying the tee-pee, bed and grub, clattered down the trail into the Hole and made through the brush for the Gap. They skirted the Cole ranch, eyeing the Mexicans who were at work clearing sage brush, and a mile further on halted their horses ... rode forward, halted again, rode forward ... stopped.
”It's McKee,” Two-Bits said. ”That's Webb's gray horse.”
The other rider came on and they rode forward again, Beck's holster hitched a bit forward, thumb locked in his belt.
Two-Bits had been right and when McKee recognized them he averted his face as though he would ride past without speaking. But this was not to be for Beck stopped directly in his way and said:
”Sam, if it was anybody else I'd been shootin' long ago. I ain't got the heart to kill you. You recollect, don't you, what I told you and your crowd about driftin' into our territory?”
”This ain't your range,” McKee grumbled. ”This is Cole's.”
His gray eyes met Beck's just once and fell off, showing helpless hate in their depths, the hate of the man who would give battle but who dares not, who is outraged by forces from without and by his own weakness.
”No need to argue,” Beck replied, tolerance replaced by a snap in his tone. ”You drag it for your own range, McKee, and don't you stop to look back.”
Two-Bits was delighted at the hot flush which swept into the other's face. He loathed McKee and to see him under the dominion of a strong man like Beck appealed to him as immensely funny.
”An' if my brother was here he'd tell you about a woman that looked back an' turned to salt,” he said. ”But if you turn an' look back I'll bet two-bits you turn to somethin' worse!”
The other flashed one look at him, a look of long-standing hate, devoid of a measure of the fear which he evidenced for Beck. He rode on without a word and Two-Bits laughed aloud. McKee did not even look back.
At the Gap there was water, just enough for a man and his horses for a few days. The seep had stopped and the water was not fresh.
”I guess it'll do, though,” Beck said. ”It's mighty important we keep this stock out of the Hole, Two-Bits. That's why I brought a trustworthy man.
”Lord, they're stringin' up fast,”--staring out on the desert where the steers slowly ate their way to the mouth of the Hole. ”Funny they're out of water so soon. If they get up in here,”--gesturing back through the Gap,--”there may be h.e.l.l to pay.”
He helped Two-Bits pitch his tee-pee and rode away.
Throughout that day the homely cow-boy met the drifting steers and turned them eastward, past the Hole toward the lower waters of Coyote Creek. They were reluctant to go for they knew that beyond the Gap lay water but Two-Bits slapped his chaps with rein ends and whooped and chased them until the van of the procession moved on in the desired direction.
He was up late at night and awoke early in the morning, riding up the Gap to turn back those that had stolen past in the night, then stationing himself in the shade of the parapet to await the others that came in increasing numbers.
Two-Bits did not see the gray horse picking its way along the heights above him. The gray's rider saw to it that he was not exposed. Nor could he know that the animal was picketed and that a man crawled over the rocks on his belly, shoving a rifle before him until, from a point that screened him well, he could look down into the Gap.
Steers strolled up and eyed the sentinel, lifting their noses to snuff, flinging heads about now and then to dislodge flies that their flicking tails could not reach. He would ride out toward them, shoving them down around the shoulder of the point toward the east, then return to head off others that took advantage of his absence to make a steal for the Gap.
As he worked, he sang:
”Ho, I'm a jolly _cow_boy, from Texas now I _hail!_ Give me my quirt and _po-o_-ony, I'm ready for the _trail_; I love the rolling _prai_ries, they're free from care an' _strife!_ Behind a herd of _long_horns I'll journey all my _life!_”